Former U.S. Congressman Abraham Lincoln, a politician best known for challenging Stephen A. Douglas for an Illinois U.S. Senate seat, visits Kansas and denounces the "popular sovereignty" law that created the "Bleeding Kansas" controversy.
Missourians from Weston, Missouri, and some residents of Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas Territory, form the Leavenworth Town Company and found the first official city in Kansas.
As a response to the popular sovereignty provision in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society is founded by Eli Thayer and other antislavery advocates to help Free-Staters settle in Kansas Territory.
President Franklin Pierce signs the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law, introducing popular sovereignty (which recognizes the right of the territory's settlers to decide if the state would be free or slave).
