; working patiently and insidiously through successive efforts
to bring about a practical subversion of the whole theory and policy
of the American Government. It linked the action of Border Ruffians,
presidential aspirants, senates, courts, and cabinets into efficient
cooeperation; leading up, step by step, from the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, through the Nebraska bill, border conquest, the Dred Scott
decision, the suppression of the submission clause in the Toombs bill,
and the extraordinary manipulation and machinery of the Lecompton
Constitution, towards the final overthrow of the doctrine that "all
men are created equal," and the substitution of the dogma of property
in man; towards the judicial construction that property rights in
human beings are before and above constitutional sanction, and that
slavery must find protection and perpetuity in States as well as in
Territories.

[Sidenote] Cass to Stanton, December 2, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc.
No. 8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., pp. 112-13.

[Sidenote] Cass to Stanton, December 8, 1857. Ibid., p. 113.

[Sidenote] Cass to Denver, December 11th, 1857. Senate Ex. Doc. No.
8, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. I., p. 120.

The first weather-sign came from Washington. On the day after Acting
Governor Stanton convened the October Legislature in special session,
and before news of the event reached him, Secretary Cass transmitted
to him advance copies of the President's annual message, in which the
Lecompton Constitution was indorsed in unqualified terms. A week later
he was admonished to conform to the views of the President in his
official conduct. At this point the State Department became informed
of what had taken place, and the acting Governor had short shrift. On
December 11 Cass wrote to J.W. Denver, Esq.: "You have already been
informed that Mr. Stanton has been removed from the office of
Secretary of the Territory of Kansas and that you have been appointed
in his place." Cass further explained that the President "was
surprised to learn that the secretary and acting Governor had, on the
1st of December, issued his proclamation for a special session of the
Territorial Legislature on the 7th instant, only a few weeks in
advance of its regular time of meeting, and only fourteen days before
the decision was to be made on the question submitted by the
convention. This course of Mr. Stanton, the President seriously
believes, has thrown a new element of discord