This sepia colored photograph shows the Planters Hotel in Leavenworth, Kansas. The four-story brick structure, completed in December of 1856, at the corner of Main and Shawnee consisted of 100 rooms that provided comfortable and spacious accommodations for weary travelers. Before the start of the Civil War the hotel was a gathering place for pro-slavery forces and a campaign stop for Abraham Lincoln in his bid for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Presidency. On December 5, 1859 Lincoln spoke on the steps of the Planters Hotel urging voters not to use violence but to use their vote at the ballot box to keep slavery from expanding into the territory. From that day forward the hotel became a Leavenworth landmark, until it was declared unsafe for occupancy in the 1950s and eventually torn down.

Creator: Birdsall, G.E.
Date: Between 1859 and 1880