ing he was removed by President Pierce. I said "launched," but I did not mean to say that they started this machinery into very active life. Since Jeremy Bentham wrote constitutions to order for some of the South American republics, I do not think there ever was a much deader piece of government machinery. Never was a political experiment so well. nursed and coddled. It was begirt with president's and governor's proclamations. United States troops were there to bolster it up, and to protect its zealous border ruffiian friends from the just punishment due their violence. A few of the "bogus" officers, noticeably Sheriff Jones, expostmaster of Westport, were active, agressive and plucky, but it was impossible to galvanize life into the thing. The people would have none of it.

Then came the Big Springs Convention, when the Free State party was organized, the bogus laws and officers repudiated, and steps originated to form a Free State Constitntion. Here the era of conventions and resolutions began. Occasionally a bad black law resolution would squeeze in, to allay the fears and pander to the unextinct prejudices of the weaker brethren, but in the main they were good resolutions. It has been said that hell is paved with good resolutions or intentions; I doubt it very much. Neglect of them may lead there, but they do not get in. There is no mistake, how

ever, but what the free State of Kansas was paved with good resolutions.

I owe you an apology for intruding so much of a recital of events so often narrated, and on which the varnish of antiquity has not fallen. Yet it is necessary for this sketch. The Topeka Constitution, its character and history are, I apprehend, not very clearly understood. The old "bloodstained banner," as Jim Lane loved to call it. A banner it was, and little more. As a piece of organic law it was a rather common-place instrument. The Leavenworth and Wyandotte Constitutions were, I think, better; the first striking out. the word "white," which was a courageous movement in that early day, and while it did not give female suffrage, it gave women equal property rights and business rights. In the Wyandotte Convention there were a few Democrats and one or two cranks, and probably both were of some use in their way. The word "white," however, was re-inserted. A woman's property interests were scarcely placed so intelligently, and she was allowed to vote on school questions. A gentleman from Doniphan had but one purpose; to insert the homestead exemption clause, although he did not get it in exactly as he wanted. At that time the eastern half of Colorado was in the territory of Kansas, and all west of the sixth principal meridian had been Arapahoe, the delegate from which your

humble speaker often was. At the Wyandotte Convention the line of the future State was drawn at the 100th meridian, which was supposed to be on the borders of the desert region. An attempt was made to annex to it all south of the Platte, and delegates from Nebraska were in attendance to urge it. One of them, a Mr. Taylor, in whom the annexation idea seemed to penetrate his whole essence, from his brown coat to his corpus collosum, urged that the Platte river had a quicksand bottom and could not be forded. It could not be bridged, because you could not find bottom for piers, and it could not be ferried for want of water. Providence intended it for a natural boundary. Alas! it was not to be.

I have always thought that the mortality among early Kansas constitutions came about because those who failed to get office under them wanted another chance. If Jeff Davis and his coadjutors had not walked out of the Senate to engage in rebellion, and Mr. Seward had not taken the opportunity to pass the bill admitting Kansas, we might have had three or more constitutions. In the Topeka Convention Mr. Tuton, a free State emigrant from Missouri, said: "I came to Kansas to help make it a free State because I did not want, when I was dead, slaves a tramping round. my grave." Abraham Lincoln's father crossed the Ohio with his family for a similar reason. How many men do not think of the possibility of such a

devil's tattoo being carried on over their heads when they have gone to a final account, among the adjustments. of which they will be unable to urge that by word or act they strove against it. against it. Among the constitutions, even if not the best, but as a historical "banner," I prefer the Topeka one. It was the flag to rally the faithful to the greatest battle of modern times. Incident to it was the Wakarusa war, the bombardment of Lawrence, Brown's battle of Black Jack; that roll call of the Topeka Senate on the 4th of July, 1856; when Summer and his dragoons dispersed it; Hickory Point, Franklin and other events. Nor was the result brought about by any one thing. The Emigrant Aid Company did much good, and sent some noble intelligent people to Kansas; but the great mass of those who made Kansas a free State came to it by their own efforts. The capture of the Territorial Legislature, the exposure of Calhoun's candlebox, and the Oxford frauds, were but incidents of the war in which Free Kansas men achieved victory.

John Brown was more than a Kansas man. As a Kansas man he differed from some other Free State men; for while they passed resolutions he acted them. In his humble way he endeavored to pattern after the man of Galilee, and the part of the evangelists that seemed to impress him most was the occasion when our Saviour with a whip of cords drove

the money changers from the temple. I am not here to apologize for or defend him. His career does not need it, and it would be a worse piece of impertinence than abuse. The people of the United States understand him. In a day when numbers of lickspittle, orthodox, trimming clergymen were ready to preach in defense of human slavery, when with Pecksniffian piety they preached, "Servant, be obedient to your master," and about Paul and Onesinus, we, as Kansans, ought to thank God that a man sharpened in the Kansas struggle-aye, a score of men--were cheerfully willing to give their lives in a protest against the crime of American slavery.

Were they earnest, honest protesters? I read from a letter of John H. Kagi, Brown's secretary of war, a Virginian by birth, and an old Topekan, written from Chambersburg just before the Harper's Ferry affair: "I shall long remember that your house was one of the only two in Lawrence into which I dared, and that in the night only, to enter, and solely because I was opposed to theft, robbery and murder-for slavery is all of these. It steals babes in the cradle-I might say in the mother's womb. It robs women of their chastity and men of their wives. It kills, with sorrow, uncheered labor and the various forms of cruelty, more slowly, surely, but in number more than the sword."

I remember, a few years after, when on a visit to my corps commander,

General Reynolds, at Little Rock, near the close of 1864, during the night I passed there, a parade of troops with torches took place, when regiment after regiment marched past, singing as they went to the tramp of their martial feet :

"Though John Brown's body lies mouldering the grave,

His soul goes marching on."

Yes, the people of the United States understand John Brown, and have given him his place.

I have not a moment for the war, with all its brilliant incidents for Kansas. Neither will I consume your time eulogizing the growth and splendor of our State. Her school houses, her battle for purer morals, her physical progression--are we not proud of them? But ere I close let me say to the men of Kansas that her highest glory is her work. Have we reached the summit? Oh, no! A State, like a man, cannot. It must go forward or back. Do we still have in Kansas the old crusaders for freedom? The field of the brave and honest worker is limitless. Let us remember that no republic can be enduring unless the great mass of the working men are happy and prosperous. Let us VOW eternal warfare against the dominion of rapacious selfishness, whatever stage it takes. Trusts, encroaching corporations, the gambling spirit must be placed under the iron hand of law. Who will say to Kansas that a remedy cannot be devised? Frauds on the ballot box are treason

to republican liberty. Bribery, the multiplication of needless offices, the creation of an official or moneyed aristocracy, are crimes against the republic. In this fresh crusade in favor of human rights it is meet that Kansas take the lead. Nor must we bend the knee to the dictates of prejudice. We hear of the race issue. Our people, white and black, have all been Americans for a hundred years.

Who are they that thus discover, that the American negro must emigrate? The men who enacted the fugitive slave law, and secured the Dred Scott decision, and kept up the wretched Seminole war for thirty years for fear a single negro would get away from the Southern States. Must emigrate, I suppose, because they are free! Who ever before heard of a political economist who proposed to send the working classes out of any country. An emigrant aid company to help out the indolent whites and others too proud or too lazy to work, would not be a bad thing. The forced deportation of the shot gun and Winchester brigade may become necessary in the interest of peace. In Europe there is no such

thing as color caste. In public conveyances, hotels, theaters and elsewhere, a negro goes like other people, subject, to the same conditions. I believe there are only three countries in the world where caste prevails in India, Mexico and the United States. In India they say it is dying out. Would to God it were

dead and buried here.

Yes, my friend, Kansas has not finished her history. Her record is not completed. We have held the banner of progress. Shall Kansas men sur

render it? It has led to victory, State and National. Let us proudly bear it onward in the front of every moral reform; in the defense of the downtrodden and the weak, and for the preservation of free republican

government.

While thanking you, my dear friends of the State Historical Society, for the honor you have conferred on me the past year, let me assure you I more highly prize my connection, humble though it may have been, with Kansas records and Kansas history, than any other honor I can receive.

WM. A. PHILLIPS.

ILLINOIS, although in order of time. the third State admitted into the Union from the Northwest Territory, was the first to revise and amend its organic law. Only six years had elapsed when it was proposed to call a constitutional convention, but the project then, 1824, was voted down in consequence of the slavery issue. Not only was the first constitution found to be defective in many essential features when considered as an instrument designed for the government of a growing and transitional commonwealth, but it had also come to be regarded with disfavor by the politicians of both parties when viewed from a partisan standpoint. Democrats and Whigs were alike anxious for its revision the former that they might get rid of the obnoxious Supreme Court judges; the latter that they

*We publish, by permission of Hon. John Moses, secretary of the Chicago Historical Society, the above extracts from the second volume of his remarkably interesting and well written History of Illinois, now in press. The series of articles will run through several numbers of the Magazine, and will give to the public for the first time many exceedingly interesting historical facts and reminiscences.

might restrict the right of suffrage to citizens and make all county officers elective by the people.

After the defeat of the call in 1824, although the advocates of revision did not cease their efforts, they failed to secure the passage of a joint-resolution by the Legislature submitting the question to the popular vote until the session of 1840-41, and it was again defeated at the election of 1842 by the narrow majority of 1,039.

The legislature of 1844-45 submitted another call to be voted upon in 1846, at which time the proposition carried by a vote of 58,339 to

23,013.

Delegates were elected on the third Monday in April (19th), and the convention, composed of 162 members, assembled at Springfield, June 7th, 1847. It was an unwieldy body in point of numbers, being larger than any of its successors, yet it contained its full proportion of the the best talent which the State could furnish. Many of its members had already attained merited distinction in the service of the State. Among these may be mentioned the following: Archibald Williams, an able lawyer, who