Bleeding Kansas

Fighting broke out on the morning of May 21, 1856, when a mob of several hundred proslavery men entered the town of Lawrence, the center of free-state settlement.  Only one man died - a proslavery raider who was killed when a burning wall collapsed - but the 'Sack of Lawrence,' as free-soil forces called it, inflamed northern opinion.  In Kansas, news of Lawrence provoked one free-soil settler, John Brown, to 'fight fire with fire.'  Announcing that 'it was better that a score of bad men should die than that one man who came here to make Kansas a Free State should be driven out,' he led the posse that massacred five allegedly proslavery settlers along the Pottawatomie Creek.  After that, guerilla war engulfed the territory.

The fanatical figure of John Brown now stalked upon the Kansas battlefield. Spare, gray-bearded, iron-willed, and narrowly ignorant, he was dedicated to the abolitionist cause. The power of his glittering gray eyes was such, so he claimed, that his stare could force a dog or cat to slink out of a room. Becoming involved in dubious dealings, including horse stealing, he moved to Kansas from Ohio with a part of his large family. Brooding the recent attack on Lawrence, Old Brown of Osawatomie led a band of his followers to Pottawatomie Creek, in May 1856. There they literally hacked to pieces five surprised men, allegedly proslaveryites. This fiendish butchery, clearly the product of a deranged mind, besmirched the free-soil cause and brought vicious retaliation from the proslavery forces. Civil war in Kansas, which thus flared forth in 1856, continued intermittently until it merged with the large-scale Civil War of 1861-1865. Altogether, the Kansas conflict destroyed millions of dollars' worth of property, paralyzed agriculture in certain areas, and cost scores of lives.

In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This law allowed the Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Both territories were north of the Missouri Compromise Line. Slave oweners were pleased because the new law opened Kansas and Nebraska to slavery. Many Northern farmers and workers who wanted to move west opposed the law. They worried that rich Southern planters would grab the best land in these territories and use slave labor to farm it. They demanded that the western lands be "free soil". Many "free soilers" joined with abolitionists to form the Republican Party. The Republicans believed that no person should own another and that all new states should be free states. One of the members of the new party was Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer from Illinois. Lincoln opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and warned that "the contest will come to blows and bloodshed." As Lincoln predicted, violence soon broke out between free soilers and slave owners in Kansas. Buildings were burned and people were killed. The newspapers referred to the territory as "Bleeding Kansas."

The antagonists in Kansas acted.  The roving Missourians who kept crossing the line carried weapons to back up their arguments.  New England abolitionists shipped boxes of rifles, "Beecher's Bibles," to the antislavery settlers.  (An eminent antislavery clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher, had incautiously remarked that a rifle might be a more powerful moral agent on the Kansas plains than a Bible.)  Sporadic shootings and barn-burnings culminated, in May 1856, in a raid by Missouri "border ruffians" on the free-soil town of Lawrence.  They sacked the place, destroyed the type and press of an antislavery newspaper and terrorized the inhabitants.  A few days later john Brown, a grim abolitionist fanatic, retaliated.  He and his ons and companions undertook a foray through the valley of Potawattomie Creek, where they stole horses, murdered five settlers, and mutilated their bodies.  Brown claimed that he was an agent of the Lord, assigned to punish those who favored slavery.  His inexcusable atrocities, lamentable by any reasonable standard, spurred a counterattack by proslavery men, who fell upon Brown's band, killed one of his sons, and burned the settlement at Osawatomie.  Though federal troops prevented further private war, the slavery issue had brought blood and terror to Kansas.

With two rival governments in place, conflict was inevitable. Proslavery raiders from Missouri attacked antislavery Kansas settlers, and in May 1856 a proslavery mob of some 700 burned the town of Lawrence, Kansas. In revenge, a group led by abolitionist John Brown attacked a proslavery settlement along Pottawatomie Creek. They dragged five men from their beds and brutally murdered them. The Pottawatomie Massacre enraged southerners, shocked northerners, and sparked more violence in what newspapers began calling "Bleeding Kansas."

Men favoring slavery formed one territorial government in Kansas. Men opposed to slavery formed another. Raids and murders took place as law and order broke down. John Brown, a fanatical abolitionist, and his sons led an attack in which five proslavery settlers in Kansas were killed. Violence in "bleeding Kansas" added to the tensions now being felt in all parts of the country.

By 1855 Kansas had two rival capitals. There was an antislavery capital at Topeka and a proslavery capital at Lecompton. The following year, tensions escalated into open violence, with murderous raids and counterraids throughout Kansas. The violence woon the territory the grim nickname of "Bleeding Kansas."

By denouncing the free-state government located at Topeka, President Pierce encouraged the proslavery settlers to assume the offensive. In May they sacked the antislavery town of Lawrence. A psychopathic Free Soiler named John Brown then took the law into his own hands in retaliation. In May 1865, together with six companions (four of them his sons) Brown stole into a proslavery settlement on Pottawatomie Creek in the dead of the night. They dragged five unsuspecting settlers from their rude cabins and murdered them. This senseless slaughter brought men on both sides to arms by the hundreds. Brown and his followers were indicted for the murders, but Brown's recent biographer, Stephen B. Oates, has written "Kansas was in complete chaos." Armed bands, one led by Brown himself, "prowled the countryside, shooting at one another and looting." Pressure from federal troops eventually forced Brown to go into hiding. He finally left Kansas in October 1856. By that time some 200 persons had lost their lives. Exaggerated accounts of "Bleeding Kansas" filled the pages of northern newspapers.

Both sides resorted to violence. In early 1856 a band of proslavery supporters rode into Lawarence, threw printing presses into the river, set the hotel on fire, and killed one man. Three nights later, John Brown, an antislavery activist, led a small band into a proslavery area. They dragged from their homes five men who had had nothing to do with the attack on Lawrence and hacked them to death. The fighting between proslavery and antislavery groups raged for weeks, at the cost of more than 200 lives. Only the arrival of the United States Army created an uneasy peace in what people were now calling "bleeding Kansas."

The caning of Sumner had repercussions in stife-torn Kansas.  John Brown, a devoted Bible-quoting Calvinist who believed he had a personal responsibility to overthrown slavery, announced that the time had come "to fight fire with fire" and "strike terror in the hearts of proslavery men." The next day, in reprisal for the 'sack of Lawrence' and the assault on Sumner, Brown and six companions dragged five proslavery men and boys from their beds at Pottawatomie Creek, spilt open their skulls with a sword, cut off their hands, and laid out their entrails.  A war of revenge erupted in Kansas.  A proslavery newspaper declared: "If murder and assassination is the program of the day, we are in favor of filling the bill." Columns of proslavery Southerners ransacked free farms, taking "horses and cattle and everything else they can lay hold of" while searching for Brown and the other "Potawattomie killers."  Armed bands looted enemy stores and farms.  At Osawatomie, proslavery forces attacked John Brown's headquarters, leaving a dozen men dead.  John Brown's men killed four Missourians, and proslavery forces retaliated by blockading the free towns of Topeka and Lawrence.  Before it was over, guerilla warfare in eastern Kansas left 200 dead.

Brown led a party containing four of his sons and two other men on a nighttime raid along Pottawatomie Creek. They seized five proslavery settlers from their cabins and murdered them by splitting their skulls with broadswords. This butchery launched full-scale guerilla war in Kansas. Although shocked antislavery people in the East denied - or chose not to believe- the truth about these killings, most Kansans knew who had done them. For the next four months, hit-and-run attacks by both sides raged in Kansas and were exaggerated by the national press into full-scale battles. Several newspapers had a standing headline for news from Kansas: "Progress of the Civil War." John Brown participated in these skirmishes, and one of his sons was killed. About two hundred other men died in the Kansas fighting during 1856. In September, President Pierce finally replaced the ineffective Gov. Shannon with John Geary, a tough but fair-minded Pennsylvanian who had won his spurs as a captain in the Mexican War and as San Francisco's first mayor. Combining persuasion with a skillfull deployment of federal troops, Geary imposed a truce on the two sides and brought an uneasy peace to Kansas in the fall of 1856. By the time the larger question of which Kansas was a part - slavery in the territories- was the focus of the presidential election.

As civil war threatened in Kansas, a Brooklyn poet, Walt Whitman, heralded American democracy in his epic poem Leaves of Grass (1855). Whitman identified himself as the embodiment of average Americans "of every hue and caste… of every rank and religion." Ebulliently, Whitman embraced urban mechanics, southern woodcutters, planters' sons, runaway slaves, mining camp prostitutes, and a catalog of others in his poetic celebration of "the word Democratic, the word En-Masse." At the same time, Whitman's faith in the American masses faltered in the mid 1850s. He worried that a knife plunged into the "breast" of the Union would bring on the "red blood of civil war." Inevitably, as Whitman feared, blood flowed in Kansas. In May 1856, supported by a prosouthern federal marshall, a mob entered Lawrence, smashed the offices and presses of a Free-Soil newspaper, fired several cannonballs into the Free State Hotel, and destroyed homes and shops. Three nights later, motivated by vengeance and a feeling that he was doing God's will, John Brown led a small New England band, including four of his sons, to a proslavery settlement near Pottawatomie Creek. There they dragged five men out of their cabins and despite the terrified entreaties of their wives, hacked them to death with swords.

Finally, confrontation began to slip into conflict. In May 1856 a proslavery mob entered the free-state twon of Lawrence and destroyed newspaper presses, set fire to the free-state governor's private home, stole property that was not nailed down, and trained five cannon on the Free State Hotel, demolishing it. The "sack of Lawrence" resulted in just one casualty, but the excitement aroused a fanatical Free-Soiler named John Brown, who had a history of instability. A companion described him as one "impressed with the idea that God had raised him up on purpose to break the jaws of the wicked." Two days after the sack of Lawrence, Brown set out with rour sons and three other men toward Pottawatomie Creek, site of a proslavery settlement, where they dragged five men from their houses and hacked them to death in front of their screaming families, ostensibly as revenge for the deaths of free-state men. The Pottawatomie Massacre (May 24-25 1856) set off a guerrilla war in the territory that lasted through the fall. On August 30, Missouri ruffians raided the free-state settlement at Osawatomie. They looted the houses, burned them to the ground, and shot John Brown's son Frederick through the heart. The elder Brown, who barely escaped, looked back at the site being devastated by "Satan's legions," and muttered, "God sees it." He then swore to his surviving sons and followers: "I have only a short time to live - only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause." Altogether, by the end of 1856 Kansas lost about 200 killed and $2 million in property destroyed during the territorial civil war.

While Congress argued, violence raged in what people called "Bleeding Kansas." Northerners and southerners alike rushed weapons into the territory. An armed proslavery group burned part of the town of Lawrence, a center of the antislavery settlers. In revenge, a fanatical white abolitionist, John Brown, gathered an armed group, including his own sons, and murdered five unarmed proslavery men. The fighting over slavery and over disputed land claims took the lives of more than 200 men and women before federal troops moved in to restore order.