On the sixth day a resolution favoring biennial sessions of the
Legislature—adopted sixteen years afterward—was submitted and referred.
The first of a long series of resolutions or proposed sections of the
Constitution, prohibiting the settlement of negroes or mulattoes within
the limits of the State, was also introduced. This question, with others
of a kindred nature, such as propositions to prohibit colored children
attending the schools, or to exclude them from the University, or to
forbid the appropriation of any funds for their education, and last, and
meanest of all, to deny to negroes the shelter of county poor-houses
when poor and helpless, was voted upon again and again, first in one
form and then in another; and to the enduring honor of the majority,
always defeated. It seems singular, in this day and generation, that
such theories found persistent and earnest advocates. But it should be
remembered that all this happened before the war, when slavery was still
an “institution” in nearly half the States of the Union. The Pro-Slavery
party was, of course, solidly in favor of excluding free negroes from
the State, and less than four years prior to the meeting of the
Convention, the Free-State party, in voting on the Topeka Constitution,
had given a decided majority in favor of such exclusion. It therefore
required genuine courage and principle to go upon record against each
and every proposition of this character. For very few members who so
voted felt absolutely certain of the indorsement of their constituents.
The first article of the Constitution reported, that on corporations and
banks, was submitted on the sixth day and considered. It was stated by
the President that many other Committees had their reports in the hands
of the printer, and during the next few days they began to come in very
rapidly. The Convention, to expedite work, adopted a resolution
requiring all Committees to report on or before Saturday, the eleventh
day of the session.