Textbook
Pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces in Kansas battled over political control of the territory from its organization in 1854 until the end of the decade. No crisis during this period had weightier political consequences than the fight which erupted in 1857 and continued through 1858 over the drafting of a pro-slavery constitution in Lecompton. Adding to the controversary, when the pro-slavery legislature initially submitted the constitution to a referendum, they offered a "no slavery" option that actually included slavery and thus earned a boycott from free soil forces. The resulting "Lecompton swindle" as Republicans called it had the effect of dividing the Democratic Party because President James Buchanan insisted on accepting the dubious results of the election, while fellow Democrat Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois rejected the fraud. Douglas was the leading advocate of "popular sovereignty" for the territories and could not bring himself to support a repudiation of this principle, but Buchanan demanded loyalty. The feud between the two leading Democrats helped set the stage for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 and much of the subsequent break up of the national Democratic Party. The Congress ultimately rejected the Lecompton Constitution and Kansas entered the nation as a free state in 1861. (By Matthew Pinsker)
Note Cards
Events
People
Places
Documents
Images
Bibliography
Chicago Style Entry | Link |
---|---|
Birkner, Michael J., ed. James Buchanan and the Political Crisis of the 1850s. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1996. | View Record |
Birkner, Michael J., moderator. “James Buchanan and the Political Crisis of the 1850s: A Panel Discussion.” Pennsylvania History 60, no. 3 (1993): 261-287. | View Record |
Collins, Bruce W. "The Democrats' Electoral Fortunes During the Lecompton Crisis." Civil War History 24, no. 4 (1978): 314-331. | View Record |
Elbert, E. Duane. "The English Bill: An Attempt to Compromise the Lecompton Dilemma." Kansas History 1, no. 4 (1978): 219-234. | View Record |
Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion. Vol. 2, Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. | View Record |
Harmon, George D. “An Indictment of the Administration of President James Buchanan and His Kansas Policy.” Historian 3 (Autumn 1940): 52-68. | View Record |
Howard, William Alanson. Kansas-Lecompton Constitution. Washington, DC: Printed at the Congressional Globe Office, 1858. | View Record |
Johannsen, Robert W. "Stephen A. Douglas, ‘Harper's Magazine,’ and Popular Sovereignty." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45, no. 4 (March 1959): 606-631. | View Record |
Luthin, Reinhard H. "The Democratic Split during Buchanan’s Administration." Pennsylvania History 11 (1944): 13-35. | View Record |
Meerse, David E. "Buchanan, the Patronage, and the Lecompton Constitution: A Case Study." Civil War History 41, no. 4 (1995): 291-312. | View Record |
Meerse, David E. "Origins of the Buchanan-Douglas Feud Reconsidered." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 67, no. 2 (1974): 154-174. | View Record |
Miner, Craig. Seeding Civil War: Kansas in the National News, 1854-1858. Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 2008. | View Record |
Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. | View Record |
Ponce, Pearl T. "Pledges and Principles: Buchanan, Walker, and Kansas in 1857." Kansas History 27, no. 1-2 (2004): 86-99. | View Record |
Porter, Lorle A. "The Lecompton Issue in Knox County Politics: Division of the Democracy, 1858." Ohio History 81, no. 3 (1972): 157-192. | View Record |
Stegmaier, Mark J. "Intensifying the Sectional Conflict: William Seward Versus James Hammond in the Lecompton Debate of 1858." Civil War History 31, no. 3 (1985): 197-221. | View Record |
Washburn, Israel. Kansas and the Lecompton Constitution. Washington, DC: Buell & Blanchard, 1858. | View Record |