Lecompton Constitution

“ Meanwhile, a convention held under the auspices of the old Legislature had formed a new constitution, known as the Lecompton Constitution, which the old Legislature proposed to submit to the people for ratification on the 21st of December. The manner of submitting it was singular, to say the least. The people were required to vote either for the constitution with slavery, or the constitution without slavery. As without slavery the constitution was in some of its provisions as objectionable as if it upheld slavery, the Free-State men refused to participate in its ratification. ”

“ The whole power of the Administration, acting as the hired man of slavery, was ruthlessly employed for the purpose of spreading the curse over Kansas, and establishing it there as an irreversible fact; and all the departments of the Government now stood as a unit on the side of this devilish conspiracy. Everybody knew the Lecompton constitution was the work of outside ruffians, and not of the people of the Territory, whose Legislature in February, 1858, solemnly protested against their admission under that Constitution, and whose protest was totally unheeded. ”

“ Yet a state government is forced upon the people of Kansas by the Lecompton constitution whether they will it or not; for they can only vote for the constitution, and not against it. But, besides the change from a territorial to a state government, which the people alone have a right to make in framing a state constitution, there are many other momentous questions included in that instrument. It involves all the powers of state government. There is the bill of rights, the magna charta of the liberties of a free people ”

“ Ignore Lecompton; ignore Topeka; treat both those party movements as irregular and void; pass a fair bill—the one that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit; have a fair election—and you will have peace in the Democratic party, and peace throughout the country, in ninety days. The people want a fair vote. They will never be satisfied without it.... But if this constitution is to be forced down our throats in violation of the fundamental principle of free government, under a mode of submission that is a mockery and insult, I will resist it to the last. ”

“ And now be pleased to express to the President my deep regret as regards our unfortunate difference of opinion in relation to the Lecompton constitution, and to say to him, that, as infallibility does not belong to man, however exalted in intellect, purity of intention, or position, yet, if he has committed any errors in this respect, may they be overruled by a superintending Providence for the perpetuation of our union and the advancement of the honor and interest of our beloved country. ”

“ In the Senate, with its heavy Democratic majority, the Administration easily secured the passage of a bill to admit Kansas with the Lecompton Constitution. Out of eleven Democratic Senators from free States, only three--Douglas of Illinois, Broderick of California, and Stuart of Michigan--took courage to speak and vote against the measure. In the House of Representatives, however, with a narrower margin of political power, the scheme, after an exciting discussion running through about two months, met a decisive defeat. ”

“ If she agree to take the dirty acres which are proffered to her as the price of her integrity, she consents to take the yoke of Slavery upon her neck and not even to attempt to shake herself free from it for six years to come. We know that shuffling Democrats, and even temporizing Republicans, represent that the people, after accepting the Lecompton Constitution, can forthwith summon a Convention and substitute another scheme of government in its stead. ”

“ We are so little accustomed to see that kind of statesmen do a fair thing, that our surprise is apt to stimulate our gratitude. I allude to the position assumed by Judge Douglas in the struggle about the Lecompton Constitution. A packed Convention has framed a Constitution fastening slavery upon Kansas, and refuses to submit it to a vote of the people. The President in a message urges the admission of Kansas as a State, under that Constitution as it stands. ”

“ Fifth, That the present Democratic Administration has far exceeded our worst apprehensions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a Sectional interest, as especially evinced in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon the protesting people of Kansas; in construing the personal relation between master and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons; in its attempted enforcement, everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and of the Federal Courts, of the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest ”

“ The Lecompton constitution provided for holding an election of State officers, a legislature and a member of Congress, on the first Monday of January, 1858. The President sent instructions to the Territorial governor which secured a peaceable election. A larger vote was polled than at any previous election. ”

“ He said that mankind made a long step, a great stride, when they declared that minorities should not rule; and that a still higher and nobler advance had been made when it was decided that majorities could only rule through regular and legal forms. He asserted this general doctrine with reference to the construction he proposed to give to the Lecompton constitution; and to say that the people of Kansas, unless they spoke through regular forms, cannot speak at all. ”

“ Surely, then, it cannot be said that such a convention, chosen by scarcely more than one-tenth of the present voters of Kansas, represented the people of that territory, and could rightfully impose a constitution upon them without their consent. These 19 counties in which there was no census constituted a majority of the counties of the territory, and these 15 counties in which there was no registry gave a much larger vote at the October election, even with the six-months qualification, than the whole vote given to the delegates who signed the Lecompton constitution on the 7th November last. ”

“ Every bill which shall have passed both houses of the legislature shall be presented to the governor. If he approve, he shall sign it; but if not, he shall return it, with his objections, to the house in which it shall have originated, which shall enter the objections at length upon their journals, and proceed to reconsider it. If, after such reconsideration, two-thirds of the house shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, with the objections, to the other house, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered ”

“ It linked the action of Border Ruffians, presidential aspirants, senates, courts, and cabinets into efficient coöperation; leading up, step by step, from the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, through the Nebraska bill, border conquest, the Dred Scott decision, the suppression of the submission clause in the Toombs bill, and the extraordinary manipulation and machinery of the Lecompton Constitution, towards the final overthrow of the doctrine that "all men are created equal," and the substitution of the dogma of property in man ”

“ Under these two powers, Congress may first establish a provisional territorial government merely for municipal purposes; and when a State has grown into rightful sovereignty, when that sovereignty which has been kept in abeyance demands recognition, when a community is formed there, a social compact created, a sovereignty born as it were upon the soil, then Congress is gifted with the power to acknowledge it, and the Legislature, only by mere usage, sometimes neglected, assists at the birth of it by passing a precedent resolution assembling a convention. ”

“ In 1857, the Pro-Slavery Legislature elected by the Pro-Slavery voters at their own special election—the Free-State voters declining to participate—called a Constitutional Convention at Lecompton, which formed a Pro-Slavery Constitution. ”

“ They shall have no power to prevent emigrants to the State from bringing with them such persons as are deemed slaves by the laws of any one of the United States or Territories, so long as any person of the same age or description shall be continued in slavery by the laws of this State: Provided, That such person or slave be the bona-fide property of such emigrants: And provided also, That laws may be passed to prohibit the introduction into this State of slaves who have committed high crimes in other States or Territories. ”

“ Genuine popular sovereignty never existed on a firm basis except in this country. The first gun of the Revolution announced a new organization of it, which was embodied in the Declaration of Independence, developed, elaborated, and inaugurated forever in the Constitution of the United States. The two pillars of it were Representation and the Ballot-box. In distributing their sovereign powers among the various Departments of the Government, the people retained for themselves the single power of the ballot-box ”

“ The legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners, or without paying the owners previous to their emancipation a full equivalent in money for the slaves so emancipated. ”