Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/725

 polls; but the great majority were deterred by the open avowal that large bodies of armed Missourians would be at the polls to vote, and by the fact that they did so appear and control the election. The same (noses deterred the free state settlers from running candidates in several districts, and in others induced the candidates to withdraw.

The poll-books of the lid and VIIIth districts were lost; but the proof is quite clear that, in the lid district, there were thirty, and in the VIIIth district thirty-eight legal votes, making a total of eight hundred and ninety-eight legal voters of the territory, whose names are on the census returns; and yet the proof, in the state in which we are obliged to present it, after excluding illegal votes, leaves the total vote of 1,310, showing a discrepancy of 412. The discrepancy is accounted for in two ways: first, the coming in of settlers before the March election, and after the census was taken, or settlers who were omitted in the census; or secondly, the disturbed state of the territory while we were investigating the elections in some of the districts, thereby preventing us from getting testimony in relation to the names of legal voters at the time of election.

If the election had been confined to the actual settlers, undeterred by the presence of non-residents, or the knowledge that they would lie present in numbers sufficient to out-vote them, the testimony indicates that the council would have been composed of seven in favor of making Kansas a free state, elected from the Ist, IId, IIId, IVth, and VIth council districts. The result in the VIIIth and Xth, electing three members, would have been doubtful, and the Vth, VIIth, and IXth would have elected three pro-slavery members.

Under like circumstances, the house of representatives would have been composed of fourteen members in favor of makiug Kansas a free state, elected from the IId IIId, IVth, Vth, VIIth, VIIIth, IXth, and Xth representative districts.

The result in the XIIth and XIVth representative districts, electing five members, would have been doubtful, and the Ist, VIth, XIth, and XVth districts would have elected seven pro-slavery members.

By the election, as conducted, the pro-slavery candidates in every district but the VIIIth representative district, received a majority of the votes; and several of them, in both the council and the house, did not "reside in," and were not "inhabitants of" the district for which they were elected, as required by the organic law. By that act it was declared to be the true intent and meaning of this act to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject to the constitution of the United States.

So careful was congress of the right of popular sovereignty, that to secure it to the people, without a single petition from any portion of the country, they removed the restriction against slavery imposed by the Missouri compromise. And yet this right, so carefully secured, was thus by force and fraud overthrown by a portion of the people of an adjoining state.

The striking difference between this republic and other republics on this