Yup, Rick was on track with you.
These speakers were made so that you can bi-wire from your AMP or you can bi-Amp which means that you have a separate amp running the upper drivers and a separate amp running the woofer(s).
Bi-wiring is pretty much useless and bi-amping is usually done wrong thus also rendered useless. I wouldn't worry about either if I were you.
You will need to get the binding posts connected again though. Otherwise, you are only sending power to your upper drivers, as you have already discovered.
Axiom, I would think, would be happy to ship you some replacements but in the mean time, just cut yourself a short junk of appropriate gauge speaker wire and bridge the uppers with the lowers again. Sounds like you may already have done so.
Using short lengths of speaker wire is probably fine for a long term solution actually, the proper flat connectors just look more pleasing and you don't have to try and squish two sets of thick wires ont the same posts.