THE WYANDOTTE CONVENTION.
Early in February, 1859, the Territorial Legislature passed an act submitting to the people the question of calling a Constitutional Convention. This vote was taken March 28th, and resulted: For, 5,306; against, 1,425. On the 10th of May, 1859, the Republican party of Kansas was organized, at Osawatomie, and at the election held on the 7th of June, for delegates to the Wyandotte Convention, the Republican and Democratic parties confronted each other in Kansas for the first time. The Democrats carried the counties of Leavenworth, Doniphan, Jefferson and Jackson, and elected one of the two delegates from Johnson. The Republicans were successful in all the other counties voting. The total vote polled was 14,000. The Republican membership was thirty-five; the Democratic, seventeen.
The Convention then chosen assembled on the 5th day of July, 1859. In its composition it was an unusual, not to say remarkable, Kansas assemblage. Apparently the chiefs of the contending parties had grown weary of Constitution-making, or regarded this fourth endeavor in that line as a predestined failure, for they were conspicuous by their absence. In the Topeka Convention nearly every prominent man of the Free-State party had a seat. Gen. James H. Lane was its President, and Charles Robinson, Martin F. Conway, Marcus J. Parrott, Wm. Y. Roberts, Geo. W. Smith, Philip C. Schuyler, Cyrus K. Holliday, Mark W. Delahay, and many other recognized Free-State leaders were members. In the Leavenworth Convention there was a similar gathering of widely-known Free-State men. Conway was its President, and Lane, Roberts, Thos. Ewing, Jr., Henry J. Adams, H. P. Johnson, Sam’l N. Wood, T. Dwight Thacher, Preston B. Plumb, Joel K. Goodin, A. Larzelere, W. F. M. Arny, Chas. H. Branscomb, John Ritchie, and many other influential Free-State chiefs or partisans, were among its members.