Topeka is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 126,587. The Topeka metropolitan statistical area, which includes Shawnee, Jackson, Jefferson, Osage, and Wabaunsee Counties, had a population of 233,870 in the 2010 census.
Lawrence is a city in and the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70, between the Kansas and Wakarusa Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 94,934. Lawrence is a college town and the home to both the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University.
Lecompton is a city in Douglas County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 588. Lecompton was the de jure territorial capital of Kansas from 1855 to 1861, and the Douglas County seat from 1855 to 1858. Anti-slavery Lawrence became the de facto capital during the latter part of this period, when the county seat was moved there. This time period was known as Bleeding Kansas, due to the violence perpetrated by the pro-slavery, and to a lesser extent the anti-slavery, factions in the eastern part of the state. Lecompton was a hotbed of pro-slavery sentiment during the mid-1800s.
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.
The Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the free state of Kansas.
The Topeka Constitutional Convention met from October 23 to November 11, 1855 in Topeka, Kansas Territory, in a building afterwards called Constitution Hall. It drafted the Topeka Constitution, which banned slavery in Kansas, though it would also have prevented free blacks from living in Kansas. The convention was organized by Free-Staters to counter the pro-slavery Territorial Legislature elected March 5, 1855, in polling tainted significantly by electoral fraud and the intimidation of Free State voters.
The Utah Territorial Statehouse, officially Territorial Statehouse State Park Museum, is a state park in Fillmore, Utah. The museum and park preserves the original seat of government for Utah Territory before the capital was moved to Salt Lake City in 1856. Built from 1852 to 1855, the statehouse was initially intended as a larger structure, but only the south wing was completed before the project was abandoned due to lack of federal funding. After its construction, the Utah Territorial Legislative Assembly met in the building for only one full session and parts of two others.
The 34th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C., from March 4, 1855, to March 4, 1857, during the last two years of Franklin Pierce's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1850 United States census. The Whig Party, one of the two major parties of the era, had largely collapsed, although many former Whigs ran as Republicans or as members of the "Opposition Party." The Senate had a Democratic majority, and the House was controlled by a coalition of Representatives led by Nathaniel P. Banks, a member of the American Party.
The Kansas State Capitol, known also as the Kansas Statehouse, is the building housing the executive and legislative branches of government for the U.S. state of Kansas. Located in the city of Topeka, which has served as the capital of Kansas since the territory became a state in 1861, the building is the second to serve as the Kansas Capitol. During the territorial period (1854–1861), an earlier capitol building was begun but not completed in Lecompton, Kansas, and smaller structures in Lecompton and Topeka were where the territorial legislatures met.
The Kansas Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Kansas. It is a bicameral assembly, composed of the lower Kansas House of Representatives, with 125 state representatives, and the upper Kansas Senate, with 40 state senators. Representatives are elected for two-year terms, senators for four-year terms.
Pawnee is a ghost town in Geary County, Kansas, United States, which briefly served as the first official capital of the Kansas Territory in 1855. Pawnee was the territorial capital for exactly five days – the legislature met there from July 2 to July 6 – before legislators voted to move the capital to Shawnee Mission, which is located in present-day Fairway. It may be the shortest-lived capital of any U.S. state or territory.
The Kansas Senate is the upper house of the Kansas Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. State of Kansas. It is composed of 40 senators elected from single-member districts, each with a population of about 73,000 inhabitants. Members of the Senate are elected to a four-year term. There is no limit to the number of terms that a senator may serve. The Kansas Senate meets at the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka.
The timeline of Kansas details past events that happened in what is present day Kansas. Located on the eastern edge of the Great Plains, the U.S. state of Kansas was the home of sedentary agrarian and hunter-gatherer Native American societies, many of whom hunted American bison. The region first appears in western history in the 16th century at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, when Spanish conquistadors explored the unknown land now known as Kansas. It was later explored by French fur trappers who traded with the Native Americans. It became part of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In the 19th century, the first American explorers designated the area as the "Great American Desert."
Isaac Tichenor Goodnow was an abolitionist and co-founder of Kansas State University and Manhattan, Kansas. Goodnow was also elected as a Republican to the Kansas House of Representatives and as Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state, and is known as "the father of formal education in Kansas."
Lecompton Constitution Hall, also known as Constitution Hall, is a building in Lecompton, Kansas, that played an important role in the long-running Bleeding Kansas crisis over slavery in Kansas. It is operated by the Kansas Historical Society as Constitution Hall State Historic Site.
The First Territorial Capitol of Kansas is the sole remaining building of the ghost town of Pawnee, Kansas. The city served as the capital of the Kansas Territory for five days before it was moved to present day Lecompton, Kansas, and the town became part of neighboring Fort Riley. The building was the meeting place for the first elected Territorial Legislature in 1855. After falling into disrepair, the structure was restored in 1928 and today it serves as a history museum operated by the Kansas Historical Society and supported through The Partners of the First Territorial Capitol.
The Topeka State Hospital was a publicly funded institution for the care and treatment of the mentally ill in Topeka, Kansas, in operation from 1872 to 1997. Located at 2700 W 6th Street, the hospital opened in 1879, after the Osawatomie State Hospital, once thought to be sufficient, became overcrowded with mentally-ill patients.
The following is a timeline of the history of Topeka, Kansas, USA.
Topeka Correctional Facility is a Kansas Department of Corrections state prison for women located in Topeka, Kansas. Built in the 1970s, in 1995 it became the only women's prison in the state. It administers a wide range of security levels, from maximum security through work-release.
Under U.S. law, a state requires a constitution. A main order of business for Territorial Kansas was the creation of a constitution, under which Kansas would become a state. Whether it would be a slave state or a free state, allowing or prohibiting slavery, was a national issue, because it would affect voting in the polarized U.S. Senate. Because of tensions over slavery, four quite different constitutions of Kansas were drafted.
