In June 1857 delegates were elected to a constitutional convention. The election Act did not provide for any popular vote upon the constitution they should form, and was passed over Governor John W. Geary's veto. A census, miserably deficient (largely owing to free-state abstention and obstruction), was the basis of apportionment of delegates. The free-state party demanded a popular vote on the constitution. On the justice of this Governor Robert J. Walker and President Buchanan were at first unequivocally agreed, and the governor promised fairplay. Nevertheless only pro-slavery men voted, and the convention was thus pro-slavery. The document it framed is known as the Lecompton Constitution. Before the convention met, the free-state party, abandoning its policy of political inaction, captured the Territorial legislature. On the constitutional convention rested, then, all hope of saving Kansas for slavery; and that would be impossible if they should submit their handiwork to the people. The convention declared slave property to be "before and higher than any constitutional sanction" and forbade amendments affecting it; but it provided for a popular vote on the alternatives, the "constitution with slavery" or the "constitution with no slavery." If the latter should be adopted, slavery should cease "except" that the right to property in slaves in the Territory should not be interfered with. The free-state men regarded this as including the right to property in offspring of slaves, and therefore as pure fraud. Governor Walker stood firmly against this iniquitous scheme; he saw that slavery was, otherwise, doomed, but he thought Kansas could be saved to the Democratic party though lost to slavery. But President Buchanan, under Southern influence, repudiated his former assurances. There is reason to believe that the whole scheme was originated at Washington, and though Buchanan was not privy to it before the event, yet he adopted it. He abandoned Walker, who left Kansas; and he dismissed Acting-Governor Frederick P. Stanton for convoking the (now free-state) legislature. This body promptly ordered a vote on the third alternative, "Against the Constitution."
The free-state men ignored the alternatives set by the Lecompton Convention; but they participated nevertheless in the provisional election for officers under the Lecompton government, capturing all offices, and then, the same day, voted overwhelmingly against the constitution (Jan. 4, 1858).