Within months of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854, white settlers began streaming into Kansas Territory, with the debate over slavery to be decided for the future state. Among these early pioneers was James Griffing, an antislavery partisan from Owego, New York. His cross-hatched letter dismissed concerns about violence, political disputes, and primitive living conditions, but nonetheless acknowledged the divisions that would lead to Bleeding Kansas and the American Civil War.