a new free state would change the balance of power in the polarized Senate. The Topeka Constitution was followed by the equally unsuccessful, pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution of 1857 and the Free-State Leavenworth Constitution of 1858. Finally the Wyandotte Constitution (1859) led to Kansas being admitted into the Union as a free state in 1861, five years after it first applied, the Southern legislators blocking it having departed en masse. The Civil War began four months later. The conflict between the Free State legislature and the Territorial legislature, each seeking control of Kansas' destiny, was carried out with guns and the ballot box. These conditions and surrounding national implications inspired the term Bleeding Kansas. Following the Free State elections, in a lengthy address on January 24, 1856, President Franklin Pierce proclaimed the Topeka government to be illegitimate and ordered the arrest of its leaders: Despite this proclamation, the Topeka Legislature convened on March 4, 1856, and again on the Fourth of July to ask the Congress for admittance of the state. The legislature was dispersed on July 4, 1856, by three squadrons of federal troops under the command of Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner. Sumner later called this the most painful duty of his career. Never before had a body of U.S. citizens, meeting to exercise their right to vote, been broken up by federal forces. See also Constitution Hall (Topeka, Kansas) Constitutions of Kansas References External links Transcript of PBS documentary 1855 in Kansas Territory December 1855 events Bleeding Kansas Constitutions of Kansas 1855 documents Black exclusion laws