After a brutal decade of guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers that gave the territory its grim nickname, Kansas joined the Union as a free state. The admission tipped the sectional balance further against the South, arriving just weeks before Southern states began seceding and the Civil War erupted.
The fight over Kansas had been a dress rehearsal for the Civil War itself. Beginning in 1854, pro-slavery Missourians known as "Border Ruffians" crossed into Kansas to stuff ballot boxes and terrorize free-state settlers, while abolitionist militants, including John Brown, answered with their own raids and killings. The territory drafted four separate constitutions before Congress finally accepted the free-state Wyandotte Constitution.
President James Buchanan signed the admission bill on January 29, 1861, making Kansas the 34th state just weeks before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration and mere months before Fort Sumter. Southern congressmen who had blocked Kansas's admission for years were, by January 1861, already resigning their seats as their states seceded, clearing the path.
The state's motto, "Ad astra per aspera" — to the stars through difficulties — captured the violent birth that preceded statehood. Kansas would go on to send disproportionately high numbers of volunteers to fight for the Union, a fitting coda to its bloody origin story.