=Advantages of the North.= The people of the North, however, possessed one very important advantage. The population of the South consisted largely of plantation owners and their slaves, and it was not an easy matter for these men to leave their property or to take it into a new and untried country. On the other hand, the North was a land of small farms and shops and many laborers. Moreover, there was much foreign immigration into the United States in those years, and since the employment of slaves left no place in the South for white laborers, most of the immigrants entered the northern states, and added to the number of those who were ready and anxious to go farther west. Consequently many more settlers came into Kansas from the North than from the South, but the Southerners tried to overcome this handicap in other ways. =The Coming of the Missourians.= The plan of the South was to use Missouri as the stepping-stone to Kansas. Immediately following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill a number of Missourians came over into Kansas and took as claims large tracts of the best lands, in some cases not even waiting for the removal of the Indians. Settlers who asked for claims were required to build houses and to use the land for homes for a certain length of time. While some of the Missourians met these requirements, many of them did not come here to live. They notched trees, or posted notices, or laid rails on the ground in the shape of a house, or in some other way indicated their claims, and returned to their homes in Missouri, coming back only to vote or to fight when it seemed to them necessary. While in Kansas, however, they held a meeting at which it was resolved that: “We recognize slavery as always existing in this Territory,” and, “We will afford protection to no abolitionists as settlers of Kansas Territory.” =Handicap to Northern Emigration.= The free-state people could not step over a boundary line and be in Kansas. They lived a long way off, the trip out here was expensive, and little was known of the new Territory. It was a land without homes or towns, churches, schools, or newspapers, and the Northerners knew that people would hesitate to start to Kansas under all these difficulties.