“Bleeding Kansas.”

In 1854, mainly under pressure from railway promoters, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It set up the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The act also provided that slavery would be permitted in any states created out of these territories if the inhabitants so voted. This provision made Kansas a battleground, with proslavery “border ruffians” and “bushwhackers” from Missouri clashing with antislavery “jayhawkers” from Kansas. The bloodshed, including incidents in 1856 at Osawatomie and Potawatomie involving John Brown, caused Kansas to be known as “bleeding Kansas,” and stirred passions that pushed the United States farther along the road to the Civil War.

After rejecting the proslavery Lecompton Constitution in 1858, Kansas voters in 1859 adopted one, called the Wyandotte Constitution, that prohibited slavery. It was as a free state that Kansas was admitted to the Union on January 29, 1861, the 34th state. Topeka was the capital, and Charles Robinson, a Republican, the first governor. At the time of statehood, Kansas had only 10 towns with 500 or more residents.

The Kansas-Missouri battles did not end with statehood, continuing into the Civil War. The bloodiest episode of the period occurred on August 21, 1863, when Confederate guerrillas under William Quantrill raided the abolitionist center of Lawrence, Kansas, setting fire to the town and killing about 150 persons. During the war, some 20,000 men—two-thirds of all the adult males in Kansas—served in the Union army.