Emigrant Aid Company, organization formed in 1854 to promote organized antislavery immigration to the Kansas territory from the Northeast. Eli Thayer conceived the plan as early as Feb., 1854, even before the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law, and in April, Massachusetts chartered the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. This organization, however, proved defective and was soon superseded by the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Many other Kansas aid societies were subsequently formed throughout the North (e.g., the Kansas Emigrant Aid Society of Northern Ohio and the New York Kansas League), but the New England group was preeminent in the field and the name Emigrant Aid Company is associated exclusively with it. Amos A. Lawrence served as treasurer of the company, which, despite its earnest soliciting of the support of clergymen throughout New England, remained in bad financial condition until Nov., 1855, when a notably successful campaign to raise money was launched. For Thayer, who was vice president of the company, the venture was not only philanthropic but profitable. As stock subscription agent he received 10% of all the money he collected, provided he gathered $20,000 or more. Thayer easily exceeded that figure, for by May, 1856, the company had received over $100,000. The company sent out an aggregate of 1,240 settlers under agents such as Charles Robinson, who founded Lawrence and other towns in Kansas. Southerners, at first confident that Kansas was safe for slavery, were moved to organize similar, though proslavery, societies of their own. However, such ill-advised actions by the proslavery societies as the sacking (May 21, 1856) of the town of Lawrence only stimulated the Kansas aid movement further. Delegates from 12 states and Kansas convened at Buffalo, N.Y., in July, 1856, and formed a National Kansas Committee. Its goal of establishing Kansas aid committees in every state, county, and town throughout the North was never realized. For one thing the national committee was divided; one group, in which Amos Lawrence was most conspicuous, advocated peaceful protest against proslavery excesses in Kansas and financial help to the free-staters, while the other, led by extreme abolitionists such as Gerrit Smith and the Rev. Thomas W. Higginson, urged the creation of state military forces to be used against Union troops in Kansas if necessary. This group also proposed disunion at a convention in Worcester in Jan., 1857. Although the New England Emigrant Aid Company continued in existence for some years, its real work was over and the whole Kansas aid movement was virtually ended by 1857. Actually, the company and its counterparts in other states had little to do with making Kansas a free state (that was mainly accomplished by settlers from the Western states), but the movement made a deep impression on public opinion, North and South, and it is claimed that the bitterness and hate it engendered helped bring on the Civil War.

The Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company was a transportation company set up to transport emigrants to Kansas Territory to shift the balance of power so that Free-Staters rather than slave holders would decide whether Kansas would enter the Union in regards to the slavery question.

The company was to successfully win the fight and its members held the state wide positions when it entered the Union in 1861,

Following the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Kansas would decide on its own whether it would enter the Union as a free state or slave state. The company was founded because of fears that pro-slavery settlers from Missouri would settle in Kansas causing it to become a slave state.

In 1854 Eli Thayer, Alexander H. Bullock and Edward Everett Hale of Massachusetts formed the company. It was officially a profit making corporation and the settlers it transported were not officially asked how they would vote.

In 1855, the company reorganized and changed its named to the New England Emigrant Aid Company.

About 2,000 settlers came to Kansas via the company.

The members were directly responsible for establishing Lawrence and Manhattan (with Lawrence being named for company secretary Amos Adams Lawrence). They also played key role in founding Topeka and Osawatomie.

Daniel Read Anthony (brother of Susan B. Anthony) who was among the emigrants was to become mayor of the state's largest city Leavenworth.

The company was involved in the Bleeding Kansas struggle, with company property being the target of the 1856 Sacking of Lawrence.

Agents from the company were to assume influential positions in the state including:

• Charles Robinson - the first governor
• Samuel C. Pomeroy - one of the first senators
• Martin F. Conway - the first U.S. Representative

References

External links

• Kansas State Historical Society