Frint, JacobBiblio.com
Collamer, Jacob ; B F WadeBiblio.com
Speech of Hon. J. Collamer of Vermont on the REPORT of the KANSAS CONFERENCE COMMITTEE ; delivered in the Senate of the United States April 27 1858
185842956Washington: Congressional Globe Office. 1858. First Edition. Pamphlet. Very Good. 8vo; 8 pages; Very good condition in original self wrappers; pages unopened. Text printed in two columns. OCLC 9578021 ; OCLC 84271361 This speech addresses the Committee's report on the Kansas Question including the Lecompton Constitution which would admit Kansas as a slave-holding state President Buchanan's support for it and presents Collamer's arguments against it detailing why he must vote against the proposed bill. Jacob Collamer 1791 – 1865 was an American politician from Vermont who served in the U.S. House of Representatives as Postmaster General in the cabinet of President Zachary Taylor and as a U.S. Senator 1855-1865 . Collamer was elected to the Senate as a Republican in 1855 shortly after the formation of the new party. He became a respected voice against slavery and a prominent supporter of the Lincoln administration during the American Civil War. An advocate of more stringent postwar Reconstruction measures than those that were favored by Lincoln and his successor Andrew Johnson Collamer advocated congressional control of the Reconstruction process. KANSAS QUESTION - Kansas Territory was officially established in 1854 with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The act provided that each territory would decide the issue through the constitution under which it would enter the union. Kansas Territory because of its proximity to Missouri a slave state became a political and literal battleground for pro- and anti-slavery forces. Contested elections armed conflict and recruitment of and support for settlers from both the North and the South contributed to the label of “Bleeding Kansas.” The battle for Kansas was waged also in the halls of Congress the national press and anywhere people gathered to discuss or debate the issues of the day. All of this increased the tensions between the North and the South which eventually led to the outbreak of the Civil War. The Kansas conflict further polarized the nation and weakened the American two-party political system which was already unravelling under the pressures of sectionalism and westward expansion. The Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson with its pro-Southern state rights bent was well entrenched but the Whig Party of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster lost its sway during the late 1840s and early 1850s. Dissidents from both parties ultimately organized as the Free Soil Party in 1848 and the new party united around the Wilmot Proviso a ban on slavery in the territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War. Although their candidate former Democratic president Martin Van Buren ran a distant third the introduction of a significant third party was a harbinger of political things to come. In less than six years despite the efforts of Clay Webster and others who fashioned the Compromise of 1850 the two party system reached its breaking point with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. During the months surrounding the 1856 election several incidents in Kansas Territory and in Washington D.C. drastically altered the national discourse. Civil war broke out in Kansas with the sacking of Lawrence and the subsequent Pottawatomie Massacre of May 1856; while in Congress Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner denounced the slave power and its “rape of Kansas” in his famous “Crime Against Kansas” speech. Throughout 1856 much congressional time and attention was given to the Kansas Question especially as it pertained to the proposed free-state Topeka Constitution. Although the violence in Kansas subsided sectional strife had risen to a new level. Immediately after the inauguration of President James Buchanan the U.S. Supreme Court entered the fray. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney rendered the decision of the high court in Dred Scott v Sanford which in effect held that slaves were not citizens of the U.S. residency in a “free” state did not alter their status and that Congress had no authority to ban slavery in the territories. The decision made the Missouri Comprise unconstitutional. Drawing on the dissenting opinions of two Northern jurists opposition to the decision was vehement. In 1857 the Lecompton Constitutional Convention eventually resulted in the ratification of a proslave constitution for Kansas which badly split the national Democratic Party. Subsequently anti-slavery Kansans were in the majority by January 1858 when they defeated the Lecompton Constitution in a second referendum. Despite this fact President Buchanan submitted the Lecompton document to Congress and recommended that Kansas be admitted as a slave state. Many Northern Democrats including the influential Senator Douglas who recognized the violation of the principal of popular sovereignty in the Lecompton action split with their party's president on this issue. Subsequently the Senate voted for admission and the House for resubmission; a compromise—the English bill providing for an up or down vote by territorial residents on the constitution passed both houses on April 30 and Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected the Lecompton Constitution on August 2 1858. Technically because of Dred Scott slavery remained legal in the territory of Kansas until admission; in reality however the free-state victory in the fall 1857 legislative elections and the defeat of the pro-slave constitution in 1858 settled the issue for Kansas. As Senator Douglas had indicated during one of his debates with Abraham Lincoln slavery could not survive no matter what the courts might say in a territory where the majority was hostile to its continued existence. Excerpted from "Territorial Kansas Online" . Congressional Globe Office unknown
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