Polarized Times: Bleeding Kansas
When the Compromise of 1850 passed, many people suspected that it was only a band-aid solution to a problem that would someday tear the nation apart. By this time virtually the entire democratic world had recognized that slavery was morally reprehensible, but the slave states in the south continued to insist on the continuation of this "peculiar institution". The abolitionist movement grew and the choice facing the United States soon became a stark one: the abolition of slavery would either split the country into two nations, or it would have to be held together by force.
The two prevailing political parties addressed the issue in different ways. The Whig Party fractured, with many Whigs ultimately joining the new Republican Party, a party which opposed slavery. The Democrats continued to run "doughface" candidates, i.e. northerners who were willing to tolerate the continuation of slavery in order to appease southern slaveholders. After Millard Fillmore's term in office ended, the Democrats selected such a candidate, former New Hampshire Senator Franklin Pierce as its candidate for President. Pierce was able to attract wider support than his Whig opponent, General Winfield Scott, and he was elected President in the 1852 election.
The term "Bleeding Kansas" is used to describe the violent political battle between anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" that took place in the Kansas Territory between 1854 and 1861 over the issue of whether slavery would be permissible in the territory. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was passed as an effort to address this problem. It called for "popular sovereignty". This meant that the decision about slavery was to be made by the settlers not by Congress. The pro-slavery side believed that every settler had the right to bring his own property, which was defined to included slaves, into the territory. Anti-slavery "free soil" forces opposed slavery both on moral grounds and because many were concerned that rich slaveholders would buy up all the good farmland and work them with slaves, to the disadvantage of non-slaveholders. The conflict turned violent and two presidents failed to take adequate steps to prevent and address the bloodshed.
In 1820, the Missouri Compromise helped to maintain a tenuous balance of political power between pro and anti slavery interests in the north and south. In May 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which contemplated the admission of this territory as a state. Those supporting both sides of the question arrived in Kansas to establish residency. Kansas Territory officials were appointed in 1854 by the pro-slavery administration of President Franklin Pierce. Pro-slavery interests were aided by thousands of non-resident pro-slavery Missourians who entered Kansas with the goal of winning local elections for those like minded. Territorial elections were sometimes won by fraud and intimidation.
To counter this, northern abolitionist elements flooded Kansas with "free-soilers." Anti-slavery Kansas residents wrote the first Kansas Constitution in 1855. They elected the Free State legislature in Topeka. The pro-slavery elements set up a parallel government in Lecompton. The two Territorial governments each claimed legitimacy, resulting in intense conflict. Pro-slavery forces settled towns including Leavenworth and Atchison. At the same time, citizens of the North, many aided by the New England Emigrant Aid Company, moved to Kansas to make it a free state and settled towns including Lawrence, Topeka and Manhattan.
A clash between the pro and anti slavery sides seemed inevitable. In November 1854, thousands of armed pro-slavery men known as "Border Ruffians", mostly from the slave state of Missouri, moved into the Kansas Territory. They swayed the vote in the election for a non-voting delegate to Congress in favor of pro-slavery candidate John Whitfield. The following year a Congressional committee was appointed to investigate the election. The committee reported that 1729 fraudulent votes were cast compared to 1114 legal votes. In one location only 20 of the 604 voters were residents of the Kansas Territory. In another 35 were residents and 226 non-residents.
On March 30, 1855, the Kansas Territory held the election for its first Territorial Legislature. It was an important election because this legislature would decide whether Kansas Territory would allow slavery. Once again the "Border Ruffians" from Missouri again streamed into the territory to vote, and proslavery delegates were elected to 37 of the 39 seats. Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder invalidated the results in five voting districts, because of concerns about voter fraud, and a special election was held on May 22, 1855, to elect replacements. Eight of the eleven delegates elected in the special election were Free-State, but this still left the pro-slavery camp with a 29-10 majority.
In the summer of 1855 around 1,200 anti-slavery New Englanders emigrated to Kansas Territory.Abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher armed many of them with Sharps rifles, which came to be known as "Beecher's Bibles". To address the rising tension, Congress sent a special committee to Kansas Territory in 1856. The committee report concluded that if the election on March 30, 1855, had been limited to "actual settlers" it would have elected a Free-State legislature. The report called the legislature seated "an illegally constituted body" which "had no power to pass valid laws."
The pro-slavery territorial legislature ignored the Congressional committee's report. It convened in the newly created Territorial Capital in Pawnee on July 2, 1855. The legislature invalidated the results from the special election in May and seated the pro-slavery delegates elected in March. After only one week in Pawnee, the legislature moved the territorial capital to the Shawnee Mission on the Missouri border, where it reconvened and passed pro-slavery laws.
In August 1855, antislavery residents met to formally reject the pro-slavery laws. This led to the election of Free State delegates, and the writing of the Topeka Constitution. But in a message to Congress on January 24, 1856, President Franklin Pierce declared that the Free-State Topeka government was illegitimate and insurrectionist.
The parallel legislatures intensified the conflict. On November 21, 1855 a Free-Stater named Charles Dow was shot by a pro-slavery settler named. Another free stater named Thomas Barber was shot and killed near Lawrence on December 6. On May 21, 1856, a group of pro-slavery Missourians invaded Lawrence and burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two newspaper offices, and ransacked homes and stores.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Republican Senator Charles Sumner took to the floor in May of 1856 to speak out against the threat of slavery in Kansas. In his speech he attacked what he called "the Slave Power". In the speech (called "The Crime against Kansas") Sumner ridiculed elderly South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. He compared his pro-slavery plans for Kansas to the raping of a virgin. The next day Butler's cousin, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, attacked Sumner on the Senate floor with a heavy cane, badly injuring him. The action intensified the North-South split.
The violence in Kansas continued to escalate. Ohio abolitionist John Brown led his sons and other followers to plan the murder of settlers who spoke out in favor of slavery. At a proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek on the night of May 24, Brown's group removed five pro-slavery men from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Brown and his men escaped.
The pro-slavery Territorial government that Franklin Pierce had sanctioned had moved to Lecompton. In April 1856, a Congressional committee arrived there to investigate voting fraud. The committee found the elections improperly elected by non-residents, but President Pierce refused to recognize these findings and continued to authorize the pro-slavery legislature, which Free State supporters called the "Bogus Legislature."
On the Fourth of July in 1856, Pierce sent 500 Army troops to Topeka from Ft. Leavenworth and Ft. Riley. With their cannons pointed at Constitution Hall, and the long fuses lit, Colonel E.V. Sumner, a cousin to Senator Charles Sumner, ordered the dispersal of the Free State Legislature.
In August 1856, thousands of pro-slavery men formed into armies and marched into Kansas. Also during that month, John Brown and several of his followers fought with 400 pro-slavery men in what was called the "Battle of Osawatomie". The hostilities raged for another two months until Brown left the Kansas Territory.
A new territorial governor, John W. Geary was appointed in September and he was able to broker a fragile peace for the next two years, with occasional violent incidents. James Buchanan was inaugurated president in March of 1857. On May 18, 1858, an incident known as the Marais des Cygnes massacre occurred, in which Border Ruffians killed five Free State men. In all, approximately 56 people died in Bleeding Kansas by the time the violence ended in 1859.
In 1857, the second constitutional convention drafted the "Lecompton Constitution", a pro-slavery document. The Lecompton Constitution was supported by President James Buchanan. But Congress instead ordered another election because of voting irregularities uncovered. On Aug. 2, 1858, Kansas voters rejected the Lecompton Constitution by a lopsided vote of 11,812 to 1,926. The Leavenworth Constitution was written and passed by Free State delegates. It was more radical than other Free State proposals in that it would have extended suffrage to "every male citizen", regardless of race. Voter turnout for the vote on this constitution on May 18, 1858 was light as even some of the anti-slavery supporters thought it went too far. This proposed constitution was forwarded to the U.S. Senate on January 6, 1859, but it died in committee. The Wyandotte Constitution drafted in 1859 represented the Free State view of the future of Kansas. It was approved in a referendum by a vote of 10,421 to 5,530 on October 4, 1859. With southern states still in control of the Senate, Kansas awaited admission to the Union until January 29, 1861.
Pierce's reputation suffered because of his support for the pro-slavery interests in Kansas. The midterm congressional elections of 1854 and 1855 were devastating to the Democrats, who lost almost every state outside the South. Pierce was not renominated by his party.
The two prevailing political parties addressed the issue in different ways. The Whig Party fractured, with many Whigs ultimately joining the new Republican Party, a party which opposed slavery. The Democrats continued to run "doughface" candidates, i.e. northerners who were willing to tolerate the continuation of slavery in order to appease southern slaveholders. After Millard Fillmore's term in office ended, the Democrats selected such a candidate, former New Hampshire Senator Franklin Pierce as its candidate for President. Pierce was able to attract wider support than his Whig opponent, General Winfield Scott, and he was elected President in the 1852 election.
The term "Bleeding Kansas" is used to describe the violent political battle between anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" that took place in the Kansas Territory between 1854 and 1861 over the issue of whether slavery would be permissible in the territory. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was passed as an effort to address this problem. It called for "popular sovereignty". This meant that the decision about slavery was to be made by the settlers not by Congress. The pro-slavery side believed that every settler had the right to bring his own property, which was defined to included slaves, into the territory. Anti-slavery "free soil" forces opposed slavery both on moral grounds and because many were concerned that rich slaveholders would buy up all the good farmland and work them with slaves, to the disadvantage of non-slaveholders. The conflict turned violent and two presidents failed to take adequate steps to prevent and address the bloodshed.
In 1820, the Missouri Compromise helped to maintain a tenuous balance of political power between pro and anti slavery interests in the north and south. In May 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which contemplated the admission of this territory as a state. Those supporting both sides of the question arrived in Kansas to establish residency. Kansas Territory officials were appointed in 1854 by the pro-slavery administration of President Franklin Pierce. Pro-slavery interests were aided by thousands of non-resident pro-slavery Missourians who entered Kansas with the goal of winning local elections for those like minded. Territorial elections were sometimes won by fraud and intimidation.
To counter this, northern abolitionist elements flooded Kansas with "free-soilers." Anti-slavery Kansas residents wrote the first Kansas Constitution in 1855. They elected the Free State legislature in Topeka. The pro-slavery elements set up a parallel government in Lecompton. The two Territorial governments each claimed legitimacy, resulting in intense conflict. Pro-slavery forces settled towns including Leavenworth and Atchison. At the same time, citizens of the North, many aided by the New England Emigrant Aid Company, moved to Kansas to make it a free state and settled towns including Lawrence, Topeka and Manhattan.
A clash between the pro and anti slavery sides seemed inevitable. In November 1854, thousands of armed pro-slavery men known as "Border Ruffians", mostly from the slave state of Missouri, moved into the Kansas Territory. They swayed the vote in the election for a non-voting delegate to Congress in favor of pro-slavery candidate John Whitfield. The following year a Congressional committee was appointed to investigate the election. The committee reported that 1729 fraudulent votes were cast compared to 1114 legal votes. In one location only 20 of the 604 voters were residents of the Kansas Territory. In another 35 were residents and 226 non-residents.
On March 30, 1855, the Kansas Territory held the election for its first Territorial Legislature. It was an important election because this legislature would decide whether Kansas Territory would allow slavery. Once again the "Border Ruffians" from Missouri again streamed into the territory to vote, and proslavery delegates were elected to 37 of the 39 seats. Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder invalidated the results in five voting districts, because of concerns about voter fraud, and a special election was held on May 22, 1855, to elect replacements. Eight of the eleven delegates elected in the special election were Free-State, but this still left the pro-slavery camp with a 29-10 majority.
In the summer of 1855 around 1,200 anti-slavery New Englanders emigrated to Kansas Territory.Abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher armed many of them with Sharps rifles, which came to be known as "Beecher's Bibles". To address the rising tension, Congress sent a special committee to Kansas Territory in 1856. The committee report concluded that if the election on March 30, 1855, had been limited to "actual settlers" it would have elected a Free-State legislature. The report called the legislature seated "an illegally constituted body" which "had no power to pass valid laws."
The pro-slavery territorial legislature ignored the Congressional committee's report. It convened in the newly created Territorial Capital in Pawnee on July 2, 1855. The legislature invalidated the results from the special election in May and seated the pro-slavery delegates elected in March. After only one week in Pawnee, the legislature moved the territorial capital to the Shawnee Mission on the Missouri border, where it reconvened and passed pro-slavery laws.
In August 1855, antislavery residents met to formally reject the pro-slavery laws. This led to the election of Free State delegates, and the writing of the Topeka Constitution. But in a message to Congress on January 24, 1856, President Franklin Pierce declared that the Free-State Topeka government was illegitimate and insurrectionist.
The parallel legislatures intensified the conflict. On November 21, 1855 a Free-Stater named Charles Dow was shot by a pro-slavery settler named. Another free stater named Thomas Barber was shot and killed near Lawrence on December 6. On May 21, 1856, a group of pro-slavery Missourians invaded Lawrence and burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two newspaper offices, and ransacked homes and stores.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Republican Senator Charles Sumner took to the floor in May of 1856 to speak out against the threat of slavery in Kansas. In his speech he attacked what he called "the Slave Power". In the speech (called "The Crime against Kansas") Sumner ridiculed elderly South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. He compared his pro-slavery plans for Kansas to the raping of a virgin. The next day Butler's cousin, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, attacked Sumner on the Senate floor with a heavy cane, badly injuring him. The action intensified the North-South split.
The violence in Kansas continued to escalate. Ohio abolitionist John Brown led his sons and other followers to plan the murder of settlers who spoke out in favor of slavery. At a proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek on the night of May 24, Brown's group removed five pro-slavery men from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Brown and his men escaped.
The pro-slavery Territorial government that Franklin Pierce had sanctioned had moved to Lecompton. In April 1856, a Congressional committee arrived there to investigate voting fraud. The committee found the elections improperly elected by non-residents, but President Pierce refused to recognize these findings and continued to authorize the pro-slavery legislature, which Free State supporters called the "Bogus Legislature."
On the Fourth of July in 1856, Pierce sent 500 Army troops to Topeka from Ft. Leavenworth and Ft. Riley. With their cannons pointed at Constitution Hall, and the long fuses lit, Colonel E.V. Sumner, a cousin to Senator Charles Sumner, ordered the dispersal of the Free State Legislature.
In August 1856, thousands of pro-slavery men formed into armies and marched into Kansas. Also during that month, John Brown and several of his followers fought with 400 pro-slavery men in what was called the "Battle of Osawatomie". The hostilities raged for another two months until Brown left the Kansas Territory.
A new territorial governor, John W. Geary was appointed in September and he was able to broker a fragile peace for the next two years, with occasional violent incidents. James Buchanan was inaugurated president in March of 1857. On May 18, 1858, an incident known as the Marais des Cygnes massacre occurred, in which Border Ruffians killed five Free State men. In all, approximately 56 people died in Bleeding Kansas by the time the violence ended in 1859.
In 1857, the second constitutional convention drafted the "Lecompton Constitution", a pro-slavery document. The Lecompton Constitution was supported by President James Buchanan. But Congress instead ordered another election because of voting irregularities uncovered. On Aug. 2, 1858, Kansas voters rejected the Lecompton Constitution by a lopsided vote of 11,812 to 1,926. The Leavenworth Constitution was written and passed by Free State delegates. It was more radical than other Free State proposals in that it would have extended suffrage to "every male citizen", regardless of race. Voter turnout for the vote on this constitution on May 18, 1858 was light as even some of the anti-slavery supporters thought it went too far. This proposed constitution was forwarded to the U.S. Senate on January 6, 1859, but it died in committee. The Wyandotte Constitution drafted in 1859 represented the Free State view of the future of Kansas. It was approved in a referendum by a vote of 10,421 to 5,530 on October 4, 1859. With southern states still in control of the Senate, Kansas awaited admission to the Union until January 29, 1861.
Pierce's reputation suffered because of his support for the pro-slavery interests in Kansas. The midterm congressional elections of 1854 and 1855 were devastating to the Democrats, who lost almost every state outside the South. Pierce was not renominated by his party.