The New England Emigrant Aid Company (NEEAC) formed in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. That bill declared that eligible voting residents in Kansas Territory would determine whether the future state would allow or prohibit slavery as a requisite for admission to the Union, creating what became known as popular sovereignty. Antislavery Northerners denounced the act because it essentially repealed the Compromise of 1820, which barred slavery in the lands attained from the Louisiana Purchase above the 36°30’ parallel, including the area that would become Kansas.

John Geary declared that Kansas Territory was in “a state of insurrection” when he became its Democratic governor on September 9, 1856. Clashes between proslavery and Free-Soil settlers threatened to tear Kansas apart. Guerrilla forces plundered homesteads, men raided towns, and neighbors slaughtered neighbors. Geary, who was appointed territorial governor by President Franklin Pierce, attempted to bridge Kansas’s proslavery and Free-State factions. He succeeded in pleasing neither.

James Henry Lane, a U.S. congressman, senator, and federal general, was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, the son of a lawyer and U.S. congressman.