9ballot “for the Constitution with Slavery,” or “for the Constitution with no Slavery;” and it was further provided, that the Constitution should stand entire, if a majority of votes should be cast for the Constitution with Slavery, while, on the other hand, if the majority of votes cast should be “for the Constitution with no Slavery,” then the existing Slavery should not be disturbed, but should remain, with its continuance, by the succession of its unhappy victims by descent forever. But even this miserable shadow of a choice between forms of a slave State Constitution was made to'depend on the taking of a test oath to support and maintain it in the form which should be preferred by the majority of those who should vote on complying with that humiliation. ' The Governor saw that by conniving at this pitiful and wicked juggle he should both shipwreck his fame and become responsible for civil war. He remonstrated, and appealed to his chief, the President of the United States, to condemn it. Denunciations followed him from the Lecompton party within the Territory, and denunciations no less violent from the slave States were his greeting at the National Capital. The President disappointed his most effective friepd and wisest counsellor. This present Congress had now assembled. The President, as if fearful of delay, forestalled our attention with recommendations to overlook the manifest objections to the transaction, and to regard the anticipated result of this mock election, then not yet held, as equivalent to an acceptance of the Constitution by the people of Kansas, alleging that the refusal of the people to vote either the ballot for the “ Constitution with Slavery,” or the false and deceitful ballot for the “ Constitution with no Slavery,” would justly be regarded as drawing after it the consequences of actual acceptance and adoption of the Constitution itself. His argument was apologetic, as it lamented that the Constitution had not been fairly submitted; and jesuitical, as it urged that the people might, when once admitted as a State, change the Constitution at their pleasure, in defiance of the provision which postpones any change seven years. Copies of the message containing these arguments were transmitted to the Territory, to confound and dishearten the Free State party, and obtain a surrender, at the election to be held on the 21st of December, on^the questions submitted by the Convention. The people, however, were neither misled nor intimidated. Alarmed by this act of connivance by the President of the United States with their oppressors, they began to prepare for the last arbitrament of nations. The Secretary, Mr. Stanton, now Governor ad interim, issued his proclamation, calling the new Territorial Legislature to assemble to provide for preserving the public peace. An Executive spy dispatched information of this proceeding to the President by telegraph, and instantly Mr. Stanton ceased to be Secretary and Governor ad interim, being removed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States. Thus the service of Frederick P. Stanton came to an abrupt end, but in a manner most honorable to himself. His chief, Mr. Walker, was less ciously mingled promises of fabulous quantities of land for the endowment of roads and education. He dispensed with the test oaths and taxes, lamented the defects of census and registry, and promised the rejection of the Constitution, by himself, by the President, and by Congress, if a full, fair, and complete submission of the Constitution should not be made by the Convention ; and he obtained and published pledges qf such submission by the party conventions which nominated the candidates for delegates, and evemby an imposing number of those candidates themselves. The people stood aloof, and refused to vote. The army protected the polls. The Slave Labor party alone voted, and voted without legal restraint, and so achieved an easy formal success by casting some two thousand ballots. Just in this conjuncture, however, the term of three years’ service which the usurping Legislature had fixed for its own members expired, and elections, authorized by itself, were to be held, for the choice, not only of new members, but of a Delegate to Congress. While the Lecompton Convention was assembling, the Free Labor party determined to attend these Territorial elections, and contest, through them, for self-government within the Territory. They put candidates in nomination, on the express ground of repudiation of the whole Lecompton proceeding. The Lecompton Convention prudently adjourned to a day beyond the elections. The parties contended at the ballot-boxes, and the result was a complete and conclusive triumph of the Free Labor party. For a moment, this victory, so important, was jeoparded by the fraudulent presentation of spurious and fabricated returns of elections in almost uninhabited districts,' sufficient to transfer the triumph to the Slave Labor party, and the Free State pqrty was proceeding to vindicate it by force. The Governor and Secretary detected, proved, and exposed, this atrocious fraud. The Lecompton Convention denounced them, and complaints against them poured in upon the President, from the slaveholding States. They were doomed from that time. The President was silent. The Lecompton Convention proceeded, and framed a Constitution which declares Slavery perpetual and irreversible, and postpones any alteration of its own provisions until after 1864, by -which time they’- hoped that Slavery might have gained too deep a hold in the soil of Kansas to be in danger of being uprooted. All this was easy|Jbut now carps the question whether the Constitution should be submitted to the people. It was confessed that it was । obnoxious to them, and, if submitted, would be rejected with indignation and contempt. An official emissary from Washington is supposed to have suggested the solution which was adopted. This was a submission in form, but not in fact. The President of the Convention, without any laws to preserve the purity of the franchise by penalties for its violation, was authorized to designate his own agents, altogether irrespectively of the Territorial authorities, and with their aid to hold an election, in which there should be no vote allowed or received, if against the Constitution itself. Each voter was permitted to cast a
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