ion and gave adherence to the
idea of presenting an ultimatum to the North, with secession as an
alternative.

Meanwhile, Buchanan sent to Kansas, as Governor, Robert J. Walker,
one of the most astute of the Democrats of the opposite faction and a
Mississippian. The tangled situation which Walker found, the details
of his attempt to straighten it out, belong in another volume.* It is
enough in this connection merely to mention the episode of the Lecompton
convention in the election of which the Northern settlers refused to
participate, though Walker had promised that they should have full
protection and a fair count as well as that the work of the convention
should be submitted to a popular vote. This action of Walker's was one
more cause of contention between the warring factions in the South. The
fact that he had met the Northerners half-way was seized upon by the
Yancey men as evidence of the betrayal of the South by the Democratic
moderates. On the other hand, Cobb, writing of the situation in Kansas,
said that "a large majority are against slavery and... our friends regard
the fate of Kansas as a free state pretty well fixed... the pro-slavery
men, finding that Kansas was likely to become a Black Republican State,
determined to unite with the free-state Democrats." Here is the clue to
Walker's course. As a strict party man, he preferred to accept Kansas
free, with Democrats in control, rather than risk losing it altogether.

* See Jesse Macy, "The Anti-Slavery Crusade". (In "The
Chronicles of America".)

The next step in the affair is one of the unsolved problems in American
history. Buchanan suddenly changed front, disgraced Walker, and threw
himself into the arms of the Southern extremists. Though his reasons
for doing so have been debated to this day, they have not yet been
established beyond dispute. What seems to be the favorite explanation
is that Buchanan was in a panic. What brought him to that condition may
have been the following events.

The free-state men, by refusing to take part in electing the convention,
had given control to the slaveholders, who proved they were not slow to
seize their opportunity. They drew up a constitution favoring slavery,
but this constitution, Walker had promised, was to be submitted in
referendum. If the convention decided, however, not to submit the
constitution, would not Congress have the right to accept it and admit
Kansas as a Mate? This question was imme