Lecompton Constitution Approved by Voters

Monday, December 21, 1857

John C. Calhoun, President of the Lecompton Constitutional Convention. Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society.

Kansas voters overwhelmingly approve the proslavery Lecompton Constitution, but only because Free-Staters boycott the referendum. The proposed constitution is a rebuke of the Free-Staters' antislavery Topeka Constitution, and it receives the approval of President James Buchanan, but it splits the Democratic Party into its Northern and Southern components as the constitution fails to pass in Congress.