The question naturally occurs, for whom did Calhoun speak when he approached Governor Walker, offering him the bribe of the Presidency and assuring him that the Administration had changed its mind? That was before, or certainly not long after, the probable receipt of this letter in Kansas, for the Governor left the Territory (November 16) about one week after the adjournment of the Lecompton Convention. The question becomes still more pressing owing to Governor Walker's testimony that when he reached Washington, "the President himself distinctly and emphatically assured me that he had not authorized anybody to say that he had approved of that [Lecompton] programme." On whose authority, then, did Calhoun declare that the Administration had changed its mind?
John Bell, Senate Speech, March 18, 1858.
This query brings us to another point in President Buchanan's letter of October 22, in which he mentions that Secretary Cobb, of his Cabinet, had without his knowledge suppressed the publication of certain letters in the "Washington Union." These were, as we learn elsewhere, the letters in which some of the Kansas pro-slavery leaders repeated their declaration of the hopelessness of any further contest to make Kansas a slave-State. Why this secret suppression by Secretary Cobb? There is but one plausible explanation of this whole chain of contradictions. The conclusion is almost forced upon us that a Cabinet intrigue, of which the President was kept in ignorance, was being carried on, under the very eyes of Mr. Buchanan, by those whom he himself significantly calls "the extremists"—a plot to supersede his own intentions and make him falsify his own declarations. As in the case of similar intrigues by the same agents a few years later, he had neither the wit to perceive nor the will to resist.
Stanton, Philadelphia Speech, Feb. 8, 1858.
The protest of the people of the Territory against the extraordinary action of the Lecompton Convention almost amounted to a popular revolt. This action opened a wide door to fraud, and invited Missouri over to an invasion of final and permanent conquest. Governor Walker had quitted the Territory on his leave of absence, and Secretary Stanton was acting Governor. "The people in great masses," he says, "and the Legislature that had been elected, with almost a unanimous voice called upon me to convene the Legislature, in order that they might take such steps as they could to counteract the misfortune which they conceived was about to befall them in the adoption of this constitution," As already stated, Stanton had come to Kansas with the current Democratic prejudices against the free-State party. But his whole course had been frank, sincere, and studiously impartial, and the Oxford fraud had completely opened his eyes. "I now discovered for the first time to my entire satisfaction why it was that the great mass of the people of the Territory had been dissatisfied with their government, and were ready to rebel and throw it off."
Having, like Walker, frequently and earnestly assured the people of their ultimate right to ratify or reject the work of the convention, he was personally humiliated by the unfairness and trickery of which that body was guilty. Under the circumstances he could not hesitate in his duty. By proclamation he convened the new Legislature in extra session.
The members respected the private pledge they had given him to engage in no general legislation; but provided by law for an investigation of the Oxford and McGee frauds, and for an election to be held on January 4, 1858 (the day fixed by the Lecompton Constitution for the election of State officers and a State legislature), at which the people might vote for the Lecompton Constitution or against it. Thus in the course of events two separate votes were taken on this notorious document. The first, provided for in the instrument itself, took place on the 21st of December, 1857. Detachments of troops were stationed at several points; the free-State men abstained from voting; the election was peaceable; and in due time Calhoun proclaimed that 6143 ballots had been cast "for the constitution with slavery," and 589 "for the constitution with no slavery." But the subsequent legislative investigation disclosed a gross repetition of the Oxford fraud, and proved the actual majority, in a onesided vote, to have been only 3423. The second election occurred on January 4, 1858, under authority of the legislative act. At this election the pro-slavery party voted for the State officers, but in its turn abstained from voting on the constitution, the result being—against the Lecompton Constitution, 10,226; for the Lecompton Constitution with slavery, 138; for the Lecompton Constitution without slavery, 24.[12] ]
This emphatic rejection of the Lecompton Constitution by a direct vote of the people of Kansas sealed its fate. We shall see further on what persistent but abortive efforts were made in Congress once more to galvanize it into life. The free-State party were jubilant; but the pro-slavery cabal, foiled and checked, was not yet dismayed or conquered. For now there was developed, for the first time in its full proportions, the giant pro-slavery intrigue which proved that the local conspiracy of the Atchison-Missouri cabal was but the image and fraction of a national combination, finding its headquarters in the Administration, first of President Pierce, and now of President Buchanan; working patiently and insidiously through successive efforts to bring about a practical subversion of the whole theory and policy of the American Government. It linked the action of Border Ruffians, presidential aspirants, senates, courts, and cabinets into efficient coöperation; leading up, step by step, from the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, through the Nebraska bill, border conquest, the Dred Scott decision, the suppression of the submission clause in the Toombs bill, and the extraordinary manipulation and machinery of the Lecompton Constitution, towards the final overthrow of the doctrine that "all men are created equal," and the substitution of the dogma of property in man; towards the judicial construction that property rights in human beings are before and above constitutional sanction, and that slavery must find protection and perpetuity in States as well as in Territories.