United States: Kansas
The Kansas-Nebraska Act established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska on May 30, 1854, under the presumption that one, Nebraska, would be a free state and the other, Kansas, would be a slave state.
In bloody skirmishes that foreshadowed the Civil War, Kansas abolitionists fought bitterly with pro-slave settlers in Kansas and Border Ruffians from Missouri, which had been admitted to the Union as a slave state on August 10, 1821, under the Missouri Compromise.
Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861. The Civil War officially began when Southern ships opened fire on Fort Sumter on April 12th 1861.
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