Bleeding Kansas | blackexistence2

Bleeding Kansas is the period of much violence over whether the territory would be free or slave. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraksa Act overturned the Missouri Compromise's use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular rule or sovereignty, commanded that the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. Proslavery and free-state settlers flooded into Kansas to try to influence the decision. It’s important to remember that the decision would affect politics and power, and that was the biggest factor in the North’s & South’s passion on the issue. Violence soon erupted as both factions fought for control. Abolitionist John Brown led anti-slavery fighters in Kansas before his well-known raid on Harpers Ferry.

The opening of the Kansas and Nebraska territories in 1854 under the principle of popular sovereignty provoked a long-lasting political crisis in both Kansas and the whole nation. Rival governments had been established in Kansas by late 1855, one backed by proslavery Missourians, the other by antislavery groups. Civil conflict in Kansas accompanied the political polarization.

Hostilities between armed bands seemed imminent in late 1855 as well over a thousand Missourians crossed the border and menaced Lawrence, Kansas. On May 21, 1856, thugs actually looted that town, known to be a staunch free-state area. In response, John Brown orchestrated the murder several days later of five proslavery settlers along Pottawatomie Creek. Four months of partisan violence and depredation ensued. Small armies ranged over eastern Kansas, clashing at Black Jack, Franklin, Fort Saunders, Hickory Point, Slough Creek, and Osawatomie, where Brown and forty others were routed in late August.

John W. Geary, appointed territorial governor in September, managed to cool the "border war" only by federal troops! But Kansas had hardly ceased bleeding--as became apparent in 1858 with the Marais des Cygnes massacre of five free-state men and pronounced disorder in several counties. Although Kansan’s in that year once and for all rejected the proslavery Lecompton constitution, such violence continued on a smaller scale into 1861.