original draft prepared by the committee and adopted
by the convention, though without signatures; also
adding his explanatory affidavit ("Cong. Globe,”
App. 1856, pp. 378-9), to the effect that, the committee
had devolved upon him the preparation of the formal
copy, but that the original signatures had been mislaid.
The official action of the Senate appears to have
concerned itself exclusively with the copy presented
by General Cass on March 24. Lane’s copies
served only as text for angry debate. As the
Topeka Constitution had no legal origin or quality,
technical defeats were of little consequence, especially
in view of the action by the free-State voters of Kansas
at their voluntary elections for delegates on October
9, and to ratify it on December 15, 1856.]
[Relocated Footnote (2): Nevertheless, the efforts
of the free-State party tinder this combination were
not wholly barren. The contest between Whitfield
and Reeder for a seat in the House as territorial
delegate not only provoked searching discussion, but
furnished the occasion for sending an investigating
committee to Kansas, attended by the contestants in
person. This committee with a fearless diligence
collected in the Territory, as well as from the border
counties of Missouri, a mass of sworn testimony amounting
to some 1200 printed pages, and which exposed the
Border Ruffian invasions and the Missouri usurpation
in all their monstrous iniquity, and officially revealed
to the astounded North, for the first time and nearly
two years after its beginning, the full proportions
of the conspiracy which held sway in Kansas.]
CIVIL WAR IN KANSAS
Out of the antagonistic and contending factions mentioned
in the last two chapters, the bogus Legislature and
its Border-Ruffian adherents on the one hand, and
the framers and supporters of the Topeka Constitution
on the other, grew the civil war in Kansas. The
bogus Legislature numbered thirty-six members.
These had only received, all told, 619 legal bond
fide Kansas votes; but, what answered their purposes
just as well, 4408 Missourians had cast their ballots
for them, making their total constituency (if by discarding
the idea of a State line we use the word in a somewhat
strained sense) 5427. This was at the March election,
1855. Of the remaining 2286 actual Kansas voters
disclosed by Seeder’s census, only 791 cast their
ballots. That summer’s emigration, however,
being mainly from the free States, greatly changed
the relative strength of the two parties. At the
election of October 1, 1855, in which the free-State
men took no part, Whitfield, for delegate, received
2721 votes, Border Ruffians included. At the
election for members of the Topeka Constitutional
Convention, a week later, from which the pro-slavery
men abstained, the free-State men cast 2710 votes,
while Reeder, their nominee for delegate, received
2849. For general service, therefore, requiring
