of four such documents was the Topeka Constitution, written by anti-slavery forces unified under the Free-State Party in December 1855. This constitution was the basis for the Free-State territorial government that resisted the federally authorized government which had been previously elected by non-resident Missourians. On June 30, 1856, following President Pierce's declaration that the Topeka government was extralegal, Congress rejected ratification of the Topeka Constitution. In 1857, a second constitutional convention met in Lecompton and by early November had drafted the Lecompton Constitution, a pro-slavery document endorsed by President James Buchanan. The constitution was submitted to Kansans for a vote on a special slavery article, but Free-Staters refused to participate, knowing that the constitution would allow Kansas slaveholders to keep existing slaves even if the article in question was voted against. The Lecompton Constitution, including the slavery article, was approved by a vote of 6,226 to 569 on December 21. Congress instead ordered another election because of voting irregularities uncovered. On August 2, 1858, Kansas voters rejected the document by 11,812 to 1,926. While the Lecompton Constitution was pending before Congress, a third document, the Leavenworth Constitution, was written and passed by Free-State delegates. It was more radical than other Free-State proposals in that it would have extended suffrage to "every male citizen", regardless of race. Participation in this ballot on May 18, 1858, was a fraction of the previous and there was even some opposition by Free-State Democrats. The proposed constitution was forwarded to the U.S. Senate on January 6, 1859, where it was met with a tepid reception and left to die in committee. The fourth and final Free-State proposal was the Wyandotte Constitution, drafted in 1859, which represented the anti-slavery view of the future of Kansas. It was approved in a referendum by a vote of 10,421 to 5,530 on October 4, 1859. With Southern states still in control of the Senate, confirmation of the Wyandotte Constitution was indefinitely postponed, and Kansas awaited admission to the Union until 1861, when the Southern legislators had left. Open violence On November 21, 1855, the so-called Wakarusa War began in Douglas County when a pro-slavery settler, Franklin Coleman, shot and killed a Free-Stater, Charles Dow, with whom Coleman had long been engaged in a feud that was unrelated to local or national politics. Dow was the first American settler to be murdered in the Kansas Territory. The decision by Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones to arrest another Free-Stater rather than Coleman and the prisoner's subsequent rescue by a Free-State posse erupted into a conflict that pitted, for the first time, armed pro-slavery settlers against anti-slavery settlers. Governor Wilson Shannon called for the Kansas militia, but the assembled army was composed almost entirely of pro-slavery Missourians, who camped outside the town of Lawrence with stolen weapons and a cannon. In response, Lawrence raised its own militia led by Charles L. Robinson, the man elected governor by the Topeka legislature, and James H. Lane. The parties besieging Lawrence reluctantly dispersed only after Shannon negotiated a peace treaty between Robinson and Lane and David Rice Atchison. The conflict had one other fatality, when Free-Stater Thomas Barber was shot and killed near Lawrence on December 6. Summer of 1856 On May 21, 1856, pro-slavery Democrats and Missourians invaded Lawrence, Kansas and burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two anti-slavery newspaper offices, and ransacked homes and stores in what became known as the Sacking of Lawrence. A cannon used during the Mexican–American War, called the Old Kickapoo or Kickapoo Cannon, was stolen and used on that day by a pro-slavery group including the Kickapoo