1 (2) | A (4) | B (20) | C (4) | D (2) | E (1) | F (9) | G (3) | H (2) | I (1) | J (4) | K (1) | L (10) | M (6) | N (2) | O (3) | P (9) | Q (3) | R (5) | S (10) | T (3) | U (2) | W (6)

By Matthew E. Stanley, Albany State University

The First Sack of Lawrence occurred on May 21, 1856, when proslavery men attacked and looted the antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas. The assault escalated the violence over slavery in Kansas Territory during a period that became known as “Bleeding Kansas.” The sacking coincided with South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks’s scandalous caning of abolitionist Republican senator Charles Sumner, which had occurred on May 20. The two events were paired and dramatized by the national media, constituting turning point in the lead up to the Civil War.

By Scharla Paryzek, Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence, Kansas

The sacking of Osceola was a significant military engagement that took place during the early stages of the Civil War in Missouri. After losing the Battle of Dry Wood Creek near Fort Scott, Kansas, the Free-State leader, U.S. Senator and Brigadier General James Henry Lane guided his 3rd, 4th, and 5th Kansas Volunteers in the looting and sacking of Osceola, Missouri.

By Chris Rein, Combat Studies Institute, Army University

John M. Schofield served as the senior Union Army officer in Missouri during part of the war, as both commander of the Army of the Frontier and the Department of Missouri. His service was checkered but generally effective; he was accused of being too lenient with Confederate bushwhackers even though he had effectively opposed them in battle and supported General Order No. 11, which ordered the depopulation of a portion of the border. He went on to a very successful postwar career, culminating in service as the commanding general of the Army from 1888 to 1895.

By Matthew E. Stanley, Albany State University

Wilson Shannon was an attorney, the 14th and 16th governor of Ohio, United States minister to Mexico, U.S. congressman, and the second territorial governor of Kansas. He was a leading proslavery figure in early Kansas politics and, despite a short 9.5-month tenure, its longest continuously-serving territorial governor. Despite these successes, the disastrous violence of "Bleeding Kansas" began during his term as territorial governor.

By Christopher Phillips, University of Cincinnati

Joseph Orville Shelby, Confederate cavalry commander, was born in Lexington, Kentucky on December 12, 1830. Educated at Transylvania University in Kentucky, he moved to Waverly, Missouri, in 1852, becoming a rope manufacturer and hemp planter and one of the state’s largest slave owners. During the Missouri-Kansas border troubles, he led two armed forays of proslavery activists into Kansas, one of which participated in the Sack of Lawrence.

By Terry Beckenbaugh, US Army Command and General Staff College

Shelby’s Raid is one of the great unsung raids of the American Civil War. The raid lasted over 40 days and covered more than 800 miles of territory in west central and northwest Arkansas and southwest and west central Missouri in the autumn of 1863. While spectacular, the raid had little lasting result on the course and conduct of the war in Missouri or in other theaters. It did earn Joseph O. “Jo” Shelby a general’s star and cemented his reputation as one of the Civil War’s most daring cavalry commanders.

By Ian Spurgeon, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Washington, D.C.

Franz Sigel is one of the best known foreign-born Union generals of the Civil War. Sigel drew German immigrants into the Republican fold, largely through a strong antislavery sentiment within their community. He is largely remembered as a poor field commander during the Civil War who could not be dismissed easily due to his popularity within the large, pro-Union German immigrant population.

By Matthew Reeves, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Benjamin “Pap” Singleton was a former bondsman who, later in his life, became known for leading African American migrations from the post-Reconstruction South into Kansas. African Americans feared that the end of federally enforced Reconstruction would mark the return of overt racial violence and discrimination in the South. These fears motivated a mass African American migration away from the former Confederacy and into sparsely populated Kansas, a state already iconic for its antebellum struggle for Free Soil.

By Matthew Reeves, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Benjamin F. Stringfellow was a Missouri lawyer, civic organizer, and proslavery advocate. He was a key figure in the Platte County Self-Defensive Association, a proslavery organization that argued the expansion of slavery into Kansas was an essential requirement to maintain the “peculiar institution” in Missouri and throughout the South.

By Deborah Keating, University of Missouri – Kansas City

Charles Sumner was a man known for political extremes in a time when the United States was flush with political extremists. As the nation hurdled toward Civil War over the issue of slavery, radicals like Sumner on both sides of the debate aggravated dissension with histrionic rhetoric inflammatory even for the period. Sumner used his powerful voice and speaking ability in support of the abolitionist cause and his acerbic intelligence against those who argued for expansion of slavery into Kansas and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. His verbal attacks on Southern legislatures and their constituents led to his being physically attacked on the floor of the House in 1856; an attack which gained him sympathetic support in the North but left him permanently impaired.