Try and try again- a history lesson for our time. Attempted misuse of the mechanisms of government.
The last federal legislative effort to forestall the Civil War, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was signed into law by President Monroe in 1854. The Act required the decision regarding the state’s status, slave versus free, to be made by the residents of each territory. It was welcomed by the southern legislators, assuming that Kansas would likely come in as a slave state; a win since the earlier Missouri Compromise would have prohibited slavery in Kansas Territory which was North of the latitude specified in the earlier Act.
The U.S. Congress set the requirement that each white male was to have been in residence in the Territory for a minimum of six months to be eligible to vote. After establishing the boundaries for the Kansas Territory, President James Monroe appointed Governor Andrew Reeder. The Governor, a staunch proponent of local sovereignty, set an election to determine territorial legislators for March, 1855.
Ardant abolitionists moved from comfortable homes in eastern states such as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island to establish residence in the frontier of Kansas. Immigration was the abolitionists’ method of determining that Kansas would enter into the Union as a free state. Abolitionists who moved to the territory became bonafide residents; establishing towns, businesses, and homes. By joining with the free-soil residents, mostly farmers, they became the majority political force in the development of Kansas into a state.
The vote for the first territorial legislature was inflated by armed non-resident pro-slavery Missourians who crossed into the territory to illegally vote and coerce others to abstain from voting. Twice the number of votes were cast as the legal number of Kansas registered voters listed in a Territory census conducted 1 month earlier. Pro-slavery candidates, some of whom lived in Missouri, won most of the seats. This election led to what was called the Bogus Kansas Territory Legislature. This group of legislators convened and quickly passed a succession of pro-slavery laws that established severe penalties for expressing abolitionist views in word or print and included capital punishment for any person convicted of aiding a fugitive slave.
Governor Reeder refused to ratify the results and called for a new election. The pro-slavery President Franklin Pierce dismissed Governor Reeder, charging him with high treason, and installed a pro-slavery Governor, Wilson Shannon.
The remaining Bogus Legislators were slow to write up a constitution. In the fall of 1855 a separate assembly of Kansans that included Free-soil settlers and abolitionists drew up the Topeka Constitution (which prohibited slavery). This document was passed overwhelmingly by a territory-wide popular vote in January, 1856 and quickly forwarded with a statehood petition to the nation’s capital. The debates in the U.S. Senate over Kansas’ request for admission drew heated arguments from both sides and led to the caning on the Senate floor of Senator Charles Sumner (who later shepherded the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution- abolishing slavery) by Congressman Preston Brooks (who died later that year from acute respiratory illness). Blocked by the Senate, the constitution was sent back to Kansas for reframing, but President Pierce sent the U.S. First Cavalry to stop the July, 1856 constitutional convention. The attendees reconvened in January, 1857 after which the Topeka Constitution was re-submitted. The new President James Buchanan, also pro-slavery declined to present the petition, claiming it was illegal; despite recognizing “the people of Kansas Territory have adopted and ratified the same (Topeka document) twice”, choosing instead to endorse the Lecompton Constitution which had not been passed by the voters.
In the fall of 1857, the Bogus Legislature established a convention in Lecompton to draft the Lecompton Constitution which stated, “… the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever”.
(https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/lesson-plans/lecompton-constitution) This document was not put to a territorial vote, but was presented by President Buchanon to Congress with his recommendation for Kansas to be admitted as a slave state. A split decision resulted- the Senate voted for admission and the House against. A compromise passed to allow the voters in Kansas Territory to decide on the constitution by direct ballot. The Lecompton Constitution was voted down by Kansas voters in January, 1858 in a normalized territorial referendum with about six times as many legal votes against the measure as for it.
A third constitution was quickly drawn up by Free-staters. This Leavenworth Constitution was ratified in May, 1858 by a territorial election and immediately rejected by the U.S. Congress due to inclusion of radical ideas including not only ending slavery, but extending the right to vote to men of all races.
Kansans went back to re-draw a constitution through a duly elected multipartisan assembly. The document produced at the convention, the Wyandotte Constitution, was on the ballot in the fall of 1860 and legitimate voters (registered white males) passed it by nearly two to one. This fourth constitution with a petition for statehood was forwarded to the U.S. Senate, House, and President. The House passed the bill granting Kansas Statehood, but the Senate balked as the year rolled over. A week after the senators from three seceding southern states withdrew, the measure passed. On January 29, 1861 the free state of Kansas was admitted to the Union just weeks before the Civil War began with the Confederate attack at Fort Sumter.SL