View source for New England Emigrant Aid Company

[[File:Neeacsignlg.jpg|thumb|Trade sign used at the Boston headquarters of the New England Emigrant Aid Company<ref>[https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/projects/catalog/new-england-emigrant-aid-company New England Emigrant Aid Company papers, 1854-1909]</ref>]]
The '''New England Emigrant Aid Company'''{{#tag:ref|Sometimes referred to as the New England Emigrant Aid Society,<ref name="Ref_">Goodrich (1998) p. 10</ref> or abbreviated as the NEEAC.<ref>E.g. Etcheson (2004).</ref>|group="n"}} (originally the '''Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company'''<ref>{{cite book
|title=Purpose and plans of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company
|date=July 28, 1854
|accessdate=Feb 22, 2022
|url=http://www.teachushistory.org/kansas-nebraska-act-bleeding-kansas/resources/purpose-plans-massachusetts-emigrant-aid-company}}</ref>) was a transportation company founded in [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]]<ref>New England Emigrant Aid Company, n5 [[Winter Street (Boston)|Winter Street]], Boston. Boston Directory. 1855</ref> by activist [[Eli Thayer]] in the wake of the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]], which allowed the population of Kansas Territory to choose whether slavery would be legal. The company's ultimate purpose was to transport anti-slavery [[Immigration|immigrants]] into the [[Kansas Territory]]. The company believed that if enough anti-slavery immigrants settled ''en masse'' in the newly-opened territory, they would be able to shift the balance of political power in the territory, which in turn would lead to Kansas becoming a [[Slave states and free states|free state]] (rather than a [[slave state]]) when it eventually joined the United States.<ref>{{cite book
|first=Eli
|last=Thayer
|authorlink=Eli Thayer
|title=The New England Emigrant Aid Company, and its influence, through the Kansas contest, upon national history
|location=[[Worcester, Massachusetts]]
|publisher=F. P. Rice
|url=https://archive.org/details/newenglandemigra00thay
|year=1887}}</ref>{{page number needed|date=February 2022}}
The company is noted less for its direct impact than for the psychological impact it had on [[proslavery]] and [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] groups. Thayer's prediction that the company would eventually be able to send 20,000 immigrants a year never came to fruition, but it spurred [[border ruffian]]s from nearby [[Missouri]], where [[History of slavery in Missouri|slavery was legal]], to move to Kansas to ensure its admission to the Union as a slave state. That, in turn, further galvanized [[Free-Stater (Kansas)|Free-Staters]] and other enemies of the [[Slave Power]].{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}
Thayer's intention was to capitalize on anti-slavery sentiment in the [[Northern United States]] and to send settlers to Kansas to purchase land and build houses, shops, and mills. They could then sell the land at a significant profit and send the proceeds back to Thayer and his investors. At the behest of several investors, who found the notion of profiting from the anti-slavery cause distasteful, the company's model was shifted to that of a benevolent society, and it was renamed the New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1855. While the company achieved neither a profit nor a significant impact on the population of Kansas, it played an important role in the events that would later be termed [[Bleeding Kansas]].{{citation need|date=May 2024}}
==Creation==
The company was formed in the midst of the [[Origins of the American Civil War#Sectional tensions and the emergence of mass politics|sectional crisis]] that preceded the [[American Civil War]]. To the Northern United States, the concept of [[popular sovereignty in the United States|popular sovereignty]], which stated that the population of each new [[U.S. state]] should be allowed to decide if it allowed slavery, was an attempt by Southerners to gain power. When the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]] threatened to extend popular sovereignty into the new [[Kansas Territory]], Eli Thayer, a second-term Congressman from Massachusetts, hatched the idea of an Emigrant Aid Company in the winter of 1853–1854. His primary partners in the venture were [[Alexander H. Bullock]] and [[Edward Everett Hale]], and together, they set Thayer's plans in motion on March 5, 1854.<ref name="TerriK">{{cite conference|author=New England Emigrant Aid Company|title=Minutes, New England Emigrant Aid Company Annual Meetings| page = 1| publisher = Territorial Kansas Online| year = 2009| location = KSHS| url = http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=show_document&document_id=101534&FROM_PAGE=|accessdate = August 3, 2009}}</ref> Thayer announced the company at a rally against the impending passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in [[Worcester, Massachusetts|Worcester]] on March 11. Shortly thereafter, the company's charter was approved by the [[75th Massachusetts General Court (1854)|Massachusetts Legislature]] for up to $5,000,000 in capital.<ref name="KHQ1">{{cite web|title=New England Emigrant Aid Company|url=http://www.kshs.org/cool3/neeacsign.htm |publisher=Kansas Historical Society|year=2009|accessdate=August 2, 2009}}</ref><ref name="Ref_a">Thayer (1889), pp. 15-25.</ref>
Under its charter, the Emigrant Aid Company was "to supply information, cheapen transportation, and set up saw mills and flour mills" in the new territory. The idea of the company was to win Kansas for the free-state movement while at the same time turning a tidy profit for investors.<ref name=Renehan>{{cite book
|page=81
|title=The Secret Six. The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown
|first=Edward J.
|last=Renehan Jr.
|location=New York
|publisher=Crown
|year=1995
|isbn=051759028X}}</ref>
Many of the sponsors of the company did not believe in social or political equality for Blacks. In addition to banning slavery in the territory, they also expected, if victorious, to ban black citizenship and property ownership.<ref name=Renehan/> Kansas's first constitution, the never-adopted [[Constitutions of Kansas#Topeka Constitution]], banned free as well as enslaved Blacks from the Territory.{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}
Officially, the company was a profit-making venture, and how the settlers voted was of no consequence to the company. For example, the company secretary, Thomas Webb released a pamphlet in 1855 stating that although the settlers sent to the territories would not be required to vote for one side or the other, they were expected to support the free-state movement.<ref name="KHQ1" /> A number of abolitionists questioned the profit motive behind the company, and even many of Thayer's potential investors balked at the notion "that people might say we were influenced by pecuniary considerations in our patriotic work." Although Thayer personally disagreed with such hesitations, in 1855 the company reorganized as a [[benevolent society]] and changed its name to the New England Emigrant Aid Company.<ref name="Ref_b">Davis (1984), pp. 40–41.</ref>
==Reaction==
The success of the endeavor prompted other aid assistance companies to form back East, in [[New York (state)|New York]] and [[Ohio]], with new companies such as the Worcester County Emigrant Aid Society.<ref name="Celia">{{Cite book|title=Celia, A Slave|last=McLaurin|first=Melton Alonza|url=https://archive.org/details/celiaslave00mcla|url-access=registration|quote=New England Emigrant Aid Company.|publisher=University of Georgia Press|location=Georgia|year=1991|page=[https://archive.org/details/celiaslave00mcla/page/55 55] | isbn=978-0-8203-1352-8}}</ref><ref name="Johnson">{{Cite book|title=The Abolitionists Vindicated in a Review of Eli Thayers' Paper on the New England Emigrant Aid Society|last=Johnson|first=Oliver|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RfJYAAAAMAAJ&q=Emigrant%20Aid|year=1887|page=28 | publisher=F.P. Rice}}</ref>
==Impact==
The company was directly responsible for creating the [[Kansas]] towns of [[Lawrence, Kansas|Lawrence]] and [[Manhattan, Kansas|Manhattan]], and it played a key role in founding [[Topeka, Kansas|Topeka]] and [[Osawatomie, Kansas|Osawatomie]]. Lawrence was named after the company secretary, [[Amos Adams Lawrence]].<ref name="KHQ">{{Cite journal|last=Barry|first=Louie|title=The New England Emigrant Aid Company Parties of 1855|url=http://www.kshs.org/publicat/khq/1943/43_3_barry.htm|publisher=Kansas State Historical Society|journal=Kansas Historical Quarterly|date=August 1943|pages=227–268|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090419195258/http://www.kshs.org/publicat/khq/1943/43_3_barry.htm|archive-date=2009-04-19}}</ref> Multiple politicians were found in the emigrants who left for Kansas, such as [[Daniel Read Anthony]], [[Charles L. Robinson]], [[Samuel C. Pomeroy]], and [[Martin F. Conway]], who would later be Kansas's first [[US Representative]].{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}
The exact number of people who left for Kansas is unknown. James Rawley puts the numbers somewhere around 2000, about a third of whom returned home,<ref name="Rawley">Rawley (1979), p. 85.</ref> but the [[Kansas Historical Society]] puts the number at around 900 for those who left for Kansas in 1855 alone.<ref name="KHQ" />
The company's mission was ultimately successful, and Kansas entered the United States as a free state in 1861, as soon as the Southern legislators blocking it had walked out of Congress, to participate in the Confederate government.{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}
==Notes==
<references group="n" />
==References==
{{reflist}}
==Sources==
* {{cite book|last=Corder|first=Eric|title=Prelude to Civil War; Kansas-Missouri, 1854-61|url=https://archive.org/details/preludetocivilwa00cord|url-access=registration|location=[[New York City, NY]]|publisher=[[Crowell-Collier Publishing Company|Crowell-Collier Press]]|year=1970}}
* {{cite book|last=Davis|first=Kenneth Sydney|title=Kansas: A History|series=States and the nation|location=[[New York City, NY]]|publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]]|year=1984|isbn=0-393-30179-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Etcheson|first=Nicole|title=Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era|location=[[Lawrence, KS]]|publisher=[[University Press of Kansas]]|year=2004|isbn=0-7006-1287-4}}
* {{cite book|last=Freehling|first=William W.|title=The Road to Disunion|location=[[Oxford, UK]]|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=1990|isbn=0-19-505814-3}}
* {{cite book|last=Goodrich|first=T.H.|title=War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861|location=[[Mechanicsburg, PA]]|publisher=[[Stackpole Books]]|year=1998|isbn=0-8117-1921-9}}
* {{cite book|last=Olson|first=Kevin G. W.|title=Frontier Manhattan: Yankee Settlement to Kansas Town, 1854-1894|publisher=[[University Press of Kansas]]|location=[[Lawrence, KS]]|year=2012|isbn=978-0-7006-1832-3}}
* {{cite book|last=Rawley|first=James A.|title=Race & Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War|location=[[Lincoln, NE]]|publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]]|year=1979|isbn=0-8032-3854-1}}
* {{cite book|last=Thayer|first=Eli|year=1889|title=History of the Kansas Crusade: Its Friends and its Foes|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924028875099}}
==External links==
* [http://www.kshs.org/cool3/neeacsign.htm Kansas State Historical Society article on the New English Emigrant Aid Company]
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Pre-statehood history of Kansas]]
[[Category:Bleeding Kansas]]
[[Category:History of immigration to the United States]]
[[Category:1854 establishments in Massachusetts]]
[[Category:19th century in Boston]]
[[Category:Organizations established in 1854]]
[[Category:Politically motivated migrations]]
[[Category:American abolitionist organizations]]