Lecompton Capital of Kansas Territory

The elegant capitol the plaque mentions was started but never finished. In 1882 Lane University, named for the free-state leader James H. Lane, put up a stone building on its foundation and brought professors and students to the old capital until 1902, when the school moved to Holton and merged into Campbell College; its bell went too and is now at Holton High School. The building then served as Lecompton's high school until a larger one opened beside it in 1926, fell into disrepair, and was restored in the 1970s as the Territorial Capital Museum.

What the plaque says

Lecompton Capital of Kansas Territory In 1855 the new town of Lecompton was named the capital of Kansas Territory. President James Buchanan appointed a governor and officials to establish government offices in Lecompton, and construction began on an elegant capitol building. In the fall of 1857 a convention met in Constitution Hall and drafted the famous Lecompton Constitution, which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state. The constitution was rejected after intense national debate and was one of the prime topics of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The controversy contributed to the growing dispute soon to erupt in civil war. The Lecompton Constitution failed, in part, because the antislavery party won control of the territorial legislature in the election of 1857. The new legislature met in Constitution Hall, now a National Historic Landmark, and immediately began to abolish the proslavery laws. The victorious free- state leaders chose Topeka as capital when Kansas became a state in 1861. Erected by Kansas Department of Transportation and State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Watkins Museum of History — 8.5 mi
  Douglas County's free museum in J. B. Watkins's 1888 bank and mortgage building on Massachusetts Street, a red-brick fortune built on Kansas farm loans and given to the city by his widow.
• Haskell Cultural Center and Museum — 9.2 mi
  Haskell Indian Nations University's own museum in Lawrence, built of cypress logs in 2002 to tell the truth about the federal boarding school the university grew out of.
• Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park — 16 mi
  Monroe Elementary in Topeka, one of four grade schools the city kept for Black children, now the museum of the case that thirteen Topeka families brought and the Supreme Court decided in 1954.
• Prairie Peoples Park (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) — 32 mi
  The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation's powwow grounds west of Mayetta, on the reservation the band held when most Potawatomi in Kansas took allotments and the promise of citizenship.

More markers nearby

• Kansa Indians — 5.7 mi
• Lawrence — 8.3 mi
• Lawrence and the Old Trails — 14 mi
• Capital City of Kansas — 16 mi