The conflict by separate Free State and Territorial legislatures, 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.