In 1855, Lecompton became the capital of Kansas Territory, and President James Buchanan appointed a governor and officials to establish government offices there as construction began on an elegant capitol building. In the fall of 1857, a convention met in Constitution Hall and drafted the Lecompton Constitution, which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state. After intense national debate, the constitution was rejected and became one of the prime topics of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, while the controversy added to the growing dispute that soon erupted in civil war. The Lecompton Constitution also failed in part because the antislavery party won control of the territorial legislature in the election of 1857. That new legislature met in Constitution Hall, now a National Historic Landmark, and immediately began abolishing the proslavery laws. When Kansas became a state in 1861, free-state leaders chose Topeka as the capital.