Thomas Ewing Jr.: Frontier Lawyer and Civil War General

4. Mr. Chief Justice and a Man Named Lincoln

n October , , John Brown and eighteen other men fought their way into a musty federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Hoping to provoke a slave uprising, they took hostages and fought for a day to hold off a local militia company. Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee led a company of marines to retake the arsenal, killing ten men inside, including two of Brown’s sons. Within weeks Brown was on trial for inciting an insurrection. Four days after Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid was suppressed, Kansans went to the polls in record numbers under their proposed new Wyandotte Constitution. While the convention had hosted controversies over women’s suffrage, black suffrage , apportionment of the first legislature, and homestead laws, the general product was one that most Kansans could support. Democrats balked at efforts to cut off the western border of the state and let the portion that now runs from eastern Colorado to the Continental Divide remain a territory. Wyandotte was different from all previous constitutions, which had preferred the larger state. While Republicans and Free Staters such as Ewing in general approved of the Wyandotte Constitution, Douglas Democrats such as Hugh, Hamp Denman, and Dan McCook did not. The constitution purposefully contained a poison pill for the territory’s Democrats. Its provisions on apportionment of the first legislature virtually guaranteed Republican successes in battles for legislative seats, which  4 MR. CHIEF JUSTICE AND A MAN NAMED LINCOLN O meant a considerable uphill battle for Democrats to dominate future state legislatures . Legislatures controlled the makeup of U.S. senators from Kansas. The apportionment wrangle was a Republican gift to Buchanan’s Democratic Party for all the heartache it had caused Kansas. The Wyandotte Constitution also allowed black children to be educated in Kansas’s public schools, but this was as far as liberality between the races would go in .The constitution did not guarantee an integrated education. Dan McCook relayed to his father that Kansas Democrats nominated Saunders Johnston, a former federal judge from Ohio, as their standard-bearer and intended to oppose the Wyandotte Constitution. Not to do so would allow the rigged apportionment section of the constitution to entrench Republicans in Kansas in such a way that it would take a “, vote popular majority to beat this apportionment.” McCook was right. The long dominance of the Republican Party in Kansas is the result of the efforts of this initial constitutional convention to rig the political scene from the beginning. Because of this skewed apportionment issue, none of the Democrat delegates signed the document.1 When territorial voters went about approving the convention’s handiwork, they did not know that the Wyandotte Constitution would remain the Kansas state’s core document for over a hundred years. Its adoption—combined with the trial of John Brown for Harpers Ferry—marked the political end of “Bleeding Kansas” and radical Free-Soil politics. As Kansas lamented the passing of John Brown after his execution for treason, Tom Ewing complained several times— once after a eulogy for Brown given by Senator Edward Everett—that Brown’s “victims” were forgotten in all the speeches about him. Had Brown succeeded in forcing a war between Free Staters and the American government, “all the nations of the world would have stood with the prestige of the South and the General Government while the North would have been divided, overwhelmed and conquered .” Writing on the subject in his later years, Ewing noted that the Civil War had intervened, “no doubt divinely directed to unify and purify our people for their glorious mission,” in order to foil John Brown’s mad scheme. For the first time in Kansas, all settlers cast a full and free vote for the constitution, this time not intimidated by warring factions.2 The Wyandotte Constitution required another election of potential state offi-  . Democrats’ problems with the Wyandotte Constitution from Plummer, Frontier Governor, ; “, vote popular majority” from McCook to his father, Daniel McCook Sr., August , , Stephen A. Douglas Papers, Special Collections, Manuscripts, University of Chicago Library. . TEJr. to Senator Edward Everett, December , , TEJr./KSHS; Rowland, “Thomas Ewing Jr.,” ; “prestige of the South” from Ewing, “Struggle For Freedom,” . THOMAS EWING JR. cers, who would automatically take office if Congress granted statehood. Eleven days after the constitutional ratification vote, the Republicans nominated Tom Ewing for chief justice. Within a week the Democrats nominated Judge Joseph Williams, Buchanan’s latest appointee, to oppose Ewing. Tom...