"This legislation will not only preserve and showcase the pivotal history of our state and the subsequent contribution Kansas made to the nation, but it will also serve as a tool to promote economic development through travel and tourism for our state," Brownback said.

"I am pleased the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area will now have this national designation," said Talent. "The events that transpired along the Missouri-Kansas border were critical conflicts that led up to the Civil War, and we have a responsibility to protect and document the historic significance of this unique piece of American history." ...

The legislation creates the Freedoms Frontier National Heritage Area by joining communities throughout eastern Kansas and western Missouri to document, preserve and celebrate the significant role Kansas and Missouri played in the political struggle that led to the Civil War and in other historic struggles for equality in the state.

Brownback continued, "I would like to thank Senator Jim Talent and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for their unwavering support of this bill and for moving this bill so quickly"

Missouri and Kansas were bitter enemies during the War of Yankee Aggression. In fact it can be argued that the war started on the Missouri / Kansas border. New England Yankee Puritans flooded the territory of Kansas, with weapons supplied by such Puritan organizations as the Emigrant Aide Society, in an attempt to usurp the ideals of Popular Sovereignty that was supposed to secure peace in the area. Missourians recognizing an invasion when they saw it, responded in kind by staking their claims in eastern Kansas.

When Lincoln launched his War of Aggression, he legitimized these Puritan invaders by allowing them to form Union military units, and with a wink and a nod, quietly approved of their ransacking of Missouri, taking household furnishings, livestock, silverware and lives. Even those in the after life did not receive due respect from the marauding Jayhawkers as Missouri homesteads were robbed of their grave markers and tombstones, which eventually made their way to the town square of Lawrence, Kansas and were auctioned off to be used as porch steps for the Puritan immigrants.

This is not the story you will hear presented by the Freedom's Frontier Project. Nor does this come as a surprise.

As a newly elected Senator in 2003, Jim Talent had his whole career ahead of him. Yet when Governor Bob Holden removed Missouri's two Confederate flags in Jan. ,2003  Senator Talent chose to side with him and Richard Gephardt. The Jan. 26, 2003 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper published Jim Talent's  views on Governor Holden's decision:

" His personal belief is that flags flying over official government property should be symbols of unity, not symbols of division."