Missouri Compromise Compromised
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was established on May 30, 1854. This act created two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska. The act permitted Kansas to allow slavery in contradiction of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had forbidden slavery within the Louisiana Purchase lands that were north of the 36º 30'N line. The second territory, Nebraska, was a "free," or a non-slavery area.
Abolitionists Act to Free Kansas
It was inevitable that in time the two territories would become states. The antislavery fraction desired, when statehood came, that Kansas would be a free state. Setting the wheels in motion for this desired outcome, influential outsiders, abolitionists, in the North began organizing and funding several thousand settlers to move to Kansas. It was presumed that when statehood came these people would vote to make Kansas a free state. The organization in this endeavor was the Emigrant Aid Company of Massachusetts, which helped to establish antislavery settlements in Topeka, Lawrence, Leavenworth, and Atchison, Kansas.
Beecher and His Bibles
Working in this effort was the abolitionist preacher, Henry Ward Beecher. Beecher collected funds to arm abolitionist settlers. These firearms, precision rifles, came to be called "Beecher's Bibles." Initially, these firearms were the fuel that blazed into what Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune called "Bleeding Kansas," to describe the violent hostilities between pro and antislavery forces that flared up in the territory.
Border Ruffians Stuff Ballot Boxes
In 1854 and 1855, territorial elections were held in Kansas. The proslavery fraction won, mainly through the use of violence and intimidation by what was called "Border Ruffians." These ruffians were Missourians who were sympathetic to slavery. They crossed the border into Kansas. and stuffed the various ballot boxes, to the extent that in some districts the number of ballots counted was twice the number of registered voters.
Ironically, few of the Border Ruffians owned slaves, being too poor to follow such practice. They preformed these depredations in Kansas. mainly because they hated Yankees as well as abolitionists. Another reason for their actions was that they were more than unhappy with the idea of free blacks living in nearby areas.
President Pierce Sides with Proslavery
With the elections over, and the proslavery people winning, the territorial legislature immediately expelled all of the antislavery delegates. They then passed a series of proslavery laws.
In opposition to this proslavery government, the free soil people, in late 1855, created their own antislavery government in Topeka. President Franklin Pierce, since the proslavery government had won the election, legally or not, recognized the proslavery government and ignored the antislavery one that was set up in Topeka.
Free-Soil Kansans Fears Plantation System
For the most part the feelings of the free soil fraction was not that they were necessarily abolitionists. Most of these people were farmers and were against slavery because it would bring the plantation system into Kansas This would eventually drive out the small homesteaders; much like big business today has overpowered the small farmer.
There now existed in Kansas a tense situation that would soon erupt into violence. Two main events of this contention are considered by many as the opening factors for the start of the American Civil War:
Lawrence and Pottawatomie
On May 1856, a band of Border Ruffians crossed the border from Missouri into Kansas and attacked the free-soil community of Lawrence. Then, a few days after the Lawrence raid, abolitionist, under the leadership of John Brown, attack the proslavery settlement on Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas.
Sources:
Comptons, The Complete Reference Collection. CD Rom, 1997, The Learning Company, Inc.
Brewer, Paul. The Civil War: State by State. Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, California, 2004.
