It was everywhere conceded that Nebraska would be a free Territory.  The eyes of the nation were focused upon Kansas, which was from the first debatable ground.  A rush of settlers from the Northwest joined by pioneers from Kentucky and Missouri followed the opening up of the new lands.  As Douglas had foretold, the tide of immigration held back by Indian treaties now poured in.  The characteristic features of American colonization seemed about to repeat themselves.  So far the movement of population was for the most part spontaneous.  Land-hunger, not the political destiny of the West, drove men to locate their claims on the Kansas and the Missouri.  By midsummer colonists of a somewhat different stripe appeared.  Sent out under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Company, they were to win Kansas for freedom at the same time that they subdued the wilderness.  It was a species of assisted emigration which was new in the history of American colonization, outside the annals of missionary effort.  The chief promoter of this enterprise was a thrifty, Massachusetts Yankee, who saw no reason why crusading and business should not go hand in hand.  Kansas might be wrested from the slave-power at the same time that returns on invested funds were secured.

The effect of these developments upon the aggressive pro-slavery people of Missouri is not easy to describe.  Hitherto they had assumed that Kansas would become a slave Territory in the natural order of events.  This was the prevailing Southern opinion.  At once the people of western Missouri were put upon the defensive.  Blue lodges were formed for the purpose of carrying slavery into Kansas.  Appeals were circulated in the slave-holding States for colonists and funds.  Passions were inflamed by rumors which grew as they stalked abroad.  The peaceful occupation of Kansas was at an end.  Popular sovereignty was to be tested under abnormal conditions.

When the election of territorial delegates to Congress occurred, in the late fall, a fatal defect in the organic law was disclosed, to which many of the untoward incidents of succeeding months may be ascribed.  The territorial act conferred the right of voting at the first elections upon all free, white, male inhabitants, twenty-one years of age and actually resident in the Territory.[536] Here was an unfortunate ambiguity.  What was actual residence?  Every other act organizing a territorial government was definite on this point, permitting only those to vote who were living in the proposed Territory, at the time of the passage of the act.  The omission in the case of Kansas and Nebraska is easily accounted for.  Neither had legal residents when the act was passed.  Indeed, this defect bears witness to the fact that Congress was legislating, not for actual, but for hypothetical communities.  The consequences were far-reaching, for at the very first election, it was charged that frauds were practiced by bands of Missourians, who had crossed the border only to aid the pro-slavery cause.  Not much was made of these charges, as no particular interest attached to the election.