[Sidenote] Walker to Buchanan, June 28, 1857.  Ibid., p. 115.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Testimony.  Ibid., p. 107.

  [Sidenote] Walker, Inaugural, May 27, 1857.  Senate Ex.  Doc.  No. 8,
  1st Sess. 35th Cong.  Vol.  I., p. 11.

Governor Walker arrived in the Territory late in May, and it required but short investigation to satisfy him that any idea of making Kansas a slave-State was utterly preposterous.  Had everything else been propitious, climate alone seemed to render it impossible.  But popular sentiment was also overwhelmingly against it; he estimated that the voters were for a free-State more than two to one.  All the efforts of the pro-slavery party to form a slave-State seemed to be finally abandoned.  If he could not make Kansas a slave-State, his next desire was to make her a Democratic State.  “And the only plan to accomplish this was to unite the free-State Democrats with the pro-slavery party, and all those whom I regarded as conservative men, against the more violent portion of the Republicans.”  He, therefore, sought by fair words to induce the free-State men to take part in the election of delegates to the constitutional convention.  His inaugural address, quoting the President’s instructions, promised that such election should be free from fraud and violence; that the delegates should be protected in their deliberations; and that if unsatisfactory, “you may by a subsequent vote defeat the ratification of the constitution.”

[Illustration:  Robert J. Walker.]

  [Sidenote] Walker, Topeka Speech, June 6, 1857, in “Washington
  Union” of June 27, 1857.

This same policy was a few weeks later urged at Topeka, where a mass meeting of the free-State men was called to support and instruct another sitting of the “insurrectionary” free-State Legislature elected under the Topeka Constitution.  The Governor found a large assemblage, and a very earnest discussion in progress, whether the “Legislature” should pursue only nominal action, such as would in substance amount to a petition for redress of grievances, or whether they should actually organize their State government, and pass a complete code of laws.  The moderate free-State men favored the former, the violent and radical the latter, course.  When their mass meeting adjourned, they called on the Governor at his lodgings; he made a speech, in which he renewed the counsels and promises of his inaugural address.  “The Legislature,” said he, “has called a convention to assemble in September next.  That constitution they will or they will not submit to the vote of a majority of the then actual resident settlers of Kansas.  If they do not submit it, I will join you, fellow-citizens, in lawful opposition to their course.  And I cannot doubt, gentlemen, that one much higher than I, the Chief Magistrate of the Union, will join you in that opposition.”  His invitation to them to participate in the election