[Footnote 3:  The “true intent and meaning” of this act, said the law, is, “not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.”  Read Rhodes’s History of the United States, Vol.  I., pp. 425-490.]

[Footnote 4:  May 30, 1854.]

%387.  The Struggle for Kansas.%—­Thus was it ordained that Kansas and Nebraska, once expressly set apart as free soil, should become free or slave states according as they were settled while territories by antislavery or proslavery men.  And now began a seven years’ struggle for Kansas.  “Come on, then,” said Seward of New York in a speech against the Kansas Bill; “Come on, then, gentlemen of the slave states.  Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it on behalf of freedom.  We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side that is stronger in numbers as it is in the right.”

[Illustration:  %THE UNITED STATES in 1851 SEVENTY FIVE YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENCE Showing Railroads and Overland Routes]

This described the situation exactly.  The free-state men of the North and the slave-state men of the South were to rush into Kansas and struggle for its possession.  The moment the law opening Kansas for settlement was known in Missouri, numbers of men crossed the Missouri River, entered the territory, held squatters’ meetings,[1] drove a few stakes into the ground to represent “squatter claims,” went home, and called on the people of the South to hurry into Kansas.  Many did so, and began to erect tents and huts on the Missouri River at a place which they called Atchison.[2]

[Footnote 1:  At one of their meetings it was resolved:  “That we will afford protection to no abolitionist as a settler of this country.”  “That we recognize the institution of slavery as already existing in this territory, and advise stockholders to introduce their property as early as possible.”]

[Footnote 2:  Called after Senator Atchison of Missouri.]

But the men of the North had not been idle, and in July a band of free-state men, sent on by the New England Emigrant Aid Society,[1] entered Kansas and founded a town on the Kansas River some miles to the south and west of Atchison.  Other emigrants came in a few weeks later, and their collection of tents received the name of Lawrence.[2]

[Footnote 1:  The New England Emigrant Aid Society was founded in 1854 by Hon. Eli Thayer of Worcester, Mass., in order “to plant a free state in Kansas,” by aiding antislavery men to go out there and settle.]

[Footnote 2:  After Amos A. Lawrence, secretary of the Aid Society.  It was a city of tents.  Not a building existed.  Later came the log cabin, which was a poor affair, as timber was scarce.  The sod hut now so common in the Northwest was not thought of.  In the early days the “hay tent” was the usual house, and was made by setting up two rows of poles, then bringing their tops together, thatching the roof and sides with hay.  The two gable ends (in which were the windows and doors) were of sod.]