"The motives for the settling of Kansas were social and moral, and the issues were stupendous."

—Hannah Oliver
survivor of the Lawrence massacre,
in a speech before the D.A.R., 1923

Lawrence, Kansas was founded in the summer of 1854, led by Boston Abolitionists. Many shared a vision of a nation free from the brutality of slavery, which imprisoned nearly four million Africans across the South. Missouri was slavery's western outpost and the new Kansas Territory was to be its next conquest. But the pioneers of Kansas halted the westward expansion of slavery, igniting both the Civil War, and a profound revolution in the way the country was governed.