Kansas

The territory where the Civil War started four years early. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise line and left slavery to popular sovereignty, meaning a vote - which turned settlement into a contest, with New England emigrant aid societies funding free-soil settlers and Missouri border ruffians crossing to stuff ballot boxes and burn towns. Two rival governments operated at once, Lawrence was sacked, John Brown's men killed five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek, and the territory was called Bleeding Kansas in the eastern press. It was admitted as a free state in January 1861, weeks before the war. Afterwards it became the archetype of the wheat frontier: the Homestead Act's quarter sections, Turkey Red wheat brought by Mennonites from Russia in the 1870s, and cattle towns at Abilene and Dodge City at the head of the Texas trails. Exodusters, Black migrants leaving the South in 1879, settled in numbers at Nicodemus and elsewhere. Dust Bowl years in the 1930s stripped the topsoil, and the Ogallala aquifer that replaced rainfall as the water supply is being drawn down faster than it recharges. Brown v Board of Education came from Topeka in 1954. Topeka is the capital. Wichita is the largest city and built much of the country's general aviation industry. The state sits at the geographic centre of the contiguous forty-eight. Its name comes from the Kansa people. Amelia Earhart and Dwight Eisenhower both grew up there. Kansas leads the country in wheat production, and its licence plates once carried the motto to the stars through difficulties.

• Existed: 1827 CE – present
• Type: Entity
• Government: U.S. State
• Capital: Topeka