"It is none of your business," replied the Missourian. "If you don't keep your impertinence to yourself, I'll knock your head from your shoulders."
So the judge gave it up, and every one who liked voted.
There were not three thousand voters in the Territory, but over six thousand votes were recorded, three-quarters of them being those unlawful votes of the Missourians. Thus said a learned gentleman, "It has been maintained by the sharp logic of the revolver and the bowie knife, that the people of Missouri are the people of Kansas!"
The Governor of Kansas was named Reeder. His sympathy was with the South. But he was an honest man, and when he saw the lawless way in which the Missourians were behaving, he resolved to see justice done. And although they threatened to hang him, he ordered new elections in the seven districts which dared to make a protest. But the new elections made little difference. Owing to the fact that so many of the people were disputing its result, this election did not settle the question whether Kansas were to be admitted as a slave or a free state, and it still remained a Territory. And as soon as the legislature met, the "Free State" members were promptly unseated, and the others had things all their own way.
The laws which this legislature drew up with regard to slaves were quite out of keeping with the needs and desires of free America.
If any person were to entice a slave away from his master they were to suffer death. If they hid and protected a slave, they might be imprisoned with hard labour for five years or more. And if any person declared that Kansas was not a slave territory, they were to be imprisoned with hard labour for at least two years.
These were only a few of the laws. But the Governor vetoed them all. That is, he refused to pass them, veto coming from a Latin word meaning "I forbid." This made the slave party angry and they asked the President to remove Reeder and send a new Governor. This the President had power to do, as Texas was still only a Territory and not a state.
The President was now quite on the side of the slave owners. So a new Governor was sent, but the struggle went on just as before. Both sides began to arm, and at length it came to bloodshed.
The town of Lawrence, which was a Free State town, was sacked by a mob of ruffians, and civil war in Kansas was begun.
In Kansas there was an old man named John Brown. He was a fierce old
Puritan, and he believed that God had called him to fight slavery.
And the only way of fighting it that he thought possible was to
slay the slave-holders.