acceptance. Southern senators ostracized
Douglas and made it clear he would
never have their support for a future
presidential run. In Kansas, meanwhile,
federal troops monitored the vote as
citizens overwhelmingly rejected
slavery. In Congressional elections,
Northern voters swept most pro-
Southern Democrats from office.slaves in Kansas would remain in
bondage as would any children they
bore, but there would be no extension
of slavery beyond that.
While Republicans and free-state
supporters denounced the plan, it put
severe strains on the Democratic Party.
Across the North, Democrats faced a
dilemma. They knew that backing the
Lecompton Constitution would be seen
as a betrayal of the ideal of popular
sovereignty and too sympathetic to
Southern interests. On the other hand,
opposing the constitution would
alienate the Southern Democrats, who
made up the party’s largest and most
powerful group in Congress.
Four years earlier, Stephen Douglas
had promised the voters of Kansas the
right to decide about slavery in a free
and fair election. In 1858, he rose in
the Senate to denounce the Lecompton
Constitution, even as a new president,
Democrat James Buchanan, urged itsdescribed it as the “sack” of Lawrence,
regarding the event as further proof
of Southern intent to create a society
dominated by powerful slaveholders.
In January 1857, the U.S. Supreme
Court reached the notorious Dred Scott
decision. The court’s ruling said that
prohibiting slavery in a federal territory
was unconstitutional, and that African-
Americans, free or slave, were not
citizens of the United States. This
emboldened pro-slavery leaders in
Kansas, who met in Lecompton and
proposed a new state constitution.
The Lecompton Constitution
Their idea was to give voters in Kansas
a referendum between their own
Lecompton Constitution “with slavery”
or a “future” free state “without
slavery.” In the latter case, the 200
Liberty assailed
An 1856 cartoon shows Liberty, the “fair maid of Kansas,”
being tormented by Democratic politicians, including
President Pierce in the buckskins of a “Border Ruffian”
(third from left) and Stephen Douglas (far right).BLEEDING KANSASAFTER
During the era of turmoil in Kansas, politics
in the North was chaotic as new parties
rose to replace the fading Whigs. In 1854,
a new party would pose a challenge to the
increasingly divided Democratic Party.THE KNOW-NOTHINGS
From the mid-1840s, many Americans fixated
on the threats Catholics and large numbers
of immigrants presented to their image of a
white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant nation. Secret
societies emerged and pledged to oppose
the influence of Catholics and new arrivals.
When questioned, they answered, “I know
nothing.” Opponents used the phrase to label
the movement.
Know-Nothings shocked party leaders by
sending their members, as many as 500,000,
to the polls. By 1855, they dominated much of
the East, replacing the Whigs as the opponents
of the Democrats in the Mid-Atlantic states,
California, and large areas of the South. The
party split in 1856 following a convention vote
on slavery, and most Northern Know-Nothings
would eventually support the Republican Party.“A noisome, squat, and nameless
animal ... not a proper model
for an American senator.”
SENATOR CHARLES SUMNER ON SENATOR STEPHEN DOUGLAS IN HIS “CRIME
AGAINST KANSAS SPEECH,” MAY 19–20, 1856Lincoln’s ally
Senator Charles Sumner had much in common with
Lincoln. Both were opponents of slavery, and though
Sumner sometimes clashed with Lincoln over matters
of policy, he never lost confidence in him.