Kansas Territory
The Kansas Territory was a forerunner of the U.S. state of Kansas that existed from May 30 1854 to January 29, 1861 was organized as this territory and released for settlement, but no state was. The colonization of the eastern part of the Kansas Territory was accompanied by political disputes on a possible introduction of slavery for the later state. The existence of a territory was ended by the admission of Kansas as 34th state to the United States. Four weeks later, on February 28, 1861, the western region of the former territory went to the newly created Colorado Territory.
As 1854 areas of the USA west of the Missouri River should be released for settlement by non-indigenous settlers, the organizational division of these areas had to be decided. The areas were initially designated as a territory, ie as a part of the United States, which is not a federal state. The later state of Kansas was the first part of the Kansas Territory, which was set in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The Kansas Territory included except the present territory of the State of Kansas and later parts of the state of Colorado, as the western limit was set on the ridge of the Rocky Mountains. A limitation to the present territory of Kansas was previously discussed as well as a further extension north to the Platte River in present-day Nebraska. The extent of the territory from north to south ranged from the 40th degree of north latitude to 37 degrees north latitude.
Kansas - Nebraska Act
The Kansas Territory was created by the Kansas - Nebraska Act. This law came on 30 May 1854 in force and created next to the Kansas Territory also the Nebraska Territory. The most controversial clause of the Act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed the settlers of Kansas Territory to be determined by popular vote whether the territory should be a " free state", or should allow slavery. The law included 37 paragraphs. The paragraphs which were related to the Kansas Territory, were the last eighteen.
The slavery question before the foundation of the Kansas Territory
The establishment of the Kansas Territory was made at a time at which an equal number of U.S. states allowed or rejected slavery. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had made this temporary equilibrium by allowing slavery in Missouri, but a prohibition of slavery prohibited north of the 36th parallel, so all through the Louisiana Purchase -down U.S. territories that were not yet states. This status quo but was threatened by the Kansas - Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed the inhabitants in the Kansas Territory, to decide on the introduction of slavery. From that moment on, proponents and opponents of slavery throughout the United States were actively to influence the vote on a constitution for the State of Kansas to be established.
The political debates on this issue have been accompanied by violent acts that were also partly politically motivated, but were sometimes perpetrated in the context of robberies. This politically motivated conflicts in the Kansas Territory, which the nickname Bleeding Kansas brought the territory shall be regarded as a precursor to the American Civil War.
Draft constitutions
The first elected government of Kansas Territory from 1855 supported slavery, but was rejected by the anti -slavery forces as a result of electoral fraud. Thousands of supporters of slavery had been brought from Missouri to Kansas to choose there. In the following years, four draft constitutions were launched in the Kansas Territory. The first draft constitution of 1855, the so-called Topeka Constitution (after the place of origin ), was directed against the government and banned slavery, but was not accepted in the U.S. Senate. The government, which at that time resided in Lecompton presented in 1857 a draft constitution, slavery allowed. The last two draft constitutions of 1858 ( Leavenworth Constitution ) and 1859 ( Wyandotte Constitution ) prohibited slavery again. After the U.S. Senate rejected the draft of 1858, the Wyandotte Constitution was adopted and in the reception of the state in the United States in 1861 to the base of the so-called Free State Kansas (ie, slavery - free state ).