Bleeding Kansas

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Ruins of the Free State Hotel in Lawrence after Sheriff Jones' raid in May 1856

Bleeding Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas") or Border War ("Border War") refers to the events in the Kansas Territory from 1855 to 1859, which took place as part of the political disputes over a possible introduction of slavery . These clashes were accompanied by acts of violence, some of which were politically motivated and some as part of robbery. The politically motivated conflicts in the Kansas Territory are seen as a preliminary stage to the Civil War .

The Slavery Question Prior to the Establishment of the Kansas Territory

Map of the states with slavery (dark gray) and without slavery ( Free States , red) in 1854. The Kansas Territory is shown in white because it was not yet part of any side. The territories that have not yet had state status are green.

The establishment of the Kansas Territory came at a time when an equal number of states in the United States allowed or denied slavery. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had established this temporary balance by allowing slavery in Missouri but prohibiting slavery north of the 36th parallel, that is, in all non-state areas that had come to the United States through the Louisiana Purchase . This status quo was jeopardized by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed residents of the Kansas Territory to decide for themselves about the introduction of slavery. From that moment on, advocates and opponents of slavery across the United States took action to influence the vote on a constitution for the state of Kansas.

Draft constitution

The Kansas Territory with the temporary capital Lecompton

The first elected Kansas Territory government in 1855 supported slavery but was rejected by anti-slavery opponents on charges of fraudulent voting. Thousands of supporters of slavery were brought from Missouri to Kansas to vote. In the years that followed, four draft constitutions were launched in the Kansas Territory. The first draft constitution of 1855, the so-called Topeka Constitution (after Topeka , the place of origin), was directed against the government and prohibited slavery, but was not adopted in the US Senate . The government, which was then based in Lecompton , presented a draft constitution in 1857 that allowed slavery. The last two constitutional drafts of 1858 ( Leavenworth Constitution ) and 1859 ( Wyandotte Constitution ) again prohibited slavery. After the US Senate rejected the draft of 1858, the Wyandotte Constitution was adopted and, when the state was admitted to the USA in 1861, it became the basis of the so-called Free State Kansas (i.e. slavery-free state).

Violent conflicts

At that time there were repeated acts of violence in the Kansas Territory, but these were often not ideologically motivated. Rather, private militias and guerrilla groups used the slavery issue as a pretext for private raids. Therefore, in addition to the pro-slavery groups, the so-called Bushwhackers or Border Ruffians , and the anti-slavery groups, the Jayhawkers or Free Staters , simple squatters are also involved in the acts of violence . The acts of violence, which went beyond simple robberies and neighborhood disputes, began with the siege of the city of Lawrence by Sheriff Jones in 1855. The trigger was the murder of an opponent of slavery by a slavery advocate, which escalated the existing conflict. Sheriff Jones besieged the town on the Wakarusa River with 1500 men ( Wakarusa War ), but withdrew after a week after negotiations. The clash resulted in only one death, but the city's defenders, John Brown and James Lane, became heroes of the anti-slavery movement ; the only fatality, Thomas Barber, was immortalized in a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier ( Burial of Barber ). In 1856, Sheriff Jones raided the town of Lawrence again to destroy the presses of the anti-slavery Herald of Freedom and Kansas Free State newspapers . The Free State Hotel , owned by the anti-slavery New England Emigrant Aid Company , also fell victim to the Sack of Lawrence . (The hotel, which was later destroyed and rebuilt, is now called the Eldridge Hotel .)

In response to the attack on Lawrence, John Brown committed the Pottawatomie massacre in May 1856 , in which he and his sons murdered five completely innocent Bushwhackers. Three men from Brown's group (two of whom were his sons) were later captured when Captain Pate's Army unit attempted to arrest John Brown. John Brown then tried, with the help of other Free State supporters, to free the prisoners at the Black Jack site in Douglas County , which led to the Black Jack shooting. Some historians refer to this firefight as the first battle of the Civil War. Brown was involved in another shootout with supporters of slavery ( Battle of Osawatomie ) in the same year , before the new governor John White Geary was able to pacify the situation for some time. After two years of minor incidents, the massacre on the Marais des Cygnes River in 1858 , in which Bushwhacker killed five men.

Settlement associations, press wars and the liberation of slaves

Caricature from 1856: Slavery-friendly politicians force opponents to swallow slavery

The proportion of violent clashes and the death toll in the Kansas Territory has long been overestimated in the press and research. The clashes over slavery in Kansas caught the attention of contemporaries across the United States and led on the one hand to a press war and on the other to a race between settlement associations on both sides of the conflict. The term Bleeding Kansas is a word created by Horace Greeley , the anti-slavery opponent and editor of the respected national New York Tribune . In Kansas, there were three anti-slavery newspapers, two in Lawrence town and one in Atchison , the German-language Kansas newspaper . The Squatter Sovereign agitated for slavery .

At the same time, various organizations in the north of the United States tried to raise money for the fight against slavery in Kansas and to bring abolitionist settlers to Kansas. These organizations included the New England Emigrant Aid Company , the Connecticut Kansas Colony , supported by Henry Ward Beecher , and the Emigrant Aid Society of Northern Ohio . An important abolitionist institution was the Underground Railroad , which smuggled freed or escaped slaves out of other states. On the side of the slavery advocates z. B. the Kansas Emigration Aid Company of South Carolina active, but also numerous settlement associations that were founded in Missouri and brought settlers or weapons to Kansas. Both sides invoked self-defense against acts of violence by the other side and exaggerated the crimes and casualties of the opponents.

literature

  • Thomas Goodrich: War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861. University of Nebraska, Lincoln 2004, ISBN 0-8032-7114-X (English, paperback edition of the first edition from 1988).
  • Samuel A. Johnson: The Battle Cry of Freedom . University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1954 (English).
  • Craig Miner: Seeding Civil War: Kansas in the National News, 1854-1858. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 2008, ISBN 978-0-7006-1612-1 .
  • Pearl T. Ponce: To Govern the Devil in Hell: The Political Crisis of Territorial Kansas. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb 2014, ISBN 978-0-87580-486-6 .
  • Robert W. Richmond: Kansas. A Land of Contrasts . Forum Press, Saint Charles 1974 (English).
  • Eleanor Turk: The Germans of Atchison, 1854-1859. Development of an Ethnic Community . In: Rita Napier (ed.): Kansas and the West . University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 2003, pp. 101-116 (English).
  • Dale E. Watts: How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas? - Political Killings in Kansas Territory, 1854–1861 . In: Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains . tape 18 , no. 2 . Summer 1995, p. 116–129 (English, full text, archived on June 29, 2017 [PDF; 255 kB ]).
  • Michael E. Woods: Bleeding Kansas: Slavery, Sectionalism, and Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border. Routledge, New York 2017, ISBN 978-1-138-95850-0 (English).

Single receipts

  1. ^ Bleeding Kansas ( en ) Online Highways LLC. Archived from the original on June 30, 2017. Retrieved August 21, 2017.
  2. ^ Ross Drake: The Law that Ripped America in Two ( en ) Smithsonian Magazine. May 2004. Archived from the original on August 21, 2017. Retrieved on August 21, 2017.
  3. ^ Robert W. Richmond: Kansas. A Land of Contrasts . Forum Press, Saint Charles 1974, pp. 68-72 (English).
  4. ^ Dale E. Watts: How Bloody was Bleeding Kansas? - Political Killings in Kansas Territory, 1854–1861 . In: Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains . tape 18 , no. 2 . Summer 1995, p. 119 f . (English, full text, archived on June 29, 2017 [PDF; 255 kB ]).
  5. ↑ Samuel J. Jones (Sheriff), ca.1820-ca.1880 ( en ) Territorial Kansas Online. Archived from the original on June 10, 2008.
  6. ↑ Black Jack, Battle of. ( en ) Tom & Carolyn Ward. 2002. Archived from the original on November 2, 2013.
  7. ↑ Black Jack Battlefield and Nature Park Homepage ( en ) Black Jack Battlefield Trust, Inc .. Archived from the original on July 11, 2017. Retrieved on August 21, 2017.
  8. ^ Marais de Cygnes Massacre ( en ) Kansas State Historical Society. Archived from the original on June 16, 2010.
  9. ^ Dale E. Watts: How Bloody was Bleeding Kansas? - Political Killings in Kansas Territory, 1854–1861 . In: Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains . tape 18 , no. 2 . Summer 1995, p. 120–122 (English, full text, archived on June 29, 2017 [PDF; 255 kB ]).
  10. ^ Eleanor Turk: The Germans of Atchison, 1854-1859. Development of an Ethnic Community . In: Rita Napier (ed.): Kansas and the West . University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 2003, pp. 101-116 (English).
  11. ^ Robert W. Richmond: Kansas. A Land of Contrasts . Forum Press, Saint Charles 1974, pp. 63 f . (English).
  12. ^ Samuel A. Johnson: The Battle Cry of Freedom . University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1954, pp. 208-213 (English).
  13. ^ Robert W. Richmond: Kansas. A Land of Contrasts . Forum Press, Saint Charles 1974, pp. 63 (English).