Trouble came to Kansas Territory almost before the ink had dried on the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Most of the early settlers were from Missouri with a decidedly proslave influence. The federal government under President Franklin Pierce encouraged the first proslavery territorial government that was established March 5, 1855. But the New England Emigrant Aid Society had actively sent abolitionist settlers, known as Free State men, into Kansas to swing the balance against slavery.

At Topeka abolitionist leaders called for a constitutional convention to form a government opposed to slavery. The resulting Topeka Constitution was approved by territorial settlers in a Jan. 15, 1856 election.

Pro-slavery men refused to recognize the Topeka convention and boycotted the election. President Pierce called the framers of the Topeka Constitution insurrectionists.

Nevertheless, the newly elected, but federally unrecognized governor, Dr. Charles Robinson, noted in his inaugural address, “Should the course indicated by the President and the people of another State be persisted in and our rights again be trampled in the dust by official interference or lawless invasion, the people of Kansas would be justified before the world in asserting their rights by revolution …”

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