The society became divided in 1840 on the question of organizing a political party on anti-slavery lines. From that time each branch worked in its own way, and by the time Kansas was organized as a territory the abolitionists -- the radical wing of the original society -- had become strong enough to attract attention from one end of the country to the other. Among the pro-slavery men, there was no distinction between those who were in favor of the gradual, peaceable emancipation of the slave and those who were in favor of immediate emancipation at whatever cost. All were "abolitionists." The following utterances of pro-slavery orators and extracts from the pro-slavery press will show how the advocates of slavery regarded the Free-State men as "abolitionists" indiscriminately.

At a squatter meeting near Leavenworth on June 10, 1854, a resolution was adopted declaring that "We will afford protection to no abolitionist as a settler in Kansas." A pro-slavery meeting in Lafayette County, Missouri on December 15, 1854, denounced the steamboats plying on the Missouri River for carrying abolitionists to Kansas. As a result of this agitation, the Star of the West in the spring of 1856 was allowed to carry about 100 persons from Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina to Kansas unmolested, but on her next trip, with a number of Free-State passengers, she was held up at Lexington, Missouri, where the passengers were disarmed, and upon arriving at Weston, Missouri was not permitted to land. Other steamers encountered similar opposition.

In February, 1855, Lawrence was denounced because it was "the home of about 400 abolitionists," and at a Law and Order meeting at Leavenworth on the November 15, 1855, John Calhoun said: "You yield and you will have the most infernal government that ever cursed a land. I would rather be a painted slave over in Missouri, or a serf to the Czar of Russia, than have the abolitionists in power."

On October 5, 1857, occurred the election for members of the legislature, and on October 23rd the Doniphan Constitutionalist, a pro-slavery paper, accounted for the Free-State victory by saying that the "sneaking abolitionists were guilty of cutting loose the ferry boats at Doniphan and other places on the day of the election, by order of James H. Lane." To this, the Lawrence Republican retorted: "Bad man, that Jim Lane, to order the boats cut loose; great inconvenience to the Missourians and the Democratic Party."

At the beginning of the border troubles the Platte Argus said editorially: "The abolitionists will probably not be interfered with if they settle north of the 40th parallel of north latitude, but south of that line they need not set foot."