Kansas Territorial History--Election of March 30, 1855

If anyone thought that Governor Reeder's effort to call for an orderly election for the Kansas Territorial Legislature (13 Council Members and 26 Representatives) would be carried out in a prudent fashion, they were sorely mistaken. Senator Atchison of MO had stirred up groups of men, known as Blue Lodges, who planned to enter into KS the day before the election and then do whatever they needed to do to secure a proslavery legislature. I will only focus on the results of voting in one of the 18 districts--Lawrence, as well as give some overall numbers for the election.

You might recall that for the Nov. 1854 election of the Congressional Delegate to Congress, Lawrence (Dist. # 1) provided the free-state candidates (there were two of them who divided a mere 580 votes in the whole Territory) a 239-46 vote edge over the proslavery candidate. A sure sign that something was amiss in the March 30 election for the state legislature is that when the ballots were opened early in April, the tally in Lawrence was 781 for the pro-slavery candidate and 253 for the free-state candidate. That is, the number of free state votes had stayed about the same, as might be anticipated, but the proslavery votes had multiplied 17-fold. Similar patterns were detected throughout many other election districts. While the census of earlier in the year yielded 2,905 legal voters, the number of votes cast in the March 30 election was 6,307. And, we don't know how many of the 2,905 legal voters were intimidated from voting.

Election complaints were filed with the Governor, and he announced, on April 16, 1855, that a new election would take place on May 22 to fill vacancies in the House and Council for six districts where the biggest electoral irregularities had occurred (Districts 1,2,3,7,8,16). The next day he promptly left the Territory and headed back to his home in Pennsylvania where, on April 30, he denounced the electoral process in these words:

"Kansas has been invaded by a regular organized army, armed to the teeth, who took possession of the ballot boxes, and made a Legislature to suit the prupose of the Pro-Slavery party," Annals of Kansas, p. 63.

Even though Reeder had been appointed by President Franklin Pierce, who sympathized with pro-slavery interests, he was committed to the principle of popular sovereignty as spelled out in Sections 1 and 19 of the Kansas-Missouri Act of May 30, 1854; the violent taking over of the voting process by Missiourians had violated that principle pretty clearly.

Reeder's standing up for a just election process would eventually become one of the factors leading to his replacement in August 1855.

The Congressional Report

I haven't yet given any solid data to show that the voting irregularities in Lawrence, for example, were the result of concerted efforts of the proslavery MO folk to take over the elections process. The remainder of this essay quotes a Congressional Committee report, summarized in Cutler's History of Kansas, appointed in the wake of the purported election irregularities. The committee was not actually voted into existence by the House of Representatives until March 1856 but issued its 1200-page report on July 2, 1856, but most knew the following well before that time. I will quote only that section relating to voting in Lawrence.

"One thousand men came in, in wagons and on horseback, on the evening preceding and the morning of the election. They encamped in a ravine near the place of election. They were armed, and under the command of Col. Samuel Young, of Boone County, Mo., and Claiborne F. Jackson, of Missouri. N. B. Blanton, one of the Judges of Election appointed by Gov. Reeder, testified that, being first offered bribes, and afterward threatened with hanging, he did not appear at the polls to act as Judge. Robert A. Cummings was appointed in his place, Col. Young claiming that, "as the people of the Territory had two Judges, it was nothing more than right that the Missourians should have the other one to look after their interests." Mr. Cummings was selected to represent the said Missouri interests, as he had stated that "every man had a right to vote, if he had been in the Territory but an hour." The Missourians wore white ribbons in their button-holes as an emblem of innocence, and to distinguish them from the hated "Abolitionists" who lived in Lawrence. The mode of voting through the Territory is shown by the following: Mr. Page, one of the Missouri raiders, on offering his vote, was required by J. B. Abbott, one of the Judges, to take the oath prescribed by the Governor's proclamation. Pending the dispute, Col. Young offered his vote, refusing to take the prescribed oath, but swearing that he was a resident of the Territory. He told Mr. Abbott that it was none of his business whether or not he intended to make Kansas his future home. The fact that he was a resident then was sufficient. His vote was received whereupon he announced to the Judges that it would be useless to swear any other men from Missouri, as they would all swear as he did. Mr. Abbott resigned on Mr. Young's announcement, and a Mr. Benjamin being elected in his place, the travesty of an election went on through the day. Several residents were driven from the polls. Late in the day, the residents came up in a body and voted. The Missourians, many of them, left for home as soon as they had voted, although some remained until the following day," quoted in Cutler, History of Kansas, Territorial History, Part 10, "The Election, March 30, 1855 (Part I).

Conclusion

Some of the details in the preceding story are interesting to note. (1) The MO men wore "white ribbons" in order to denote the purity of their cause. This kind of ideological involvement in the KS question would ultimately make it impossible for Reeder or any subsequent Governor to develop a "consensus" between pro-slavery men and free-staters. As one source I read says, the slavery question became injected into every land claim, every settlement of people, every town meeting in the Territory. Whatever middle ground that might have existed was taken away from almost the very beginning. (2) Note also the way that the residency requirement, which was not clearly defined in the KS-NE Act ("actual resident" is the language, with no mention of a plan to continue residing in the territory and no proof of when entered territory necessary in order to vote). (3) Finally, we see evidence of a concerted plan for of intervention by proslavery Missouri residents (the term "Border Ruffian" was coined later in the year by New York newspaperman Horace Greeley to describe these people) to make sure Kansas was a slave state.

These election irregularities showed that the government of the KS Territory from the beginning was an impossible task. The next essay will show how various parties responded to the election of March 30, 1855.

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