Map of Eastern Kansas by E.B. Whitman & A. D. Searl General Land Agents Lawrence, Kansas.

£7,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

An excellent copy of this rare map, which confirms the breadth and ambition of abolitionist activities in the antebellum period. It’s one thing to write pamphlets, petition government, and raise funds, but trying to effect immigration patterns is quite another. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed settlers to decide whether these new territories would be slave-holding or not. There was much dissension between the pro- and anti-slavery factions (the latter called both Free State or Free Soil) in Kansas which erupted into such violence it became known as Bleeding or Bloody Kansas. Indeed, Lawrence - a key anti-slavery seat in the 30 March, 1855 elections - was inundated by pro-slavery forces trying to effect the outcome and whom eventually ransacked the town a year later. This map was published shortly thereafter in a bid to encourage anti-slavery settlers to move to Kansas and redress the balance between factions. Of real interest, these tensions are recorded on the map itself - specifically, the three encampments of divisions of Shannon’s Posse along the Kansas River (dated 10 Dec. 1855) with one opposite Lawrence. These pro-slavery forces were organized by Governor William Shannon in order to suppress what were deemed illegal activities by anti-slavery factions. Migration is very much a theme in this map . It spans from a sliver of Nebraska Territory in the north to the abandoned Fort Scott in the south, and from Wyandotte, Kansas in the east to a portion of the Arkansas Riv

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