THE PEOPLE, THE PLACE, THE TIMES

In the spring of 1855 Manhattan was founded as an “ardent, fire eating” antislavery settlement on the Kansas Territory frontier.¹ The founding of Manhattan was part of the rapid westward expansion of the United States. Less than eighty years had passed since English colonists, clinging to the East Coast, issued a Declaration of Independence from the British king. In the turbulent era when Manhattan was established — five and a half years before Kansas became a state — Kansas Territory was sparsely populated with Native Americans, woolly frontiersmen, overwhelmed settler families in covered wagons, and fanatics of all stripes, including Yankee abolitionists,