This was in October, 1854. In the following spring a Legislature was elected by the same illegal process, and proceeded at once to form a constitution most rabidly pro-slavery. It prescribed the death-penalty for any who should entice or decoy away a slave or assist him to escape, and ten years’ imprisonment for harboring or concealing a fugitive slave. To deny the right of holding slaves in the Territory, either by speaking, writing, printing or circulating books or papers, was declared to be felony, punishable with two years’ imprisonment. Having formed an elaborate constitution of the above character, and made ample provision for enforcing its requirements, they selected a site for the new State capital, called it Lecompton—after the attorney of the State, whose legal acquirements had assisted them greatly in their villany—and adjourned. Looking upon affairs as they then appeared, and seeing that the Legislature, however elected, had been officially recognized, and that its enactments were in form legal, that the whole machinery of courts, marshals, and militia were in its hands and could be used to enforce its statutes, that it was favored by the Administration and the dominant faction at Washington, which could employ the United States army for its support, it would seem as if the battle had already been lost to the Free-State men, and that Kansas could be counted upon to give that majority in the United States Senate which the slave-power so greatly coveted. But other forces were at work. In the first place, the very enormity of these slave-laws compelled all the decent residents of Kansas, whether Free-Soil, Whig, or Democrat, to combine for their own defence against the possible outrages to which they were exposed by these enactments. In the second place, the party which had brought about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had, by this very act, lost the control of the Lower House in Congress, and could not be relied upon to admit the Territory with its present infamous code. Besides these near and more immediate advantages, there were forces enlisted on this side that were working slowly but with great certainty toward the result aimed at by the Free-State men. The old migratory instinct which had throbbed in the veins of this race from the first, which had brought them from the steppes of Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, pushed the stronger and abler ones across the seas, moved them from the sea-coast to the foot of the Alleghanies, then drove them across this barrier to take possession of the great valley of the Ohio and the Mississippi, was still as active as ever and readily responded to the enticements of the new and fertile lands just opened in Kansas for settlement. No sooner was it known that the broad plains of this Territory could be occupied than the tide began to flow in this direction. Principle also came in to strengthen and ennoble this instinct.