Bleeding Kansas
Part of Prelude to American Civil War
Date 1854 to 1860
Location Kansas and Missouri
Result Abolitionists (Kansas) are victorious
Kansas (Abolitionists) Missouri (Slave Owners)
John Brown
William Quantrill
Casualties and losses
unknown, 100 or fewer (30-40 killed) unknown, 80 or fewer (20-30 killed)

Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a series of violent events, involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of the U.S. state of Missouri roughly between 1854 and 1858. At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state or slave state. As such, Bleeding Kansas was a proxy war between Northerners and Southerners over the issue of slavery in the United States. The term "Bleeding Kansas" was coined by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune; the events it encompasses directly presaged the American Civil War.

The United States had long struggled to balance the interests of slaveholders and abolitionists. The events later known as Bleeding Kansas were set into motion by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which nullified the Missouri Compromise and instead implemented the concept of popular sovereignty. An ostensibly democratic idea, popular sovereignty stated that the inhabitants of each territory or state should decide whether it would be a free or slave state; however, this resulted in immigration en masse to Kansas by activists from both sides. At one point, Kansas had two separate governments, each with its own constitution, although only one was federally recognized. On January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, less than three months before the Battle of Fort Sumter which began the Civil War.


Events leading to
the US Civil War
Northwest Ordinance
Missouri Compromise
Tariff of 1828
Nullification Crisis
Nat Turner's slave rebellion
The Amistad
Texas Annexation
Mexican–American War
Wilmot Proviso
Ostend Manifesto
Manifest Destiny
Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
Compromise of 1850
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Kansas–Nebraska Act
Bleeding Kansas
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry
Election of 1860
Secession of Southern States
Battle of Fort Sumter
File:US Slave Free 1789-1861.gif

The issue of slavery, deeply embedded in the culture of the Southern United States had been divisive since the country's formation. Indeed, the United States Constitution probably would not have been ratified had slavery not been preserved, and the three-fifths compromise was meant to balance the interests of slave states and free states. The issue became even more contentious as the country expanded and was faced with admitting new states as free states or slave states, threatening to shift the fragile balance of power in either direction. The Missouri Compromise was an attempt to preserve this balance; later, the Compromise of 1850 served a similar purpose, but the nation continued to teeter on the brink of civil war.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the Kansas and Nebraska territories and opened the lands to settlement by American pioneers. The Act also established that the question of whether slavery would be allowed in the new states of Kansas and Nebraska would be decided by the inhabitants of the states – essentially repealing the Missouri Compromise. The concept of letting the settler decide, now known as "popular sovereignty", was an idea advocated by U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories. Popular sovereignty was an attempt to offer concessions to the Southern states by making possible the expansion of slavery into both western and northern territories. While this doctrine, also known in Kansas Territory as "squatter sovereignty", was not actually formulated by U.S. Senator Lewis Cass, he nevertheless earned the sobriquet "Father of Popular Sovereignty" by providing its ideological framework in a letter published in the Washington Daily Union, which later also secured for Cass the presidential nomination of the Democratic party.[1]

Initially, it was assumed that few slave owners would attempt to settle in Kansas and make it a slave state, because it was thought to be too far north for profitable exploitation of slaves. However, the eastern portion of Kansas along the Missouri River was as suitable for slave-based agriculture as the nearby "black belt" of Missouri in which most of Missouri's slaves were held.

The settlement and the zone formation of the state government in Kansas became highly politicized beyond the borders of the territory. There were a number of reasons for this. Missouri, a slave state, was uniquely exposed to free states, with Illinois and Iowa bordering it on the east and north. Most parts of Missouri held very few slaves, and slave owners were a very small proportion of the state's population. If Kansas entered the Union as a free state, Missouri would have free soil on three sides. Since manumission, abolition activity, and escape were all more common in the border south, the existence of nearby free soil was a threat to Missouri slaveowners.

Also, in the Senate, each state is apportioned two senate seats. A rough balance had existed between free and slave states, but each addition of a state threatened to tip the balance, disrupting the status quo (see Slave Power).

Meeting of North and SouthEdit

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Rumors had spread through the South that 30,000 Northerners were descending on Kansas, and in November 1854, thousands of armed Southerners known as "Border Ruffians," mostly from Missouri, poured over the line in an attempt to steal the election to Congress of a single territorial delegate. Less than half the ballots were cast by registered voters, and at one location, only 20 of over 600 voters were legal residents. The proslavery forces won the election. While Kansas had approximately 1,500 registered voters at the time, not all of whom actually voted, over 6,000 votes were cast. More significantly, the Border Ruffians repeated their actions on March 30, 1855 when the first territorial legislature was elected, swaying the vote again in favor of slavery[citation needed].

The proslavery territorial legislature convened in Pawnee on July 2, 1855, but after one week it adjourned to the Shawnee Mission on the Missouri border, where it began passing laws to institutionalize slavery in Kansas Territory. In August 1855, a group of Free-Soilers met and resolved to reject the proslavery laws passed by the territorial legislature. This meeting led to the drafting of the Topeka Constitution and the formation of a shadow government. In a message to Congress on January 24, 1856, President Franklin Pierce declared the Free-State Topeka government to be a "revolution" against the rightful leaders.[2]

Later, in April 1856, a three-man congressional committee investigated the vote. The majority report of the committee found the elections to be improperly influenced.

Open violenceEdit

In October 1855, John Brown came to Kansas Territory to fight slavery. On November 21, 1855 the (relatively bloodless) "Wakarusa War" began when a Free-Stater named Charles Dow was shot by a pro-slavery settler. The only fatal casualty occurring during the siege was one Free-State man named Thomas Barber. He was shot and killed on December 6, 1855 where the main body of the invaders were encamped, some six miles (ten kilometers) from Lawrence. A few months later, on May 21, 1856, a group of Border Ruffians entered the Free-State stronghold of Lawrence, where they burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two newspaper offices and their printing presses, and ransacked homes and stores.

The following day, on the afternoon of May 22, 1856, Preston Smith Brooks (a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina) physically attacked Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate chambers, hitting him on the head with his thick cane. Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and staggered away until he collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until he broke his cane. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Rep. Laurence Keitt, who was holding a pistol and shouting "Let them be!" This was in retaliation for insulting language Sumner used against Brooks's relative in a speech Sumner made that denounced Southerners for proslavery violence in Kansas. Sumner was beaten severely and did not return to his Senate desk for three years as a result of his injuries to the head and neck area; he became regarded as an antislavery martyr.
File:Southern Chivalry.jpg

These acts in turn inspired John Brown to lead a group of men in Kansas Territory on an attack at a proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek. During the night of May 24, the group, which included four of Brown's sons, led seven pro-slavery men from their homes and killed five of them with broadswords. Brown's men let Jerome Glanville and James Harris return home to the cabin of Harris.

On June 2, 1856, John Brown took future Confederate Colonel Henry C. Pate and 22 other pro-slavery soldiers prisoner at the Battle of Black Jack.


In August, thousands of proslavery Southerners formed into armies and marched into Kansas. That same month, Brown and several of his followers engaged 400 proslavery soldiers in the "Battle of Osawatomie." The hostilities raged for another two months until Brown departed the Kansas Territory, and a new territorial governor, John W. Geary, took office and managed to prevail upon both sides for peace. This was followed by a fragile peace broken by intermittent violent outbreaks for two more years. The last major outbreak of violence was touched off by the Marais des Cygnes massacre in 1858, where Border Ruffians killed five Free State men.

In all, approximately 56 people died in Bleeding Kansas by the time the violence completely abated in 1859.[3] Following the commencement of the American Civil War in 1861, additional guerrilla violence erupted on the border between Kansas and Missouri.

Constitutional fightEdit

An adjunct to the guerrilla warfare in Bleeding Kansas was the fight over the constitution that would govern the state of Kansas. Several constitutions were drafted, including the 1855 Topeka Constitution, which created the shadow Free-State government essentially by fiat.



Heritage AreaEdit

In 2006, legislation that enabled a new "Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area" (FFNHA) was passed by Congress. The heritage area is tasked with describing the story behind the Missouri/Kansas border war, the story of settlement, and the enduring struggle for freedom in the region to the present. FFNHA comprises 41 counties, 29 of which are in eastern and east-central Kansas and 12 of which are in western Missouri.


References Edit

  • KCPT Kansas City Public Television and Wide Awake Films (2007). "Bad Blood, the Border War that Triggered the Civil War" a documentary DVD (ISBN 0-9777261-42) [1]

External linksEdit

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et:Veritsev Kansas fr:Bleeding Kansas la:Kansia Cruda ms:Kansas Berdarah no:Bleeding Kansas pl:Bleeding Kansas