When the United States acquired from France, in 1803, the territory of which Atchison county is a part, slavery was a legalized institution, and many of the residents held slaves. In the treaty of cession, there was incorporated an expressed stipulation that the inhabitants of Louisiana “should be incorporated into the Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States, and in the meantime they should be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the religion which they professed.” Thus it came to pass for over fifty years after the time that vast empire was acquired from France the bitter contest between the anti-slavery and the pro-slavery advocates ebbed and flowed, and amidst a continual clash of ideas and finally after the shedding of blood, Kansas, and Atchison county, were born. It was in the Thirty-second Congress that petitions were presented for the organization of the Territory of the Platte, viz: all that tract lying west of Iowa and Missouri and extending west to the Rocky mountains, but no action on the petitions was taken at that time. December 13, 1852, Willard P. Hall, a congressman from Missouri, submitted to the House of Representatives a bill organizing this region. This bill was referred to the committee on territories, which reported February 22, 1853, through its chairman, William A. Richardson, of Illinois. A bill organizing the territory of Nebraska, which covered the same territory as the bill of Mr. Hall, was met by unexpected and strong opposition from the southern members of Congress, and was rejected in the committee of the whole. The House, however, did not adopt the action of the committee, but passed the bill and sent it to the Senate, where it was defeated March 3, 1853, by six votes. On the fourteenth day of December, 1853, Senator Dodge, of Iowa, submitted to that body a new bill for the organization of the territory of Nebraska, embracing the same region as the bill which was defeated in the first session of the Thirty-second Congress. It was referred to the committee on territories, of which Stephen A. Douglas was chairman, on January 4, 1854.