Kansas Territory
The Kansas Territory was a precursor to the U.S. state of Kansas , which existed between May 30, 1854 and January 29, 1861, when that area was organized and opened for settlement but was not yet a state. The settlement of the eastern part of the Kansas Territory was accompanied by political disputes over the possible introduction of slavery for the later state. Its existence as a territory was terminated with the admission of Kansas as the 34th state to the United States. Four weeks later, on February 28, 1861, the western part of the former territory was incorporated into the newly created Colorado Territory .
When areas of the USA west of the Missouri River were to be released for settlement by non-Indian settlers in 1854 , the organizational division of these areas had to be decided. The areas were initially referred to as territory , i.e. a part of the United States that is not a state. The later state of Kansas was first part of the Kansas Territory , which was established in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The Kansas Territory included the area of what is now the state of Kansas and parts of the later state of Colorado , since the western border was established on the ridge of the Rocky Mountains . A limitation to what is now Kansas had previously been discussed as well as a further extension north to the Platte River in present-day Nebraska . The extension of the territory from north to south ranged from the 40th north latitude to the 37th north latitude.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas Territory was created by the Kansas-Nebraska Act . This law came into effect on May 30, 1854 and created the Nebraska Territory in addition to the Kansas Territory . The most controversial clause in the law repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed the Kansas Territory settlers to vote by referendum on whether the area should be a "Free State" or slavery. The law comprised 37 paragraphs. The Kansas Territory paragraphs were the last eighteen.
The Slavery Question Prior to the Establishment of the Kansas Territory
The establishment of the Kansas Territory came at a time when an equal number of states in the United States allowed or rejected slavery. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had created this temporary equilibrium by allowing slavery in Missouri, but banning it north of the 36th parallel, that is, in all areas that were not yet federal to the United States through the Louisiana Purchase . This status quo was jeopardized by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed residents of the Kansas Territory to decide for themselves about the introduction of slavery. From that moment on, advocates and opponents of slavery across the United States took action to influence the vote on a constitution for the state of Kansas.
The political disputes on this topic were accompanied by acts of violence, some of which were also politically motivated, but which were also committed in the context of robberies. These politically motivated conflicts in the Kansas Territory, which gave the Territory the nickname Bleeding Kansas , are regarded as a preliminary stage to the Civil War .
Draft constitution
The first elected Kansas Territory government in 1855 supported slavery but was rejected by the anti-slavery forces as a result of electoral fraud. Thousands of supporters of slavery were brought from Missouri to Kansas to vote. In the years that followed, four draft constitutions were launched in the Kansas Territory. The first draft constitution of 1855, the so-called Topeka Constitution (according to the place of origin), was directed against the government and banned slavery, but was not adopted in the US Senate . The government, which then resided in Lecompton , presented a draft constitution in 1857 that allowed slavery. The last two constitutional drafts of 1858 ( Leavenworth Constitution ) and 1859 ( Wyandotte Constitution ) again prohibited slavery. After the US Senate rejected the 1858 draft, the Wyandotte Constitution was adopted and, when the state was admitted to the US in 1861, it became the basis of the so-called Free State Kansas (slavery-free state).
literature
- Samuel A. Johnson: The Battle Cry of Feedom. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1954.
- Robert W. Richmond: Kansas. A Land of Contrasts. Forum Press, Saint Charles 1974.
- Eleanor Turk: The Germans of Atchison, 1854-1859. Development of an Ethnic Community. In: Rita Napier (ed.): Kansas and the West. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 2003, pp. 101-116.
- Dale E. Watts: How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas? Political Killings in Kansas Territory, 1854–1861. In: Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains. 18.2, Summer 1995, pp. 116-129. ( Text online , PDF, 262 kB)
- William G. Cutler: History of the State of Kansas. 1883.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article on Planning the Kansas Territory by Calvin Gower, 1967
- ^ The Law that Ripped America in Two ( Memento from September 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Article in Smithsonian magazine
- ↑ Bleeding Kansas page at US History.com
- ^ Robert W. Richmond: Kansas. A Land of Contrasts. Forum Press, Saint Charles 1974, pp. 68-72.