1855: Bleeding Kansas Violence
From Bensonwiki
The strife and struggles of Kansas in 1855 began in 1854 with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, stating that both Kansas and Nebraska were to be settled under popular sovereignty. Of course there were two different sides to this Kansas question. Missourians greatly desired Kansas’ admission into the Union as a slave state, so “border Ruffians” induced physical violence and intimidation in Kansas in order to vote proslavery in the legislative elections. [1] Yet there was certainly opposition to this argument as well. A man by the name of Eli Thayer formed an organization called the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company (later called New England Emigrant Aid Company) which encouraged immigrants to move out to western territory in order to settle Kansas as a free state. Along with the immigrants, Sharp’s rifles were also sent to Kansas under the disguise of “books” in order to effectively arm free state supporters. The Sharp rife was a “new invention and very effective.” [2] The aid society especially felt the need to arm free state supporters in Kansas since a proslavery territorial legislature had been elected on March 30, 1855. [3] The examples of the Sharp’s rifles and “border Ruffians” ably depict the sentiment in Kansas during this time. The Wakarusa War (December 1855) demonstrates the extreme proslavery/free state tension within the territory. From 1854 until 1856, Kansas underwent extreme violence, but it was not only physical, but ideological as well. There were two factions in the territory and both refused to give up their causes—only foreshadowing more controversy on the slave issue to come.
Related Events: 1854:Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1855: Kansas Pro-slavery Legislature elected, Big Springs Conference, 1855: Know-Nothing/Nativist Riot, 1856: Sumner Caning
Footnotes: [1] New York, New York, New York Daily Times(1851-1857), 17 September 1856. [2] W.H. Isely, "The Sharps Rifle Episode in Kansas History,", The American Historical Review, 12, (April 1907), 546-566. [JSTOR: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28190704%2912%3A3%3C546%3ATSREIK%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R] [3] Boston,Massachusetts, Liberator (1831-1865), 27 April 1855 (American Periodical Series Online)