Andrew H. Reeder was an American lawyer and politician most known for his involvement in “Bleeding Kansas,” first as the federally appointed governor of Kansas Territory, then as a leading force in the Free-State movement.

The New England Emigrant Aid Company (NEEAC) formed in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. That bill declared that eligible voting residents in Kansas Territory would determine whether the future state would allow or prohibit slavery as a requisite for admission to the Union, creating what became known as popular sovereignty. Antislavery Northerners denounced the act because it essentially repealed the Compromise of 1820, which barred slavery in the lands attained from the Louisiana Purchase above the 36°30’ parallel, including the area that would become Kansas.

In 1854, amid sectional tension over the future of slavery in the Western territories, Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which he believed would serve as a final compromise measure. Through the invocation of popular sovereignty, Douglas’s proposal would allow the citizens of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories, rather than the federal government, to decide whether to permit or prohibit slavery within their borders.