Important from Kansas

Since our Proclamation on the 19th inst., rejecting the so-called election returns from the Oxford Precinct in Johnson County, another very similar case has been presented for our official action. It is that of pretended returns from three precincts of McGee County, in this Territory, containing an aggregate of more than twelve hundred votes. This county is located in the extreme southeastern portion of Kansas, is constituted form the lands of the Cherokee Indians which are not yet open to preemption or settlement, and is consequently one of the most sparsely populated counties on the Territory, containing less than one hundred qualified voters, and giving last June but fourteen votes for Delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Indeed, all persons actually conversant with the number of the population of the county, treat with derision the large vote pretended to have been given there. Our information also excludes the idea that there was any incursion of voters from the neighboring State of Missouri, whose people do not seem to have interfered with the recent election. It is, then, quite evident that no such vote as is presented in these pretended returns was given at the late election in this county.

It is not, however, on the grounds above stated that we reject these pretended returns; but feeling confident that no such vote was given, or even one-tenth part of it, we are induced by such considerations to give these alleged returns the most rigid scrutiny, in order to ascertain whether they are genuine, legal and valid.

From intrinsic evidence on the face of these papers, we are convinced they are not genuine, but simulated and fictitious. Besides, they present no evidence that the oath, required by our statutes, was administered to the clerks or judges of the election, to secure from each and all of them the “impartial discharge of their duties according to law.”

But in addition to these grounds of decision against the legality and validity of these pretended returns, there is yet a more conclusive reason which constrains us not to count them. While the names of the voters, and of candidates, all appear to be entered on the lists, not one of the offices is mentioned for which the candidates respectively were intended to be designated. We cannot determine, therefore, from the face of these papers, for what office any one of the candidates was supported. The uniformity in this particular of these pretended returns from three separate and distant precincts, especially as the forms are made up in the same handwriting, nor (with certain exceptions which only add force to the argument) on the same kind of paper, renders with other circumstances conclusive to our minds the conviction, that they are, as above stated, fictitious and simulated. It is most extraordinary also, that not a single vote appears to have been given for any county officers.

In rejecting these papers, we do not go behind the returns, because no legal or valid returns were made. Neither in the former instance, nor in this, have we claimed the power to judge of the qualifications of voters, and to exclude votes deemed to be illegal. What constitutes a return, is defined by the Territorial statues; and to reject a paper as spurious or fictitious, or because, in points of vital importance, it deviates form the requisitions of the law, and therefore is not a return, in legal parlance, is not going behind the returns, as we have been unjustly charged with doing.

If these papers, (like those from the Oxford precinct,) would increase, by nearly twelve hundred, the apparent vote for the candidates of our party, although the offices are not named, our obligation is none the less paramount to reject them as we now do, as spurious and illegal. An election secured through our sanction, by frauds so monstrous, would be more fatal to our party than any defect, however disastrous. We deem it our duty to state that according to our information, some, if not all the candidates, who, it was supposed might claim their election by these frauds, have refused to accept any advantage under them.

These disreputable attempts to destroy the elective franchise, and all popular government which is based upon it, and to subject us to the responsibility of rejecting such papers, or rendering ourselves accomplices in the fraud, by giving it our endorsement and sanction, will meet, we doubt not, the serious reprehension of honest men of all parties in this Territory by these enormous frauds has rendered imperative upon us, in this public official manner, to make known our decision in regard to them, believing that a just and impartial course of action on our part will serve to restore peace and harmony to an agitated and distracted people.

If instead of relying upon these papers themselves as authentic returns, it is sought to deny the fact that the results are spurious and simulated, we cannot doubt that Congress, upon the question of admitting the delegate, would, by an appropriate Committee of one or both houses dispatched to this Territory, and clothed with the authority to send for persons and papers, inquire fully onto these transactions, in order that the perpetrators of such enormities, and all their accomplices and confederates may be exposed and punished. In the meantime, we shall cause to be published at an early day, a complete list of the names of these pretended voters, that the people of this Territory, and especially of the localities in which these frauds were perpetrated, may visit them with appropriate condemnation. As these pretended voters are alleged to have come in large bodies from Missouri, under claim of settlements in the Indian reservations, and as we have ascertained that this allegation is unfounded in fact, we deem it a duty to the people of Missouri, in order to prevent unjust prejudice against them in this Territory, and throughout the Union, with all its evil consequences, to give them the means, by publishing these lists of fictitious names, to exonerate themselves from such unfounded accusations.

R. J. Walker
Governor of Kansas Territory.
Fred P. Stanton, Secretary


Below we publish the returns of the election, as far as received, with the addition of Leavenworth County, the whole which vote has not been received at the Secretary’s office.

These returns comprise the vote of all the counties as far as received, some of which will have to be deducted from several counties on account of illegal returns, and others on account of illegal precincts.

When corrected, the whole vote of the Territory will probably fall short of 13,000:

Ransom Parrott
Leavenworth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,356 1,655
Atchison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366 315
Doniphan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 574
Nemaha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 127
Brown (3 precincts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 99
Marshall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 1
Pottowatomie, (1 precinct) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 30
Riley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 251
Calhoun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 205
Jefferson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 344
Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ----- -----
Douglas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 1,632
Shawnee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 749
Richardson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ----- 127
Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 126
Wise and Breckinridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 266
Bourbon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 96
McGee* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,202 21
Dorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 -----
Allen, Hunter, Wilson, Woodson-
(Allea) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 65
Greenwood and Godfrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 11
Coffey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 265
Madison and Butler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 69
Anderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 241
Franklin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 245
Lykins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 348
Linn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176 214
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,813 7,552

Part Fourth, Council,- Clay, Dickenson, and Washington. Arapahoe not included in apportionment, and unorganized.
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*Rejected

Deducting from the aggregate Democratic vote the fraudulent returns from McGee County, rejected by Gov. Walker, the vote of Ransom is reduced to 3,611; making a majority for Parrott of 3,941.

The Lecompton Democrat contains a call for a mass meeting of the citizens of the Territory who approve of the actions of Gov. Walker- to be held at Lecompton on Saturday, Oct. 31.

The Constitutional Convention met at Lecompton on the 19th, as has been already stated, but without a quorum present, and continued in session until the 22nd, when it proceeded to the election of a Clerk. C. J. Moilvainn was chosen.
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On the evening succeeding the proclamation against the Oxford enormities the opponents of that measure assembled a meeting here to denounce the Governor. We were present on that occasion, as a mere spectator, with many others appearing in a similar capacity. We can trly state that the number who participated in the vote of condemnation did not exceed twenty, after all the drumming and preparation with which that mighty conclave was heralded. Yet this little squad who have got into the Oxford omnibus, composed to a considerable extent of the participants or beneficiaries in that extraordinary transaction, assume to speak in the name of the Democratic Party.

Of the twenty participants in those condemnatory proceedings, perhaps some half a dozen had been duped into the affair by absurd representations that Governor Walker was opposed to the Convention. Strange that so absurd a falsehood should obtain currency even with half a dozen men. In the Governors Inaugural of May last, in his address on the tax qualification of September, and in his numerous [ ] speeches everywhere throughout the Territory, he has uniformly advocated and sustained the Convention; provided they would submit the Constitution to the vote of the people; and this is now position, as is known by every delegate or citizen who has chosen to converse with him.
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The Northern Democracy, and, we believe, the great masses of the party everywhere, maintain that any Constitution which shall be framed by the sitting Convention in Kansas, shall be referred, for approval or rejection, to an honest vote of the people. No party can stand on any other platform. It is the honest way, the right way, and the only way left, by which we can manage territorial affairs, North or South. Opposition to it is opposition to our whole scheme of self-government- to the theory, practice, and tradition of our countrymen- to the declarations of the Democratic Party, its men and its candidates. Col. Davis and Senator Hunter have no more power to alter this law of American politics than to reverse the laws of gravitation. It involves a principle a principle which exists, operates and controls our affairs, independent of Federal institutions; it is simply the right of the people to govern themselves. To question this right is most absurd; to attempt its overthrow, for the accomplishment of ulterior purposes, must be regarded as involving a sacrifice of principle and on abandonment of the great doctrines of our Democratic system.

There is, we are glad to see, but one Democratic representative in Congress from the free states who has attempted to make the Convention of Kansas superior to the people of Kansas in the matter of submitting the Constitution to popular vote. In the South, the Richmond Enquirer, the organ of the Administration party in Virginia, is unreserved in demanding that the people are the controlling power and that the action of the Convention should go to them for rejection or confirmation. This principle will triumph, and those who resist it must take consequences.

The North appeals to the people interested, and will ever insist, that they shall settle for themselves the question of the recognition or rejection of Slavery in the Territories- and we are confident that the party in the South, which appeals to any other tribunals not to deliberate upon the question of Slavery, but to establish that institution in defiance of the will of the majority, is very small indeed.