Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/732

 The material differences in the Missouri and Kansas statutes are upon the following subjects: The qualifications of voters and of members of the legislative assembly; the official oath of all officers, attorneys, and voters; the mode of selecting officers, and their qualifications; the slave code, and the qualifications of jurors.

Upon these subjects the provisions of the Missouri code are such as are usual in many of the states. But by the "Kansas statutes," every office in the territory, executive and judicial, was to be appointed by the legislature, or by some officer appointed by it. These appointments were not merely to meet a temporary exigency, but were to hold over two regular elections, and until after the general election in October, 1857, at which the members of the new council were to be elected. The new legislature is required to meet on the first Monday in January, 1858. Thus, by the terms of these "laws," the people have no control whatever over either the legislative, the executive, or the judicial departments of the territorial government until a time before which, by the natural progress of population, the territorial government will be superseded by a state government.

No session of the legislature is to be held during 1856, but the members of the house are to be elected in October of that year. A candidate, to be eligible at this election, must swear to support the fugitive slave law, and each judge of election, and each voter, if challenged, must take the same oath. The same oath is required of every officer elected or appointed in the territory, and of every attorney admitted to practice in the courts.

A portion of the militia is required to muster on the day of election. "Every free white male citizen of the United States, and every free male Indian, who is made a citizen by treaty or otherwise, and over the age of twenty-one years, and who shall be an inhabitant of the territory, and of the county and district in which he offers to vote, and shall have paid a territorial tax, shall be a qualified elector for all elective offices." Two classes of persons were thus excluded, who by the organic act were allowed to vote, viz: those who would not swear to the oath required, and those of foreign birth who had declared on oath their intention to become citizens. Any man of proper age who was in the territory on the day of election, and who had paid one dollar as a tax to the sheriff, who was required to be at the polls to receive it, could vote as an "inhabitant," although he had breakfasted in Missouri, and intended to return there for supper. There can be no doubt that this unusual and unconstitutional provision was inserted to prevent a full and fair expression of the popular will in the election of members of the house, or to control it by non-residents.

All jurors are required to be selected by the sheriff, and "no person who is conscientiously opposed to the holding of slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in the territory, shall be a juror in any cause" affecting the right to hold slaves, or relating to slave property.

The slave code, and every provision relating to slaves, are of a character [sic]intolerent and unusual, even for that class of legislation. The character and