Having, like Walker, frequently and earnestly assured the people of
their ultimate right to ratify or reject the work of the convention,
he was personally humiliated by the unfairness and trickery of which
that body was guilty. Under the circumstances he could not hesitate in
his duty. By proclamation he convened the new Legislature in extra
session.

The members respected the private pledge they had given him to engage
in no general legislation; but provided by law for an investigation of
the Oxford and McGee frauds, and for an election to be held on January
4, 1858 (the day fixed by the Lecompton Constitution for the election
of State officers and a State legislature), at which the people might
vote for the Lecompton Constitution or against it. Thus in the course
of events two separate votes were taken on this notorious document.
The first, provided for in the instrument itself, took place on the
21st of December, 1857. Detachments of troops were stationed at
several points; the free-State men abstained from voting; the election
was peaceable; and in due time Calhoun proclaimed that 6143 ballots
had been cast "for the constitution with slavery," and 589 "for the
constitution with no slavery." But the subsequent legislative
investigation disclosed a gross repetition of the Oxford fraud, and
proved the actual majority, in a onesided vote, to have been only
3423. The second election occurred on January 4, 1858, under authority
of the legislative act. At this election the pro-slavery party voted
for the State officers, but in its turn abstained from voting on the
constitution, the result being--against the Lecompton Constitution,
10,226; for the Lecompton Constitution with slavery, 138; for the
Lecompton Constitution without slavery, 24.[12]

This emphatic rejection of the Lecompton Constitution by a direct vote
of the people of Kansas sealed its fate. We shall see further on what
persistent but abortive efforts were made in Congress once more to
galvanize it into life. The free-State party were jubilant; but the
pro-slavery cabal, foiled and checked, was not yet dismayed or
conquered. For now there was developed, for the first time in its full
proportions, the giant pro-slavery intrigue which proved that the
local conspiracy of the Atchison-Missouri cabal was but the image and
fraction of a national combination, finding its headquarters in the
Administration, first of President Pierce, and now of President
Buchanan