"Bleeding Kansas" Topic

"Bleeding Kansas was a violent clash over slavery in a place that had few slaves. From the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the settlement of Kansas Territory had less to do with whether slavery was viable economically in that locale than with the balance of political power between the North and the South, between free labor and slave labor systems. People in both sections convinced themselves that far more was at stake than mere power. They believed that the fate of liberty for the nation and of the honor of their section was under attack. These convictions made resolution of the conflict more difficult and raised the importance of Bleeding Kansas until it became a national crisis.

Until 1854, the region that became Kansas Territory was off limits to slavery. The prohibition had been put in place as part of the Missouri compromise in 1820. As western settlement pressed against the boundary of the region, however, both Iowans and Missourians wished to see the territory opened to their people. A number of territorial bills had failed in Congress, however, and the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase remained unorganized.

Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, chairman of the Senate's committee on territories, took up the matter in the winter of 1853-54. Without the support of Southerners in Congress, however, an organization bill would likely fail. Southerners had no interest in organizing free territory that would enter the Union as free states, shifting the political balance of Congress and the Union further against their section…"
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Amicalement
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Bleeding Kansas & the Missouri Border War

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Armand

I hope she kept the day job.

What day job