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Title: The Governor's Mansion, Lecompton, Kansas Territory
Description: Harper's Weekly wood engraving of men on horseback outside of the governor's mansion in Lecompton, Kansas Territory. The house was built by Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones and briefly resided in by Kansas Territorial Governor John W. Geary. In 1855, The "Bogus Legislature" selected the proslavery town of Lecompton as Kansas Territory's capital city. Meanwhile, Free-Staters continued to denounce the legislature as illegitimate.
Object Type: Image
Date: June 6, 1857

Title: Free State Convention!
Description: Invitation to the Free State Convention in Big Springs, Kansas. On September 5-6, 1855, approximately 100 delegates gathered at Big Springs, Kansas, along the California Road in Douglas County, to form the Free-State Party. The party supported the entry of Kansas into the Union as a free state, but it did not necessarily espouse abolition of slavery in the South, a position commonly considered to be radical in both the North and the South.
Object Type: Image
Date: 1855

Title: Free-State Legislative Council, Kansas Territory
Description: Photograph of the Free-State Legislative Council, 1857-1858.
Object Type: Image

Title: The Arrest of Governor Robinson by Marshall Donaldson
Description: Illustration of the arrest of Governor Charles Robinson by Marshall Donaldson in Lexington, Missouri on May 10, 1856. Charles Robinson, then considered the Kansas Territorial Governor by the Free-Staters' illegitimate Topeka legislature, was arrested for treason in Lexington, Missouri due to his faux "governorship" and his denouncements of the proslavery "Bogus Legislature." He was imprisoned at Lecompton, Kansas before being released on September 10, 1856. He was finally acquitted of the charges of treason on August 20, 1857. This image was originally published in the 1856 publication of "True History of the Kansas Wars" by O. N. Merrill.
Object Type: Image
Date: 1856

Title: The Kansas Herald of Freedom
Description: An 1859 issue of the Herald of Freedom. The Herald of Freedom, a prominent Free-State newspaper, was first published in Lawrence, Kansas on October 21, 1854. The press was destroyed in the May 1856 Sacking of Lawrence, but it returned to print in November 1856.
Object Type: Newspaper Article
Date: March 26, 1859

Title: Squatter Sovereign
Description: The first issue of the Squatter Sovereign. The Squatter Sovereign, the most prominent of the proslavery newspapers in Kansas Territory, was first published in Atchison, Kansas in 1855. It printed some of the most inflammatory proslavery rhetoric in the territory, before ironically being purchased by the antislavery Samuel C. Pomeroy in March 1857. Pomeroy, an affiliate of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, turned the paper in favor of the Free-State cause before reselling it to John A. Martin, who renamed it Freedom's Champion.
Object Type: Newspaper Article
Date: February 3, 1855

Title: David Rice Atchison
Description: Daguerreotype of Missouri politician David Rice Atchison, taken by photographer Mathew Brady at the United States Capitol at Washington, D.C., March 1849. On October 3, 1855, Atchison and other proslavery activists met at Leavenworth, Kansas to form the Law & Order Party, which cited criminal violence as justification to target, attack, and arrest persons associated with the Free-State cause.
Object Type: Image
Date: March, 1849

Title: Amos Adams Lawrence
Description: Portrait of Amos A. Lawrence, namesake of Lawrence, Kansas.
Object Type: Image

Title: Charles Robinson
Description: An artist's rendering of Free-State activist Charles Robinson speaking to the Lecompton Territorial Legislature. On October 6, 1856, Free-Staters boycotted the territorial elections that resulted in the second territorial legislature at Lecompton, Kansas. The Free-Staters complained that the options given on the referendum asked voters to choose between making Kansas a slave state or merely banning the new importation of slaves. The latter option would have sanctioned slavery for slaves who were already in Kansas, and its restrictions on new importations of slaves were likely unenforceable.
Object Type: Image
Date: 1856

Title: A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand
Description: This is a copy of Abraham Lincoln's speech, "A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand", delivered on June 16, 1858 at the Republican State Convention in Springfield, Illinois. This speech is preserved here in its entirety with original italics as part of a 1936 publication that includes an introduction by Douglas C. McMurtrie.
Object Type: Speech
Date: June 16, 1858

Title: Sara Tappan Lawrence Robinson
Description: Portrait of Sara Robinson taken in 1857. The wife of Dr. Charles Robinson, Sara Robinson was a notable Free-State activist and author of Kansas: Its Interior and Exterior Life.
Object Type: Image
Date: 1857

Title: Kansas - Col. Sumner Arriving at Constitution Hall
Description: Wood engraving of Col. Sumner dispersing the Topeka Legislature on July 4, 1856. The Topeka legislature met to draft a request to Congress for the admission of Kansas as a free state, but federal soldiers under command of Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner dispersed the assembly. The Topeka Constitution was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, but the U.S. Senate rejected it by two votes.
Object Type: Image
Date: July 26, 1856

Title: Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, Kansas
Description: Stereograph by Alexander Gardner depicting Massachusetts Street in downtown Lawrence, Kansas. Founded by members of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society (later renamed the New England Emigrant Aid Company) in 1854, Lawrence was a center of Free-State activism during the Border War.
Object Type: Image
Date: 1867

Title: New England Emigrant Aid Company Sign
Description: Sign advertising the New England Emigrant Aid Company.
Object Type: Image

Title: Shawnee Indian Mission, Wyandotte County, Kansas
Description: Photograph of the Shawnee Indian Mission, where the Bogus Legislature met on May 30, 1855.
Object Type: Image
Date: July 6, 1940

Title: Resolutions Presented to the Missouri State Convention
Description: This document presents resolutions drafted ca. March 7, 1861 by Abram Comingo for the Missouri State Convention held in Jefferson City, Missouri. Comingo declares, “we are warmly attached to the Federal Union, and…we will not cease our efforts for its preservation,” but warns that Missouri “will resist and oppose any attempt that may point to the coercion of the seceded States.” Comingo proposes a meeting of representatives from the border states for the purpose of “presenting a plan of adjustment” to the states that have not seceded.
Object Type: Government Document

Title: Governor Charles Robinson
Description: Photograph of Governor Charles Robinson. Robinson, an ardent Free-Stater associated with the New England Emigrant Aid Company, was named Kansas territorial governor by the illegitimate Topeka legislature on January 15, 1856. He was never officially recognized as territorial governor.
Object Type: Image
Date: n.d.

Title: John W. Whitfield
Description: Photograph of John W. Whitfield, the first Congressional delegate from Kansas Territory. The first election in Kansas Territory, held november 29, 1854, was won by Democrat John W. Whitfield, a proslavery settler and veteran of the Mexican-American War. Free-Staters complained about fraudulent voting by Misourians who crossed the border to cast their ballots and intimidate antislavery voters, especially in proslavery towns such as Leavenworth.
Object Type: Image
Date: n.d.

Title: The Cradle of the G.O.P.
Description: Lithograph of Pittsburgh's Lafayette Hall, where the first Republic National Convention convened on February 22, 1856. The image depicts the exterior and interior of LaFayette Hall at the time of the first Republican convention.
Object Type: Image
Date: January 29, 1897

Title: Honorable Eli Thayer of Massachusetts
Description: Eli Thayer, founder of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, later renamed to the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Thayer and other antislavery advocates charted the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society on April 26, 1854.
Object Type: Image

Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865

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