Date

Event

1861

Kansas women were given the right to vote in school elections, far earlier than in most states.

January 29, 1861

Kansas becomes the 34th state after 3 unsuccessful constitutional conventions. Topeka is chosen as the state capital.

February, 1861

The first State Governor, Dr. Charles Robinson of Lawrence, is inaugurated. 

April, 1861

The first U.S. Senators from Kansas -- James H. Lane and Samuel C. Pomeroy, are elected.

The Civil War begins. In answer to President Lincoln's first call for troops in April, Kansas supplied 650 men. Before the war ended in 1865, Kansas contributed 20,097 men to the Union Army, a remarkable record since the population included less than 30,000 men of military age. Kansas also suffered the highest mortality rate of any of the Union states. Of the black troops in the Union army, 2,080 were credited to Kansas, though the 1860 census listed fewer than 300 blacks of military age in the state; most of them came from Arkansas and Missouri .

While Missouri was officially a Union state, never declaring to join the Confederacy, the majority of its population was proslavery. This resulted in a state of war within its own borders between the U.S. Army and Missouri citizens. The State of Missouri never officially joined the Civil War due to its own internal struggles.

Many Fort Leavenworth soldiers are reassigned to other locations, making protection of travelers on the trail more difficult. William Quantrill eagerly fights with the Confederate army at Wilson’s Creek and Lexington, Missouri.

April 20, 1861

The first military action of Missouri State forces occurred with the seizure of the Federal arsenal at Liberty, Missouri.

May 10, 1861

As a result of a power struggle for Missouri's military resources, a confrontation between State and Federal forces brought the first bloodshed to the State of Missouri in what became known as the "Camp Jackson Massacre" in St. Louis, Missouri. When the crowd began to riot, federal forces, led by General Nathaniel Lyon, fired into the crowd, killing a baby, two men and wounding many innocent spectators.

May 25, 1861

Great Seal of the State of Kansas was established by a joint resolution adopted by the Kansas Legislature.

June 3, 1861

First Kansas regiment called to duty in the Civil War.

June 17, 1861

The Battle of Booneville was fought between Missouri State and Federal forces that resulted in a Union victory.

August 14, 1861

General John C. Freemont declared martial law on the city of St. Louis. Six days later, he extended the law to the entire state.

Summer, 1861

James H. Lane, a United States Senator from Kansas returned to his home state to command what was called "Lane's Brigade." Lane was to retain his Senate seat while occasionally rampaging through Missouri. His brigade was composed of Kansas infantry and cavalry; however, they were commanded to act more as a ruthless band of Jayhawkers wearing United States uniforms.

September 22, 1861

Lane's Brigade descended on the town of Osceola, Missouri. When Lane's troops found a cache of Confederate military supplies in the town, Lane stripped the town of all of it's valuable goods which were loaded into wagons taken from the townspeople. Then, twelve citizens were given a farcical trial and shot. After Lane's men went on a wild drinking spree, his men brought their frenzy of pillaging, murder and drunkenness to a close by burning the entire town. The town suffered more than $1,000,000 worth of damage including that belonging to pro-Union citizens.

December, 1861

William Quantrill forms a band of guerrilla troops, leading his men on raids against Kansas and Missouri farmers and townspeople who favor the Union.

1862

Quantrill's band is mustered into Confederate service but sometimes continues to operate independently.

The first governor of Kansas, Charles Robinson was impeached, but not convicted or removed from office.

February 7, 1862

The state Capitol stands on 20 acres of ground donated to the state by Cyrus K. Holliday. The Legislature accepted the block of land by a joint resolution approved.

May 20, 1862

The Homestead Act greatly aided in the opening of the country after the Civil War.

August 11, 1862

Colonel J.T. Hughes’s Confederate force, including William Quantrill, attacked Independence, Missouri at dawn. Though Colonel Hughes was killed, the Confederates took Independence, leading to a Confederate dominance in the Kansas City area for a short time. Quantrill's role in the capture of Independence led to his being commissioned a captain in the Confederate Army.

October 17, 1862

Quantrill and his band attack Shawnee, Kansas, killing several men and burning the settlement to the ground.

1863

The Union Pacific Eastern Division established in Kansas.

Kansas State University was the second state agricultural college in the United States to be founded.

The second governor of Kansas takes office -- Governor Thomas Carney of Leavenworth.

Kansas State University in Manhattan was established as the nation's second original land-grant university.

Emporia State University at Emporia was established as the Kansas State Normal School.

March, 1863

Congress provides for removal of all Indians from Kansas.

July, 1863

Federal forces began to arrest Kansas City area women who were provided shelter to or were suspected of gathering information on the Confederate partisans' behalf. Both women and children were rounded up an imprisoned in several buildings throughout the Kansas City area.

August 13, 1863

One of the buildings in downtown Kansas City, utilized as a women's prison, collapsed, killing 5 women and injuring dozens of others. Crowds mobbed the area shouting "Murder" at the Union forces. Later, Quantrill and his men would claim that the building was deliberately weakened, giving them ammunition for the infamous attack on Lawrence that was about to come.

August 18, 1863

Union Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, Jr. from Kansas, issued General Order Number 10, which stated that any person - man, woman or child, who was directly involved with aiding a band of Rebel guerrillas would be jailed.

August 21, 1863

Surprise attack at Lawrence by Confederate guerillas led by William Quantrill. More than 180 residents were killed in the raid. The city was sacked and burned, and about $1.5 million worth of property was destroyed. Quantrill’s guerillas included Frank James. Only 1 of the guerrillas is killed. They escape into the Missouri hills.

August 25, 1863

In response to the Lawrence Massacre, Union Brigadier General Thomas Ewing signed General Order No. 11, which required all persons living more than one mile from Independence, Hickman’s Mill, Pleasant Hill, and Kansas City to leave their farms unless they took an oath of loyalty to the Union. The cities that were excluded were already under Union control This order included Cass, Jackson, Bates and portions of Vernon Counties. Some did take the oath, but many others fled to other areas never to return. The remaining homes, building and crops were burned by the Union Army and the entire area became known as "No Mans Land."

October 6, 1863

William Quantrill leads another slaughter at Fort Blair in Baxter Springs, Kansas. They attack both the fort and a Union wagon train, killing 98 Federals and losing only 6 of their own men. It is later reported that they mutilated the dead bluecoats.

1864

Indians begin attacks on frontier settlements.

Jim R. Mead became the first white settler at Wichita when he opened a trading post on the site of Wichita, Kansas.

The Kansas legislature passes an act establishing the University of Kansas.

July 28, 1864

The Seventeenth Kansas regiment is the last to be raised during the Civil War.

August, 1864

The original Fort Harker post (first called Fort Ellsworth) was established on the left bank of the Smoky Hill River about 3-4 miles southeast of the present town of Ellsworth.

September 6, 1864

Fort Zarah was established on the banks of Walnut Creek near the crossroads of the Santa Fe Trail, the army supply route from Fort Riley, and the main Indian trail. In 1867 Fort Zarah was relocated in stone buildings two miles downstream near the Arkansas River and was abandoned December 4, 1869 as the Indian problem moved southwestward.

October 25, 1864

Battle at Mine Creek: Although Kansas soldiers saw action in many important engagements of the Civil War, the only major battle fought in Kansas occurred at Mine Creek in Linn County. This battle involved some 25,000 men. The Union Army under Generals Curtis, Blunt, and Pleasanton defeated the Confederate Army under Generals Sterling Price and Marmaduke, ending the threat of a Confederate invasion in Kansas.

December, 1864

Southern hopes for a Confederate-controlled Missouri plummet and Quantrill's guerrilla band face imminent destruction. Fearing capture and execution, Quantrill gathers about 40 bushwhackers in and heads east.

1865

Wichita was plotted during this year.

After the Civil War, Jesse Chisholm pioneered the Chisholm Trail when Jim R. Mead sent him into the southwest (south from Kansas to the Red River) with a wagon load of goods to trade with the Indians for buffalo hides.

Lincoln College (now known as Washburn University) was established in Topeka by the Congregational Church, first classes begin in January, 1866.

April 8, 1865

General Lee surrenders at Appomattox, effectively ending the Civil War.

April 10, 1865

Fort Dodge was established near the present-day site of Dodge City to protect the Santa Fe Trail from Indians.

April 14, 1865

President Lincoln is shot and dies on April 15, 1865.

June 6, 1865

After an battle with Unionist irregular forces in May, Quantrill was shot through the spine. He died at the military prison at Louisville, Kentucky, on June 6, 1865.   

September, 1865

Fort Aubrey was established in present-day Hamilton County at the head of Spring Creek.

October 11, 1865

Fort Fletcher (later Fort Hays) was established as a frontier military post to protect military roads, defend construction gangs on the Union Pacific Railroad, and guard the U.S. mail.

1866

Construction of the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka began.

The first Kansas orphanage, St. Vincent's Home, was opened by the Sisters of Charity.

The University of Kansas at Lawrence was opened at the first state university in the Great Plains Area.

1867

Buffalo Bill Cody co-founds the city of Rome, Kansas.

Joseph G. McCoy arrived at Abilene, the end of the extended Chisholm Trail, and built stockyards that he advertised throughout Texas.

Indian attacks reached their height in Kansas, when nearly 130 settlers were killed.

One Indian raid occurred at a small settlement called Brookville. When a large body of Indians attacked the town, the settlers rushed to the roundhouse where a barricade was hastily thrown up. The Indians surrounded the building, piled Railroad ties against it, and tried to set the structure on fire. Railroad crew members jumped on an engine already under steam, crashed it through the doors of the roundhouse, around the turntable, and with whistle and bell sounding, headed for Salina to get help. When the engine reached Salina, a dead Indian was found lying on a wheel.

The Indian Peace Treaty Monument of Medicine Lodge commemorates the signing of the peace treaty between the U.S. and the Indian tribes.

Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony work in Kansas for women's suffrage.

Orphan Trains begin going to Kansas and will continue through 1930.

June 5, 1867

The first recorded Indian attack at Henshaw Station, when the Indians killed four men and stampeded the horses. At the time the station was guarded by only ten soldiers and two stock traders, so pursuit of the Indians was out of the question.

July, 1867

Fort Fletcher is relocated and several months later is renamed Fort Hays.

1867-1868

A great famine in Sweden combined with the discontent bred by repressive government made the American advertisement of land and freedom particularly attractive to Swedes. The third largest foreign-born group in nineteenth-century Kansas came from Sweden. The primary colony from Sweden was at Lindsborg in McPherson County. The settlement at (New) Scandia in Republic County was promoted by the Scandinavian Agricultural Society of Chicago. Swedish influence was also in Osage County and the Blue River parts of Riley and Pottawatomie counties.

William Frederick Cody "Buffalo Bill", gained his nickname from his success in supplying the men working on the Union Pacific Railroad with buffalo, killing 4,280 of them in Kansas in just two years.

1867-1872

More than three million head of Texas longhorn cattle were driven up the Chisholm Trail to the Union Pacific (later the Kansas Pacific) Railroad shipping center at Abilene.

1868

Jesse Chisholm died at Left Hand Spring near modern Geary, Oklahoma, in 1868, about the time the traders' routes across Indian Territory became the Chisholm Trail, used as a cattle highway by Texas ranchers moving their longhorns to railheads in Kansas.

Colonel George A. Forsyth and his command were on Arikaree Creek, a fork of the Republican River, five miles due west of Kansas's northwest corner. They were surrounded by nearly a thousand Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux on 17 Sep 1868 . They retreated to an "island" (sandbar) in the Arikaree and dug-in. They suffered heavy losses, including the company's surgeon and its second-in-command, Lt. Fred H. Beecher (he was nephew of Henry Ward Beecher, of Harriet Beecher Stowe). The U.S. Army officially named this the Battle of Beecher Island in honor of Lieutenant Beecher.

Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry mustered in for Indian Wars.

Lucy Hobbs Taylor, first woman to earn Degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery, established practice in Lawrence.

1869

Union Pacific Eastern Division was renamed the Kansas Pacific.

Sioux and Cheyenne raid northwestern Kansas.

Wild Bill Hickok, special marshal of Hays City, Kansas.

Ernest Valeton de Boissiere established a communal French colony in Franklin County introducing silk to Kansas.

1870

Brookville Hotel in Brookville, Kansas was built. It was famous for it's family style chicken dinners for more than a century. It still exists today, but has been moved to Abilene.

1870's

Pittsburg - Crawford County, the coal metropolis of Kansas was founded as a mining camp during the 1870's. Name that came from the coal region of Pennsylvania to the coal region of Kansas.

The Bender family lived on the road south from Independence in Montgomery County, halfway between the "Little House on the Prairie" and Independence, and near a land mark known as Bender Mounds. People disappeared on that road and they were never heard of again. Occasionally the Benders invited travelers to stay for dinner. These itinerants were then murdered and robbed of their valuables.

Bethel College at Newton was founded by Swiss and German Mennonites from Russia; what is now the General Conference Mennonite Church.

Homesteaders begin to flock to Kansas and continue to do so over the next two decades.

The Kansas Pacific Railroad is completed through Kansas to the Colorado line. By the end of 872, the Santa Fe Railroad would do the same.

Kansas is the first state to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution, giving African-Americans the right to vote.

1870-1871

After the Civil War, many families came from Clermont County, Ohio and settled on the high prairie in what is now known as Ohio Township in the northwest part of Morris County. On their way, they laid over at Topeka where they met others from Clermont County, Ohio.

1871

Many Italian and other immigrants came to the coal mining region of southeast Kansas.

Crawford and Cherokee Counties are formed.

No more Indian treaties written after this time.

Hays City is called the "Sodom of the Plains."

The first railway in the state was in operation in Lawrence.

April 15, 1871

James Butler Hickok replaced Tom Smith as Marshal of Abilene.

July, 1871

The Santa Fe Railroad extended its line to Newton, Kansas, which then succeeded Abilene as the terminus of the Chisholm Trail. The cattle boom at Newton only lasted a year for the railroad was soon extended to Wichita.

July-August, 1871

During this period there was considerable violence in the saloons and dance halls at Newton, with nine men being shot down in one shootout.  

1872

"Home on the Range" song words written in Smith County by Dr. Brewster M. Higley, M.D.

Ellsworth succeeded Abilene as the northern terminus (shipping point) of the Texas cattle trail.

A branch of the Santa Fe Railroad arrived at Wichita, and the town "busted-wide-open." A sign was erected at the outskirts of town proclaiming: "Everything goes in Wichita."

When the Santa Fe Railroad was completed to the Colorado border, the days of the Santa Fe Trail as a main transportation route were over.

When the Santa Fe Railroad was completed to the Colorado border, the days of the Santa Fe Trail as a main transportation route were over. Dodge City remained the cattle shipping point for 10 years.

1873

The Kanza Indians were removed from their reservation in Morris County to Oklahoma Territory, thus opening this land for white settlement.

Fort Harker is abandoned.

1873-1874

German Mennonite immigration to Kansas and South Dakota from Russia. Southeast McPherson and adjoining Marion (Hillsboro), Harvey (Halstead-where they built a flour mill by the Little Arkansas River, North Newton), and Reno (Buhler-one of the oldest Mennonite Brethren churches in Kansas) counties became the home of German-Russian Mennonites.

1874

Four Kansas Railroads shipped 122,914 head of Texas cattle in eight months.

March, 1874

The Kansas legislature amended the state militia law. This allowed anyone who objected to military service on religious grounds to obtain release. All they had to do was sign a declaration of objection in the county clerk's office.

July-September, 1874

Grasshopper plague (Rocky Mountain Locust) visited Kansas. The grasshopper invasion devastated crops (corn) in Kansas and many people lost nearly everything. Aid (clothes, provisions and money) was sent from the East to help the people get through the hard winter.