Emigrant Aid Societies

Thayer, presented to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in March, 1854, a petition for the incorporation of the "Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company," and on April 26, 1854, more than a month before the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, this company was chartered with a capital of $5,000,000.

The incorporators selected a committee consisting of Eli Thayer, Alexander H. Bullock and Edward Everett Hale, to recommend a system of operation. The first charter proving unsatisfactory, the company reorganized under a charter granted by the Connecticut legislature, and a third charter was obtained in 1855, when the name was changed to the "New England Emigrant Aid Company," with a capital of $1,000,000. The work done by this society, directly and indirectly, was one of the greatest factors in making Kansas a Free-State. Agitation of the question, advertisements in the papers and the literature distributed, started many for Kansas, who never knew of the country until this work commenced.

Charles Robinson, S. C. Pomeroy and M. F. Conway were the company's agents. They secured low rates of transportation to the territory, and the first emigrants, 30 in number, led by Charles H. Branscomb, arrived at the mouth of the Kansas River on July 28, 1854. Two weeks later they were followed by a second and larger party, and these men laid the foundations of Lawrence, the first Free-State settlement in Kansas.

"The Emigrant Aid Company of New York and Connecticut," was organized on July 18, 1854, under a charter from the Connecticut legislature, its objects being the same as those of the New England society, with which it was ultimately consolidated, with John Carter Brown of Providence, R. I., as president, and Eli Thayer as vice-president. The company was not a financial success. Its original capital was depleted until in 1862, it amounted to only $16,000, but the work of the society was done, for Kansas had been admitted as a Free-State. In 1901, the state legislature passed an act authorizing the regents of the state university to build a gymnasium with the money appropriated by Congress in payment of the claim assigned to the university by the New England Emigrant Aid Company.

Several minor aid societies were formed in the north. The "Union Emigrant Aid Society," was organized in Washington, D. C., in the spring of 1854, "by such members of Congress and citizens generally, as were opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the opening of Kansas and Nebraska to the institution of slavery."

The plan of the league was to arrange parties of emigrants, so that they could travel together and settle in the same locality. Their first train for Kansas left Worcester on July 17, 1854, only eleven days after the league was organized.

The "Kansas League," was organized by Eli Thayer about 1856. Its members promoted emigration, organized parties who wished to go to Kansas, and published a "History of Kansas, also Information Regarding, Rates, Laws," etc., which was widely circulated. Some of the other organizations of this character were the "Oberlin Kansas League," the "Kansas National Committee," and after the sack of Lawrence the "General National Kansas Aid Committee," the "Boston Relief Committee," the "Kansas Aid Society of Wisconsin," and the "Female Aid Society of Wisconsin," all of which were formed to send people and supplies to Kansas, and in other ways aid in defeating the friends of slavery.

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