The course of Governor Shannon reached its end in the summer of 1856. He was disliked by the free-state faction, while his personal habits gave no respectability to the pro-slave cause. At the end of his régime the extra-legal legislature under the Topeka constitution was prevented by federal troops from convening in session at Topeka. A few weeks later Governor John W. Geary superseded him and established his seat of government in Lecompton, by this time a village of some twenty houses. It took Geary, an honest, well-meaning man, only six weeks to fall out with the pro-slave element and the federal land officers. He resigned in March, 1857. Under Governor Robert J. Walker, who followed Geary, the first official attempt at a constitution was entered upon. The legislature had already summoned a convention which sat at Lecompton during September and October. Its constitution, which was essentially pro-slavery, however it was read, was ratified before the end of the year and submitted to Congress. But meanwhile the legislature which called the convention had fallen into free-state hands, disavowed the constitution, and summoned another convention. At Leavenworth this convention framed a free-state constitution in March, which was ratified by popular vote in May, 1858. Governor Walker had already resigned in December, 1857. Through holding an honest election and purging the returns of slave-state frauds he had enabled the free-state party to secure the legislature. Southerner though he was, he choked at the political dishonesty of the administration in Kansas. He had yielded to the evidence of his eyes, that the population of Kansas possessed a large free-state majority. But so yielding he had lost the confidence of Washington. Even Senator Douglas, the patron of the popular sovereignty doctrine, had now broken with President Buchanan, recognizing the right of the people to form their own institutions. No attention was ever paid by Congress to this Leavenworth constitution, but when the Lecompton constitution was finally submitted to the people by Congress, in August, 1858, it was defeated by more than 11,000 votes in a total of 13,000. Kansas was henceforth in the hands of the actual settlers. A year later, at Wyandotte, it made a fourth constitution, under which it at last entered the union on January 29, 1861. "In the Wyandotte Convention," says one of the local historians, "there were a few Democrats and one or two cranks, and probably both were of some use in their way."