Everything about Free-stater totally explained
» Free-Stater was also a term for those from the
Irish Free State and particularly those on the pro-
Treaty side in the
Irish Civil War. The term is still used pejoratively and anachronistically in
Northern Ireland for those from the
Republic of Ireland.
Free-Stater was the name given those settlers in
Kansas Territory during the
Bleeding Kansas era in the
1850s who opposed the extension of
slavery to Kansas.
Many Free-Staters were
abolitionists from
New England, in part because there was an organized emigration of settlers to Kansas Territory arranged by the
New England Emigrant Aid Company beginning in
1854. Other Free-Staters were abolitionists who came to Kansas Territory from
Ohio,
Iowa, and other
midwestern states.
However, the majority of Free-Staters, regardless of where they were from, didn't claim to be abolitionists at the outset. Instead, the official Free-State line supported the idea of excluding
all African-Americans from the future state of
Kansas and didn't advocate the abolition of slavery nationwide. What united the Free-Staters was a desire to defeat the proslavery
Southern settlers in Kansas Territory on the question of whether Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a slave state. (The
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had left the question open to the settlers in the territory.)
Pro-slavery Southerners in Kansas Territory painted all Free-Staters as abolitionists in order to motivate the South's opposition. However,
Eli Thayer and other New England Company leaders denied that they were seeking to abolish slavery, and the failed
Topeka Constitution drafted by the Free-Staters in
1855 would have excluded any African-American – slave or free – from settling in Kansas.
As time passed and the violence in Bleeding Kansas escalated, abolitionists became ascendent in the Free-State movement. In
1858, the Free-Staters proposed a second constitution, the
Leavenworth Constitution, which banned slavery. (This constitution also failed.)
Further Information
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