[Sidenote: 1855.]
[Sidenote: Howard Report, pp. 9 to 44.]
[Sidenote: Howard Report, p. 30.]
[Sidenote: Ibid., p. 34.]
When the 30th of March, election day, finally arrived, the conspiracy had once more mustered its organized army of invasion, and five thousand Missouri Border Ruffians, in different camps, bands, and squads, held practical possession of nearly every election district in the Territory. Riot, violence, intimidation, destruction of ballot-boxes, expulsion and substitution of judges, neglect or refusal to administer the prescribed oaths, viva voce voting, repeated voting on one side, and obstruction and dispersion of voters on the other, were common incidents; no one dared to resist the acts of the invaders, since they were armed and commanded in frontier if not in military fashion, in many cases by men whose names then or after-wards were prominent or notorious. Of the votes cast, 1410 were upon a subsequent examination found to have been legal, while 4908 were illegal. Of the total number, 5427 votes were given to the pro-slavery and only 791 to the free-State candidates. Upon a careful collation of evidence the investigating committee of Congress was of the opinion that the vote would have returned a free-State legislature if the election had been confined to the actual settlers; as conducted, however, it showed a nominal majority for every pro-slavery candidate but one.
Governor Reeder had feared a repetition of the November frauds; but it is evident that he had no conception of so extensive an invasion. It is probable, too, that information of its full enormity did not immediately reach him. Meanwhile the five days prescribed in his proclamation for receiving notices of contest elapsed. The Governor had removed his executive office to Shawnee Mission. At this place, and at the neighboring town of Westport, Missouri, only four miles distant, a majority of the persons claiming to have been elected now assembled and became clamorous for their certificates. [Footnote: Testimony of Ex-Governor Reeder, Howard Report, pp. 935-9; also Stringfellow's testimony, p. 855.] A committee of their number presented a formal written demand for the same; they strenuously denied his right to question the legality of the election, and threats against the Governor's life in case of his refusal to issue them became alarmingly frequent. Their regular consultations, their open denunciations, and their hints at violence, while they did not entirely overawe the Governor, so far produced their intended effect upon him that he assembled a band of his personal friends for his own protection. On the 6th of April, one week after election, the Governor announced his decision upon the returns. On one side of the room were himself and his armed adherents; on the other side the would-be members in superior numbers, with their pistols and bowie-knives. Under this virtual duress the Governor issued certificates of election to all but about one-third of the claimants; and the returns in these cases he rejected, not because of alleged force or fraud, but on account of palpable defects in the papers. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
The issue of certificates was a fatal error in Governor Reeder's action. It endowed the notoriously illegal Legislature with a technical authority, and a few weeks later, when he went to Washington city to invoke the help of the Pierce Administration against the usurpation, it enabled Attorney-General Cushing (if current report was true) to taunt him with the reply: "You state that this Legislature is the creature of force and fraud; which shall we believe—your official certificate under seal, or your subsequent declarations to us in private conversation?"
[Sidenote: April 16, 1855.]
The question of the certificates disposed of, the next point of interest was to determine at what place the Legislature should assemble. Under the organic act the Governor had authority to appoint the first meeting, and it soon became known that his mind was fixed upon the embryo town of Pawnee, adjoining the military post of Fort Riley, situated on the Kansas River, 110 miles from the Missouri line. Against this exile, however, Stringfellow and his Border Ruffian lawmakers protested in an energetic memorial, asking to be called together at the Shawnee Mission, supplemented by the private threat that even if they convened at Pawnee, they would adjourn and come back the day after. If the Governor harbored any remaining doubt that this bogus Legislature intended to assume and maintain the mastery, it speedily vanished. Their hostility grew open and defiant; they classed him as a free-State man, an "abolitionist," and it became only too evident that he would gradually be shorn of power and degraded from the position of Territorial Executive to that of a mere puppet. Having nothing to gain by further concession, he adhered to his original plan, issued his proclamation convening the Legislature at Pawnee on the first Monday in July, and immediately started for Washington to make a direct appeal to President Pierce.
[Sidenote: "Squatter Sovereign," June 5, 1855.]