US and Kansas Flags on Our Flagpole

Kansas – The Sunflower State

Introduction:

Kansas is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States.

Kansas in the United States
Kansas in the United States

Its capital is Topeka and its largest city is Wichita.  Kansas is named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area.  The tribe’s name is often said to mean “people of the (south) wind” although this was probably not the term’s original meaning.

History:

For a millennium, the land that is currently Kansas was inhabited by Native Americans.

Kansa Lodge in 1819
Kansa Lodge in 1819

The first European to set foot in present-day Kansas was the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who explored the area in 1541.  In 1803, most of modern Kansas was acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase.  Southwest Kansas, however, was still a part of Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas until the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1848, when these lands were ceded to the United States.  From 1812 to 1821, Kansas was part of the Missouri Territory.  The Santa Fe Trail traversed Kansas from 1821 to 1880, transporting manufactured goods from Missouri and silver and furs from Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Wagon ruts from the trail are still visible in the prairie today.

Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail

In 1827, Fort Leavenworth became the first permanent settlement of white Americans in the future state.  The Kansas–Nebraska Act became law on May 30, 1854, establishing Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory, and opening the area to broader settlement by whites.  Kansas Territory stretched all the way to the Continental Divide and included the sites of present-day Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo.

Kansas Territory 1854 - 1861
Kansas Territory 1854 – 1861

Missouri and Arkansas sent settlers into Kansas all along its eastern border.  These settlers attempted to sway votes in favor of slavery.  The second wave of Americans to settle in Kansas Territory were abolitionists from Massachusetts and other Free-Staters, who attempted to stop the spread of slavery from neighboring Missouri.  Directly presaging the American Civil War, these forces collided, entering into skirmishes that earned the territory the name of Bleeding Kansas.

Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861, making it the 34th state to join the United States.  By that time the violence in Kansas had largely subsided, but during the Civil War, on August 21, 1863, William Quantrill led several hundred men on a raid into Lawrence, destroying much of the city and killing nearly 200 people.  He was roundly condemned by both the conventional Confederate military and the partisan rangers commissioned by the Missouri legislature.  His application to that body for a commission was flatly rejected due to his pre-war criminal record.

Kansas - The Sunflower State 1
Quantrill’s Raid

After the Civil War, many veterans constructed homesteads in Kansas.  Many African Americans also looked to Kansas as the land of “John Brown” and, led by freedmen like Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, began establishing black colonies in the state.  Leaving southern states in the late 1870s because of increasing discrimination, they became known as Exodusters.

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