August 1
1854 – Twenty-nine northern emigrants, mostly from Massachusetts and Vermont, are the first to arrive in Lawrence, Kansas. A second party of 200 men, women, and children arrive in September.
August 2
August 3
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August 5
1806 - Lewis and Clark returned to the mouth of the Kansas River with the first reliable information on the climate, topography, and general features of the western country.
August 6
August 7
August 8
1831 — Treaty With The Shawnee of Ohio are given lands in Kansas contiguous to the land of the Shawnees of Missouri.
1846 — President Polk sends a special message to Congress, asking an appropriation of money to pay for territory to be acquired by treaty from Mexico. A bill was reported appropriating $30,000 expenses of negotiations, and $2,000,000 to be used in making a treaty. The House was Democratic by 120 to 72. A few Northern Democrats -among them Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, Preston King, of New York, and David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, held a caucus and decided that, inasmuch as Mexico had abolished slavery some twenty years before, all territory acquired from that country should come in free.
1850 – Fort Atkinson (also called Fort Sod) was established about two miles west of present-day Dodge City on the left side of the Arkansas River.
August 9
August 10
1825 — Treaty With The Great And Little Osage at the place called the Council Grove, on the river Neeo-zho (Neosho), 160 miles from Fort Osage.
1861 - The first real Civil War action for Kansas troops came at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, near Springfield, Missouri, on August 10, 1861. Both the First and Second Kansas Volunteer Infantry regiments were engaged, but the First saw the most action and suffered heavy losses.
August 11
1862 – Colonel J.T. Hughes’s Confederate forces, including William Quantrill, attacked Independence, Missouri, at dawn. Though Colonel Hughes was killed, the Confederates took Independence, leading to a Confederate dominance in the Kansas City area for a short time. Quantrill’s role in the capture of Independence led to his being commissioned as a captain in the Confederate Army.
August 12
1819 - The expedition of Major Stephen H. Long a scientific exploration sent out by the Government ascended the Missouri River to the present town of Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1819. Long camped there for the winter, then moved south to the Platte and Red Rivers, entered Colorado, where members of his party made the first ascent of Pike's Peak, and returned to the Mississippi via the Red River. His expedition, following in the path of Pike, accumulated scientific data, and introduced the first steamboat to Kansas waters. The Western Engineer entered the mouth of the Kansas River, on August 12, 1819, and transported his party up the course for one mile. Here the mud left by flood waters made it necessary to turn back and continue up the Missouri.
August 13
1863 – One of the buildings in downtown Kansas City, utilized as a women’s prison, collapsed, killing five women and injuring dozens of others. Crowds mobbed the area shouting “Murder” at the Union forces. Later, William Quantrill and his men would claim that the building was deliberately weakened, giving them ammunition for the infamous attack on Lawrence that was about to come.
August 14
1720 – The French and Spanish fight a battle over the possession of Kansas 50 years before the Revolutionary War. Colonel Don Pedro de Villazur and his little Spanish army are massacred by the French and their Pawnee allies. The French gained the right to carry on their fur trade in Kansas.
"The Pawnees and Otoes attacked at dawn on August 14, shooting with muskets and unleashing flights of arrows, then charging into combat clad only in body paint, headbands, moccasins, and short leggings. Some survivors reported that Frenchmen had been among the attackers, and men in European dress are shown in a surviving painting of the battle." (Source)
1855 - The First Territorial Legislature of Kansas enactments what is known as the "Black Laws." provided a death penalty for anyone who, by word or deed, should aid in freeing a slave, and a penitentiary sentence for holding an opinion adverse to slavery. Reaction to these measures was widespread, with newspapers of the North and even some of the South protesting. The proslavery party prepared to enforce them through the Law and Order Society, which was organized on October 3, 1855, at a meeting in Leavenworth.
1861 – General John C. Fremont declared martial law on the city of St. Louis. Six days later, he extended the law to the entire state.
August 15
August 16
1825 - Treaty With The Kansa.
1856 - "Some fifty Free State men under Captain Samuel Walker attacked Ft. Titus. After a brief battle, Ft. Titus and its thirty-four defenders, including Colonel Henry Titus, surrendered." (Source: Battle of Fort Titus article on the Historic Lecompton Kansas website.)
August 17
August 18
1863 – Union Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, Jr. from Kansas, issued General Order Number 10, which stated that any person – man, woman or child, who was directly involved with aiding a band of Rebel guerrillas would be jailed.
August 19
August 20
August 21
1863 - William Clark Quantrill and several hundred followers attacked Lawrence at dawn. By the time they Lawrence, much of the town had been destroyed and nearly 200 men and boys had been killed. (Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, Kansas)
August 22
1828 – The first white child born in Kansas was Napoleon Boone, son of Daniel Morgan Boone, at an Indian agency.
August 23
August 24
1845 - Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny, with five companies of dragoons and Lieutenant William B. Franklin, as his Topographical Engineer, arrived back to Ft. Leavenworth. Kearney was ordered to gather information on essentially the same area that Colonel Dodge’s expedition had covered in 1835.
August 25
1863 – In response to the Lawrence Massacre, Union Brigadier General Thomas Ewing signed General Order No. 11, which required all persons living more than one mile from Independence, Hickman’s Mill, Pleasant Hill, and Kansas City to leave their farms unless they took an oath of loyalty to the Union. The cities that were excluded were already under Union control. This order included Cass, Jackson, Bates, and portions of Vernon Counties. Some did take the oath, but others fled to other areas, never returning. The Union Army burned the remaining homes, buildings, and crops, and the entire area became known as “No Man’s Land.”
August 26
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August 29
August 30
1831 – The Ottawa Indians cede land to the United States and move to a small reservation on the Kansas River and its branches.
1855, The Kansas Territorial Legislature, created Arapahoe County, a huge county that included the entire western portion of Kansas to the Rocky Mountains. This county was never organized.
1856 – Battle of Osawatomie – John Brown leads a raid on proslavery sympathizers in a small Kansas settlement on the Pottawatomie Creek. It is the first battle over slavery in the U.S. Five men are killed. The division in the Kansas territory over slavery leads to much violence in “Bleeding Kansas”
August 31