Lecompton Constitution

(1857), instrument framed in Lecompton, Kan., by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood. It contained clauses protecting slaveholding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the U.S. Civil War. Though it was rejected in a territorial election (January 1858), Pres. James Buchanan subsequently recommended statehood for Kansas under its provisions. Congress balked, and a compromise was offered calling for resubmission of the constitution to the territory's voters. Kansas again rejected it the following August and was admitted to the Union as a free state on Jan. 29, 1861.