6, a governor and
legislature were chosen, and, in February, the Legislature, meeting at
Topeka, memorialised Congress, asking that Kansas be admitted into the
Union. Thereupon, Senator Douglas reported a bill providing that
whenever the people of Kansas numbered 93,420 inhabitants they might
organise a State. Instantly, Senator Seward offered a substitute,
providing for its immediate admission with the Topeka Constitution.

The events leading up to this parliamentary situation had been noisy
and murderous, rekindling a spirit of indignation in the South as well
as in the North, which brought out fiery appeals from the press. The
Georgia Legislature proposed to appropriate sixty thousand dollars to
aid emigration to Kansas. A chivalrous colonel of Alabama who issued
an appeal for three hundred men willing to fight for the cause of the
South, began his march from Montgomery with two hundred, having first
received a blessing from a Methodist minister and a Bible from a
divine of the Baptist church. One young lady of South Carolina set the
example of selling her jewelry to equip men with rifles. The same
spirit manifested itself in the North. Public meetings encouraged
armed emigration. "The duty of the people of the free States," said
the _Tribune_, "is to send more true men, more Sharpe's rifles, and
more howitzers to Kansas."[468] William Cullen Bryant wrote his
brother that "by the 1st of May there will be several thousand more
free-state settlers in Kansas. Of course they will go well
armed."[469] Henry Ward Beecher, happening to be present at a meeting
in which an orthodox deacon who had enlisted seventy-nine emigrants
asked for more rifles, declared that a Sharpe's rifle was a greater
moral agency than the Bible, and that if half the guns needed were
pledged on the spot Plymouth Church would furnish the rest.[470]
Thus, the equipment of Northern emigrants to Kansas became known as
"Beecher's Bibles."[471] Henry J. Raymond said that "the question of
slavery domination must be fought out on the plains of Kansas."[472]
To add to Northern bitterness, President Pierce, in a special message
to the United State Senate, condemned the emigrant aid societies,
threatening to call out the army, and approving the acts of the
pro-slavery Legislature.

[Footnote 468: New York _Weekly Tribune_, February 2, 1856.]

[Footnote 469: Parke Godwin, _Life of Bryant_, Vol. 2, p. 88.]

[Footnote 470: New York _Independent_, March 26, 18