Under U.S. law, a state requires a constitution. A main order of business for Territorial Kansas was the creation of a constitution, under which Kansas would become a state. Whether it would be a slave state or a free state, allowing or prohibiting

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, was a national issue, because it would affect voting in the polarized U.S. Senate. Because of tensions over slavery, four quite different constitutions of Kansas were drafted.

Topeka Constitution

Text of the Topeka Constitution
The Topeka Constitutional Convention met in opposition to the first territorial legislature, from which free-staters had been excluded, and that they called "bogus". It adopted the

Topeka Constitution The Topeka Constitutional Convention met from October 23 to November 11, 1855 in Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, Kansas Territory, in a building afterwards called Constitution Hall (Topeka, Kansas), Constitution Hall. It drafted the Topeka Constitution, w ...

on December 15, 1855, which was approved territory-wide on January 15, 1856. Under this constitution, free Blacks were excluded from Kansas; the "Black exclusion" was voted on separately, but it passed. The constitution was sent to Congress and approved by the House on July 2, 1856, but, opposed by

President Pierce Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was a northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity ...

, failed in the Senate by two (Southern) votes.

Lecompton Constitution

Text of the Lecompton Constitution
The Territorial Legislature met in

Lecompton Lecompton (pronounced ) is a city in Douglas County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 588. Lecompton was the ''de jure'' territorial capital of Kansas from 1855 to 1861, and the Douglas County seat f ...

in September 1856 to prepare a rival document. The

LeCompton Constitution The Lecompton Constitution (1859) was the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas. Named for the city of Lecompton where it was drafted, it was strongly pro-slavery. It never went into effect. History Purpose The Lecompton Co ...

explicitly allowed slavery, the subject of an entire article (Article 7). It was approved in a rigged election in December 1857, but it was overwhelmingly defeated in a second vote in January 1858 by a majority of voters in the Kansas Territory. It was sent to Washington anyway. President Buchanan endorsed it, and it was approved by the Southern-dominated Senate, but the House sent it back to Kansas for a vote. It was overwhelmingly defeated a second time on August 2, 1858.

Leavenworth Constitution

Text of the Leavenworth Constitution
In the 1856 election the free-staters achieved a majority in the legislature, and they called for another constitutional convention, to head off approval of the Lecompton Constiutution. It met in March 1858 first in Mineola, then in Leavenworth. This constitution, the most liberal of the four, was sent to Congress in January 1859, but Congress took no action.

Wyandotte Constitution

Text of Wyandotte Constitution
The convention met July 5, 1859 in the former community of Wyandotte, today part of

Kansas City, Kansas Kansas City, abbreviated as "KCK", is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas, and the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is an inner suburb of the older and more populous Kansas City, Missouri, after which it is named. As of ...

. The Wyandotte Constitution was approved by territorial referendum on October 4, 1859. In April 1860, the United States House of Representatives voted to admit Kansas under the Wyandotte Constitution. The Senate was still just as opposed to a new free state, and no action was taken until January 1861, when senators from the seceding slave states abandoned their seats. On the same day the last of them left, Monday, January 21, 1861, the Senate passed the Kansas bill. Kansas's admission as a free state became effective Tuesday, January 29, 1861. The Wyandotte Constitution remains Kansas's current constitution.

References

{{Kansas Bleeding Kansas Constitutions of Kansas

Topeka Constitution

Lecompton Constitution

Leavenworth Constitution

Wyandotte Constitution

See also

Further reading

References