and was met at the depot by a large body of his fellow citizens, without distinc-
tion of party, who received him with hearty cheers and hearty congratulations.
He was escorted to the court-house, where he was welcomed by Hon. James M.
Porter, formerly secretary of war, in a brief but exceedingly felicitous speech.
Judge Porter said, in conclusion: "We welcome you among us. You retain our
undiminished confidence and regard, and we pray that a benign providence may
preserve you in health and strength for a long life of usefulness to your country
and your friends."
Governor Reeder, with much feeling and impressive eloquence, returned his
thanks to the assembly for the flattering demonstration of welcome with which
he had been greeted on his return to the home of his nativity, the bosom of his
family, and the society of long-loved and valued friends, after an absence on the
very outer frontiers of ovir immense repviblic, amid scenes somewhat trying and
embarrassing. By permission of the eloquent gentleman who had been their
organ upon this occasion, he addressed them directly, as he preferred to do. It
was more consonant with his feelings to speak without any medium of communi-
tion directly to the sea of manly and familiar faces, covering warm and honest
hearts of old and valued friends.
He alluded to the address of their speaker, which called him out upon the sub-
ject of his official action as the governor of Kansas, and the state of circumstances
which there surrounded him, and after thanking them for the approbation they
had expressed of his official action, and the high pleasure which such approval
must necessarily confer, he said he was reluctantly compelled to admit the truth
of the facts relating to the recent election. Indeed, it would be in vain to at-
tempt to disguise or conceal them, humiliating as they were. He should have
been surprised to find them so well acquainted with the true state of the facts
and so keenly alive to the oppressive injustice that had been committed, if he had
not already ascertained that this knowledge had preceded him all along the
route he had traveled. He had found along his whole route the same familiarity
with the facts, and the same state of indignant excitement. It seemed as though
some electric medium had diffused over the covmtry the full knowledge of the
circumstances, and that but one sentiment pervaded all parties, sects and fac-
tions in the country through which he had passed, impelling them to the
strongest denunciation of the recent outrage upon popular sovereignty and the
purity of the ballot-box. It was, indeed, too true that Kansas had been invaded,
conquered, subjugated, by an armed force from beyond her borders, led on by a
fanatic spirit, trampling under foot the Kansas bill and the right of suffrage.
He reminded his hearers of the fact that he had been, as they well knew, an
—11
170 Kansas State Histurical Society.
early and consistent friend and advocate of the principles of that bill ; he be-
lieved in it then, and his opinion was still unchanged.
The people of Kansas would ask nothing but that the principles of that bill
should be carried out, and that the rights for which they had the sacred and
solemn pledge of the nation should be secured to them. That this bill had been
rexjudiated, those pledges, under which they had gone forth to establish another
republic, had been forfeited, it was impossible to deny. He said none knew bet-
ter than those whom he now addressed how constantly and consistently he had
contended for all the constitutional and legal rights which had been guaranteed
to every section of the union, and how sternly he had warred against the fanati-
cism that would violate them. He was ready to oppose the fanaticism that was
reckless of the rights of others, come from what quarter it would, and all he
asked for the infant and feeble community over which he presided, that their
ballot-boxes should be respected and their rights held sacred. With the de-
cisions they should then make he would rest satisfied. But when they were
overborne by numbers and preparations beyond their power to resist, they must
appeal to the spirit of freedom and the sense of justice among their fellow citizens
of the states to redress their wrongs by the moral force of a unaniinous and de-
termined tone of public opinion that wovild frown. down the wrong and vindicate
the right, acting in legitimate and efficient channels.
To every right-thinking man a constitutional, a legal or a moral right was
equally sacred, whether claimed by the North or the South, East or West, by a
territory or a state, by an enemy or a friend. That the same feeling which had
induced him to stand up, oft and again, for the constitutional rights of the South,
impelled him now to claim, with equal pertinacity, the right of suffrage for the
people of Kansas. He could not hold the South responsible for the invasion
which had been referred to; nor could he, with propriety, visit the responsibility
on the state of Missouri. Its authors were the fanatic leadei-s and corrupt and
reckless presses of some half dozen border counties, who had inflamed, excited
and deceived their own people, and had then urged this misguided and deluded
people to the commission of the wrong. It was due from Missouri, however, to
disavow and repudiate it, and to take measures to prevent its recurrence. Fail-
ing in this, she might fairly be held to sanction it. If she should thus sanction
it, we must appeal to the honor, the justice and the magnanimity of the southern
states to stay the outrage thus committed by one of themselves, in the mistaken
expectation of advancing their common cause. That rebuke and disapprobation
from them would be all-powerful cannot be doubted, and if this reliance should
fail, it will be for the rest of the union to say whether the plighted faith of the
nation to us shall be kept or broken; whether the right of suffrage shall be a
reality or a mockery; whether we, their fellow citizens, shall be freemen or
slaves.
The governor closed by again referring to the old and cherished relations he
had sustained with those around him, and with the expression of his gratification
and his thanks for the honor conferred and the regard manifested by this enthu-
siastic popular demonstration.
The above report of Governor Reeder's speech, which we copy from the
"Argus," is introduced with the following editorial remarks: "A number of
errors having crept into the report of Judge Porter's speech on the occasion of
Governor Reeder's reception here, as published in the ' Argus,' and the inaccura-
cies in the telegraphic reports of the governor's reply, made up from the memory
of some one in the crowd, induced us to call upon the governor for a more correct
report, with a view to republishing the remarks of both gentlemen correctly.
Goconor lixcdcr's Adiiilnistratioii. 171
Governor Reeder declined writing out his remarks, but repeated them to us, and
we made at the moment the following notes, which we are satisfied is a sufficiently
close report of the substance of his original speech."
[ " Herald of Freedom," June 2, 1855. 1
GOVERNOR REEDER IN PENNSYLVANIA.
At a reception on arriving at his former home in Pennsylvania, in Decem-
ber, 1S55, Governor Reeder made the following address:
Among the true, the tried and the trusted friends who now surround me,
I shall always feel gratified and at home, let my lot be cast where it will; and
although such a demonstration of welcome would call for my sincere thanks
among any people and under any circumstances, I assure you it has for me a
double charm, when emanating from men who have known me from childhood,
socially, politically, and professionally; and in whose good faith, sound judg-
ment and honest impulses, I have always relied, and never relied in vain.
With no empty words do I thank you for the honor conferred by this cordial
and flattering reception. I thank you personally for the implication it con-
veys that my course in Kansas has met your approbation, and, in the name of
the true, the honest, the oppressed and the slandered people of that lovely
country, I thank you for the assurance it will bear to them, that amid all the
wrongs they have suffered, they have friends who watch the interesting and
memorable events that are making their history; and that whilst they are
struggling for their simplest but their dearest rights, among the broken
pledges of a nation, they have a sympathy here which still holds out the hope
that those pledges may yet be redeemed. To the thanks I tender you in their
behalf 1 know they Avill respond. Many an anxious and manly face on the far-
off plains of that beautiftil and eventful country will beam with pleasure on
reading the account of this reception, and many a heart will swell with renewed
encouragement in the work that is before them, whilst thousands will indorse
all of the thanks and gratitude which in their name I tender to yoti to-day.
Encouragement from the homes they have left and sympathy and support
from their brethren of the states is pleasant to their ears and cheering to their
hearts, and although they will not, when deprived of it, falter at all in the
duty they owe to themselves and their country, the assurance of justice and
support from their friends at home will strengthen and encourage them.
It needs no effort of imagination on my part to conjure tip a realization of
the effect of such sympathy and support upon the hearts of the honest pio-
neers of Kansas. Too often have I witnessed among them the eager anxiety
for expressions of public opinion — the kindling pleasure at its favorable mani-
festations and the disappointment which followed injustice or neglect— to
draw upon any other source than memory for the effect of public demonstra-
tions such as these.
Six months ago I spoke to you on this old and familiar ground, and re-
counted to you, as truth and candor required, the wrongs which had been com-
mitted upon the constitution and the doctrine of self-government. I told you
then, that our people, though few and weak, were firm and strong in their reli-
ance on the justice of the nation and the power of an enlightened public opin-
ion. I said to you that, although compelled to wait for a propitious time and
the exhaustion of peaceful remedies, they would never sit down in permanent
submission to the yoke that had been set upon their necks, nor tamely bear the
172 Kansas State Historical Society.
shackles of white slavery which galled their limbs. And sooner even than I
looked for have our prospects brightened and our hopes increased. In spite of
intolerance and proscription and slander; in spite of pertinacious tyranny,
regarding no right too sacred to invade and no Draconian code too fierce to
impose; in spite of the most insolent attempts to perpetuate an ill-gotten
power, and the most elaborate contrivances to secure it; in spite of the com-
plicity of a chief magistrate who has proved faithless to his high trust, and
encouraged the wrong by his oflicial acts of commission and of omission, and
justified it by authority of articles in his official organ, and who has allowed
enemies to use and abuse, for their nefarious ends, nine-tenths of his political
patronage in the territory— in spite of all these, I say, we begin to see what
looks like the dawn of a brighter day for Kansas.
In place of a chaotic mass of scattered men, each struggling, among the
hardships and privations of a frontier life, to provide food and shelter for
themselves and their families, and not knowing friends from enemies, with no
facilities for communication — individuals and whole neighborhoods strangers
to each other, without organization or concerted action — they have become
now an organized and efficient party, conducting their primary elections, hav-
ing commattees and subcommittees throughout the territory. They have met
in regular convention of delegates, with every district represented, have
adopted a platform of principles which, in its conservatism and liberality,
puts to shame the intolerance of our opponents, and gives the lie direct to the
unmeaning cry of abolitionism, with which it is sought to brand every man
who will not proclaim that negro slavery is a blessing in itself, and that white
slavery in Kansas should be tolerated without a murmur. They have for the
first time had an opportunity to know their strength, and are cheered with the
conviction that their numerical superiority is as three to one, and that they
have outnumbered all the votes of their opponents, including even the non-
residents. They have seen, as the mists of slander and misrepresentation
cleared away, large numbers of late misguided and deceived opponents fiock-
ing to their standards and rallying under their flag. They have openly repu-
diated the vile code of a foreign-elected legislature, and, by the moral power of
their position, they haA'e seen its whole machinery made impotent and station-
ary, its magistrates disregarded and ashamed of their function, its court silent
and empty, its officers idle, its taxes uncollected, even from its own political
friends, and its unconstitutional penalties a scoff and a byword. They have
seen men who in March last came into our territory as part of the force that
invaded our polls recently become residents, and join the ranks of the free-
state party, and, having held an election with all the forms and all the cor-
rectness that would do credit to any community, they have elected 52 dele-
gates, of character and intelligence, representing every district, v/ho are now
engaged in the formation of a state constitution, to be submitted to Congress.
They have seen former opponents, subdued and convinced by the contrasts
between the enormities of the legislature on one hand and the liberality of the
free-state platform on the other, carry their slaves to the states, and returning
with the proceeds in their pockets, take a firm and open stand with the friends of
self-government and free institutions, and under the same influences they have
seen struggling minorities in certain districts change into overwhelming and tri-
umphant majorities. All this has been the glorious work of the last six months,
and it has filled the hearts of our friends with hope and confidence. Nor is this all.
The sober second thought of the people in the border counties of Missouri is
Governor Recder's Administration. ]73
taking the right direction: a conviction of the wrong inflicted upon us, and a re-
pugnance to its repetition, is steadily gaining ground among them. It becomes evi-
dent that these invasions of our polls produce no prominent ef5'ect, except in their
recoil upon the men who make them, and they become weaker at each repetition.
At the election for county-seat of Leavenworth county the bitter chalice came
back to the lips of those who filled it, and men who had formerly gone into Mis-
souri and solicited votes for the legislature were found loudly complaining of the
foreign vote which secured a majority for a rival town. I have spoken to you in
general terms of the acts and conduct of the legislature, and it may be well to
refer to them more in detail:
First, as to its organization. Certain censorious gentlemen, who sit quietly
at home and philosophize the matter in their own way, undertake to find fault
with me for granting any certificates of election at all. Without stopping to
inquire whether these gentlemen would not have granted them all, had they been
in my situation, I will only say that such a charge betrays ignorance of the facts
of the case. Each district and precinct must of course stand on its own merits,
and it would have been ridiculous to set aside all of them because illegal votes
had been polled in the same.
It would have been equally ridiculous to set aside a district in which I do not
know that illegal votes had been polled. These gentlemen take the absurd posi-
tion that my action t/ten should be judged by the knowledge we have now. I
had provided for the voters of the territory the opportunity, the mode and the
time to complain of illegal vote«, and the right to a full hearing, and in none of
the districts in which certificates were granted, was there a protest filed as di-
rected by the proclamation, nor was I, at the time, made acquainted with facts
to justify a refusal. Seven electoral districts were set aside, all for disregard of
the forms prescribed by the proclamation, and these comprised all and more
than all of the cases in which complaints had been filed. New elections were
then ordered, and upon them certificates were granted, which the legislature at
their meeting disregarded, and although by the organic act the certificate of the
executive is made the evidence of due election by legal votes, and no power is
given to the legislature to judge of the qualifications of members, a number of
members who had such certificates were ejected, and their places filled by men
who had no title to seats whatever.
Of the removal to an unauthorized place I need not speak, as it involves a
legal question and has been already before the public, in the papers which it
evoked fi-om the judiciary and the executive.
By their so-called slavery act they have provided, that if any person shall
speak, write or circulate, anything calculated to produce a disorderly disaffection
among the slaves he shall suffer five years' solitary imprisonment at hai-d labor,
and as the jury are the judges of what is so calcvilated, and only men of one
political opinion are admitted to the jury-box, it will be seen that the way of a
free-state man to the penitentiary will be very easy. The twelfth section of the
same act imposes upon any man who will express the opinion that slavery does
not legally exist in the territory imprisonment at hard labor for two years.
True, the constitution foi-bids, even to Congress, the power of passing any law
abridging the freedom of speech or the press, but this legislature, in the self-
complacency of their omnipotence, rise superior to Congress, and stop at no such
small obstacles as the constitution, or an organic act, and boldly enacted the
penalties of the penitentiary for the man who would dare to read or introduce
into the territory the debates of the United State senate of the speeches of the
174 Kansas State Eistorical Society.
-greatest statesmen of the nation. The thu-teenth section closes the jury-box
-against every man who does not believe that slavery exists in the territory.
The preemption laws of the United States are repealed, and although, by
their provisions, a settler is allowed but 160 acres, this legislature, paying no at-
tention to the expressed prohibition in the organic act, extends his claim to 320.
The members of the bar, too, come in for their share of attention, and no
man is allowed to be admitted unless he takes the oath to support all the enact-
ments of the legislature.
The organic act forbids them to confer the right of suffrage on any other
than citizens of the United States and declarants, and yet the legislature in
their election law provide that all Indians "who conform to the custom of the
white man " shall be considered citizens, and shall be allowed to vote.
Thus, they not only violate the organic act and usurp the power of natural-
ization, confided by the constitution to Congress alone, but they make the
election officers the judges of who has "conformed to the custom of the white
man," and that custom must be conferred to, and thus enable them to admit or
reject whom they please.
Avowing in the legislative halls the determination to allow the people to elect
none of their olficers, they appoint for each of the counties a probate judge, a
sheriff, and county commissioner, and for each district prosecuting attorneys —
many of these officers residing in the state of Missouri when appointed — and to
hold their offices until October 1, 1857, that being the time when the next elec-
tion takes place for a legislative council, and when the ill-gotten power must be
renewed by another invasion. They declare in their election law that every man
who offers to vote shall be presumed to be qualified, and thus, if the vote of a
non-resident is objected to, the challenger must prove the negative or the vote
is received.
No residence previous to election is required. When challenged, the judges
may swear the voter first — and then it is provided that no evidence whatever
shall be heard to contradict — or they may hear other evidence in preference to
the voter, thus enabling them to make one rule for one man and a different one
for another. A voter, to be qualified, must swear to support the fugitive-slave
law of 1793, the fugitive- slave law of 1850, and the Kansas bill, thus making a
man's vote to depend, to some extent, on his political opinions, and he must pay
to the sheriff, appointed by the legislature, a poll tax of $1. This latter requi-
sition, however, was removed, when it was ascertained that the free-state men
would not vote at their polls.
To this election our people could not — would not — go. They were unwill-
ing to go through the mockery of an election where they were to be disfran-
chised by foreign voters, and drunken Indians who conformed to the " custom"
of drinking bad whisky ; where one rule could be made for them and another for
their opponents ; where they must recognize a foreign-elected legislature and
pay taxes into the hands of a nonresident sheriff or the expenses of their in-
vaders, and where those in favor of, as well as those opposed to, the laws invid-
iously pointed out must accept as a boon, on condition of political opinion, that
privilege of suffrage which was theirs of right. These contrivances and restric-
tions they well knew were intended to cripple and smother their numerical
strength, and that no effort would be spared to enforce them in the most
odious way.
In strong and beautiful contrast to this intolerant and unjust legislation is the
platform of the free-state party: a set of principles to which any rational man
may freely subscribe, and which, as I have already said, fully vindicates them
Governor Feeder's Adniinistration. 175
from all the slander that has been heaped upon them. They assert the right of
self-government and free suffrage, for the actual residents of Kansas, and against
all interference by non-residents from any quarter.
They assert, as they have the right to do, their preference for the free labor
over slave labor, and their determination to make their future state a free one;
they assert the doctrine of state rights, and denounce all interference by citizens
of Kansas with the slave property of Missouri or any other state. They recog-
nize the constitutional rights of the slave states to mold their own institutions in
their own way, and to hold and recover their own slaves without any molestation.
They contain a provision for exclusion of all free blacks, so desirable and accept-
able to contiguous slave states, as diminishing the chance of harboring fugitives.
They assert the intention of the party in the adoption of a state constitution to
guard the owners of the slaves in the territory against injustice and loss, by a
reasonable provision for their benefit, and therefore, by necessary implication,
avow the intention to leave the slaves unmolested in the territory, in the mean-
time, whether they are rightfully held there or not. They finally repudiate with
indignation the charge of abolitionism as slanderous and false, intended to bring
odium on a pure and formidable cause and frighten away weak and timid men,
and well known by its authors to be untrue. And yet there are men and presses
so purblinded or malicious as to attempt to brand such an organization as one
politically unsound, encroaching upon the rights of others, and of which a na-
tional democrat or a national whig should be ashamed.
Of these cavilers it is only necessary to say, that their only arguments consist
in the use of epithets, the meaning of which they possibly cannot understand,
or by which they hope to deceive the ignorant; and that, if not satisfied with the
doctrines of our platform, they must, to preserve their own consistency, advocate
the introduction of negro slavery into the states where they reside. In the di-
rection they desire to go, there is but one step to take beyond our position, and
that is the advocacy of negro slavery for themselves and us, as a blessing in
itself, and the entire surrender of the right of self-government. They may advo-