Settlement and early years
The Kaw people, also known as the Kansa, settled the region including what is now Lawrence in the late 17th or early 18th century. A series of treaties with the U.S. government compelled the Kaw to relinquish the land to the Shawnee and their Indian Reservation, established in 1830. The Kansas Territory was established in May 1854. During this period, the Oregon Trail ran parallel to the Kansas River, roughly through the area where Lawrence is now. A hill in the area, then known as Hogback Ridge and now known as Mount Oread, which sits on the water divide separating the Kansas and Wakarusa River, was used as a landmark and outlook by those on the trail. While the territory was technically closed to settlement until 1854, there were a few "squatter settlements" in the area, especially just north of the Kansas River.
Lawrence was founded "strictly for political reasons" having to do with slavery, which was heavily debated in the United States in the early to mid-1800s. Northern Democrats, led by Senators Lewis Cass of Michigan and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, promoted "popular sovereignty" as a middle position on the slavery issue. Its proponents argued it was more democratic, as it allowed the citizens of newly organized territories (and not Washington, D.C. politicians) to have a direct say as to the legality of slavery in their own lands. (Meanwhile, enemies of the bill, especially in the north, derisively called this idea "squatter sovereignty".) Douglas eventually made popular sovereignty the backbone of his Kansas–Nebraska Act—legislation that effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska—which passed Congress in 1854.
The Christian abolitionist and Protestant minister Richard Cordley later noted that after the bill became law, "there was a feeling of despondency all over the north" because its passage "opened Kansas to [the possibility of] slavery [which many] thought [was] equivalent to making Kansas a slave state". This was largely because nearby Missouri allowed slavery, and many rightly assumed the first settlers in Kansas Territory would come from Missouri, bringing their penchant for slavery with them.
In time, anger at the Kansas–Nebraska Act united antislavery forces into a movement committed to stopping the expansion of slavery, eventually institutionalized as the Republican Party. Many slavery opponents decided to "meet the question [of slavery in Kansas] on the terms of the bill itself" by migrating to Kansas, electing antislavery legislators, and eventually banning slavery altogether. These settlers soon became known as "Free-Staters". Even before the bill passed, some people already had this idea. In early May 1854, four men—Thomas W. and Oliver P. Barber, Samuel Walker, and Thomas M. Pearson—toured the new territory with the intention of finding a good place to settle. Their travels included what would become Lawrence, passing up on the spur of Hogback Ridge. The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed while they were in the territory, and they were instrumental in convincing others to come. In his book A History of Lawrence (1895), Cordley wrote:
The most systematic and extensive movement [to populate Kansas], however, was made [by] "The New England Emigrant Aid Company" ... The men engaged in it, Eli Thayer [a Republican in the United States House of Representatives], Amos A. Lawrence [a Republican abolitionist and businessman], and others, began their work at once, arousing public interest and making arrangements to facilitate emigration to Kansas. As early as June, 1854, they sent Dr. Charles Robinson, of Fitchburg, and Mr. Charles H. Branscomb, of Holyoke, to explore the territory and select a site for a colony ... [Previously] Robinson [had journeyed to Kansas, during which] his party climbed the hill along this spur, and looked off over what was afterwards the site of Lawrence. They marked the beauty of the spot and the magnificence of the view. Whether they thought then of what might afterwards occur is not known; but when the time came to select a location for the first colony, Dr. Robinson remembered this view from the hilltop, and this doubtless had much to do in the final decision. When he was asked, therefore, to go and explore the country with a view to locating colonies, it was not altogether an unknown land to him.
Branscomb was tasked with exploring the Kansas River up to about Fort Riley, while Robinson scouted land near Fort Leavenworth and the nearby city of the same name; after assessing the territory they had surveyed, the two recommended the New England Emigrant Aid Company (NEEAC) send its settlers to claim territory along the Oregon Trail near Hogback Ridge. The two likely chose this site because it was the "first desirable location where emigrant Indians had ceded their land rights". The area was also attractive because it was close to not only on the Oregon Trail, but also the Santa Fe and the 1846 Military Trails.
Concurrent with Robinson and Branscomb's exploration, the NEEAC was soliciting some of its members to settle in Kansas. At first, the NEEAC wanted to send a somewhat sizeable group of settlers to claim the land, but a cholera outbreak in the Missouri Valley prevented it. In the end, a group of only 29 men—which Eli Thayer later called the "pioneer colony"—volunteered for the job. Led by Branscomb, these pioneers left Boston, Massachusetts, and set out for Kansas Territory on July 17, 1854; according to Thayer's antislavery newspaper the Kansas Crusader for Freedom, "Immense crowds had gathered [in Boston] at the station to give them a parting God-speed. They moved out of the station amid the cheering of the crowds who lined the track for several blocks." In late July, the group met Robinson in St. Louis, and he discussed the next leg of the journey with them and provided them with transportation. The pioneers arrived in Kansas Territory near the end of July, and at about noon on August 1, they ate their first meal on Hogback Ridge itself, which was soon renamed Mount Oread after the Oread Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. Immediately thereafter, about half this party set off to claim land in the nearby countryside, where about 15 of the original settlers remained, and began to establish a city between Mount Oread and the Kansas River roughly where Massachusetts Street now runs.
While all of this was unfolding, a followup party of 67, guided by Robinson and Samuel C. Pomeroy (an abolitionist and a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives), left Worcester, Massachusetts, on August 31; along the way to Kansas, settlers of similar political inclinations joined this group, and when the party reached its destination on September 9–11, it had grown to about 114 people. This second party included about ten women, a number of children, and several musicians. A third group of settlers arrived in the vicinity of the future city on October 8–9, but many "became disgusted by the outlook" of the settlement and returned to New England, feeling they had been "deceived" by the NEEAC. A fourth group of settlers arrived on October 30, followed by a fifth on November 20 and a sixth on December 1. On September 18, the early colonists convened and established a "voluntary municipal government", and by September 20, the settlers had approved a constitution that included principles of prohibitionatory Maine law to govern their town. The settlement was created against threats by pro-slavery men that the free-staters ought to be "driven from the country". The first rally of forces from Lawrence was the night of September 30, done to protect Thomas J. Ferril, a free-state Methodist preacher from Missouri. His assailants surrounded his house, threatening violence and to destroy his property, but retreated after they saw a body of armed free-staters without injury to either side. The next day, a woman tore down a free-state man's tent. Pro-slavery men rallied to prevent the tent's reconstruction by a group of about 20 armed free-staters, but it was completed without violence. The next day, a sizeable band of pro-slavery men appeared, threatening a repeat of the attack, but upon seeing their opponents ready, they retreated with renewed threats of vengeance.
When the settlers arrived, most had called their fledgling city simply Wakarusa, after the nearby river of the same name, but other names were considered, such as New Boston (in recognition of both the NEEAC's city of operation and the hometown of many early settlers). Meanwhile, settlers from Missouri derisively called it "Yankee Town", due to its New England connections. Another name considered around this time was Lawrence. Many approved of this name in honor of Amos A. Lawrence, an Ipswich-based businessman and noted abolitionist, who, Cordley writes, was "a man of wide personal influence" and "one of the first men of means" to fund the Emigrant Aid Company. Others hoped that if they named their town after him, Lawrence would be inclined to support them with monetary donations, which proved correct. Another factor making "Lawrence" a popular choice was that it had "no bad odor attached to it in any part of the Union". On October 1, the settlement's leaders voted to approve "Lawrence" as the name of their new city, and on October 17, the citizens drew territory lots so as to begin erecting homes and businesses. Around this time, the settlers got into a heated argument with pro-slavery squatters, who were hoping to establish a city named Excelsior on the land where Lawrence was being constructed. These pro-slavers threatened violence against anyone who stood in their way, but eventually acquiesced to the New Englanders, and no open conflict occurred.
In early October 1854, the first governor of the Kansas Territory, Andrew Horatio Reeder, arrived, had a reception and a festival, and after a welcoming speech by Pomeroy, made a conciliatory speech urging harmony and order, while evading the slavery question. Lawrence's first winter was characterized by great hardship, as the people predominantly lived in sod houses and "shanties made of clap-boards". About two miles (3.3 km) south of Lawrence, at the first election on November 29, 1854 to elect Congressional delegates, there was a commotion; it ended with a man named Henry Davis attacking a free-stater man named Lucius Kibbee with an Arkansas toothpick knife. The fight ended when Kibbee shot Davis, making this Kansas's first homicide.
By the end of 1854, two newspapers touting the free state mission had been established in the town: the Herald of Freedom, edited by George W. Brown, and the Kansas Pioneer, edited by John Speer, renamed the Kansas Tribune after Speer discovered a proslavery Kansas Pioneer newspaper existed. A third paper, the Kansas Free State, was also created by editors Robert Gaston Elliott and Josiah Miller, and began publication in early January 1855. The Plymouth Congregational Church was started in September 1854 by Reverend S. Y. Lum, a missionary sent to Kansas from Middletown, New York. The first post office in Lawrence was established in January 1855, and E. D. Ladd was appointed the town's first postmaster. On January 10, 1855, the first school in Kansas was established in Lawrence by voluntary contributions, and it was taught by Edward P. Fitch.
