Medium: Text
Date: February 26, 1855
This printed circular letter is addressed “to the Friends of Freedom.” In it, J. E. Snodgrass expressed his antislavery sentiments and claimed he knew about slavery first hand as he…
Medium: Text
Date: January 14, 1858
This printed document reported the votes on the Lecompton Constitution from elections held on December 21, 1857, and January 4, 1858. It was prepared by G. W. Deitzler, Speaker of…
Medium: Text
Date: September, 1855
This broadside listed six places where John W. Whitfield planned to speak during his campaign for reelection as the delegate to Congress from Kansas Territory. Whitfield was a proslavery supporter.…
Medium: Text
Date: 1855
This broadside signed by J. H. Lane was addressed “to the legal voters of Kansas Territory.” It contained a great deal of free state rhetoric about the failure of the…
Medium: Text
Date: 1855
This broadside represented the efforts of free state supporters to encourage residents to vote in the election for the delegate to represent Kansas Territory in Congress that was held October…
Medium: Text
Date: 1855
Charles Robinson wrote this printed letter on behalf of the Free State Executive Committee of Kansas Territory. In it, he encouraged free state supporters to monitor the upcoming elections for…
Medium: Text
Date: 1856
Lewis Bodwell was a Congregational minister located in Topeka, Kansas Territory. He reported that his activities to organize a Congregational Church in Topeka had resulted in 24 members. Apparently, he…
Medium: Text
Date: January 1, 1855
Carriers Address to the patrons of the Kansas Weekly Herald.
Medium: Text
Date: January 1, 1856
This circular is an advertisement for the “Kansas Tribune,” a newspaper published in Topeka, Kansas Territory, whose “sole and entire object has been the promotion of the Freedom of Kansas.”…
Medium: Text
Date: December 2, 1860
One year after the execution of John Brown, on December 2, 1860, Mrs. Child wrote the Brown’s widow, Mary Brown, regarding the impact her husband’s actions and commitment to the…
Medium: Text
Date: March 12, 1858
Senator Robert M.T. Hunter delivered this speech on the floor of the Senate in support of adopting Kansas into statehood under the Lecompton Constitution. Hunter argued that the Lecompton Constitutional…
Medium: Text
Date: March 4, 1858
Senator James Hammond offered this speech as a rebuttal to those recently presented by Senators in oppositon to his perspective, questioning their argument that the Lecompton Constitutional Convention was a…
Medium: Text
Date: February 24, 1858
Representative Reuben Fenton, of New York, delivered this speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, in reaction to the Congressional debate over the validity of the Lecompton Constitution.…
Medium: Text
Date: February 18, 1858
Senator Stephen Douglas, as a member of the Committee on the Territories, presented this report, which analyzed the Lecompton and Topeka constitutional rivalry, for the consideration of the President. Douglas…
Medium: Text
Date: November 15, 1860
In this typically long letter/report to Franklin Sanborn in Boston, Whitman wrote from Lawrence on November 15, 1860, regarding the difficult situation facing Kansas settlers/farmers as another winter approached–as “the…
Medium: Text
Date: July 12, 1860
Signed C. A. Foster, Boston, July 12, 1860, this brief statement asserts that John Brown “was not present” at the Pottawatomie Massacre, “but that he knew that it was going…
Medium: Text
Date: March 6, 1860
From Franklin, Indiana, on March 6, 1860, John Ritchey wrote to Aaron Dwight Stevens, 1831-1860, one of the Harpers Ferry raiders still awaiting execution in Virginia, that it “it is…
Medium: Text
Date: December 20, 1859
Writing from Cottonwood Falls, Kansas Territory, on December 20, 1859, William Keller wrote to Thomas H. Webb (Boston, New England Emigrant Aid Co.) regarding the events leading up to Missouri…
Medium: Text
Date: November 16, 1859
In this letter to his wife, from the Charlestown, Virginia, jail, John Brown wrote mainly of his children–especially the daughters–and his ideas about the proper education for them, in light…
Medium: Text
Date: November 6, 1859
H.O. Wagoner of Chicago, who had entertained John Brown one afternoon in the fall of 1858, wrote to one of the nation’s leading abolitionist supporters of Brown, Wendell Phillips of…
Medium: Text
Date: October 26, 1859
H. B. Hurd, the secretary of the National Kansas Committee, Chicago, Illinois, wrote to assure Whitman that he (Whitman) had “full authority to act in reference to said notes &…
Medium: Text
Date: October 26, 1859
Lydia Maria Child, “an earnest friend of Kansas,” wrote John Brown from Wayland, Mass., on October 26, 1859, regarding her opposition to violence but her admiration for his courage and…
Medium: Text
Date: October 21, 1859
From his jail cell in Charles Town, Virginia, just days before he was to go on trial for treason, John Brown wrote seeking legal counsel for himself and fellow prisoners.…
Medium: Text
Date: December 9, 1857
Senator Stephen Douglas delivered this speech in the United States Senate, responding to President Buchanan’s decision to let Congress determine whether or not to admit Kansas into the Union. Douglas…
Medium: Text
Date: ca. 1856
This pamplet, voicing the opinions of the Democratic National Committee, charged Black Republicans with inciting violence by their opposition to Kansas’ admission to the Union under the Lecompton Constitution. As…
