The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was signed by President Andrew Jackson. Its intent was to allow for the voluntary movement of all Native Americans east of the Mississippi to west of that river. Movement later became mandatory. Eventually military force was used to amass the native population, move them to reservations and forts were established to assure they remained there.
In the mid-1800s, the Underground Railway, used to transport slaves to freedom, ran through Kansas. Kansas was ideal for this humane, but illegal, activity because it was isolated and remote. It was most active between 1857 to 1862. Many abolitionists who moved to Kansas chose their homestead location so it would be near Lane's Trail, the most-used Kansas path toward freedom. After the Civil War, Kansas encouraged black immigration by offering free land. Few ex-slaves accepted the offer, but many who did, settled in Nicodemus, Graham County, Kansas. Due to the fact there is only one recorded incident of a slave being caught and returned speaks for the success of the trail. There are many African Americans from Kansas with notable records. One is George Washington Carver, from Ness County, who mortgaged his Kansas homestead to go to college. He became an agricultural chemist who developed crop-rotation methods for conserving soil nutrients and discovered new markets for farmers by developing new uses for crops such as the peanut.
Kansas, below the Mason-Dixon Line, would have been required to be a slave state under the previous Missouri Act. However, because of a loop-hole in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, each territory had the choice of being a free or slave state when they drafted their constitution. Whether this infant territory would choose to enter the Union as free or slave would be very important as it would hold the balance between North and South.
Pro-slavery advocates called Bushwhackers, lead by William Clark Quantrill, would sneak across the Kansas-Missouri border and kill anti-slavery voters. In retaliation, free-state supporters, lead by John Brown and called Jayhawks, would kill pro-slavery advocates. This was the beginning of the Civil War but the rest of the country didn't realize it until 6 years later. In January 1861, after years of bloodshed and political bickering, Kansas finally entered the Union as a free state. The Civil War began about three months later. Because of the difficulty in attaining statehood and the amount of blood shed, this territory became known as "Bleeding Kansas" or "Bloody Kansas"; the state motto is "ad astra per asper" - "To the Stars with Difficulty". It showed the determination and strength of Kansas peoples.
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