On the 14th of March Mr. Everett presented the famous mammoth memorial, signed by 3,050 clergymen of New England, protesting against the passage of the bill.
In the House of Representatives the bill was brought up on the 31st of January, 1853. The debate upon it was closed on the 19th of May, 1854, and on the 22d of May, 1854, it passed the House by the following vote:—Yeas, 113; nays, 100. The vote of the Senate on the final passage of the bill was, yeas, 35; nays, 13.
On the 20th of December, 1854, the Hon. John H. Whitfield, delegate elect from the Territory of Kansas, was sworn in and admitted to a seat in the House. It was alleged that his election had been carried by an importation of Missourians into the Territory, but no contest was made on his right, and he held his position during the remainder of the Thirty-third Congress.
During the recess between the 4th of March and the 1st of December, 1855, the history of Kansas was marked by the most exciting events. The removal of the seat of government by the Territorial Legislature from the place which had been fixed by Governor Reeder, was deemed by the latter to have made void, ab initio, all acts enacted by them subsequent to such removal, on the ground that the power to locate the same was vested in him alone.
The free State party backed up Governor Reeder, while the pro-slavery party endorsed the action of the Legislature. Governor Reeder was in the meantime removed from office.
The free State party met at Big Springs and resolved to repudiate the acts of the Territorial Legislature and organize a State government. A Convention was accordingly called and held at Topeka, on the 4th Tuesday of October, framed what was called the Topeka Convention, and set on foot a State Government which soon came in conflict with the regularly constituted authorities, and resulted in the indictments against the former for treason, which followed.
Meanwhile, finding opposition to the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska act unavailing in Congress and under the forms of the Constitution, combinations were entered into at the North to control the political destinies and form and regulate the domestic institutions of these Territories through the machinery of emigrant aid societies, by which means large numbers of persons were forwarded to the debatable ground. In order to give consistency to the movement and surround it with the color of legal authority, an act of incorporation was procured from the Legislature of Massachusetts for an association by the name of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, the ostensible purpose of which was to enable emigrants to settle in the West. It was a powerful corporation, with a capital of five millions of dollars, invested in houses and lands, in merchandise and mills, in cannons and rifles, in powder and lead—in all the implements of art, agriculture and war, and employing a corresponding number of men under the management of directors who remained at home and pulled the wires of this immense political automaton. In a measure they succeeded. Thousands of these emigrants poured into the Territory, armed with Sharpe’s rifles and the Word of God, and located themselves wherever their votes were most necessary. The result might have been anticipated. Under the influence of inflammatory appeals and stung by the irritating threats of the free-state men, the most intense indignation was aroused in the States near the Territory of Kansas, and especially in Missouri, whose domestic peace was thus the most directly endangered. Counter movements consequently ensued. Bands of men came over the State border and appeared at the polls, and on both sides angry accusations followed that the elections were carried by fraud and violence. In the meantime, statements entirely unfounded or grossly exaggerated concerning events within the Territory, were sedulously diffused through remote States to feed the flame of sectional animosity there, and the agitators in the States in turn exerted themselves to encourage and stimulate strife within the Territory.
During the Presidential campaign of 1856 Kansas may be said to have been in a state of civil war. Life was nowhere safe. Armed men espousing both sides of the question roamed throughout the country, committing depredations and atrocities which find their equal only in the records of savage barbarity. Men, women and children were murdered in their beds, and few could aver themselves either as free-state men or pro-slavery men without danger of being shot down in their tracks. It was during this period that the notorious John Brown, with his band, made his appearance and commenced those villanies for which he has since met a just reward upon the gallows.
To return to Congress, however: on the 7th of April, 1856, a memorial of the Senators and Representatives of the so-called State of Kansas, accompanied by the Constitution adopted at Topeka, praying the admission of the same into the Union, was presented in the House of Representatives and referred. The Committee on Territories reported a bill to that effect, which was rejected on the 30th of June by a vote of yeas 106, nays 107.
On motion of Mr. Barclay, of Pennsylvania, the question was reconsidered, and the vote being taken on the passage of the bill, it was carried by yeas 107, nays 106, the abovenamed gentleman changing his ballot, and one other voting aye who was not present before.