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Book, page 289 / 313 new site on the open prairie overlooking the Kansas River some twelve miles west of Lawrence was agreed upon. The proceedings do not show any unseemly scramble over the selection, and no tangible record remains of the whispered distribution of corner lots and contracts. It is only the name which rises into historical notice. [Sidenote: "House Journal Kansas Territory," 1855. Appendix, p. 3.] One of the actors in the political drama of Kansas was Samuel Dexter Lecompte, Chief-Justice of the Territory. He had been appointed from the border State of Maryland, and is represented to have been a diligent student, a respectable lawyer, a prominent Democratic politician, and possessed of the personal instincts and demeanor of a gentleman. Moved by a pro-slavery sympathy that was sincere, Judge Lecompte lent his high authority to the interests of the conspiracy against Kansas. He had already rendered the bogus Legislature the important service of publishing an extra-judicial opinion, sustaining their adjournment from Pawnee to Shawnee Mission. Probably because they valued his official championship and recognized in him a powerful ally in politics, they made him a member of several of their private corporations, and gave him the honor of naming their newly founded capital Lecompton. But the intended distinction was transitory. Before the lapse of a single decade, the town for which he stood sponsor was no longer the capital of Kansas. [Relocated Footnote: Namely, because of a _viva voce_ vote certified instead of a ballot, and because the prescribed oath and the words "lawful resident voters" had been openly erased from the printed forms. In six districts the Governor ordered a supplementary election, which was duly held on the 22d of May following. When that day arrived, the Border Ruffians, proclaiming the election to be illegal, by their default allowed free-State men to be chosen in all the districts except that of Leavenworth, where the invasion and tactics of the March election were repeated now for the third time and the same candidates voted for.--Howard Report, pp. 35-36. Indeed, the Border Ruffian habit of voting in Kansas had become chronic, and did not cease for some years, and sometimes developed the grimmest humors. In the autumn of that same year an election for county-seat took place in Leavenworth County by the accidental failure of the Legislature to designate one. Leavenworth city aspired to this honor and polled six
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