Bloody Kansas Essay

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Bloody Kansas
Bloody Kansas, or Bleeding Kansas, is the term describing the violence which occurred during the settling of the Kansas territory. The phrase was first coined by antislavery publicists for the New York Tribune. During the Civil War, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, wishing to lure trans-continental railroad developers to build a rail system ending in Chicago in order to gain more profit for his own state, was halted in his efforts by Federal Law, which required him to first organize the vast scattered country into official territories before any progress could be made on the railroad. This caused him to hurriedly propose the Kansas-Nebraska Act to Congress in 1854. His proposal stated that two new territories …show more content…

Secretly, he believed that slavery would never become prominent in Kansas and Nebraska, simply because their terrain was ill-suited for the growth of cotton. He merely aimed to please the South with the use of popular sovereignty. The coy senator thus thought he could please both the slave-owners in the South and the abolitionists in the North, boost his own presidential campaign, and bring increased profit to Chicago and Illinois without having to change much. But his plan backfired. Though all Southerners jumped at the chance to open Northern territories to slavery, Northerners were outraged at the violation of the Missouri Compromise. Riots against the Kansas-Nebraska Act began to erupt in the Northern cities. The Act also caused the collapse of the Whig and Democratic Parties. The reason for this split were their voting differences: Southern Whigs voted with Southern Democrats against their Northern counterparts for the first time in history. The two groups of Whigs were never able to reunite after this drastic divide. The Democrats survived, though the Northern Democrats suffered a dramatic loss of seats in Congress that …show more content…

Most were west-ward migrating farmers in search of better land, but others rushed alter the balance of the decision of Kansas's free/slave status. When they learned that popular sovereignty would determine the state of Kansas, thousands of pro-slavery Missourians crossed into the territory and garnered as much land as they could, founding dozens of small towns. They were nicknamed "border ruffians" and often rigged elections, sometimes recruiting comrades to illegally cross over to Kansas and cast ballots. Some voted more than once and even threatened locals to vote pro-slavery. Northern abolitionists, fearing that Kansas would become the next pro-slavery state, also rushed to Kansas to found their own "Free Soil" towns. The two even established their own territorial capitals. Inevitably, the two factions clashed. In one altercation, a band of impetuous pro-slavery settlers burned the Free-Soil town of Lawrence, Kansas, to the ground. In an act of revenge, the deranged John Brown and his own band of border ruffians killed five pro-slavery settlers in what is known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. Brown, nor any of his followers, were ever tried for their crimes. Within Months, Kansas was fraught with violent crimes, lawlessness and marauding bands slaughtering each other. This bloodshed and uncontrolled lawlessness earned the territory the nickname "Bleeding

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