Thirty-eight pro-slavery legislators met at the Shawnee Manual Labor School between July 16 and August 30, 1855. Free-state council member M.F. Conway, resigned without attending and free-state House member S.D. Houston eventually resigned as well. Eleven of the thirty-eight had lived and worked in Kansas before the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. At least thirty of the thirty-eight members were living in Kansas when they were elected to the Legislature in 1855. Twenty-two of the thirty-eight stayed in Kansas after 1858 when it became apparent their cause was lost, or died before that time. They were neither simply Missourians nor vagabonds; they were united by a vision for Kansas that did not prevail.
