| OCR Text |
Show GRANTS TO STATES ON ADMISSION TO UNION 305 of and by the authority of the people of Kansas, that the right aforesaid to tax such lands shall be, and is hereby, forever relinquished, if the conditions following shall be accepted and agreed to by the Congress. . . . The conditions set forth were: (1) sections 8, 16, 24, and 36 in every township should be granted to the state for schools; (2) all salt springs and gold, silver, copper, lead, and other valuable mines together with adjacent sections should be granted to the state; (3) 5 percent of the net proceeds of the sales of all public lands sold or held in trust or otherwise were to be assigned to the state of which three-fifths should be assigned for schools and two-fifths for aid in constructing railroads; (4) two townships were to be granted for a seminary of learning; (5) 5,600,000 acres were to be given the state for aid in the construction of two railroads, one to be built from the northern to the southern boundary and the other from the eastern to the western boundary. Kansas was asking for no more school sections than California earlier had requested but not received, and its request for a railroad grant was not out of line with what other states had by then received for this purpose. Yet its boldness in'stating that it had an undoubted right to tax public lands, a right it would only give up if Congress would grant its demands for 24 percent of the public lands within its borders, if we include the 500,000 acres to which it would also be entitled on admission, ought to have bothered the southern states' rights people who were at that very time contending that Congress was supreme in the territories and in effect could make any requirement concerning the public lands for admission. Actually, Congress boggled at the ordinance but decided to resubmit the rejected constitution to the people with the usual disclaimer provision in return for which the state would receive the usual grants. Congress was not willing to allow the people to outlaw slavery and if the constitution were rejected they were not to have another opportunity to form a constitution and state government until their population had attained the Federal ratio of 93,420 people required for representation in the House. Kansans decisively rejected the constitution and repudiated the pro-slavery attempts to make of it a slave state.62 Continued territorial status for Kansas was favored by some groups, notably territorial officials sent in to assure that a slave state would be created or nothing at all and, as elsewhere, by some business interests who feared that once the territory was on its own it would have to resort to heavy property taxes. On the other hand there were many reasons why forward-looking people should favor statehood for with it would come control over school, university, and internal improvement lands, the prospect of gaining road and railroad construction, of getting the state capital located and buildings begun, greater ease in bonding the new state for such internal improvements as it wished to make, and the elimination of the carpetbag, pro-slavery officials. When the free-state people came into control of the legitimate or "law and order" government in 1859, the Topeka "revolutionary government," as Buchanan loved to call it, was permitted to wither away, no longer being needed. There was a prospect that Kansas might be able to frame a constitution that would receive congressional approval, for "illegitimacy" could no longer be offered as an excuse for keeping her out of the Union. It was not unexpected, then, that the territorial legislature determined in 1859 62 2 Stat. 269 ff.; William F. Zornow, Kansas, a History of the Jayhawk State (Norman, Okla., 1957), has the political outline but seems unaware of the significance of the land question in shaping the political history of the territory and state. The majority report of a select committee of the House to report on the Lecompton constitution and two minority reports are in House Reports, 35th Gong., 1st sess., Vol. Ill, No. 377 (Serial No. 966), pp. 1-158. |
