Early in February, 1859, the Territorial Legislature passed an act
submitting to the people the question of calling a Constitutional
Convention. This vote was taken March 28th, and resulted: For, 5,306;
against, 1,425. On the 10th of May, 1859, the Republican party of Kansas
was organized, at Osawatomie, and at the election held on the 7th of
June, for delegates to the Wyandotte Convention, the Republican and
Democratic parties confronted each other in Kansas for the first time.
The Democrats carried the counties of Leavenworth, Doniphan, Jefferson
and Jackson, and elected one of the two delegates from Johnson. The
Republicans were successful in all the other counties voting. The total
vote polled was 14,000. The Republican membership was thirty-five; the
Democratic, seventeen.
The Convention then chosen assembled on the 5th day of July, 1859. In
its composition it was an unusual, not to say remarkable, Kansas
assemblage. Apparently the chiefs of the contending parties had grown
weary of Constitution-making, or regarded this fourth endeavor in that
line as a predestined failure, for they were conspicuous by their
absence. In the Topeka Convention nearly every prominent man of the
Free-State party had a seat. Gen. James H. Lane was its President, and
Charles Robinson, Martin F. Conway, Marcus J. Parrott, Wm. Y. Roberts,
Geo. W. Smith, Philip C. Schuyler, Cyrus K. Holliday, Mark W. Delahay,
and many other recognized Free-State leaders were members. In the
Leavenworth Convention there was a similar gathering of widely-known
Free-State men. Conway was its President, and Lane, Roberts, Thos.
Ewing, Jr., Henry J. Adams, H. P. Johnson, Sam’l N. Wood, T. Dwight
Thacher, Preston B. Plumb, Joel K. Goodin, A. Larzelere, W. F. M. Arny,
Chas. H. Branscomb, John Ritchie, and many other influential Free-State
chiefs or partisans, were among its members.