eeks for the House speakership ended in the
election of Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts.

The immediate practical effect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to throw
the political destiny of those Territories into the hands of the future
settlers. There were men at the North who were prompt to see and seize
the opportunity. In February, 1854, three months before the bill became
law, the New England Emigrant Aid Society was incorporated in
Massachusetts. Its originator was Eli Thayer of Worcester, and among its
active promoters was Edward Everett Hale. In the following July it sent
to Kansas a colony of twenty-four, speedily followed by another of
seventy, which founded the town of Lawrence. Other colonies followed
from various Northern States, and other settlements were made. The
natural westward movement of an active population seeking new homes and
personal betterment was augmented and stimulated by a propaganda of
freedom. Whittier gave the colonists a marching song:

We cross the prairies as of old
Our fathers crossed the sea,
To make the West as they the East
The home of liberty.

A counter movement was started from the South. Missouri was its natural
base. But Missouri furnished the material and leadership for another
kind of crusade. The rough and lawless element of a border community was
brought out in its worst character by the appeal to champion the cause
of slavery. Men high in political life were ready to utilize such
forces. The first settlers of Lawrence, before they had time to raise
their houses, were visited by a ruffianly mob from Missouri, who tried
by threats and show of force to drive them from the Territory, but
failed. When in November the first election was held for Territorial
delegate to Congress, there was a systematic invasion by bands of
Missourians, who captured the polling-places and elected their
candidate by 3000 votes; though it was afterward proved that there were
only half that number of voters resident in Kansas.

In 1855 the first Territorial Legislature was elected by a similar
invasion of armed men, which chose the entire body. A foremost leader in
these operations was United States Senator Atchison of Missouri.
President Pierce's administration recognized the usurping faction. It
sent a succession of governors--Reeder, Shannon, Geary, Walker (the last
was sent by President Buchanan)--who, with the exception of the
incompetent and worthless Shannon, were by the ine