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.
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