Paul Bahnmaier almost single-handily has promoted the history of tiny Lecompton Kansas for several decades. Lecompton's unfortunate history is that it was chosen as the slave-capital of Kansas Territory in 1854. The Constitution written in Lecompton's Constitution Hall (inset) would have had Kansas enter the Union as a slave state despite the clear majority of free-staters living in the Territory. Some Democrats, like President James Buchanan, supported the admission of Kansas as a state under the Lecompton Constitution. Other Democrats, like Stephen Douglas, opposed the admission of Kansas under this Constitution because it did not seem to have the support of the Kansas electorate. This split in the Democratic Party opened the door for Abraham Lincoln to be elected President with less than a majority of votes.
Now, Paul is using the opening of Steven Spielberg's movie "Lincoln" to promote Lecompton's place in American history and his efforts have caught the attention of writers from the
New York Times and the
Topeka Capital-Journal. Surely, Lecompton played a role in American history. The battles fought over slavery in Kansas served as a prelude to the Civil War and they helped to re-define the Jeffersonian ideal that "all men are created equal." What Jefferson thought these words meant when he wrote them in 1776 is not what Americans think they mean today. Jefferson did not believe that women or slaves were equal to white men.
Today, Americans celebrate the equality of
all people and the struggles that took place in Lecompton, Kansas helped us get there.
