Lecompton Constitutional Convention

Bleeding Kansas: From the Kansas-Nebraska Act to Harpers Ferry

In 1859, John Brown, a settler from Kansas Territory, invaded the state of Virginia with plans to raid the Harpers Ferry arsenal and incite a slave rebellion. Among his small band of insurgents were several young men who had also carried out vigilante violence in Kansas in hopes of abolishing slavery in that territory. The raid itself failed, and those who did not escape or die in the raid were later executed, including John Brown.

Nicole Etcheson
Ball State University

Lecompte, Samuel Dexter

By Ian Spurgeon, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Washington, D.C.

Samuel D. Lecompte gained fame as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Kansas Territory and a prominent proslavery official during the “Bleeding Kansas” conflict of the 1850s. His association with the expansion of slavery into territorial Kansas was cemented when the town named in his honor—Lecompton—became the capital of the proslavery territorial government.

Buchanan, James

By Deborah Keating, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Two days after James Buchanan was inaugurated the 15th president of the United States, the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision, opening all American territories to slavery until the time came to seek admission as a state. Buchanan, sympathetic to the Southern cause despite being Northern born, wanted a ruling that supported “popular sovereignty,” a concept introduced in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) that allowed the settlers of Western territories—rather than the U.S. Congress—decide their status as slave or free states upon admission to the Union.

Lecompton Constitution

By Zach Garrison, University of Cincinnati

As Kansas Territory marched toward statehood following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, its citizens, deeply divided along pro- and antislavery lines, rushed to construct a viable state constitution. Four constitutions were eventually proposed, with the second and most controversial emerging from a territorial convention held in Lecompton in 1857, in which the delegates intended to protect the institution of slavery.

Bogus Legislature

By Jeremy Prichard, University of Kansas

The “Bogus Legislature” refers to Kansas Territory’s first governing body, established in 1855. Free-Soil and antislavery supporters in the area provided the moniker after widespread accounts of fraudulent voting in the March 30, 1855, election that selected the assembly’s initial members. The nickname stuck, and the partisan rift surrounding the two-year legislative session played a prominent role in the early years of Bleeding Kansas.

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