14. The Crime Against Kansas
14. The Crime Against Kansas
“President Douglas was the most prominent proponent of popular sovereignty, and he wanted to use his Presidency to implement the policy in the western territories. He had made sure to place like-minded men in his cabinet, and he was advantaged by the fact that Speaker Cox was also a popular sovereignty man. Douglas involved himself heavily in the process, regularly meeting with Cox, Crittenden, Stephens, Dodge, Breckinridge, and Cass [1].
Early on in negotiations, it became apparent that some northerners were willing to compromise and come to a deal allowing popular sovereignty in Kansas. While William Seward, Charles Sumner, Salmon Chase [2], and Abraham Lincoln led the ‘hard’ free-soil faction, Augustus Dodge and Lewis Cass assembled several dozen northern Congressmen in favor of popular sovereignty. Initially, even moderate northerners were reluctant to support the proposal, as they wanted a guaranteed free territory created. Predictably, southerners were loathe to allow this. “We have already ceded the abolitionists Oregon, why should we cede an acre more of land?” asked Congressman Preston Brooks.
Douglas, with the aid of Alexander Stephens’s connections to the southern factions, presented a compromise that northern Democrats and the south could begrudgingly agree on: Nebraska and Kansas would have their territorial status determined by popular sovereignty, while Minnesota would be immediately admitted as a free state. Thanks to the lobbying efforts of Stephens and Crittenden, nearly all the southern Senators voted in favor of the Kansas-Minnesota Act. Only two southerners voted against: Sam Houston of Texas and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, both arguing that the introduction of popular sovereignty and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise would set a dangerous precedent. Every single Whig Senator voted against the Kansas-Minnesota Act, but with many northern Democrats and all four National Unionists voting in favor, the bill narrowly passed the Senate.
In the House, Kansas-Minnesota faced stiffer resistance. This was, after all, the chamber where the Whigs had nearly elected their own Speaker despite the Democrats holding an outright majority. Free-soil Whigs and free-soil Democrats furiously denounced the bill. David Wilmot and Lewis Campbell, both free-soil Democrats, published a manifesto, the Appeal of the Independent Democrats, in which they declared that “we arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves [3].”
President Douglas took personal offense to this manifesto and transmitted via his allies in Congress his response: that “abolitionist confederates” were spreading “base falsehood” and accusing Wilmot and Campbell of duplicity in their dealings with the President. Debate in the House raged for another three months, northern Whigs furiously opposed. As the New-York Tribune noted, “the unanimous sentiment of the North is indignant resistance… The whole population is full of it. The feeling in 1848 was far inferior to this in strength and universality [4].” Douglas quickly came to realize that he was relying on a faction “largely unenthusiastic” about popular sovereignty to pass this bill, and he privately praised Alexander Stephens for “taking the reins in his hands [5] and shepherding the southern flock.”
All but one Whig [6] voted against the Kansas-Minnesota Act, while just over half of the northern Democrats voted for it. All but six southerners, two Democrats and four Whigs, voted in favor. Kansas-Minnesota had passed the House, by the thin margin of 112-102. The immediate result of its passage was fury from the Whigs and defensiveness from the Douglas Democrats. It was seen by free-soilers like William Seward as “an aggression towards the values held so dearly in the North, a blatant sop to shore up the ill-gotten, corrupt, illegitimate authority of the Slave Power.” President Douglas defended his pet project as settling, “once and for all, the question of slavery from the halls of Congress and the political arena, committing it to the arbitration of those who were immediately interested in, and alone responsible for, its consequences.”
The fallout from Kansas-Nebraska resulted in the defeat of all but eleven of the northern Democrats who voted in favor. The Whigs won 22 seats in the House, placing them just two seats away from a majority. And, after thirty ballots, William Pennington was elected the first Whig speaker in six years by a slim plurality. Despite their legislative victory, the Douglas Democrats had swiftly lost the support of many northerners, while the south was increasingly unhappy with the President. Abolitionists followed the example of the Independent Democrats and excoriated supporters of slavery as dishonest, violent, thuggish, and evil. The President was suddenly hated across the north leading him to remark that he could have traveled to Chicago by the light of his effigies burning. And, as Kansas prepared to determine whether it was a free territory or a slave territory, the south’s support could only erode further…”
-UNEASY SILENCE: AMERICA IN THE ANTEBELLUM by John Erwin, published 2021
Continental Liar said: OTL, the Kansas-Minnesota Act passed the House by a super thin margin of 112-102. Say a couple yea votes switch or get sick and miss the vote and the bill fails. What happens next?
Big Mac said: It depends on where these extra nays come from. Are they northern Democrats? If so, Douglas likely recalculates and tries to appease them – perhaps Nebraska is split into two territories. The northern one (Dakota, perhaps?) could become free territory, while Nebraska and Kansas get popular sovereignty’d. Such a compromise likely wouldn’t pass, however. The south would never approve. A similar thing would probably happen if the bill were sunk by southerners, because then Douglas can’t give more concessions to the south or the north will desert him, and he obviously can’t refuse to negotiate here. I think, if Kansas-Minnesota died in the House, its dead for good. There were too many conflicts for Douglas to get a second try.
Continental Liar said: So, what would happen with Bleeding Kansas? I could see it delayed, but some sort of conflict was increasingly inevitable once the free-soilers took over the Whigs. Maybe the Civil War is delayed a few years, but the west had to be organized eventually, and I can’t see the south accepting a deal that would leave them with reduced influence.
Conscience said: Well with no Kansas-Minnesota Act, the brawl of 1859 never happens. That was crazy – Charles Sumner attacked Douglas and a senator in a long and furious speech. Sumner sparked a fight in the Senate, as Butler’s cousin Preston Brooks beat him with a cane. When others rushed to intervene, Brooks’ friend Laurence Keitt brandished a pistol and Abraham Lincoln had to wrestle it from him while Congressmen Nathaniel Banks and David Wilmot pulled Brooks away from a wounded Sumner [7]. So, no Kansas-Minnesota means no brawl and no Bleeding Kansas, which means that politics are decidedly less polarized.
Big Mac said: I read about that brawl – hard to believe it actually happened in the US senate. In any case, the civil war is likely delayed. I can’t see it pushed back any later than 1865/1866. Something would set secession in motion – tensions were too high to peacefully deescalate by 1858.
-From WI KANSAS-MINNESOTA FAILS? on whatif.net, posted 2021
“One of the most famous speeches in Senate history is the one Charles Sumner gave on November 3rd, 1859. Sumner called for the immediate admission of Kansas as a free state and claimed that the reason this had not happened was because of the immense influence of the Slave Power. Provocatively, he framed the slave power’s conduct in Kansas in sexual terms: “Not in any common lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved desire for a new Slave State, hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of slavery in the National Government [8].” President Douglas and Andrew Butler (one of the authors of the legislation) had been, Sumner charged, seduced by “the harlot, slavery,” into forcing through the Kansas-Minnesota.
Sumner gave his speech in response to the Lawrence Massacre and the beginning of open warfare in Kansas Territory. In a pugnacious and prescient speech to the Senate shortly after the passage of Kansas-Minnesota in April 1858, William Seward declared: “we will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in men.” Indeed, the Kansas-Minnesota Act had not calmed sectional tensions but inflamed them further. A group of abolitionist businessmen in New England formed the Emigrant Aid Company, with the stated purpose of helping people settle in the west. However, these businessmen lacked the means to launch such an enterprise. Nevertheless, news that abolitionists were supposedly going to flood Kansas with northerners sent the south into a frenzy. David Rice Aitchison of Missouri wrote that the south was threatened by northerners “polluting our fair lands.”
Several militias were formed in Missouri with the sworn goal of expelling any northerners who might settle in Kansas. Douglas’s appointed territorial Governor, Andrew Reeder, arrived in October of 1858 and immediately announced elections for a territorial legislature. However, the franchise was open to all residents, no matter how recently they had arrived in Kansas. Seeking to gain the advantage, both northerners and southerners flooded into Kansas. The pro-slavery camp would likely have won in a fair contest, but pro-slavery militias from Missouri rushed in and padded the pro-slavery majority to the new legislature in March of 1859. This blatant election interference sparked outrage in the north, while southerners like Alexander Stephens bemoaned the “reckless endangerment of the southern cause.” Even worse for free-soilers, Governor Reeder accepted the obviously fraudulent results wherever they went unchallenged [8].
However, the real conflict stemmed from the hasty and poor surveying job the government had done prior to the opening of Kansas to settlement. As a result, many land deeds overlapped and disputes began. With the slavery question mixed in and often, free-soilers and pro-slavery settlers finding themselves with overlapping claims, the situation quickly grew tense. Shortly after the initial elections, a pro-slavery settler shot and killed a free-soil settler over a land dispute. However, the pro-slavery sheriff arrested another free-soiler for the murder, prompting an outcry. A free-soil mob forced the innocent man’s release. In retaliation, the sheriff and a pro-slavery militiamen descended upon the free-soil settlement of Lawrence and burned a hotel, two abolitionist newspapers, and dozens of homes and buildings. The Sack of Lawrence sparked the beginning of open warfare on the plains of Kansas. Militias led raids and burned settlements, famously including John Brown’s militia that killed about a dozen pro-slavery settlers in a series of kidnappings and raids.
…Meanwhile, in December 1859, a Congressional investigation found strong proof that voting fraud and non-residents voting illegally had produced the pro-slavery legislature. In response, President Douglas declared that the people of Kansas had not been allowed to properly decide the status of slavery for themselves and withdrew his authorization of the legislature [9]. The legislature refused to disband and fled to Lecompton, where they declared themselves the legitimate government and approved a pro-slavery constitution.
New elections were held in the meantime, boycotted by pro-slavery forces. As a result, free-soilers won a strong majority and, once the results were certified as legitimate, approved a free-soil constitution. This ‘Lawrence Constitution’ was quite radical, extending the franchise to all men without mention of race. When it was submitted to Congress, even a few Whigs and free-soil Democrats were uneasy with it. Southerners, still angry over the approval of Nebraska’s free-soil constitution [10], closed ranks to defeat the Lawrence Constitution. The furious opposition from the south guaranteed it never made it out of committee. Meanwhile, free-soil forces in Congress ensured that the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution met a similar fate.
While the majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, being southerners, favored the Lecompton Constitution, President Douglas openly denounced it as “born from fraud, violence, and depraved conduct.” He declared that the Lawrence Constitution had been “duly approved and ratified by the people of Kansas and is therefore legitimate.” In April of 1860, Douglas, keenly aware that the south would likely try and deny him renomination, nevertheless dispatched the army to forcibly dissolve the Lecompton legislature. In retaliation, pro-slavery militias battled with free-soil forces throughout May and June.
The Lawrence legislature drafted a second constitution which denied suffrage to blacks but still prohibited slavery. This was submitted to Congress in July. Douglas, feeling liberated of his obligations to the south after the convention, immediately endorsed it and leaned heavily on northern Democrats to vote in favor. After intense lobbying, an alliance of Whigs and northern Democrats successfully approved the second Lawrence Constitution in August, only for southerners in the Senate to defeat it. Kansas would be a free territory, but, for the time being, it would not be admitted as a free state. And as a consequence of his support for the Lawrence Constitution, President Douglas had lost the confidence of the south. Kansas was merely a dark portent of what would grip the Union just a few years later.”
-From BROTHER KILLING BROTHER: THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR by Michael Yates, published 2019
[1] Samuel Cox, John Crittenden, Alexander Stephens, Augustus C. Dodge, John C. Breckinridge, Lewis Cass.
[2] Without the collapse of the Whigs, Chase remains a Democrat.
[3] OTL, this exact manifesto was written by Salmon Chase and Joshua Giddings.
[4] An OTL excerpt from the March 2nd, 1854, issue of the Tribune.
[5] Stephens said something similar IOTL about himself.
[6] Samuel J. Randall, who I may or may not do something with later.
[7] With a swifter and bolder intervention, Sumner isn’t nearly as badly wounded TTL.
[8] Reeder threw out fraudulent tallies in districts where there were challenges, but he did not believe he had the right to interfere where there were no complaints.
[9] OTL, Franklin Pierce continued to recognize the pro-slavery legislature as legitimate and ignored the results of the Congressional investigation.
[10] Nebraska doesn’t have any violence or fraud, so it has a much quieter and quicker path to incorporation.
“President Douglas was the most prominent proponent of popular sovereignty, and he wanted to use his Presidency to implement the policy in the western territories. He had made sure to place like-minded men in his cabinet, and he was advantaged by the fact that Speaker Cox was also a popular sovereignty man. Douglas involved himself heavily in the process, regularly meeting with Cox, Crittenden, Stephens, Dodge, Breckinridge, and Cass [1].
Early on in negotiations, it became apparent that some northerners were willing to compromise and come to a deal allowing popular sovereignty in Kansas. While William Seward, Charles Sumner, Salmon Chase [2], and Abraham Lincoln led the ‘hard’ free-soil faction, Augustus Dodge and Lewis Cass assembled several dozen northern Congressmen in favor of popular sovereignty. Initially, even moderate northerners were reluctant to support the proposal, as they wanted a guaranteed free territory created. Predictably, southerners were loathe to allow this. “We have already ceded the abolitionists Oregon, why should we cede an acre more of land?” asked Congressman Preston Brooks.
Douglas, with the aid of Alexander Stephens’s connections to the southern factions, presented a compromise that northern Democrats and the south could begrudgingly agree on: Nebraska and Kansas would have their territorial status determined by popular sovereignty, while Minnesota would be immediately admitted as a free state. Thanks to the lobbying efforts of Stephens and Crittenden, nearly all the southern Senators voted in favor of the Kansas-Minnesota Act. Only two southerners voted against: Sam Houston of Texas and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, both arguing that the introduction of popular sovereignty and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise would set a dangerous precedent. Every single Whig Senator voted against the Kansas-Minnesota Act, but with many northern Democrats and all four National Unionists voting in favor, the bill narrowly passed the Senate.
In the House, Kansas-Minnesota faced stiffer resistance. This was, after all, the chamber where the Whigs had nearly elected their own Speaker despite the Democrats holding an outright majority. Free-soil Whigs and free-soil Democrats furiously denounced the bill. David Wilmot and Lewis Campbell, both free-soil Democrats, published a manifesto, the Appeal of the Independent Democrats, in which they declared that “we arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves [3].”
President Douglas took personal offense to this manifesto and transmitted via his allies in Congress his response: that “abolitionist confederates” were spreading “base falsehood” and accusing Wilmot and Campbell of duplicity in their dealings with the President. Debate in the House raged for another three months, northern Whigs furiously opposed. As the New-York Tribune noted, “the unanimous sentiment of the North is indignant resistance… The whole population is full of it. The feeling in 1848 was far inferior to this in strength and universality [4].” Douglas quickly came to realize that he was relying on a faction “largely unenthusiastic” about popular sovereignty to pass this bill, and he privately praised Alexander Stephens for “taking the reins in his hands [5] and shepherding the southern flock.”
All but one Whig [6] voted against the Kansas-Minnesota Act, while just over half of the northern Democrats voted for it. All but six southerners, two Democrats and four Whigs, voted in favor. Kansas-Minnesota had passed the House, by the thin margin of 112-102. The immediate result of its passage was fury from the Whigs and defensiveness from the Douglas Democrats. It was seen by free-soilers like William Seward as “an aggression towards the values held so dearly in the North, a blatant sop to shore up the ill-gotten, corrupt, illegitimate authority of the Slave Power.” President Douglas defended his pet project as settling, “once and for all, the question of slavery from the halls of Congress and the political arena, committing it to the arbitration of those who were immediately interested in, and alone responsible for, its consequences.”
The fallout from Kansas-Nebraska resulted in the defeat of all but eleven of the northern Democrats who voted in favor. The Whigs won 22 seats in the House, placing them just two seats away from a majority. And, after thirty ballots, William Pennington was elected the first Whig speaker in six years by a slim plurality. Despite their legislative victory, the Douglas Democrats had swiftly lost the support of many northerners, while the south was increasingly unhappy with the President. Abolitionists followed the example of the Independent Democrats and excoriated supporters of slavery as dishonest, violent, thuggish, and evil. The President was suddenly hated across the north leading him to remark that he could have traveled to Chicago by the light of his effigies burning. And, as Kansas prepared to determine whether it was a free territory or a slave territory, the south’s support could only erode further…”
-UNEASY SILENCE: AMERICA IN THE ANTEBELLUM by John Erwin, published 2021
Continental Liar said: OTL, the Kansas-Minnesota Act passed the House by a super thin margin of 112-102. Say a couple yea votes switch or get sick and miss the vote and the bill fails. What happens next?
Big Mac said: It depends on where these extra nays come from. Are they northern Democrats? If so, Douglas likely recalculates and tries to appease them – perhaps Nebraska is split into two territories. The northern one (Dakota, perhaps?) could become free territory, while Nebraska and Kansas get popular sovereignty’d. Such a compromise likely wouldn’t pass, however. The south would never approve. A similar thing would probably happen if the bill were sunk by southerners, because then Douglas can’t give more concessions to the south or the north will desert him, and he obviously can’t refuse to negotiate here. I think, if Kansas-Minnesota died in the House, its dead for good. There were too many conflicts for Douglas to get a second try.
Continental Liar said: So, what would happen with Bleeding Kansas? I could see it delayed, but some sort of conflict was increasingly inevitable once the free-soilers took over the Whigs. Maybe the Civil War is delayed a few years, but the west had to be organized eventually, and I can’t see the south accepting a deal that would leave them with reduced influence.
Conscience said: Well with no Kansas-Minnesota Act, the brawl of 1859 never happens. That was crazy – Charles Sumner attacked Douglas and a senator in a long and furious speech. Sumner sparked a fight in the Senate, as Butler’s cousin Preston Brooks beat him with a cane. When others rushed to intervene, Brooks’ friend Laurence Keitt brandished a pistol and Abraham Lincoln had to wrestle it from him while Congressmen Nathaniel Banks and David Wilmot pulled Brooks away from a wounded Sumner [7]. So, no Kansas-Minnesota means no brawl and no Bleeding Kansas, which means that politics are decidedly less polarized.
Big Mac said: I read about that brawl – hard to believe it actually happened in the US senate. In any case, the civil war is likely delayed. I can’t see it pushed back any later than 1865/1866. Something would set secession in motion – tensions were too high to peacefully deescalate by 1858.
-From WI KANSAS-MINNESOTA FAILS? on whatif.net, posted 2021
“One of the most famous speeches in Senate history is the one Charles Sumner gave on November 3rd, 1859. Sumner called for the immediate admission of Kansas as a free state and claimed that the reason this had not happened was because of the immense influence of the Slave Power. Provocatively, he framed the slave power’s conduct in Kansas in sexual terms: “Not in any common lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved desire for a new Slave State, hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of slavery in the National Government [8].” President Douglas and Andrew Butler (one of the authors of the legislation) had been, Sumner charged, seduced by “the harlot, slavery,” into forcing through the Kansas-Minnesota.
Sumner gave his speech in response to the Lawrence Massacre and the beginning of open warfare in Kansas Territory. In a pugnacious and prescient speech to the Senate shortly after the passage of Kansas-Minnesota in April 1858, William Seward declared: “we will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in men.” Indeed, the Kansas-Minnesota Act had not calmed sectional tensions but inflamed them further. A group of abolitionist businessmen in New England formed the Emigrant Aid Company, with the stated purpose of helping people settle in the west. However, these businessmen lacked the means to launch such an enterprise. Nevertheless, news that abolitionists were supposedly going to flood Kansas with northerners sent the south into a frenzy. David Rice Aitchison of Missouri wrote that the south was threatened by northerners “polluting our fair lands.”
Several militias were formed in Missouri with the sworn goal of expelling any northerners who might settle in Kansas. Douglas’s appointed territorial Governor, Andrew Reeder, arrived in October of 1858 and immediately announced elections for a territorial legislature. However, the franchise was open to all residents, no matter how recently they had arrived in Kansas. Seeking to gain the advantage, both northerners and southerners flooded into Kansas. The pro-slavery camp would likely have won in a fair contest, but pro-slavery militias from Missouri rushed in and padded the pro-slavery majority to the new legislature in March of 1859. This blatant election interference sparked outrage in the north, while southerners like Alexander Stephens bemoaned the “reckless endangerment of the southern cause.” Even worse for free-soilers, Governor Reeder accepted the obviously fraudulent results wherever they went unchallenged [8].
However, the real conflict stemmed from the hasty and poor surveying job the government had done prior to the opening of Kansas to settlement. As a result, many land deeds overlapped and disputes began. With the slavery question mixed in and often, free-soilers and pro-slavery settlers finding themselves with overlapping claims, the situation quickly grew tense. Shortly after the initial elections, a pro-slavery settler shot and killed a free-soil settler over a land dispute. However, the pro-slavery sheriff arrested another free-soiler for the murder, prompting an outcry. A free-soil mob forced the innocent man’s release. In retaliation, the sheriff and a pro-slavery militiamen descended upon the free-soil settlement of Lawrence and burned a hotel, two abolitionist newspapers, and dozens of homes and buildings. The Sack of Lawrence sparked the beginning of open warfare on the plains of Kansas. Militias led raids and burned settlements, famously including John Brown’s militia that killed about a dozen pro-slavery settlers in a series of kidnappings and raids.
…Meanwhile, in December 1859, a Congressional investigation found strong proof that voting fraud and non-residents voting illegally had produced the pro-slavery legislature. In response, President Douglas declared that the people of Kansas had not been allowed to properly decide the status of slavery for themselves and withdrew his authorization of the legislature [9]. The legislature refused to disband and fled to Lecompton, where they declared themselves the legitimate government and approved a pro-slavery constitution.
New elections were held in the meantime, boycotted by pro-slavery forces. As a result, free-soilers won a strong majority and, once the results were certified as legitimate, approved a free-soil constitution. This ‘Lawrence Constitution’ was quite radical, extending the franchise to all men without mention of race. When it was submitted to Congress, even a few Whigs and free-soil Democrats were uneasy with it. Southerners, still angry over the approval of Nebraska’s free-soil constitution [10], closed ranks to defeat the Lawrence Constitution. The furious opposition from the south guaranteed it never made it out of committee. Meanwhile, free-soil forces in Congress ensured that the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution met a similar fate.
While the majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, being southerners, favored the Lecompton Constitution, President Douglas openly denounced it as “born from fraud, violence, and depraved conduct.” He declared that the Lawrence Constitution had been “duly approved and ratified by the people of Kansas and is therefore legitimate.” In April of 1860, Douglas, keenly aware that the south would likely try and deny him renomination, nevertheless dispatched the army to forcibly dissolve the Lecompton legislature. In retaliation, pro-slavery militias battled with free-soil forces throughout May and June.
The Lawrence legislature drafted a second constitution which denied suffrage to blacks but still prohibited slavery. This was submitted to Congress in July. Douglas, feeling liberated of his obligations to the south after the convention, immediately endorsed it and leaned heavily on northern Democrats to vote in favor. After intense lobbying, an alliance of Whigs and northern Democrats successfully approved the second Lawrence Constitution in August, only for southerners in the Senate to defeat it. Kansas would be a free territory, but, for the time being, it would not be admitted as a free state. And as a consequence of his support for the Lawrence Constitution, President Douglas had lost the confidence of the south. Kansas was merely a dark portent of what would grip the Union just a few years later.”
-From BROTHER KILLING BROTHER: THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR by Michael Yates, published 2019
[1] Samuel Cox, John Crittenden, Alexander Stephens, Augustus C. Dodge, John C. Breckinridge, Lewis Cass.
[2] Without the collapse of the Whigs, Chase remains a Democrat.
[3] OTL, this exact manifesto was written by Salmon Chase and Joshua Giddings.
[4] An OTL excerpt from the March 2nd, 1854, issue of the Tribune.
[5] Stephens said something similar IOTL about himself.
[6] Samuel J. Randall, who I may or may not do something with later.
[7] With a swifter and bolder intervention, Sumner isn’t nearly as badly wounded TTL.
[8] Reeder threw out fraudulent tallies in districts where there were challenges, but he did not believe he had the right to interfere where there were no complaints.
[9] OTL, Franklin Pierce continued to recognize the pro-slavery legislature as legitimate and ignored the results of the Congressional investigation.
[10] Nebraska doesn’t have any violence or fraud, so it has a much quieter and quicker path to incorporation.
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