Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the State of Kansas: 1855–, title varies, var. state printers, 1855– Prior to becoming part of the United
States, the area now comprising Kansas was a part of the Spanish/French Territory of Louisiana. An act of Congress, March 26, 1804, split the newly acquired
Louisiana into two jurisdictions, the Territory of Louisiana, which became Missouri, and the District of Orleans, which became the state of
Louisiana. When the area now comprising Missouri became a territory in 1812, Kansas remained technically part of Missouri until it was defined as “Indian
County” in the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834. From that date until 1954, Kansas was a federal enclave, reserved for the settlement of Native
Americans from east of the Mississippi. Finally, an act of May 30, 1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, settled the boundaries of the territories of Kansas and
Nebraska and established territorial legislatures. The first Kansas territorial legislature met in the City of Lecompton in July of 1855. The Kansas
territorial period lasted from 1854-1861. An act of May 4, 1858 provided for the tentative admission of Kansas into the union as a state, but actual
admission was delayed as Free-Staters and proslavery forces sought to enshrine their views into the new state’s constitution. Final admission came by
act of Congress on 29 Jan. 1861, when Congress accepted the so-called Wyandotte Constitution, an anti-slavery document. The first state legislature met
in the City of Lawrence in March of 1861. (Documents that are part of the Early State Records Collection were digitized from a microfilm copy of title
originally held by the Library of Congress and the Kansas Historical Society).
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