With the promise of freedom and new economic and educational opportunities, Kansas attracted many African Americans in its territorial days, through statehood, and into the 20th century. Slavery existed in the Kansas Territory, but slave holdings were small compared to the South. Many black migrants also came to the territory as hired laborers, while some traveled as escaped slaves through the Underground Railroad. In the 1860s, others joined the Union Army, and some moved from the South in large groups during the Kansas Exodus, a mass migration of freedpeople during the 1870s and 1880s. As a territory that had a long and violent history of pre-Civil War contests over slavery, Kansas emerged as the “quintessential free state” and seemed like a promised land for African Americans who searched for what they called a “New Canaan.”
Less than 40 years after the Civil War, General John G. Haskell, the president of the Kansas Historical Society, described slavery in western Missouri as “a more domestic than commercial institution,” in which the “social habits were those of the farm and not the plantation.” Many of his white contemporaries remembered slavery in a similar way, arguing that conditions were much more favorable on the farms of western Missouri than in the cotton fields of the Deep South.
In 1855 members of the Wattles family first settled in Kansas in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed territorial settlers to elect legislatures that would determine whether the territory would enter the Union as a free or slave state. The Wattles family came to Kansas with intentions of swaying these referendums toward the Free-State cause. Once they arrived, the family participated in Free-State Party politics, helped found the town of Moneka, edited an antislavery newspaper, connected with the radical abolitionist John Brown, and even advocated with some degree of success for women’s suffrage in Kansas.
On March 7, 1827, Colonel Henry Leavenworth received his order to proceed “with four companies of his regiment, ascend the Missouri,” and find a point “on its left bank near the mouth of the Little Platte River and within a range of twenty miles above or below its confluence.” From there, Colonel Leavenworth would “select such position as in his judgment is best calculated for the site a permanent cantonment.” After two months of surveying the area, Colonel Leavenworth found what he was looking for: an area located strategically near the Missouri River but not in danger of being flooded by it.
The sacking of Osceola was a significant military engagement that took place during the early stages of the Civil War in Missouri. After losing the Battle of Dry Wood Creek near Fort Scott, Kansas, the Free-State leader, U.S. Senator and Brigadier General James Henry Lane guided his 3rd, 4th, and 5th Kansas Volunteers in the looting and sacking of Osceola, Missouri.
By Tony O’ Bryan, University of Missouri—Kansas City
When Kansas Territory was opened for settlement in 1854, a number of towns sprang up along the Missouri and Kansas Rivers and each attracted migration and commerce. Some settlements were predominantly proslavery, including Leavenworth, Lecompton, and Atchison, and others were Free-Soil, such as Lawrence, Topeka, and Quindaro.
In an effort to help runaway slaves escape from slave states to the North and to Canada, white and African American abolitionists established a series of hiding places throughout the country where fugitives could hide during the day and travel under the cover of night. Although runaways tended to travel on foot and trains were rarely employed, all involved referred to the secret network as the “Underground Railroad,” a term which first appeared in literature when Harriet Beecher Stowe referred to a secret “underground” line in her 1852 book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
John Brown was an American abolitionist who believed in using violent methods to eradicate slavery in the United States. He is most famous for leading an attack on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in 1859. Although unsuccessful in his aim of overthrowing slavery in the American South, Brown’s raid and his subsequent execution fueled tensions in the national debate over slavery in the United States. Historians credit Brown, his raid, and the public debates surrounding his trial and legacy with hastening Southern secession and the Civil War.
Growing up in Vermont in the early 19th century, Clarina Howard (Nichols) recognized the need for women’s rights from an early age. Her mother and father taught her values of equality and self-sufficiency that stayed with her throughout her life. In 1828, she attended Timothy Cressy’s Select School in West Townshend, and at the age of 17, she gave her first speech, entitled “Comparative of a Scientific and an Ornamental Education to Females.” While attending school, however, Howard learned the harsh lesson that women in America, no matter how smart or dedicated, were treated as second-class citizens to their male counterparts.
Perhaps the most unique town on the Western Border was Quindaro, Kansas, a town of freed African Americans founded along the banks of the Missouri River northwest of Kansas City, Kansas.