Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

By Marc Reyes, University of Connecticut

With language echoing the Declaration of Independence, the future state of Kansas considered the unprecedented measure of extending equal rights of citizenship to black males. Serving as an early example of Brandeisian thinking, wherein states, or in this case a territory, function as “laboratories of democracy,” the delegates who gathered in Leavenworth, Kansas, placed the enfranchisement of black males up for consideration a full decade before the federal government enacted the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

By Marc Reyes, University of Connecticut

On March 7, 1827, Colonel Henry Leavenworth received his order to proceed “with four companies of his regiment, ascend the Missouri,” and find a point “on its left bank near the mouth of the Little Platte River and within a range of twenty miles above or below its confluence.” From there, Colonel Leavenworth would “select such position as in his judgment is best calculated for the site a permanent cantonment.” After two months of surveying the area, Colonel Leavenworth found what he was looking for: an area located strategically near the Missouri River but not in danger of being flooded by it.

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