Kansas becomes 34th state, Jan. 29, 1861
Kansas, the scene of violence triggered by the slavery issue, entered the Union on this day in 1861 as the 34th state, some three months before the start of the Civil War.
The United States had acquired Kansas from Napoleonic France in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. During its early years as a U.S. possession, it remained part of a vast area, known as the Indian Territory, to which the federal government relocated tribal peoples.Continue Reading
In 1854, passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, championed by Sen. Stephen Douglas (D-Ill.), chairman of the Committee on Territories, called for its residents to vote on whether they wanted to live in a free or slave-owning state. The act effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had banned slavery in any new states to be created north of latitude 36°30’.
As settlers from North and South streamed into the territory, tensions over slavery escalated and violence erupted, giving rise to the moniker “Bleeding Kansas.”
Before Kansas could be admitted, the territory needed to approve a constitution. Between 1855 and 1859, four such documents were drafted as pro- and anti-slavery forces struggled in turn to gain supremacy.
The 1855 Topeka Constitution, written by anti-slavery forces unified under the Free State Party, was overwritten in 1857 by the Lecompton Constitution, a pro-slavery document backed by President James Buchanan but spurned by Congress. In 1858, a third document, the Leavenworth Constitution, was written and passed by Free State delegates, only to be blocked in the Senate.
Finally, the Wyandotte Constitution called for a slave-free Kansas. Voters approved it by a 2-to-1 margin on Oct. 4, 1859. But with Southerners still in control of the Senate, it was placed on hold until, with the election of President Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War became inevitable.
SOURCE: U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS