A History of Kansas

by Anna E. Arnold

CHAPTER VII

THE COMING OF THE SETTLERS

Little Known of Kansas in 1854. Kansas in 1854 was, to most people, only a name, a part of the great desert in the Far West, an Indian country. Many of those who had crossed it in emigrating to California had been impressed with the beauty and richness of the country and had written back glowing accounts of it. Some of them had returned from the coast, and were now numbered among our early settlers. When its organization as a territory brought it into such prominence, knowledge of Kansas soon became more general.

Advantages of the South. The people of the South felt confident that they could make it a slave state, for they had gained many victories in Congress, and the President, Franklin Pierce, was in sympathy with them. Moreover, they were closer to Kansas than were the northern people, and the only state touching Kansas was the slave state Missouri.

Advantages of the North. The people of the North, however, possessed one very important advantage. The population of the South consisted largely of plantation owners and their slaves, and it was not an easy matter for these men to leave their property or to take it into a new and untried country. On the other hand, the North was a land of small farms and shops and many laborers. Moreover, there was much foreign immigration into the United States in those years, and since the employment of slaves left no place in the South for white laborers, most of the immigrants entered the northern states, and added to the number of those who were ready and anxious to go farther west. Consequently many more settlers came into Kansas from the North than from the South, but the Southerners tried to overcome this handicap in other ways.

The Coming of the Missourians. The plan of the South was to use Missouri as the stepping-stone to Kansas. Immediately following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill a number of Missourians came over into Kansas and took as claims large tracts of the best lands, in some cases not even waiting for the removal of the Indians. Settlers who asked for claims were required to build houses and to use the land for homes for a certain length of time. While some of the Missourians met these requirements, many of them did not come here to live. They notched trees, or posted notices, or laid rails on the ground in the shape of a house, or in some other way indicated their claims, and returned to their homes in Missouri, coming back only to vote or to fight when it seemed to them necessary. While in Kansas, however, they held a meeting at which it was resolved that: “We recognize slavery as always existing in this Territory,” and, “We will afford protection to no abolitionists as settlers of Kansas Territory.”

Handicap to Northern Emigration. The free-state people could not step over a boundary line and be in Kansas. They lived a long way off, the trip out here was expensive, and little was known of the new Territory. It was a land without homes or towns, churches, schools, or newspapers, and the Northerners knew that people would hesitate to start to Kansas under all these difficulties.

The New England Emigrant Aid Company. So it came about that even while the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was pending in Congress a Massachusetts man named Eli Thayer had thought out a plan for assisting and encouraging the people to undertake the long journey. His plan was to form a company for the purpose of inducing and organizing emigration to Kansas and reducing the expense and hardship involved. This was not to be done as charity, but was to be put on a business basis. Thayer aroused public interest in his plan by constant writing and speaking, and since the people were ready to listen to whatever promised to aid in making Kansas a free state, money enough was soon raised to organize a company, called the New England Emigrant Aid Company. It gathered and published information concerning the new country and organized emigrants into large parties in order to make the journey more pleasant, to reduce expense, and to lessen danger. Competent guides were sent with the parties. The company established schools, newspapers, mills, hotels, and other improvements that tended to lessen the hardships of the pioneers and to further the development of the new Territory. Several similar organizations were formed, but none of them was so well known nor so efficient as the New England Emigrant Aid Company.

Work of the Emigrant Aid Companies. Hundreds of people came here under the management of these companies, but probably the greatest service the companies performed was that of giving an immense amount of publicity and advertising to Kansas. Newspapers were filled with descriptions of the loveliness, the fertility, and the future greatness of the new Territory, and people were urged to go to Kansas at once, both to secure the advantages of the country and to help in saving it from slavery. In this way interest and enthusiasm were aroused over the whole North, but for every one who came in one of the emigrant aid parties there were many who came independently, especially from the states farther west than New England—​Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa.