Lecompton

When the Kansas territory was ready to seek admission to the Union in 1857, the key issue was whether it would be a free state or a slave state. The pro-slavery forces won control of the constitutional convention, which met in the town of Lecompton in September of that year. The complicated fight over the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution manifested the sectional tension that would erupt in the Civil War three years later.

The pro-slavery majority at Lecompton knew that most Kansans preferred to enter the Union as a free state, so the delegates resolved to send a pro-slavery document to Washington without putting it to a fair vote. The referendum on the Lecompton Constitution claimed to let voters decide between a "constitution with slavery" and a "constitution with no slavery," but they were given no real choice: the "constitution with no slavery" prohibited only the importation of new slaves, not the maintenance of slaves already established in the territory.

In December the "constitution with slavery" and the "constitution with no slavery" went to a vote, but anti-slavery forces boycotted the election. The "constitution with slavery" passed (6,226 to 569). Two weeks later, however, the territorial legislature, which unlike the constitutional convention was controlled by the antislavery forces, organized an "up or down" vote on the Lecompton Constitution. This time the pro-slavery forces refused to participate, and the constitution was voted down (10,226 to 162).

In February the drama moved to Washington, where Congress could either grant statehood under the Lecompton Constitution or deny it altogether. President James Buchanan pledged his support to the pro-slavery constitution. The Republican minority in Congress opposed it. The decisive figure was Stephen Douglas, the powerful Democratic senator from Illinois. He had long served as the bridge between the northern and southern wings of his party (he engineered the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854), but he believed strongly in the tenets of popular sovereignty and was convinced that Kansans had not been allowed to vote. Douglas broke with southerners and organized the congressional opposition to the Lecompton Constitution. After bitter debate, it passed the Senate but was rejected in the House.

In the end the two houses struck a compromise to make what had become a crisis go away. In an election ostensibly having nothing to do with slavery, Kansans went to the polls to vote on whether to accept a smaller land grant. If they accepted the revised grant, Kansas would become a state under the Lecompton Constitution. If they refused it, Kansas would remain a territory. The issue of the land grant became a safe proxy for the dangerous issue of slavery. In August, Kansans voted no on the land grant (11,300 to 1,788), implicitly rejecting the Lecompton Constitution.

Though disaster was averted, the split between Douglas and the southerners made it clear that as long as slavery remained the dominant political issue, the Democratic Party could no longer be a national organization. The party convention actually broke in two in 1860, and disunion and war followed the next winter.

Bibliography

Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Nevins, Allan. The Emergence of Lincoln. New York: Scribners, 1950.

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Stephen A. Douglas broke with the Democratic party leadership over the Lecompton Constitution.

The Lecompton Constitution was the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas (it was preceded by the Topeka Constitution and was followed by the Leavenworth and Wyandotte).^[1] The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state advocates.^[1] The territorial legislature, consisting mostly of slave-owners, met at the designated capital of Lecompton in September 1857 to produce a rival document.^[1] Free-state supporters, who comprised a large majority of actual settlers, boycotted the vote. President James Buchanan's appointee as territorial governor of Kansas, Robert J. Walker, although a strong defender of slavery, opposed the blatant injustice of the Constitution and resigned rather than implement it.^[2] This new constitution enshrined slavery in the proposed state and protected the rights of slaveholders. In addition, the constitution provided for a referendum that allowed voters the choice of allowing more slaves to enter the territory.

Both the Topeka and Lecompton constitutions were placed before the people of the Kansas Territory for a vote, and both votes were boycotted by supporters of the opposing faction. In the case of Lecompton, however, the vote was boiled down to a single issue, expressed on the ballot as "Constitution with Slavery" v. "Constitution with no Slavery." But the "Constitution with no Slavery" clause would have not made Kansas a free state; it merely would have banned future importation of slaves into Kansas (something deemed by many as unenforceable). Boycotted by free-soilers, the referendum suffered from serious voting irregularities, with over half the 6,000 votes deemed fraudulent.^[3] Nevertheless, both it and the Topeka Constitution were sent to Washington for approval by Congress.

A vocal supporter of slaveholder rights, President Buchanan endorsed the Lecompton Constitution before Congress. While the president received the support of the Southern Democrats, many Northern Democrats, led by Stephen A. Douglas, sided with the Republicans in opposition to the constitution.^[4] Douglas was helped considerably by the work of Thomas Ewing Jr., a noted Kansas Free State politician and lawyer, who led a legislative investigation in Kansas to uncover the fraudulent voting ballots. A new referendum over the fate of the Lecompton Constitution was proposed, even though this would delay Kansas's admission to the Union. Furthermore, a new constitution, the anti-slavery Leavenworth Constitution, was already being drafted.^[1] On 4 January 1858, Kansas voters, having the opportunity to reject the constitution altogether in the referendum, overwhelmingly rejected the Lecompton proposal by a vote of 10,226 to 138.^[4] And in Washington, the Lecompton constitution was defeated by the federal House of Representatives in 1858. Though soundly defeated, debate over the proposed constitution had ripped apart the Democratic party. Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861.

See also

• Historical background of Lecompton, Kansas
• Robert J. Walker

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Heller, Francis Howard, The Kansas State Constitution: A Reference Guide, Greenwood Press, 1992, pp. 1–4. ISBN 0313265100.
2. ^ Stampp, Kenneth M., America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 167-80. ISBN 0195074815
3. ^ Flanagan, Mike, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Old West, Alpha Books, 1999, p. 180. ISBN 0028629450
4. ^ ^{a b} "Key Events in the Presidency of James Buchanan". Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia. 2009. http://millercenter.virginia.edu/academic/americanpresident/keyevents/buchanan?PHPSESSID=6fdcedf41fc1fe121947dd44b3c17c21. Retrieved July 17, 2009. 

• Smith, Ronald D., Thomas Ewing Jr., Frontier Lawyer and Civil War General. Columbia:University of Missouri Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8262-1806-3.

External links

• The Kansas Constitution on Wikisource.
• Constitution Hall State Historic Site Lecompton, Kansas
• Historic Lecompton.

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