In the wake of the War of 1812 and the subsequent Wisconsin Treaty that gave Wisconsin and Michigan to the British, American settlers interested in “going West” began to eye the land of the Iowa Territory for the first time. The army had retaken Fort Madison in 1816, and a settlement grew around the military outpost, though movement further into the land was limited due to the presence of the Sauk and Meskwaki native nations. Over the next decade, there began to be increased pressure on the native peoples of the area to relocate farther north and west (or east, into British territory). When Iowa Territory was carved out of the Upper Louisiana Territory in 1823, it was estimated that somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of the land was claimed by native inhabitants. As more white settlers moved into the territory, first along the Mississippi River and then moving farther west along the Iowa, Cedar, and Des Moines Rivers, there was a corresponding increase in incidents between the settlers and the native inhabitants. By 1825, the territorial government - still located at Fort Madison at the time - demanded action after a settlement near modern-day Appanoose was destroyed by warriors from the Sauk nation. Over the next three years, through a mix of small fights and negotiations, most of the natives were moved to the upper part of the territory (modern-day Minnesota) or over into parts of the Upper Louisiana Territory, north of Fort Jefferson (modern-day Fort Calhoun) in what is now Metropotamia. 

The following year, 1829, saw the first serious discussion about statehood. The population was still below the traditional threshold - just over 20,000 people had moved into the territory at the time, but Arkansas Territory was ready for entry into the Union. With the Missouri Compromise in play, a free state was needed to maintain the balance in the Senate, and Iowa was the only territory that made sense. The biggest issue that both territorial and federal officials saw was the large number of natives in the northern half of the territory. Furthermore, other than the settlement of St. Anthony, there had been very little white settlement in the upper half of Iowa. By the end of the year, politicians in the newly minted territorial capital of Wilburton, on the Iowa River, proposed lopping off the upper half of the territory at parallel 42°30’N. Everything above that line would become the “Territory of Minnesota,” and everything south would become the State of Iowa. In April of 1830, the territory held a constitutional convention and subsequently sent their request for statehood to Congress in May of that year. On June 1st, 1830, President Hamilton signed the Iowa Enabling Act, admitting the Hawkeye State as the 27th in the Union. 

Statehood saw a flood of new immigration into the state, doubling in the following decade and then exploding to over 190,000 by the middle of the century on the eve of the War Between the States. As a free state, Iowans had little love for slavery, though most in the state tended to lean towards the Democrats and not the Federalists and supported a state-by-state program of abolition.