1 (2) | A (4) | B (20) | C (4) | D (2) | E (1) | F (9) | G (3) | H (2) | I (1) | J (4) | K (1) | L (10) | M (6) | N (2) | O (3) | P (9) | Q (3) | R (5) | S (10) | T (3) | U (2) | W (6)

By Claire Wolnisty, Angelo State University

Eli Thayer convinced New England businessmen to create the New England Emigrant Aid Company in response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of May 25, 1854. The company encouraged settlers to move to Kansas and vote it a free state under the Act’s “popular sovereignty” provisions. As Reverend Edward Everett Hale, the company’s vice-president, concluded about Thayer’s role in the Kansas settlement effort, “This emigration at that time would have been impossible but for Eli Thayer.”

By Russell S. Perkins, University of Saint Mary

Very few leaders in the American Civil War experienced the conflict on more levels than M. Jeff Thompson. Between 1861 and 1865 he was a guerrilla leader and a regular commander of Confederate forces, a combatant and a prisoner of war, a cavalryman and a sailor; Thompson was an actor in the military struggle for Missouri and a shrewd writer in the political fight to win the support of its people. For this, he was revered by the pro-secession citizens of Missouri, and reviled by those standing with the Union.

By Tony O’ Bryan, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Free-Soil settlers in Kansas created the Topeka Constitution and elected their own legislature to manifest the democratic ideals of popular sovereignty and bring their struggle against proslavery forces in Kansas Territory to a national audience. When the ballot box failed to solve the dispute, settlers turned to bullets to settle their differences, and the violence over slavery in the territory brought “Bleeding Kansas” to national attention.