Anti-slavery Kansans ratify Topeka Constitution

This Day in Kansas History

The Topeka Constitution was the first constitution written for the then territory of Kansas in 1855. It was drafted by free staters in October of that year as a response to the contested elections that took place on March 30, 1855. These elections gave initial control of the Kansas Territory to the proslavery party. The Topeka Constitution echoed the rhetoric of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and it called for Kansas territorial citizens to alter their form of government, overthrow an oppressive regime, and repel foreign invaders. In the case of the Kansas Territory this was the proslavery settlers and Missouri border ruffians who fraudulently participated in the elections in March. Once the proslavery legislature led by lawyer and politician Benjamin F. Stringfellow was in office, it tried to drive free soil settlers out of the territory by enacting Slave Codes. These codes were repressive and hostile not only to abolitionists but to anyone who was even mildly unsupportive of slavery. Slave code laws were passed that forbade men known to hold antislavery views from serving on juries. These laws also made it a felony to deny someone the “right” to hold slaves and the circulation of published materials that encouraged slaves to revolt was punishable by death.

In the summer of 1855 free soil advocates like James H. Lane and abolitionists like Charles Robinson expressed daring opinions against the proslavery government and the Slave Codes in Lawrence, Kansas. Although free state men had varying opinions of slavery, and some believed in liberty for all, while others believed in liberty for only white men, they coalesced a political party around the desire to make Kansas a free state. They looked to the precedent of California’s statehood which emerged after a popular convention drafted a constitution and the territory was accepted by the federal government into the Union in the Compromise of 1850. The Free State Party moved in a similar direction when it met at a convention in Big Springs, KS on September 5, 1855, and declared the federally recognized proslavery legislature as “bogus” and elected its own legislature and a delegate to Congress. It also called for a state constitutional convention to take place in Topeka that would begin in October. Jim Lane served as the president of the convention that met from October 23 to November 11, 1855. This convention joined fractions of Whigs, Democrats, Republicans, and Free Soilers together to fight against the increasingly virulent proslavery movement in the Kansas Territory. Together they drafted the Topeka Constitution.

The drafted constitution prohibited slavery, granted citizens the rights to “Life, Liberty, and Property and the free pursuit of happiness.” It also extended suffrage to white men and “every civilized male Indian who has adopted the ways of the white man.” The Topeka Constitution for reasons founded on racists beliefs and a desire to avoid economic competition also included an “exclusion clause” banning free blacks from entering Kansas Territory. This was because some free staters believed that Kansas should be open only to settlement by whites. It was Lane who forced the issue by including the clause in the constitution. On December 15, 1855, anti-slavery Kansans ratified the constitution by a three to one margin or a 1,731 to 46 vote. One month to the day later, on January 15, 1856, a free state governor named Charles L. Robinson and legislature were elected, which created two competing territorial governments: one proslavery the other, free-state. The Topeka Constitution was then forwarded to Washington D.C. in hopes of being approved. However, President Franklin Pierce delivered a message to Congress that condemned the action of the Free State Kansans as “of a Revolutionary character” and committed a military force in support of the proslavery Kansans.

The House of Representatives accepted the Topeka Constitution and voted to accept Kansas’s Statehood. But the Senate blocked the process by suggesting that the Free State Kansans reframe their constitution and sent the measure back to the House which refused to consent. And so, when the elected Free State legislature attempted to convene at Topeka on July 4, 1856, Colonel Edwin V. Sumner under the authority of President Pierce dispersed the meeting. He used the threat of force from two companies of the U.S. First Calvary and a cannon. In January 1857 the Kansas Free Legislature resubmitted the Topeka Constitution to Washington where President James Buchanan who supported the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution would condemn the petition and stall its adoption after his inauguration that March. Although the Topeka Constitution failed to gain Statehood for Kansas, it drew national attention to the Free State cause, stimulated the heated national debate over slavery, and would be a central campaign issue of the 1856 presidential election.

The struggle over the Topeka constitution helped to foster the fledgling Republican Party and inspired waves of Free State immigrants to come to Kansas. Along with them came the associated guns and money that would finally settle the issue of popular sovereignty in Kansas. When the ballot boxes failed to solve the disputes in the territory, settlers turned to bullets to settle their disagreements. The violence, which was over slavery in the territory, brought “Bleeding Kansas” to national attention. Kansas would be admitted into the Union in 1861 after a long and bloody fight for statehood. The original Topeka Constitution was filed in the Office of the Executive Committee of Kansas Territory in 1855. The location of the original is unknown, but a copy made by the convention was submitted to Congress and the signers verified that “It is a true copy and transcript of the original adopted at Topeka, Kansas Territory on the 12th day of November 1855.” The copy was found in the records of the U.S. Senate in the fall of 2013. The Topeka Constitution was the first step on the long and bloody road to statehood for Kansas and though it failed to gain federal recognition it changed the political history of the state of Kansas forever.