Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 74

26. The Border Ruffian Code in Kansas (N.p., [1856]). (16 p.)

Compilation of Republican campaign documents related to the elections of 1856. The first document analyzes and subsequently derogates the slavery provisions in the Lecompton (pro-slavery) Constitution. The next document is a letter from the Lieutenant Governor of Kansas, W. Y. Roberts, in which the writer dissects Robert Toombs’s Kansas bill, which made concessions to anti-slavery forces but failed to provide for the ratification by popular vote of the constitution to be drafted by a constitutional convention. (This failure was the reason for the eventual rejection of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution in Congress.) The final section present the campaign platforms of the three parties vying for the presidential office—the South American Party [southern Know Nothings], the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party. A map of the United States showing the slave states, the free states, and the unorganized territories appears on the back.