1855 Constitutional Convention Topeka Kansas Territory Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper Dec15

The Topeka Constitutional Convention met from October 23 to November 11, 1855 in

Topeka Topeka ( ; Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeast Kansas, in the Central Un ...

Kansas Territory The Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the United States, Union as the Slave and ...

, in a building afterwards called

Constitution Hall DAR Constitution Hall is a concert hall located at 1776 D Street NW, near the White House in Washington, D.C. It was built in 1929 by the Daughters of the American Revolution to house its annual convention when membership delegations outgrew Memo ...

. It drafted the Topeka Constitution, which banned

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 ...

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...

, though it would also have prevented free Blacks from living in Kansas. The convention was organized by Free-Staters to counter the pro-slavery Territorial Legislature elected March 5, 1855, in polling tainted significantly by

electoral fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of ...

and the intimidation of Free State voters. The Topeka Constitution marked the first effort to form a Kansas governmental structure and define its basis in law. Free-State delegates passed the constitution on December 15, 1855. The -wide election for officers and approval of the constitution on January 15, 1856, was boycotted by most pro-slavery men. Among those elected was

Charles L. Robinson Charles Lawrence Robinson (July 21, 1818 – August 17, 1894) was an American politician who served in the California State Assembly from 1851-52, and later as the first Governor of Kansas from 1861 until 1863. He was also the first governor o ...

as governor. The constitution was forwarded to Washington with a plea to the

U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...

for admitting Kansas as a free state, under this constitution. President Pierce, anxious to placate Southerners and keep them in the Union, condemned the document. It was presented in the Senate by Senator

Lewis Cass Lewis Cass (October 9, 1782June 17, 1866) was an American military officer, politician, and statesman. He represented Michigan in the United States Senate and served in the Cabinets of two U.S. Presidents, Andrew Jackson and James Buchanan. He w ...

of Michigan and in the House by Representative Daniel of Indiana. It passed the House by two votes on July 2, but was held in committee by the Senate. On July 8, Senator

Stephen A. Douglas Stephen Arnold Douglas (April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. A senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party for president in the 1860 presidential election, which wa ...

took up the Topeka Constitution in a bill counter to Senator Cass, which threw the issue back upon the people of Kansas in accordance with the provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Following the model of Oregon, citizens of the 2nd Territorial District petitioned the 1855 Free State convention to incorporate a "black exclusion" clause in the Topeka Constitution. This would have prevented not only the enslaved, but also free

African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

from residing in the state. It was rejected by convention president James H. Lane and others, who allowed the issue to be voted on separately in the January 1856 referendum; the results favored exclusion. With renewed determination, the Free State legislature reconvened in Constitution Hall on January 5, 1858. Governor Robinson urged keeping the State government intact, and laws were passed. The Topeka Constitution was again sent to the Congress, but no action was taken. The South controlled Congress, and it was not going to admit Kansas as a free state if it could help it. It was not so much that slavery was benign, as most of them believed, it was that a new free state would change the balance of power in the polarized Senate. The Topeka Constitution was followed by the equally unsuccessful, pro-slavery

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 ...

of 1857 and the Free-State

Leavenworth Constitution The Leavenworth Constitution was one of four Kansas state constitutions proposed during the era of Bleeding Kansas. It was never adopted. The Leavenworth Constitution was drafted by a convention of Free-Staters, and was the most progressive of the ...

of 1858. Finally the

Wyandotte Constitution The Wyandotte Constitution is the constitution of the U.S. state of Kansas. Background The Kansas Territory was created in 1854. The largest issue by far in territorial Kansas was whether slavery was to be permitted or prohibited; aside from the m ...

(1859) led to Kansas being admitted into the Union as a free state in 1861, five years after it first applied, the Southern legislators blocking it having departed ''en masse''. The Civil War began four months later. The conflict between the Free State legislature and the Territorial legislature, each seeking control of Kansas' destiny, was carried out with guns and the ballot box. These conditions and surrounding national implications inspired the term

Bleeding Kansas Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the ...

. Following the Free State elections, in a lengthy address on January 24, 1856, President

Franklin 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 ...

proclaimed the Topeka government to be illegitimate and ordered the arrest of its leaders: Despite this proclamation, the Topeka Legislature convened on March 4, 1856, and again on the

Fourth of July Independence Day (colloquially the Fourth of July) is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence, which was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States ...

to ask the Congress for admittance of the state. The legislature was dispersed on July 4, 1856, by three squadrons of federal troops under the command of Colonel

Edwin Vose Sumner Edwin Vose Sumner (January 30, 1797March 21, 1863) was a career United States Army officer who became a Union Army general and the oldest field commander of any Army Corps on either side during the American Civil War. His nicknames "Bull" or "Bul ...

. Sumner later called this the most painful duty of his career. Never before had a body of U.S. citizens, meeting to exercise their right to vote, been broken up by federal forces.

References

External links

Transcript of PBS documentary
{{Authority control 1855 in Kansas Territory December 1855 events Bleeding Kansas Constitutions of Kansas 1855 documents Black exclusion laws

See also

References

External links