In the late antebellum period the United States experienced one of the greatest economic booms in its history.

From 1843—when the nation began to recover from the recession of the late 1830s—until the Panic

of 1857, economic growth continued almost uninterrupted and the nation’s gross national product doubled.

New technologies such as the telegraph and the railroad improved communications and transportation

and helped tie the disparate sections of the country together into an increasingly unified capitalistic market.

Territory gained from the Texas annexation, the Mexican War, and Oregon settlement added vast tracts of

land and resources to the United States. Americans moved west, pulled by dreams of California gold or by new

farms in Wisconsin, Iowa, the Pacific Northwest and, finally, Kansas. Unregulated banking and gold from western

mines poured money into the economy and fueled the boom with easy credit. Americans tried to make a

quick profit on everything from stocks and guano to slaves, and speculation became almost a national pastime.

Towns sprang up across the West as settlers from both North and South moved in, lured by hopes for easy riches. Quindaro, one of these small towns, materialized in early 1857 on the Missouri River, a few miles upstream from the frontier town that became Kansas City.1