Had the Governor remained true to the legislature it is possible that this plan of rebellion against the Territorial government might have been suppressed at the outset, but such was not to be the course of history. He called the legislature to assemble at Pawnee on July 2nd. It remained in session there only four days. It did little more than unseat the persons holding the Governor's certificate by virtue of the second election, and seat those to whom he had denied his certificate on account of fraud at the first election. It then adjourned itself to Shawnee Mission, a place nearer the Missouri border. The Governor denied the power of the legislature to do this, since by the Act organizing the Territory, the legislature must first meet at the time and place appointed by the Governor, and was vested by the Act with power, thereafter, only over the time of commencing its regular sessions. The Governor vetoed the proposition of the legislature to change its place of meeting. The legislature passed the project over his veto, and removed to Shawnee Mission; after which the Governor broke off all official connection with it. There is little doubt that the pro-slavery legislature wanted to be where it could be easily supported by the Missourians, and that the Governor considered this a menace to his own independence, and an outrage upon the people of Kansas, and upon the principle of "popular sovereignty" in the Territories.
| Sharpe's riles. |
The attitude now assumed by the Governor toward the legislature at Shawnee Mission was a great encouragement to the anti-slavery men. Dr. Robinson had already sent to Mr. Thayer for Sharpe's rifles, and, at the time of the Governor's quarrel with the legislature, a sufficient number of these had arrived to furnish almost every anti-slavery man with a good outfit.
| Factional movements among the anti-slavery men suppressed. |
Dr. Robinson had, at the same time, overcome the attempts of James S. Lane to separate the anti-slavery men into parties, by the organization of a Democratic party in Kansas. In a powerful speech at Lawrence, on July 4th, 1855, the Doctor convinced his hearers of the necessity for all anti-slavery men standing together until Kansas should be admitted into the Union as a non-slaveholding Commonwealth. It was in this address that the Doctor repudiated the existing legislature as a Missouri institution, advising resistance to the execution of its acts, and made his noted declaration, that, if slavery in Missouri was impossible with freedom in Kansas, then slavery in Missouri must die in order that freedom in Kansas might live.
| Excitement in Missouri and throughout the country over the "Free-state" movement. |
These bold utterances startled the North and the South, the people of Kansas and, especially, the people of Missouri. This speech, together with the letter of M. F. Conway to Governor Reeder, resigning his seat in the legislature and repudiating that body "as derogatory to the respectability of popular government and insulting to the virtue and intelligence of the age," set the "Free-state" scheme in motion.
| The enactments of the Territorial legislature. |
The enactments of the Territorial legislature greatly aided the movement by demonstrating to the people what they had to expect from the dominance of that body. They made the decoying, or aiding therein, of a slave away from his master in the Territory grand larceny, punishable by death. They made the decoying into Kansas of any slave away from his master in any other place, for the purpose of effecting his freedom, grand larceny, punishable by death. And they made the denial of the right to hold slaves in Kansas, either by word of mouth or in writing or printing, a felony, punishable by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than two years.
| The North aroused by this legislation. |