Editing Kansas Territory (section)

==Election of Territorial Legislature==
{{Main|1855 Kansas Territory elections}}
On March 30, 1855, "[[Border Ruffians]]" from Missouri entered Kansas during the territory's first legislative election and voted in a pro-slavery Territorial Legislature. Antislavery candidates prevailed in one election district, the future [[Riley County]].

The first session of the legislature was held in [[Pawnee, Kansas]] (within the boundary of modern-day [[Fort Riley]]), at the request of [[Andrew Horatio Reeder|Governor Reeder]]. The two-story stone building still stands and is open to the public, as the [[First Territorial Capitol of Kansas]]. The building remained as the seat of the legislature for five days from July 2–6, 1855, then moved nearer Missouri to the [[Shawnee Methodist Mission]].<ref>[http://www.kshs.org/places/firstterritorial/history.htm] First Territorial Capitol, Kansas State Historical Society</ref>

In the election of 1857, free-staters out-voted the pro-slavery settlers in the Territory, which meant that the Territorial Legislature fell into free-state hands.<ref>{{cite web|title=Free-Staters Win Election|url=http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/timeline/free-staters-win-election|website=Civil War on the Western Border|publisher=[[Kansas City Public Library]]|access-date=May 24, 2018}}</ref> Then, on October 4, 1859, the [[Wyandotte Constitution]] was approved in a referendum by a vote of 10,421 to 5,530, and after its approval by the U.S. Congress, Kansas was admitted as a free state on January 29, 1861,<ref name="Adoption">[http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/kansas-constitutions/16532 "Kansas Constitutions."] ''KSHS.org''. Kansas Historical Society.</ref> shortly after the Southern legislators, who would never have permitted a new free state, had walked out. The last legislative act of the Territorial Legislature was the approval of the charter for the [[College of the Sisters of Bethany]]. This was February 2, 1861—four days after [[James Buchanan]] signed the act of Congress that officially brought Kansas into the Union.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/thirtyyearsintop00gile/page/187 Thirty years in Topeka: a historical sketch] by Frye William Giles, p. 184</ref>