Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company
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The Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company was a transportation company set up to transport emigrants to Kansas Territory to shift the balance of power so that Free-Staters rather than slave holders would decide whether Kansas would enter the Union in regards to the slavery question.
The company was to successfully win the fight and its members held the state wide positions when it entered the Union in 1861,
Following the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Kansas would decide on its own whether it would enter the Union as a free state or slave state. The company was founded because of fears that pro-slavery settlers from Missouri would settle in Kansas causing it to become a slave state.
In 1854 Eli Thayer, Alexander H. Bullock and Edward Everett Hale of Massachusetts formed the company. It was officially a profit making corporation and the settlers it transported were not officially asked how they would vote.
In 1855, the company reorganized and changed its named to the New England Emigrant Aid Company.
About 2,000 settlers came to Kansas via the company.
The members were directly responsible for establishing Lawrence and Manhattan (with Lawrence being named for company secretary Amos Adams Lawrence). They also played key role in founding Topeka and Osawatomie.
Daniel Read Anthony (brother of Susan B. Anthony) who was among the emigrants was to become mayor of the state's largest city Leavenworth.
The company was involved in the Bleeding Kansas struggle, with company property being the target of the 1856 Sacking of Lawrence.
Agents from the company were to assume influential positions in the state including:
- Charles Robinson - the first governor
- Samuel C. Pomeroy - one of the first senators
- Martin F. Conway - the first U.S. Reprentative
[edit] References
- Thayer, Eli (1889). History of the Kansas Crusade: Its Friends and its Foes.
