In 1856, 57 men, four women and two children from across Connecticut left the state to begin life anew in Kansas — “Free-Staters,” as emigrants to Kansas who opposed slavery were known.

But Kansas was next to the slave state of Missouri. In an era that would come to be known as "Bleeding Kansas," the territory would become a battleground over the slavery question.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act also allowed for the negation of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude, with Missouri as the exception.

The war between North and South began in the West. In the 1850s, the fight over whether Kansas would allow slavery became so violent that it ignited the Civil War.

In Lecompton, Kansas, pro-slavery supporters gathered to write an 1857 constitution that legalized ownership of other humans in the territory, as part of the violent battle known as Bleeding Kansas.

Immigrants working on a remote Kansas ranch toil long days in a type of servitude to work off loans from the company for the cost of smuggling them into the country, according to five people who ...

America, brought the Juneteenth celebration to the 18th and Vine District, which is the site of the annual Junetee ...

University of Missouri-Kansas City history professor Diane Mutti-Burke, who has written extensively about slavery in Missouri, says slave owners tended to have less than 20 slaves.

Escaped slave Ann Clarke hunkered down in the dead of night in a ravine near Lecompton. ... wrote in “Reminiscences of Slave Days in Kansas” in 1895. “Mrs. Scales kept boarders, ...

Spalding backed up his words. Following passage of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that mandated that popular vote would decide if slavery would be extended into the new territories, pro-slavery ...

Senator beaten as tempers flared over slavery in Kansas in 1856. ... The institution of slavery was evil, yet millions of Americans believed it was divinely preordained.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is joining 10 mayors across the country in a pledge to pay reparations for slavery in their communities.