In the face of such a menace, and tempted by such a bribe, the whole voting population of the Territory turned out at the election, which was ordered to be held August 2, 1858.  At this election, 1,788 votes were cast for the Constitution, and 9,512 against it.  From whence then came this overwhelming majority?  The majority of the Free State party was about two to one.  “Wilder’s Annals,” the best extant Free State authority, puts it at this.  “The Free State or Republican party has carried every election in Kansas since this date (1857), usually by two to one.”  But here is a majority of six to one; and we must go outside of the Free State or Republican party to find it.  Dr. John H. Stringfellow wrote at this time to the Washington Union against the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution.  He says:  “To do so will break down the Democratic party at the North, and seriously endanger the interests and peace of Missouri and Kansas, if not of the whole Union.”

Judge Tutt, of St. Joseph, Mo., had said to the South Carolinians:  “I was born in Virginia, and have lived forty years in Missouri.  I am a slave-holder, and a Pro-slavery man; and I desire Kansas to be made a slave State, if it can be done by honorable means.  But you will break down the cause you are seeking to build up.”  And Judge Tutt voiced the sentiments of a large number of Pro-slavery men and slave-holders in Kansas.

The city of Atchison gave a majority of votes against the Lecompton Constitution; and Atchison county gave a majority of almost three to one against it; and Leavenworth city, which two years before had been the theater of such murders, riots and robberies, gave a majority against the proposition of the English bill of more than ten to one, notwithstanding the huge bribe offered if the people would accept it.

We are writing these “Recollections” for posterity as well as for the present generation.  It is only the verdict of posterity that will justly estimate the men and the influences that went to make up the final result of the early Kansas struggle.  Up to the present time the writers that have written on this subject have been too near the battle, and themselves too much a party in it, to write with perfect impartiality.  Southern and Pro-slavery writers and speakers have not been able to admit that Southern men were the original wrong-doers; while Northern and Free State writers have not been able to rise to the level of such fair dealing, as to admit that when the decisive vote was cast that determined the question of freedom and slavery in Kansas, as absolutely as it had already been determined in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, the Free State people were indebted to the nobility of heart and elevation of mind, displayed by Southern and Pro-slavery men in making the vote so overwhelming as to put the question beyond the possibility of controversy forever; yet this was done in the unprecedented vote of six to one, cast in condemnation of the Lecompton Constitution.