What was Bleeding Kansas?

Bleeding Kansas was the period of guerrilla warfare and political violence in Kansas Territory between 1854 and 1859, in which proslavery and antislavery settlers, often supported by armed groups crossing from outside the territory, fought over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave or free state. The conflict was sparked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of May 30, 1854, which organized Kansas Territory under the principle of popular sovereignty, allowing settlers to decide for themselves on slavery.

Both sides organized to influence the outcome. The New England Emigrant Aid Company, founded by Massachusetts businessman Eli Thayer in 1854, sent about 1,200 free-state settlers to Kansas with weapons known as Beecher's Bibles after Henry Ward Beecher, the abolitionist preacher who said rifles would be more effective than Bibles for converting Border Ruffians. Proslavery Missourians, organized by Senator David Atchison and others, crossed into Kansas to vote and to intimidate free-state settlers.

Major incidents included the fraudulent territorial election of March 30, 1855 in which about 5,000 Missourians voted illegally, electing a proslavery legislature that met at Lecompton and passed strict slave codes. Free-state settlers refused to recognize the Lecompton government and convened their own legislature at Topeka in October 1855 with the Topeka Constitution prohibiting slavery.

The Sack of Lawrence on May 21, 1856 saw a proslavery sheriff and posse of about 800 men destroy the Free State Hotel, two newspaper offices, and many homes in Lawrence. Three days later, on May 24 to 25, 1856, the abolitionist John Brown led a small group including four of his sons in killing five proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek in retaliation. The Battle of Black Jack on June 2, 1856 saw Brown defeat a proslavery militia. The Battle of Osawatomie on August 30, 1856 saw proslavery forces burn the town and kill Brown's son Frederick.

Two days before the Sack of Lawrence, on May 22, 1856 in Washington, D.C., Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts unconscious with a cane on the Senate floor after Sumner's "Crime Against Kansas" speech, dramatizing the violence in the territory. Total deaths in Bleeding Kansas are estimated at 56 to perhaps 200, mostly from skirmishes and raids.

The Lecompton Constitution drafted by proslavery delegates in November 1857 was rejected by territorial voters in two elections. The Wyandotte Constitution drafted by free-state delegates in July 1859 prohibited slavery and won territorial approval. Congress admitted Kansas as a free state on January 29, 1861. By that date seven southern states had already seceded, and the violence in Kansas had hardened views on both sides.