of a convention produced no effect; they still adhered to their resolve to have nothing to do with any affirmative proceedings under the bogus laws or Territorial Legislature.  But the Governor’s promise of a fair vote on the constitution was received with favor.  “Although this mass convention,” reports the Governor, “did not adopt fully my advice to abandon the whole Topeka movement, yet they did vote down by a large majority the resolutions prepared by the more violent of their own party in favor of a complete State organization and the adoption of a code of State laws.”

  [Sidenote] Walker to Cass, July 15, 1857.  Senate Ex.  Doc.  No. 8,
  1st Sess. 35th Cong.  Vol.  I., p. 27.

  [Sidenote] Ibid., p. 29.

  [Sidenote] Walker to Cass, July 15, 1857.  Senate Ex.  Doc.  No. 8,
  1st Sess. 35th Cong.  Vol.  I., p. 30.

If the Governor was gratified at this result as indicative of probable success in his official administration, he rejoiced yet more in its significance as a favorable symptom of party politics.  “The result of the whole discussion at Topeka,” he reported, “was regarded by the friends of law and order as highly favorable to their cause, and as the commencement of a great movement essential to success; viz., the separation of the free-State Democrats from the Republicans, who had to some extent heretofore cooperated under the name of the free-State party.”  Another party symptom gave the Governor equal, if not greater, encouragement.  On the 2d and 3d of July the “National Democratic” or pro-slavery party of the Territory met in convention at Lecompton.  The leaders were out in full force.  The hopelessness of making Kansas a slave-State was once more acknowledged, the Governor’s policy indorsed, and a resolution “against the submission of the constitution to a vote of the people was laid on the table as a test vote by forty-two to one.”  The Governor began already to look upon his counsels and influence as a turning-point in national destiny.  “Indeed,” he wrote, “it is universally admitted here that the only real question is this:  whether Kansas shall be a conservative, constitutional, Democratic, and ultimately free-State, or whether it shall be a Republican and abolition State; and that the course pursued by me is the only one which will prevent the last most calamitous result, which, in my opinion, would soon seal the fate of the republic.”

  [Sidenote] F.P.  Stanton’s Speech, Philadelphia, February 8, 1858. 
  Pamphlet.

In his eagerness to reform the Democratic party of Kansas, and to strengthen the Democratic party of the nation against the assaults and dangers of “abolitionism,” the Governor was not entirely frank; else he would at the same time have reported, what he was obliged later to explain, that the steps taken to form a constitution from which he hoped so much were already vitiated by such defects or frauds as to render them impossible