User:IveGoneAway/sandbox/Timeline of Bleeding Kansas

''The central concern of this timeline is the period of antebellum conflict. However, all of the events of Bleeding Kansas took place in a context where the majority of the territory's population (as well as the majority of the territory's black slaves) were within tribes living on the Kansas River who were involved in the development of the Territory before and after the American Civil War.''

''The role of the local and settler tribes in Bleeding Kansas should not be overlooked. The Kansas–Nebraska Act expressly stipulated the preservation of Indian treaties in the territory. Within the Eastern Kansas tribes were to be found champions of Kansas statehood but also a reconning of their traditional thoughts on slavery.''

Prelude to the Prelude
1700s: Given the apparent withdrawal of the Pawnee presence from the particular region, the Kaw people (Kansa) colonize the river soon to be named for them, establishing farms and villages as far was the Smoky Hill Forks.

1803: The Louisiana Purchase removes much of the French influence in the Territory.

1806: The Pike Expedition in particular had the purpose of asserting U.S. Claim over the Mississippi watershed. Surrounded by thousands of Republican Pawnee, Zebulon Pike convinces them to lower the Spanish flag and raise the U.S. flag.

1810, September 16 — 1821, September 27: The Mexican War of Independence further reduced the Spanish influence in the Territory eventually replacing it with a weaker Mexican influence. The resulting establishment of the New Mexico and Utah Territories.= exacerbated the slavery conflict.

1819: John Stewart, a young free black man from Virginia who had been ministering to the Wyandot at Sandusky, Ohio for four years, was ordained as the Methodist Episcopal Church's first missionary priest.

1820: The Missouri Compromise placed a pro-slavery state as the dominate border contact of the United States with Indian Territory, occupying land claimed by Kansa and Iowa tribes. Well before any European contact, slavery was normal practice of most tribes.

1821: The Santa Fe Trail establishes a commercial and military interest through the near future Indian settlements.

1825: Suffering pressure from Pawnee in the west and conflict with proslavery Missourians in the east, the Kansa cede claims to land they can no longer control in return for a reservation so defined by the United States to give room for the settlement of eastern tribes.

1928: Unpleased by the original Federal offering of a reservation in old Osage land in Missouri, the Shawnee selected a strip of rich land along the south bank of the Kansas River (where some Shawnee had already settled) and began relocating there.

1830: The South Methodists established their Shawnee Mission. 1831: Unpleased by the original Federal offering of a reservation in old Osage land in Missouri, the Delaware selected a strip of rich land along the north bank of the Kansas River from the Great Bend of the Missouri River to the Kansa reservation (where some Delaware had already settled), and began relocating there, where they prosper as farmers and as traders to the early U.S. settlers. For several years after, this reservation attracted many people from the widespread Delaware diaspora.

1831: A 10-mile wide "Delaware Outlet" paralleling the north of the Kansa reservation gave the Delaware right-of-way for access to the buffalo hunting grounds around the future Saline County. The Republican Pawnee attack the Delaware Outlet hunting parties, which they see as trespassers. Veterans of the French and Indian War and American Revolutionary War, the Delaware responded by destroying the Capitol of the Republican Pawnee, under the leadership of their "Capt. Suwaunock".

1835, October 2 — 1836, April 21: The Texas Revolution reduced Spanish influence, but increased the influence of slavery in the Territory.

1842: John C. Frémont reported Kansa villages destroyed by Pawnee.

1843, July: The Wyandotte unanimously vote to relocate by hired steamboats to the Territory. The move was opposed by the tribe's non-voting white tenants and sharecroppers who would lose their arrangements.

1844: The Wyandotte settle on 36 sections of land they purchased from the Delaware Reservation. The Wyandotte also receive the right to claim 35 sections of their choosing (floats) within the territory west of Missouri. The Wyandotte settlement established the first Masonic lodge in the Territory.

1845: The United States annexes Texas.

1846: Their remaining settlements and crops destroyed by the Great Flood of 1844, the Kansa arrange to relocate to a reservation centered on Council Grove, Kansas.

1846-1848: The Mexican–American War removes much of the Mexican influence in the Territory. The addition of U.S. territory in the Southwest amplifies the question of the expansion of slavery on the Frontier.

1847: Unpleased by the original Federal offering of a reservation in old Osage land in Missouri, Potawatomi relocate to the east end of the rich land of the vacated Kansa reservation.

1848, October: Resettled nations of the old Northwestern Confederacy (Wyandotte, Delaware, Chippewa, Ottowa, Potawattomie, Shawnee, and Miami) with the Kansa and Kickapoo inducted into the Council and with the Sac and Fox present, hold a congressional convention near Fort Leavenworth. The Wyandots were reappointed as the lead nation of the confederation and keepers of the council-fire. Not present are the unsettle Plains Nations in western Kansas, e.g., Pawnee, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa.

1850, May-June: The Pawnee were determined to drive out the Pottawatomi. However, the Pottawatomi trained under the British in the War of 1812 and fought with contemporary military tactics. The full force of the Pottawatomie, a combined cavalry and infantry force, intercept the northern mounted Pawnee descending the Big Blue River at Rocky Ford (Manhattan), soundly defeating them at Chapman's Creek.

1852, Spring: Uniontown was a short-lived Indian trading post on the Oregon Trail crossing of the Kansas River (1848—1858) in that is now Shawnee County. In the midst of this Indian village, a handful of Missourians stage a "public meeting" for the purpose of shamming a petition for establishment a (proslavery) Territorial government.

1852, October 12: A congress including many if not mostly Wyandot members elected Ablard Guthrie, a Wyandot by marriage, as a delegate to the 32nd United States Congress for a free Territorial government. The U.S. Congress did not admit Guthrie.

1853, January: Fort Riley founded with 1 Mile Creek as its east boundary.

1853, July: The Wyandot host a convention that organized the (Kansas—Nebraska) Territory, with William Walker, a Wyandot chief, elected to be the first governor.

Bleeding Kansas, 1854 – 1861
1854, May 30: Kansas–Nebraska Act

1854, November: Pawnee townsite founded east of 1 Mile Creek just outside of the Fort Riley reservation.

1855, July 2: Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder declares Pawnee the Territorial capital.

1855, July 2-6: The proslavery legislature sits in Pawnee only to vote to move the capital to Shawnee Mission.

1855, September: Acting on behalf of the pro-slavery factions, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, having altered the repeated survey of Fort Riley to extend the fort's boundary beyond 1 Mile Creek to incorporate the Pawnee townsite, ordered the demolition of the Capitol town.

1855: With the approach of Statehood, many Wyandot accept U.S. citizenship, with the land of the reservation divided among those who relocate the Nation to Oklahoma and those who remain in Wyandotte City.

1855: Lawrence, Topeka, Lecompton, Manhattan, and other towns, mostly Free-State, are founded on purchased Wyandotte floats.

1855, March 30: The first Territorial election to set a legislature to found the state either with or without slavery. Missourians cross the border to control the vote, establishing a proslavery Territorial constitutional convention.

1855: Claiming election fraud, the Free-State settlers rejected the Lecompton legislature, establishing an alternate Free-State legislature in Larwence.

1855 November-December: Wakarusa War: Three units of (mostly) Missourians lay siege to the "rouge" Free-State government in Lawrence.

1855, December 15: Topeka Constitution passed by the Free-State "rouge" legislature, threading a line between Free-State and abolition causes, would ban slavery, but also would exclude black settlers from the state.

1856, January 15: Boycotted by proslavery voters, a Territorial referendum approves the Topeka Constitution. The petition would die in U.S. Senate committee.

1856, July 4: Companies of the 1st Cavalry disperse the Free-State legislature in Topeka.

1856: Beecher's Bibles delivered to Free-State Wabaunsee.

1856, May 21: Sacking of Lawrence

1856, May 24–25: Named for the proslavery white Pottawatomie Rifles, not the tribe, the Pottawatomie massacre was the Free-State reaction to Sacking of Lawrence.

1856, December: Wyandots and the New England Emigrant Aid Company found Quindaro as a Free-State port-of-entry to counter the proslavery ports of Leavenworth, Atchison, and Kansas City, Missouri.

1857, January: Free-State legislature resubmits the Topeka Constitution. President James Buchanan suppresses the petition.

1857: Battle of Indian Rock at present Salina: Cheyenne war party attacked a hunting party of Delaware and Potawatomi, who with relief by Kansa rifles devastated the attackers. Salina Stockade then established.

1857: Manhattan was laid out on two Wyandot reservation floats, the East, South, and West boundary streets named Wyandotte, Pottawatomie, and Delaware for the settled tribes.

1857, December: The proslavery legislature rigs a public vote on the Lecompton Constitution, boycotted by the Free-State voters.

1858 — 1861: The Pike's Peak Gold Rush increase pressure on a system of transport (Wagon trail or railroad) through the Indian Territory along the Kansas River and Smoky Hill Fork, and a military presence to secure it.

1858, January 4: Kansas voters reject the Lecompton Constitution, 10,226 votes to 138.

1858, April 3: Free-State Leavenworth Constitution adopted.

1858, May 18: Leavenworth Constitution passed public referendum, but is rejected by the U.S. Senate.

1859, January: Recently traversing lands claimed by, in order, Delaware, Pottawatomie, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Kanza, and Shawnee, the F.B. Meek-F.V. Hayden expedition was the first to scientifically explore the geology of the Kansas River and Smoky Hill River valleys; the report published this month.

1859, July: Free-state Wyandotte Constitution adopted.

1859, October 4: The Wyandotte Constitution passed in public referendum, 10,421 votes to 5,530.

1861, January 29: Statehood becomes a mere formality as Secession removes most proponents of slavery from the U.S. Senate quorum.

Civil War, April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865
1861, April 12–13: Battle of Fort Sumter commences the American Civil War.

1863, September 7: Ground breaking on the Kansas Pacific Railway in Wyandott City.

1863, August 21: Lawrence Massacre

1864, April: First rail laid on the Kansas Pacific Railway. First KPR is named Wyandotte.

Indian war in Kansas, 1867 — 1868
1867, Summer: Kansas Pacific tracks completed to Junction City. Route officially changed to reach Denver through hunting ground claimed by Cheyenne, themselves realtively new occupants of Western Kansas.

1867, August 1: Seven workers were killed by Dog Soldiers at Campbell's grading camp (present-day Victoria).

1867, August 2: Battle of the Saline River: Captain George Augustus Armes, with scout William Cody, leads Company F, 10th Cavalry, Buffalo Soldiers against the Dog Soldiers, with whom are riding un-reconstructed Confederate cavalrymen.

1967: After the decades of Kansas class conflicts of the romantic Southern Aristocrats, exploitive Northern Industrialists, Speculators, and newly Landed Peasants, Karl Marx published Das Kapital.

1868, June 3: Battle of Council: Southern Cheyenne set out to raid Council Grove, within the Kansa Reservation. The Kansa muster out in full traditional regailia to defend the settlement, facing off the Cheyenne with no tribesmen killed on either side.

1868: U.S. Cavalry units largely consisting of free-slaves and Kansas Cavalry unit largely consisting of ex-Confederates ride to battles in the upper forks of the Kansas River.