War on the Border: Bleeding Kansas

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War on the Border: Bleeding Kansas

The Race for Kansas. Both Southerners and Northerners knew in 1854 that the bitter fight over slavery’s extension would take place in the West, in the new territory of Kansas. Both proslavery Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners were determined to settle Kansas first and win the territory for their side. As soon as the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed in Congress, abolitionists formed the New England Emigrant Aid Society to bring settlers to eastern Kansas. The emigration of antislavery New Englanders to the territory incited proslavery Missourians to action. Led by Senator David Rice Atchison, the Missourians hoped to win Kansas back from Free Soilers attempting to settle it as a free state. “If we win we carry slavery to the Pacific ocean,” declared Atchison. “[I]f we fail, we lose Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and all the territories.”

Border Ruffians. The first battles in Kansas took place at the ballot box. In a November 1854 election to send a territorial delegate to Congress, bands of Missourians (labeled “border ruffians” by the antislavery press) crossed the border to vote—early and often, as it turns out, since more than one thousand seven hundred fraudulent ballots were counted—for a proslavery candidate. The following spring, after more Free Soilers had moved in, Atchison claimed in public that “there are eleven hundred coming over from Platte county [Missouri] to vote… and if that ain’t enough, we can send five thousand.” A later Congressional inquiry determined that, in fact, 6,307 votes had been cast in an election for a territorial legislature when there were only 2,905 eligible voters—making Atchison’s claim eerily accurate. The new legislature promptly legalized slavery and adopted a rigid slave code to punish runaways and people who helped them.

Free Staters. Outraged Free Staters held their own elections, calling the elected legislature “bogus.” More important, by the fall of 1855 the free staters constituted a majority of actual settlers in the territory. They called their own constitutional convention, adopted an antislavery constitution, and chose a governor. Thus there were two territorial governments in Kansas at the dawn of 1856—one fraudulent and proslavery (located in Lecompton) and the other, antislavery (located in nearby Lawrence), whose legality was questionable at best.

Violence Erupts. Fraud and extralegality soon begat violence. In the wake of President Franklin Pierce’s statements denouncing the Free Staters, proslavery settlers sacked the antislavery town of Lawrence. A wild-eyed abolitionist named John Brown retaliated by murdering five proslavery settlers in Pottawatomie in May 1856. This episode led to still more civil strife in the territory, as armed bands on both sides began a guerrilla war. “Bleeding Kansas” became, for both Northerners and Southerners, a powerful symbol of sectional strife.

Sumner. Violence was hardly confined to Kansas Territory. After delivering a speech in the Senate titled “The Crime Against Kansas,” the Republican Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner was beaten with a heavy cane by Preston Brooks, a South Carolina congressman who took offense to the speech’s viciousness and slight to his uncle, Sen. Andrew Butler. So severe were Sumner’s injuries that he was unable to return to the Senate for four years, a period during which his state refused to replace him. For his part, Brooks resigned after being censured by the House but returned to Congress after winning a special election for his own seat. Both Sumner and Brooks became symbols in their respective sections: Sumner as a martyr to the South’s barbarism and Brooks as a hero for standing up to Yankee attacks. In addition, both served as evidence for how deep sectional antagonism ran over the issue of slavery in the West.