that it was "the happiest day of his life," dismissed his "posse," and they immediately commenced their lawless pillage. In this officers and men all participated, and they did not terminate until they had rifled all the principal houses of whatever articles of value they could lay their hands upon, and had destroyed that which they could not carry away. Finally, Governor Robinson's house on Mount Oread was set fire to, after it had been searched for papers and valuables, and its burning walls lit up the evening sky as the army of desperadoes, now wild with plunder and excesses, and maddened with drink, retired from the pillaged city. The value of the property stolen and destroyed during the day in Lawrence is estimated to have amounted to nearly thirty thousand pounds sterling.

Life was fortunately not taken, as the inhabitants of Lawrence disappointed their invaders of a fight, by offering no resistance. . . .

Among all the scenes of violence I witnessed, it is remarkable that the offending parties were invariably on the Pro-slavery side. The Freestate men appeared to me to be intimidated and overawed, in consequence, not merely of the determination and defiant boldness of their opponents, but still more through the sanction given to these acts by the Government.

I often heard the remark, that they would resist, but that they were resolved not to bring themselves into collision with the Federal power.

...

Their later conduct, however, was different. In the hands of their oppressors all justice had been set at defiance. They had been driven out of house and home by an armed mob, acting under territorial authority. The Federal power had been appealed to in vain. The Freestate men were driven to desperation. It was but natural that some revulsion of feeling should be experienced. As it was, guerrilla parties. were organized by some of the less passive spirits on the Free-state side, corresponding with those already existing amongst their opponents. These thought themselves justified in recovering stolen horses and other property. Other acts of retaliation occurred. In several instances the opposing parties came into collision, and violence ensued. For some time, therefore, after the attack upon Lawrence, an irregular strife was maintained, and a bitter remembrance filled each man's mind, and impelled to daily acts of hostility and not unfrequent bloodshed.

T. H. Gladstone, The Englishman in Kansas; or, Squatter Life and Border Warfare (edited by F. L. Olmsted, New York, 1857), 22–66 passim.

40.

A Constitution made to Order (1857)

BY GOVERNOR ROBERT JOHN WALKER (1860)

Walker, a resident of Mississippi, is best known as Polk's secretary of the treasury, 1845-1849. He was an opponent of Calhoun's theories on the Constitution and on slavery. During the Civil War he was a financial agent of the United States abroad. As territorial governor of Kansas, a position which he accepted with reluctance, he gained distinction by refusing to lend himself to the scheme to force a pro-slavery constitution on an anti-slavery majority. - Bibliography as in No. 36 above.

FIR

IRST, my instructions were drawn out, which, according to my judgment, fully confirmed the doctrine of the submission of the constitution to the vote of the people, and the President himself so regarded them. I then set about to draw up my inaugural address. . . . I prepared that inaugural address, and Mr. Buchanan, by appointment, met me at my house, where he spent many hours, which were devoted to that subject. That address was not then complete, except that portion of it that related to the question of the constitution being submitted to the vote of the people, and what I said on the subject of slavery in Kansas. What I said on the subject of submitting the constitution to the vote of the people Mr. Buchanan fully approved. . . .

When I first arrived in Kansas, every effort to make Kansas a slave State was apparently entirely abandoned. It was universally conceded that it could not be made a slave State by a fair vote of the people, which I thought was the only way in which it could be properly made either a slave State or a free State.

Shortly before I arrived at Lecompton, the county of Douglas, of which Lecompton is the capital, had held a public democratic meeting, and nominated eight gentlemen, I think, as delegates to the Lecompton convention, of which John Calhoun, then the surveyor general of the Territory, was at the head. The resolutions of the meeting required them to sustain the submission of the constitution to the vote of the people. They published a written pledge to that effect. Rumors were circulated by their opponents that they would not submit the whole constitution to the people. They published a second circular a day or two before the election denouncing these rumors as falsehoods, and reaffirming their determination, if elected, to submit the constitution to the people. But for these assurances, it is universally conceded, they had no chance whatever of being elected, not the slightest. . . .

This attempt to make Kansas a slave State developed itself in the fall

of 1857. It first was fully developed by the terrible forgeries in the pretended returns - they were not legal returns that were sent to me as governor of the Territory, and which I rejected, although that rejection gave a majority of the territorial legislature to my political opponents, the republicans, at which, I am free to say, I was deeply grieved. . .

.. at length it was fully developed that, contrary to all the pledges given, especially by Calhoun himself, the president of the convention, that they would submit the constitution to the vote of the people, another course was resolved upon.

Finally, a few days before the vote was taken upon the subject, Mr. Calhoun, the president of the convention, called upon me, and submitted substantially the programme as to slavery, which was subsequently adopted by the convention, and asked my concurrence. He presented various prospects of the highest place from the people of this Union if I would concur, and assured me that that was the programme of the administration. I said that that was impossible, and showed Mr. Calhoun this letter of Mr. Buchanan to me of the 12th of July, 1857. He said that the administration had changed its policy. I told him I did not believe it; but let who would change their views on that question, with me the question of submitting the constitution to the vote of the people was fundamental, and I never would change or modify my views on that question in the slightest respect; that I would fight it out to the end, be the consequences to me personally or politically what they might. Mr. Calhoun continued to insist that I ought to go with the President upon this subject. I denied that he had any right to speak for the President. . I asked him if he had any letter from the President. He said he had not, but that the assurance came to him in such a manner as to be entirely reliable; that this particular programme (which was finally adopted in Kansas) was the programme of the administration. I stated that I never would assent to it, and I gave various reasons. I stated, in the first place, that I had openly pledged myself to the people of Kansas - declaring that I was so authorized by the President - so far as my power and that of the government would avail, that this constitution should be submitted fairly to their vote for ratification or rejection; that I had by these pledges (on which they relied) induced them to suspend putting the Topeka State government into operation, which otherwise undoubtedly would have been done; and that it would be dishonorable in me to forfeit these pledges, and that I could not do it. I stated that although I insisted that the Kansas and Nebraska bill required that the

constitution itself should be submitted to the vote of the people, yet if they would make a good constitution, and submit the slavery question distinctly, by itself, to a fair vote of the people, although it did not correspond with my views, yet I would not interfere; but that the particular programme which they proposed to adopt did not submit the question of slavery to the people of Kansas; that it only submitted it to those constituting a small minority who were in favor of the constitution because the vote was limited to a vote "for the constitution with slavery," and "for the constitution without slavery," and those who were opposed to the constitution were not permitted to vote at all. Therefore, I considered such a submission of the question a vile fraud, a base counterfeit, and a wretched device to prevent the people voting even on that question. I said to him that not only would I not support it, but I would denounce it, no matter whether the administration sustained it or not; and I always have denounced it, and shall ever continue to do so. It is due to frankness to say, that when I came on here in November, 1857, the President himself distinctly and emphatically assured me that he had not authorized anybody to say that he had approved of that programme. I told him that such being the case, I could not but believe that some member of the administration, or some person in high authority enjoying its confidence, must have given these assurances, or Mr. Calhoun would not have made the communication that he had to me, and also changed his own course upon the subject. For Mr. Calhoun had been the distinguished and special leader of the Douglas party in Kansas, and was supposed to have been appointed surveyor general upon Judge Douglas's recommendation. He, Judge Douglas, certainly requested me to have him, Calhoun, retained, assuring me that he would support the submission of the constitution to the vote of the people; as he did, until a late period.

When Mr. Calhoun made this communication to me he requested me not to mention it to Mr. Stanton, the secretary of state of Kansas, and I believe I never have done so ; nor should I have communicated it to you now except as necessary to my vindication from the testimony you have shown me to-day. It is also due to frankness to further say that I am fully impressed with the conviction that the President himself did not get up this programme, though I do believe it was gotten up by some of the administration, or others high in authority.

House Reports, 36 Cong., I sess. (Washington, 1860), V, No. 648, pp. 106–111 passim.

CHAPTER VII-THE CRISIS ARRIVES

41. Papers in the Dred Scott Case (1847-1848)

BY THE MISSOURI CIRCUIT COURT

These papers are introduced to show the process of claiming freedom, the succession of suits, and the original question at issue in the Missouri courts. The action for trespass here described was finally decided in Dred Scott's favor, but on appeal to the Supreme Court of Missouri the decision was reversed. Meanwhile Scott had brought action of trespass in the United States Circuit Court, as a citizen of Missouri suing Sandford, a citizen of New York. The court gave judgment for the defendant, and Dred Scott's counsel carried the case to the United States Supreme Court on a writ of error. After the decision, which is one of the most important opinions ever handed down by the court, Scott was at once set free by his titular master. Bibliography: Channing and Hart, Guide, § 202.

Dred Scott

VS.

Alex. Sandford,

Saml. Russel, and

Irene Emerson.

A. DRED SCOTT'S FREEDOM SUIT

T

O the Honorable, the Circuit Court within and for the County of St. Louis.

Your petitioner, Dred Scott, a man of color, respectfully represents that sometime in the year 1835 your petitioner was purchased as a slave by one John Emerson, since deceased, who afterwards, to-wit; about the year 1836 or 1837, conveyed your petitioner from the State of Missouri to Fort Snelling, a fort then occupied by the troops of the United States. and under the jurisdiction of the United States, situated in the territory ceded by France to the United States under the name of Louisiana, lying north of 36 degrees and 30' North latitude, now included in the State of Missouri, and resided and continued to reside at Fort Snelling upwards of one year, and held your petitioner in slavery at such Fort during all that time in violation of the Act of Congress of 1806 and 1820, entitled An Act to Authorize the People of Missouri Territory to form a Constitution and State Government, and for the admission of such State