| First invasion of the Missourians. |
When the first party arrived at the site they found it occupied by a single settler, named Stearns. Mr. Branscomb immediately purchased Stearns' claim and improvements for the company. The Missourians had, however, rushed into the Territory, at the earliest moment after the passage of the organic Act, and marked all the best lands as taken, leaving very little for bona fide settlers. As the result of this procedure, another claimant to the site of Lawrence soon appeared, one John Baldwin, and ordered the Yankees to decamp. Robinson proposed that each settler be left in possession until some authorized tribunal could pass upon the claims, and declared that his party would hold possession until removed by a legal act. Baldwin and his party rejected the proposition, and summoned their Missouri friends to assist them. Some came, but not enough to overcome the Yankees. The Yankees stood firm and the Missourians retired, declaring that they would come again, and breathing out threats of war and bloodshed upon their return. This was October 6th, 1854, and such was the first invasion of the Missourians.
| Governor A. H. Reeder. |
On the next day, the Governor of the Territory, the President's representative, the Hon. A. H. Reeder, of Pennsylvania, arrived at Fort Leavenworth, and began his régime in the Territory. From this time forward the history of the Territory is the resultant of four elemental forces in contact with each other—the general Government, the pro-slavery inhabitants, the anti-slavery inhabitants, and the Missourians.
Governor Reeder was a genial, intelligent, upright man, a good lawyer and a fine orator. He was a Union-loving Democrat, and a firm believer in the doctrine of home rule in the Territories. He declared that he would maintain peace and order in the Territory, and immediately set out on a tour of inspection through the Territory. After having finished this, he caused the Territory to be districted, and ordered the election of a delegate to Congress.
| The second invasion of the Missourians and the election of the delegate to Congress. |
There is little question that at the moment a majority of the bona fide settlers in the Territory were pro-slavery, and would have elected the delegate to Congress without any outside aid, but the pro-slavery men in Kansas and Missouri had become excited by the rumors of the vast schemes in the East for planting anti-slavery military colonies in the Territories, and also in the slaveholding Commonwealths, and were in no state of mind to think quietly and act calmly. They felt that they must make sure of all of the elements of government in Kansas at the outset. The Missourians consequently committed the fatal and unnecessary blunder of going over into Kansas, to the number of some seventeen hundred or more, and voting for the pro-slavery candidate for Congress, J. W. Whitfield, who was thus elected by a large majority. Without the vote of the Missourians, Whitfield had still a substantial majority, but this travesty of the principle of home rule in the Territories, this pollution of republican principles at the very fountain-head, roused the North to the highest pitch of indignation.