DK - The American Civil War

Franklin Pierce to invalidate the

election, but Pierce, a political ally of

Atchison, fired the governor instead.

Rival state governments

The new pro-slavery legislature legalized

slavery and banned anti-slavery speeches

and texts. Those who aided runaway

slaves were to be punished with death.

This intimidation enraged the larger

free-state faction of Kansas residents.

Rejecting the official territorial

government as invalid, in the fall of 1855

they gathered in Topeka where they

formed their own

legislature, elected

a governor, and

wrote the Topeka

Constitution. By

January 1856, two

rival governments

competed for control of Kansas and

dominated national politics. Pierce

recognized the pro-slavery government

in the city of Lecompton, while the new

Republican Party, founded in 1854,

backed the free-state legislature and

attacked Democrats as tools of Southern

Slave Power. The Massachusetts

abolitionist, Senator Charles Sumner, was

incensed. In May, he delivered a two-day

speech entitled “The Crime Against

Kansas,” in which he accused pro-slavery

men of carrying on with the “harlot,

Slavery.” Popular sovereignty had failed.

On May 21, 1856, pro-slavery men

rode into Lawrence, a free-state town,

and destroyed its newspaper’s press and

burned its Free State Hotel. Republican

newspapers and campaign speeches

“Beecher’s Bible”

The .52 caliber Sharps carbine was

shipped to anti-slavery settlers in

Kansas in boxes labeled “Bibles.” The weapon’s nickname

came from abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher,

who believed that there was “more moral power in one

[carbine] ... than in a hundred Bibles.”

Bleeding Kansas

By 1854, land to the west and northwest of Missouri had been settled. This land had to be organized as a

U.S. territory, but would it be slave or free? Pro-slavery forces were determined to spread slavery westward,

abolitionists were determined to stop them. Two years later, the result was near civil war in Kansas.

AN IMPERFECT UNION

Nebraska Act—15 of the 20 Northern

Democrats supported it. In the House,

where Southern influence was weaker,

it just barely passed. In the elections

that followed, half of the incumbent

Northern Democrats lost their seats.

The way was now open to let the

settlers vote. Neighboring Missouri, a

slave state, encouraged a first wave of

pro-slavery migrants, but as 1854 went

on, anti-slavery settlers from across

the North and Midwest entered the

territory. Missouri politicians

helped organize

militia and citizens’ groups

prepared to ride into the state’s border

regions to scare Northern or free-state

advocates. The Missourians also voted

illegally, hoping to elect delegates who

would support slavery.

Atchison personally led a large group

of “Border Ruffians”—as the Missouri

citizens were

called by

abolitionists—

across the Kansas

state line to vote.

He boasted that

1,100 people were

on the way and he could gather

another 5,000 if needed. The count for

the first territorial legislature included

those 5,000 fraudulent tallies and

resulted in a pro-slavery body. The

territorial governor begged President

T

he first steps to decide if the new

territory should be slave or free

were legislative. Illinois senator

Stephen A. Douglas worked to balance

the demands of the militant pro-slavery

faction, led by Missouri senator David

Atchison, with those Northern

Democrats who were fearful of

conceding too much to Southern

interests. Douglas suggested that it be

left to a vote in the territory. Atchison

thought Douglas’s plan of “popular

sovereignty” was not enough and

demanded the repeal of 1820’s Missouri

Compromise. Douglas

agreed to argue for the

repeal, thus opening up

the West for the potential

expansion of slavery.

The proposed Kansas-

Nebraska Act triggered a

passionate response. Since

the Compromise of 1850

and the publication of Harriet Beecher

Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Northern

aversion to appeasing Southern “Slave

Power” had grown.

Abraham Lincoln strongly believed

slavery to be “an unqualified evil” and

that no man had the right to hold another

as property. He denounced both the act

and Douglas in public. A former Whig,

Lincoln now joined with others in the

North who opposed slavery’s expansion

but as yet had no formal political party.

This so-called “anti-Nebraska” group

included Free-Soilers, abolitionists, and

Northern Whigs. Yet, despite an outcry

across the North, Douglas was able to

convince and coerce enough Senate

Democrats to approve the Kansas-

BEFORE

In August 1846, Congressman David

Wilmot introduced an amendment, or

proviso, to an army appropriations bill

that would have banned slavery forever

in territories acquired from Mexico.

WILMOT PROVISO

Although the Wilmot Proviso passed the U.S.

House of Representatives, it failed in the

Senate. As a result, the future of slavery

was still not settled in the West.

VARYING VIEWS

The political parties offered different solutions

during the 1848 presidential election campaign.

John C. Calhoun ❮❮ 20–21 argued that the

Constitution protected property, and so

slave-owners had the right to take slaves into

the territories. Democratic nominee Lewis Cass

argued that settlers should vote on the issue,

while the Whig Party tried to avoid it and

nominated Zachary Taylor, a Virginia slaveholder

and hero of the War with Mexico.

ANTI-SLAVERY PARTY

The Liberty Party joined with anti-slavery

Whigs and the Free-Soil Party to nominate

former president Martin Van Buren for

president. The Free-soil Party pledged itself

to no new slave states and called slavery

a “barbarism.”

Democratic divide
In order to get the votes he needed, Douglas had to
please the South. But bowing to their wishes would
cause rifts within his own Democratic party.

The approximate

number of Sharps rifles

that were smuggled to anti-slavery

fighters in Kansas during the period of

bitter conflict between 1854 and 1858.

1,000

JAYHAWKER An anti-slavery guerrilla from

Kansas. Named after a make-believe bird,

the Jayhawkers clashed with Missouri’s

Border Ruffians. Both sides terrorized the

residents of Missouri and Kansas.

KEY MOMENT

In January 1854, in an attempt to defuse

the controversy over whether or not slavery

should be permitted in the Nebraska

Territory, Senator Douglas devised a plan to

split the Nebraska Territory into two separate

future states: Kansas to the west of

Missouri, a slave state; and Nebraska to the

west of Iowa and Minnesota, a free state.

If passed, the Kansas-Nebraska Act

would repeal the Missouri Compromise of

1820, which had outlawed slavery from all

land north of Missouri’s southern border.

Douglas called for “popular sovereignty,”

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT

which would make the decision about slavery

in each new territory subject to the will of the

voters. This would, he hoped, remove the

issue from the national stage and make it a

local issue.

Abolitionists argued that slavery would have

been banned in both states under the terms

of the Missouri Compromise. The Democratic

Party was split, but Douglas was stubborn, and

the act was passed by Congress on May 30,

1854. Far from ending the controversy, the
      Kansas-Nebraska Act threw Kansas into
      turmoil, earning it the name Bleeding Kansas.