Constitution Hall Topeka - Please visit our website

Restoring Constitution Hall in Topeka, the territorial Kansas Free State and first Kansas Capitol. Join us!
OldKansasCapitol.org

The Free State or Topeka Constitution was written here in 1855. Constitution Hall is the first stone building erected in the capital of Kansas. Write to us at PO Box 2551, Topeka, 66601, or visit our website.

The Topeka constitutional convention brought over forty delegates elected from Leavenworth, Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan and free state settlements in between, some walking 60 miles to attend. They had gathered in defiance of appointed proslavery Territorial officials and the "bogus" Territorial legislature elected by citizens of Missouri.

The Free State constitution was the first written for a state to be called Kansas. It was progressive for its time. It's position on slavery was radical, to ban slavery and Negro indentures made in other states. It passed in the U.S House of Representatives but stopped by the pro-slavery Senate.

Constitution Hall-Topeka is a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program site and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In addition to the Free State legislature and early state government, five Topeka churches were established, the first school classes held and the town government met.

The administration of President Franklin Pierce permitted federal troops to disperse the Topeka Legislature on the Fourth of July in 1856. For this reason, Pierce was removed from local streets named for the presidents; instead, the name of his political rival Henry Clay was given the street between Fillmore and Buchanan.

Constitution Hall was the Quartermaster's Depot on the Jim Lane Trail to freedom in the North.

Cyrus K. Holiday, signer of the Topeka Constitution, organized the first Kansas railroad convention in its assembly hall. He was later the founder of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad.

After the six-year struggle over statehood called "Bleeding Kansas," Kansas entered the Union a free state on Jan. 29, 1861. The Civil War erupted three months later. Constitution Hall became the Kansas Statehouse from 1864-1869 while the current Statehouse was being built five blocks south. The Topeka Constitution Hall is among Kansas and Missouri sites important in preserving the stories of freedom struggles on the western frontier in the years leading up to the Civil War.

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