<P> In response to the disputed votes and rising tension, Congress sent a special committee to the Kansas Territory in 1856 . The committee report concluded that if the election on March 30, 1855, had been limited to "actual settlers" it would have elected a Free - State legislature . The report also stated that the legislature actually seated "was an illegally constituted body, and had no power to pass valid laws". Nevertheless, the pro-slavery territorial legislature convened in the newly created territorial capital in Pawnee on July 2, 1855 . The legislature immediately invalidated the results from the special election in May and seated the pro-slavery delegates elected in March . After only one week in Pawnee, the legislature moved the territorial capital to the Shawnee Mission on the Missouri border, where it reconvened and began passing laws favorable to slaveholders . </P> <P> In August, anti-slavery residents met to formally reject the pro-slavery laws . They quickly elected their own Free - State delegates to a separate legislature based in Topeka, which stood in opposition to the pro-slavery government operating in Lecompton, and drafted the first territorial constitution, the Topeka Constitution . In a message to Congress on January 24, 1856, President Pierce declared the Free - State Topeka government insurrectionist in its stand against pro-slavery territorial officials . The presence of dual governments was symbolic of the strife brewing in the territory and further provoked supporters of both sides of the conflict . </P> <P> In October 1855, outspoken abolitionist John Brown arrived in the Kansas Territory to fight slavery . On November 21, the so - called Wakarusa War began when a Free - Stater named Charles Dow was shot by a pro-slavery settler . The war had one fatality, when Free - Stater Thomas Barber was shot and killed near Lawrence on December 6 . On May 21, 1856, Missourians invaded Lawrence and burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two newspaper offices, and ransacked homes and stores . </P> <P> In May 1856, Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts took to the floor to denounce the threat of slavery in Kansas and humiliate its supporters . He had devoted his enormous energies to the destruction of what Republicans called the Slave Power, that is the efforts of slave owners to take control of the federal government and ensure the survival and expansion of slavery . In the speech (called "The Crime against Kansas") Sumner ridiculed the honor of elderly South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, portraying Butler's pro-slavery agenda towards Kansas with the raping of a virgin and characterizing his affection for it in sexual and revolting terms . The next day, Butler's cousin, the South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, nearly killed Sumner on the Senate floor with a heavy cane . The action electrified the nation, brought violence to the floor of the Senate, and deepened the North - South split . </P>

What happened in kansas during the november 1854 elections as a result of popular sovereignty