History of slavery in Kansas

Slavery in Kansas remained small-scale and mainly at the household level. Since cotton never had a significant role in Kansas' early agrarian economy, there were a few plantations and slaves along the Missouri River during the pre-Territorial period. Starting with the organization of Kansas Territory in 1854, there was a state-level civil war over slavery which inhibited the development of the institution of slavery.

History[]

The number of slaves in Kansas Territory was estimated at 200.^[1] Men were engaged as farm hands, and women and children were employed in domestic work.^[2][3]

The presence of slaveowners in Kansas, particularly slaveowners who had migrated from the neighboring slave state of Missouri in order to guarantee the future state's entry into the Union as a slave state, served as a motivating factor for Northern abolitionist movements to move into the Kansas territory in order to prevent such efforts from succeeding. This resulted in the armed conflict known as Bleeding Kansas, a prelude to the Civil War.

The slavery ceased to exist in Kansas after a new state entered the Union on January 29, 1861.

In October 1862, the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment engaged the Confederate forces at Island Mound, in Bates County, Missouri.^[4]

References[]

Further reading[]

• Burke, Diane Mutti. On Slavery's Border: Missouri's Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
• Epps, Kristen. Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2018.

External links[]

• Kansas Bogus Legislature