o say that he had approved of that [Lecompton] programme." On
whose authority, then, did Calhoun declare that the Administration had
changed its mind?

[Illustration: FREDERICK P. STANTON.]

[Sidenote] John Bell, Senate Speech, March 18, 1858.

This query brings us to another point in President Buchanan's letter
of October 22, in which he mentions that Secretary Cobb, of his
Cabinet, had without his knowledge suppressed the publication of
certain letters in the "Washington Union." These were, as we learn
elsewhere, the letters in which some of the Kansas pro-slavery leaders
repeated their declaration of the hopelessness of any further contest
to make Kansas a slave-State. Why this secret suppression by Secretary
Cobb? There is but one plausible explanation of this whole chain of
contradictions. The conclusion is almost forced upon us that a Cabinet
intrigue, of which the President was kept in ignorance, was being
carried on, under the very eyes of Mr. Buchanan, by those whom he
himself significantly calls "the extremists"--a plot to supersede his
own intentions and make him falsify his own declarations. As in the
case of similar intrigues by the same agents a few years later, he had
neither the wit to perceive nor the will to resist.

[Sidenote] Stanton, Philadelphia Speech, Feb. 8, 1858.

The protest of the people of the Territory against the extraordinary
action of the Lecompton Convention almost amounted to a popular
revolt. This action opened a wide door to fraud, and invited Missouri
over to an invasion of final and permanent conquest. Governor Walker
had quitted the Territory on his leave of absence, and Secretary
Stanton was acting Governor. "The people in great masses," he says,
"and the Legislature that had been elected, with almost a unanimous
voice called upon me to convene the Legislature, in order that they
might take such steps as they could to counteract the misfortune which
they conceived was about to befall them in the adoption of this
constitution," As already stated, Stanton had come to Kansas with the
current Democratic prejudices against the free-State party. But his
whole course had been frank, sincere, and studiously impartial, and
the Oxford fraud had completely opened his eyes. "I now discovered for
the first time to my entire satisfaction why it was that the great
mass of the people of the Territory had been dissatisfied with their
government, and were ready to rebel and throw it off."