Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Ron Smith is a fifth-generation Kansan, a native of Manhattan, an attorney practicing in Larned, a grandfather several times over, a Vietnam veteran and a civil war historian.
The late Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights warrior in the Martin Luther King Jr. mold, chucked a rock at Kansas during his last year in office when he said there were more UFO sightings in Kansas than allegations of provable voter fraud.
Lewis died before seeing the 2020 presidential election’s aftermath.
Former President Donald Trump’s post-election message has continued to be that the 2020 election was stolen. Most of the candidates he’s endorsed in 2022 support his efforts to “stop the steal.”
Was there ever anything like 2020 in our history of elections?
In Kansas, the answer is yes. Back in the 1800s, we saw two high-profile, disputed elections — both with significant and provable fraud. One involved the most important constitutional election in Kansas during our tender territorial years, the adoption of the Lecompton constitution.
The other was the presidential election of 1876. That election was so rife with fraud on both sides, Southerners were polishing their muskets in case another Civil War erupted.
The disputed birth of Kansas
Illinois Sen. Stephen A. Douglas sponsored the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, bringing Kansas into the country as a new territory.
Douglas had tired of the Senatorial yapflapping and sectional bickering over slavery that always erupted when new states wanted in the union. He also wanted to fund a transcontinental railroad with Chicago as the eastern terminus and needed slave state cooperation. Slave states wanted Douglas’ help to allow slavery in the new territories.
Douglas’ 1854 compromise changed the rules, allowing territorial settlers to decide in local elections whether their new territory came into the union as a free or slave state. Douglas’ one, non-negotiable demand was that the territorial elections had to be fair.
In the next few years, settlers poured into Kansas, bringing along their pro- and anti-slavery views. Violence erupted. In response to the sacking of Lawrence in May 1856 by Missourians, John Brown and his men took broadswords to five pro-slavery men, leaving mutilated bodies floating in the Pottawatomie Creek. Such was Bleeding Kansas.
The pro-slavery elements eventually put together a constitution allowing slavery in Kansas and scheduled a statewide vote on the Lecompton document for January 1858.
Free state men knew there would be fraud because fraud was no stranger to Kansas elections. The Free Staters set a trap. At Kickapoo on election day, Leavenworth free-state lawyer Thomas Ewing and about 30 free state men, all residents of the county, hung around. All afternoon, they watched a small ferry bring boatloads of Missourians across the Missouri river to vote in Kansas.
Free state men knew there would be fraud because fraud was no stranger to Kansas elections. The Free Staters set a trap. At Kickapoo on election day, Leavenworth free-state lawyer Thomas Ewing and about 30 free state men, all residents of the county, hung around. All afternoon, they watched a small ferry bring boatloads of Missourians across the Missouri river to vote in Kansas.
At the end of the day, Ewing got into the voting line and signed the ledger as the 550th voter. Only 300 registered voters lived in Leavenworth County’s Kickapoo township. John Calhoun, President James Buchanan’s chief territorial officer in Kansas and a practicing fraudster, announced that more than 900 votes were cast in Kickapoo. This was more evidence of fraud. The illegal “Missouri vote” in Kansas made the difference.
In Washington, after Calhoun’s telegram,…
Read More: Want to find real election fraud? Look at the history of Kansas, United States in 1800s