'Bleeding Kansas' was a term coined by the New York Tribune in 1856, referring to the escalating hostilities in the Kansas Territory between pro-slavery activists and anti-slavery 'free staters' following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Violent confrontations between these two factions went on from 1854 to 1859, though hostilities would continue through 1861, when Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, and continue through the American Civil War.
Bleeding Kansas is understood as an overture to the American Civil War (1861-1865), as the factional violence clearly showed that the issue of slavery could only finally be dealt with through military action. It also highlighted how divided the United States had become over slavery as neighbor killed neighbor in disputes over whether Kansas should be a free state or a slave state.
These disputes were encouraged by the provision in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowing for popular sovereignty in deciding the matter. The people in the Kansas Territory would vote on which they wanted their state to be. The problem with this, as became clear quite quickly, is that it drew people from both sides of the issue to fill the region with as many supporters of their respective causes as possible and also encouraged pro-slavery 'border ruffians' from Missouri to cross into the territory to vote illegally.
The tensions in the region were never resolved, and hostilities between free staters, pro-slavery advocates, and their allies, the border ruffians, continued throughout the Civil War. At least 60 people died between 1854 and 1859, though that number is most likely low. Although Bleeding Kansas is usually understood in reference to the years 1854-1859, hostilities were only finally ended by the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, abolishing slavery.
Background
In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, prohibiting the spread of chattel slavery into the Northwest Territory, and, in 1807, it abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Slavery was restricted to those states in which it had already been established, and each state could decide for itself whether to maintain the 'peculiar institution' or vote for abolition.
Northern states, generally, were less dependent on slave labor than those in the South and so slavery was gradually abandoned there, but in the South, with its large plantations of cotton and tobacco, slavery continued to flourish, especially after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, which sped up the process of cultivating cotton but required more labor in picking and transporting the crop.
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 nearly doubled the size of the United States but created controversy over whether that region, once it was divided into states, would be admitted to the Union as free or slave. This problem was addressed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri (part of the Louisiana Purchase) as a slave state and Maine as a free state in 1820, thereby maintaining the balance of power between slave and free states. The Missouri Compromise also outlawed slavery north of the 36°30´ parallel and west of the Mississippi River except for Missouri.
After the Mexican American War (1846-1848) and the acquisition of more land in the so-called Mexican Cession, the question arose again and was answered by the Compromise of 1850, which included the provision that slavery in the states of New Mexico and Utah would be decided by popular sovereignty. The compromise also included the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, compelling authorities, law enforcement, and private citizens in free states to help capture and return fugitive slaves to their masters; a law which was extremely unpopular and increased tensions between free and slave states.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was drafted by the same man who had submitted the final version of the Compromise of 1850, Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) of Illinois. Since Kansas and Nebraska were both north of the 36°30´ parallel, Douglas' act abolished the Missouri Compromise of 1820 in leaving it up to the people themselves to choose slavery or reject it. As Nebraska was further north, it was assumed the people would reject slavery, but Kansas, bordered by the slave state of Missouri, and with wide open plains for cultivation of crops, was expected to enter the Union as a slave state.
Problems began with the provision of popular sovereignty in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, as each side of the issue saw an opportunity to increase their power in representational government by filling the region with supporters as quickly as possible. Consequently, immigrants from free and slave states hurried to Kansas to establish the residency required to vote on the issue. Since Kansas was so close to Missouri, pro-slavery activists arrived first, establishing the towns of Atchison and Leavenworth. Anti-slavery free staters also arrived in 1854, setting up communities in what would become Lawrence and Topeka. The vote was set for November 1854, and all the players were in place for the hostilities to begin, which would, within two years, be referred to as Bleeding Kansas.
Votes & Hostilities 1854-1856
Among the most militant free staters was John Brown (1800-1859), who campaigned in the northeast to raise funds and encourage like-minded people to migrate to Kansas. At the same time, so-called 'border ruffians' were doing the same. In November 1854, armed groups from Missouri showed up for the vote, intimidating free staters and illegally casting ballots for the pro-slavery candidate, John Wilkins Whitfield.
The number of votes cast exceeded the number of registered citizens of the territory. A congressional investigation revealed the fraud, and a revote was called for March 1855. This event was a repeat of November 1854, with pro-slavery advocates streaming in from Missouri and swinging the vote to their candidates. Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder invalidated some of these outcomes as fraudulent, but this did nothing to resolve the problem. Scholar Andrew Delbanco comments:
Upon appeal to the federally appointed governor, a revote was ordered in some districts, and antislavery candidates did little better. Meeting in the summer of 1855 at the town of Lecompton in eastern Kansas, the legislature ignored the new results and seated an overwhelmingly pro-slavery majority, which passed a raft of slave codes, including one prescribing the death penalty for anyone aiding a fugitive slave. In October, Free-Soilers, committed to the principle that slavery should not be permitted to expand, and whose numbers were starting to catch up to those of their adversaries, convened a counter government in Topeka and demanded new elections.
By now, men on both sides were "walking arsenals." The New England Emigrant Aid Company…sent funds and guns to Free-Soil farmers looking to pick up stakes and move to the fresh fields of Kansas. After Henry Ward Beecher…declared that trying to teach slave owners the error of their ways was like reading "the Bible to Buffaloes," the carbines carried by antislavery men in Kansas became known as "Beecher's Bibles."
(326-327)
Kansas now had two different capitals – Lecompton (pro-slavery) and Lawrence (free state) – two different constitutions, and two different legislatures. The first outbreak of hostilities was the so-called Wakarusa War of November-December 1855, which started when Franklin Coleman (pro-slavery) shot and killed a free stater named Charles Dow. The killing had nothing to do with slavery or the political divisions it had caused; it was a personal feud, but because the killer was pro-slavery and the victim a free stater, both sides seized on the event.
Coleman had turned himself in and been released, but another man, a free stater named Jacob Branson, who had been a witness, was arrested for disturbing the peace. A posse of free staters released Branson, which riled up the pro-slavery faction, and approximately 1000 men from Missouri crossed the border to do battle. The two sides faced each other, prepared to fight, but the new governor, Wilson Shannon, was able to broker a truce. The only casualty of the Wakarusa War, besides Dow, was a free stater named Thomas Barber, killed in an ambush before Shannon arrived.
Escalating Hostilities 1856-1859
The events of the Wakarusa War were not forgotten by either side, and tensions continued to escalate. On 21 May 1856, a pro-slavery posse, made up largely of border ruffians from Missouri, sacked the city of Lawrence, destroying the offices of the free state newspapers Herald of Freedom and Kansas Free State and burning down the Free State Hotel. Delbanco writes:
Remarkably, despite the use of artillery as an instrument of demolition, and the promise of pro-slavery leaders to litter the whole territory with "the carcasses of the Abolitionists," the only casualty was a pro-slavery man killed by falling masonry. But in the minds of anti-slavery men, the attack demanded reprisal, and as the blow-for-blow logic took hold, the conflict entered a cycle of escalation.
(328)
The next day, 22 May 1856, partisan violence broke out in Washington, D.C., when pro-slavery Democrat Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked abolitionist Republican Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the chamber of the United States Senate. On 19-20 May, Sumner had delivered a speech in the Senate condemning slavery and the slave power of the South and calling for the immediate admission of Kansas as a free state. Brooks, incensed after reading the speech, caught Sumner in the nearly empty chamber on the 22nd and beat him senseless with a cane.
News of the attack on Sumner traveled quickly and, on the night of 24 May 1856, John Brown led a party, which included some of his sons in the now infamous Pottawatomie Massacre. They called on the homes of five pro-slavery advocates and hacked them to death with swords and knives. The reason for Brown's attack on these particular men is still debated, but it is thought that the sacking of Lawrence and caning of Sumner were primary motivating factors in the slaughter of pro-slavery men associated with the courts.
Violence continued through the summer of 1856, finally culminating in the Battle of Osawatomie on 30 August. Slaveholder and soldier John W. Reid of Missouri led a band of 200-400 border ruffians against the free state town of Osawatomie, Kansas, on the banks of the Marais des Cygnes River.
A group of free staters from Osawatomie had raided the neighborhood of pro-slavery advocates on 13 August, making off with cattle and horses. Reid, retaliating, gathered as many men as he could to ride with him and burn the town. John Brown, his sons, and his men – many of whom had been part of the raid on the pro-slavery community – were camped outside of Osawatomie at the time. His son, Frederick Brown, in a cabin outside of town, was the first to discover Reid's men and was shot dead.
The shot alerted others, who ran out to see Reid's men riding away and Frederick dead, and then raised the alarm. John Brown and his men ran from their camp to the town to defend it. Scholar Stephen B. Oates writes:
Osawatomie was in a state of panic when Brown arrived. But as if by a miracle, the Missourians did not follow up their initial advantage and attack the town while everything was pandemonium; instead, they dallied around the bridge, possibly to have breakfast before they burned the settlement. Meanwhile, Brown [organized a defense, sending] men into the timber along the river where they had a better chance of defending themselves against enemy artillery. (169)
Reid's men opened fire with small arms and cannon, blasting the trees with volleys of grapeshot. Brown held his position, returning fire, for as long as he could before retreating. Facing no further resistance, Reid's company burned the town, only sparing three buildings where the women and children had taken refuge. With Osawatomie in flames, Reid marched on, vowing to burn every other free state town he came to.
Brown would later claim to have killed "70 or 80 of the enemy," and Reid claimed to have killed "about thirty abolitionists including Old Brown himself" (Oates, 172). There were only, at most, 40 defenders at Osawatomie, and they suffered 5 casualties, including Frederick Brown. Twelve of the defenders were taken prisoner. Reid lost 5 men in the attack. The reality of the numbers lost in the Battle of Osawatomie did not matter, however, as both Brown and Reid exaggerated the depredations of the other side, as well as their own valor, and stirred up even greater animosity.
Further violence ensued throughout the rest of 1856, and then, in 1857, tensions escalated further when the Dred Scott Decision was announced. The Dred Scott Decision (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857)) began as a freedom suit filed by the slave Dred Scott (circa 1799-1858) on behalf of himself and his wife, claiming they were free as they had been residents of the free territories of Illinois and Wisconsin.
The case made its way on appeal up to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled 7-2 against Scott, declaring him to be still enslaved but, further, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1777-1864), a pro-slavery advocate, writing the majority opinion, declared that Scott's lawsuit was invalid because Blacks were not United States citizens and so had no rights under the law. Taney further ruled that neither Congress nor territorial governors could exclude slavery from any region in the United States, as that would be a breach of a slaveholder's right to due process under the Fifth Amendment.
Pro-slavery advocates, obviously, rejoiced at a huge win for their side, but abolitionists denounced the ruling, and, in Kansas, this led to more violence. Brown would eventually leave Kansas Territory and continue his fight elsewhere, leading up to his Raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, on 16 October 1859, capture, and execution. In Kansas, though, there were plenty of others to keep hostilities alive on both sides and, among them, was pro-slavery champion Charles Hamilton, responsible for what is considered the last major event of Bleeding Kansas – the Marais des Cygnes Massacre.
On 19 May 1858, Hamilton led a band of around 30 border ruffians from Missouri into Kansas seeking revenge for his exile from the territory by the free stater James Montgomery. Hamilton and his men took eleven free staters, all of whom knew him and seemed to think he was enlisting them for some job, brought them to a ravine near the Marais des Cygnes River, and ordered his men to open fire. Five of the men were killed, five were wounded, and one escaped unharmed. Hamilton then rode back to Missouri.
On 25 January 1859, abolitionist Dr. John Doy and his son Charles (who were both conductors on the Underground Railroad) were taking 13 fugitive slaves (freedom seekers) from Lawrence, Kansas, to Canada when they were stopped by border ruffians from Missouri, who claimed they had stolen the slaves from their state. John and Charles Doy were arrested and taken to Missouri to be tried for slave stealing.
Charles was released, but John Doy was sentenced to five years of hard labor at the Missouri State Penitentiary. His unlawful imprisonment on trumped-up charges resulted in the daring raid of The Immortal Ten, abolitionists who slipped into Missouri from Kansas and freed him.
Further incidents were minor, including the so-called Battle of the Spurs, 31 January 1859, which took place shortly after Doy was kidnapped, in which John Brown, bringing 11 fugitive slaves from Missouri to Iowa, was confronted by US marshals leading a posse who hoped to capture him. Brown simply led his group through them. Neither party fired a shot. Abolitionists later called this the Battle of the Spurs in reference to how quickly the pro-slavery contingent rode away, intimidated by the legendary John Brown.
Conclusion
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 launched the hostilities of Bleeding Kansas, which would continue until 1865. It also gave birth to the Republican Party, which gained greater support through its opposition to the westward expansion of slavery. Abolitionists flocked to the Republican Party, opposing the Southern Democrats who were uniformly pro-slavery. In Kansas, the Republican Party gained increasing support between 1854 and 1859. Scholar James McPherson comments:
Free state Kansans organized a Republican Party and elected two-thirds of the delegates to a new constitutional convention in 1859. Kansas finally came in as a free state in January 1861, joining California, Minnesota, and Oregon, whose entry since the Mexican War had given the North a four-state edge over the South. Kansas also became one of the most Republican states in the Union. Though most of the free state settlers had originally been Democrats, the struggle with the slave power pushed them into the Republican Party.
(169)
Kansas remained pro-Republican and anti-slavery throughout the American Civil War and was the first state in the Union to recruit and field Black soldiers for that conflict as early as 1862, the 1st and 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry Regiments. As noted, the same partisan violence that defined Bleeding Kansas continued throughout the war and has been depicted in film, notably The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Ride with the Devil (1999).
Although the beginning of the American Civil War is dated to 12 April 1861, when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, it had a kind of dress rehearsal years before, as early as 1854, in Bleeding Kansas.
