Bleeding Kansas

Bleeding Kansas Causes

In early 1854, the United States was rapidly expanding westward. Congress had begun to draft ideas regarding the former Louisiana Purchase lands, also known as the Nebraska Territory.

In May, Senator Stephen A. Douglas and attorney Henry Clay created the "Kansas-Nebraska Act." The Act stated that because Nebraska was guaranteed to be a free state due to its location, another territory would be open to the decisions of settlers. With Nebraska and California entering as free states, the title of "slave state" or "free state" would be up to the people living in Kansas. Stephen Douglas described the decision of the people as "popular sovereignty."

Fig. 1 - Senator Stephen Douglas Fig. 2 - Attorney Henry Clay, 1848

Pro-slavery Southerners quickly flocked to the new territory to settle and gain dominance over the land, leaving Abolitionists deeply angered by Douglas' Act. The Act would not only throw off the balance of "free states" and "slave states," but it would also completely disregard the Missouri Compromise.

Realizing they had a chance to increase their influence within the Union, anti-slavery Northerners and Abolitionists also rapidly moved into Kansas to strengthen their upper hand. These fights for dominance quickly turned violent, and many were beaten, murdered, and forcibly removed from their settlements on both pro-slavery and anti-slavery sides.

Bleeding Kansas Summary

Upon Kansas' first territorial election in November of 1854, thousands of pro-slavery supporters from Missouri flooded in to vote. Pro-slavery candidate John Whitfield defeated two Free-Soil representatives because around half of the ballots were cast by unregistered voters. Through illegal voting and physical intimidation, pro-slavery supporters implemented a pro-slavery legislature in the state. Northern anti-slavery settlers refused to accept this outcome, and a group titled "Jayhawkers" took up arms and clashed with pro-slavery supporters. According to President Franklin Pierce, regardless of the illegal outcome, he recognized the pro-slavery legislature as the only legitimate government in Kansas.

The Sack of Lawrence

On May 21st, 1856, a group of pro-slavery supporters, led by Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones, stormed into the Free State stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas (which was settled by anti-slavery settlers from Massachusetts. Once there, they destroyed printing presses, looted homes and stores, and set fire to a hotel.

Fig. 3 - Drawing of the Sack of Lawrence, 1856

John Brown Bleeding Kansas

As a fierce Abolitionist, John Brown decided to retaliate against pro-slavery supporters for their sack of Lawrence. He brought seven other men, 4 of whom were his sons. On May 24th, just days after the sacking, the men marched through Potawatomie Valley and dragged five men from their homes, bringing them to the Potawatomie Creek and brutally killing them.

Just two days before the attack, Representative Preston Brooks from South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with his cane for his speech that denounced the supporters of slavery in Kansas.

John Brown temporarily returned in the winter of 1858-9 to lead a raid to liberate a group of enslaved people. Throughout his role in Kansas, Brown gathered enough money to plan an invasion of Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859.

In June of 1856, pro-slavery forces once again suppressed a Free State meeting that was being held in Topeka, Kansas. Again, John Brown retaliated with this intervention with guerrilla attacks on Black Jack and Osawatomie.

Following in 1857, anti-slavery Free Staters boycotted a pro-slavery vote to send Constitutional delegates to Lecompton, citing illegal pro-slavery influence. President James Buchanan pushed Congress to accept the Lecompton Constitution despite extreme backlash from Douglas and other Democrats. They saw it as an infringement of the states' right to popular sovereignty.

Congress decided to send the Constitution back to Kansas to be voted on again, this time, Free State voters were able to place their votes, and the Constitution was rejected.

Kansas eventually adopted a Free State Constitution at a convention at Wyandotte in 1859, though pro-slavery forces in the Senate refused to enter the Union as a free state; it was only after some Confederate states decided upon their secession in 1860 that Congress finally approved the Wyandotte Constitution. Kansas entered the Union as a free state in January of 1861, barely three months before the Civil War broke out in April.

Bleeding Kansas Significance

Bleeding Kansas signified the massive differences between pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters; it foreshadowed how violent and passionate the oncoming war would be. Despite being horrified by the violence that ensued, the Republican Party used Bleeding Kansas to build its base and strengthen its political advantage. On the opposite side, Bleeding Kansas caused a more profound separation between Northern and Southern Democrats, who were already struggling to find common ground during these turbulent years.

The Senate debate for the state of Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln (Republican) vs. Stephen Douglas (Northern Democrat), would also foreshadow an enormous change in the country. Though Lincoln lost the debates to Douglas, his new-found reputation set him up to be the first Republican President during the election of 1860; the event that would officially drive the South to secession.