County had adjudged the hotel and the two free-state newspaper offices to be nuisances, and as nuisances to be removed, and that he was there as Sheriff to execute these indictments, and summarily remove the obnoxious buildings.

In the mean time the forces had left the hill, and were at the entrance of the town, under Titus and Buford, Atchison and Stringfellow. . . .

The newspaper offices were the first objects of attack. First that of the Free State, then that of the Herald of Freedom, underwent a thorough demolition. The presses were in each case broken to pieces, and the offending type carried away to the river. The papers and books were treated in like manner, until the soldiers became weary of carrying them to the Kaw, when they thrust them in piles into the street, and burnt, tore, or otherwise destroyed them.

From the printing offices they went to the hotel.

As orders were given to remove the furniture, the wild mob threw the articles out of the windows, but shortly found more congenial employment in emptying the cellars. By this time four cannon had been brought opposite the hotel, and, under Atchison's command, they commenced to batter down the building. In this, however, they failed. The General's "Now, boys, let her rip!" was answered by some of the shot missing the mark, although the breadth of Massachusetts-street alone intervened, and the remainder of some scores of rounds leaving the walls of the hotel unharmed. They then placed kegs of gunpowder in the lower parts of the building, and attempted to blow it up. The only result was, the shattering of some of the windows and other limited damage. At length, to complete the work which their own clumsiness or inebriety had rendered difficult hitherto, orders were given to fire the building in a number of places, and, as a consequence, it was soon encircled in a mass of flames. Before evening, all that remained of the Eldridge House was a portion of one wall standing erect, and for the rest a shapeless heap of ruins.

The firing of the cannon had been the signal for most of the women and children in Lawrence to leave the city. This they did, not knowing whither to turn their steps. The male portion of its citizens watched, without offering resistance, the destruction of the buildings named, and next had to see their own houses made the objects of unscrupulous plunder.

The sack of Lawrence occupied the remainder of the afternoon. Sheriff Jones, after gazing on the flames rising from the hotel, and saying

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.

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 not 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.