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Historical Almanac of the U.S. Senate
Contents:
Senate Votes on Admission of Kansas
On March 23, 1858, the Senate voted to admit the state of Kansas to the Union under the terms of the Lecompton Constitution. This vote had been preceded by two years of the most bitter debates the Senate had yet witnessed. Charles Sumner’s stinging "Crime Against Kansas" speech, and his caning at the hands of Representative Preston Brooks in 1856, served as a preface to this important day and vote.
At issue was the extension of slavery into Kansas. Proslavery forces, meeting in Lecompton, Kansas, had drawn up a constitution permitting slavery. President Buchanan, eager to placate the South, recommended that Kansas be admitted to the Union with the Lecompton Constitution. Enraged by what he regarded as Buchanan’s betrayal, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois led a revolt of northern Democrats who supported the free-state partisans and opposed the extension of slavery.
Douglas threw himself into the Senate debates over Kansas. At seven o’clock on the evening of March 22, as a "prodigious multitude" crowded the old Senate chamber, he appeared on the floor to make his final speech against the Lecompton bill. Douglas spoke for three hours but to no avail. The next day, March 23, when the decks were cleared for final action on the bill, 33 senators upheld the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution, 22 opposed it.
Mr. President, the House refused to comply, and the issue of Kansas remained alive for three more years. Not until January 1861, after the South had seceded, was Kansas finally admitted to the Union, becoming the thirty-fourth state.
Contents:
Chicago: Robert J. Dole, "Senate Votes on Admission of Kansas," Historical Almanac of the U.S. Senate: A Series of Bicentennial Minutes Presented to the Senate During the One Hundredth Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S Government Printing Office, 1989), in Original Sources, accessed October 3, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GCXWYYG63DP9VAM.
MLA: Dole, Robert J. "Senate Votes on Admission of Kansas." Historical Almanac of the U.S. Senate: A Series of Bicentennial Minutes Presented to the Senate During the One Hundredth Congress, Washington, D.C., U.S Government Printing Office, 1989, in , Original Sources. 3 Oct. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GCXWYYG63DP9VAM.
Harvard: Dole, RJ 1989, 'Senate Votes on Admission of Kansas' in Historical Almanac of the U.S. Senate: A Series of Bicentennial Minutes Presented to the Senate During the One Hundredth Congress, U.S Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.. cited in , . Original Sources, retrieved 3 October 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GCXWYYG63DP9VAM.
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