jected
it, they should not be admitted as a State until they had a population
large enough to entitle them to a representative in the lower House. The
vote of the people was cast on August 2, 1858, and the constitution was
finally rejected by a majority of nearly twelve thousand. Thus resulted
the last effort to impose slavery on the people of Kansas.

Although the war between slavery and freedom was fought out in miniature
in Kansas, the immediate issue was the preservation of slavery in
Missouri. This, however, involved directly the prospect of emancipation
in other border States and ultimate complete emancipation in all the
States. The issue is well stated in a Fourth of July address which
Charles Robinson delivered at Lawrence, Kansas, in 1855, after the
invasion of Missourians to influence the March election of that year,
but before the beginning of bloody conflict:

"What reason is given for the cowardly invasion of our rights by our
neighbors? They say that if Kansas is allowed to be free the institution
of slavery in their own State will be in danger.... If the people
of Missouri make it necessary, by their unlawful course, for us to
establish freedom in that State in order to enjoy the liberty of
governing ourselves in Kansas, then let that be the issue. If Kansas and
the whole North must be enslaved, or Missouri become free, then let
her be made free. Aye! and if to be free ourselves, slavery must be
abolished in the whole country, then let us accept that due. If black
slavery in a part of the States is incompatible with white freedom
in any State, then let black slavery be abolished from all. As men
espousing the principles of the Declaration of the Fathers, we can do
nothing else than accept these issues."

The men who saved Kansas to freedom were not abolitionists in the
restricted sense. Governor Walker found in 1857 that a considerable
majority of the free-state men were Democrats and that some were from
the South. Nearly all actual settlers, from whatever source they came,
were free-state men who felt that a slave was a burden in such a country
as Kansas. For example, during the first winter of the occupation of
Kansas, an owner of nineteen slaves was himself forced to work like a
trooper to keep them from freezing; and, indeed, one of them did freeze
to death and another was seriously injured.

In spite of all the advertising of opportunity and all the pressure
brought to bear upon Southerners to se