Bogus Legislature

Bleeding Kansas: From the Kansas-Nebraska Act to Harpers Ferry

In 1859, John Brown, a settler from Kansas Territory, invaded the state of Virginia with plans to raid the Harpers Ferry arsenal and incite a slave rebellion. Among his small band of insurgents were several young men who had also carried out vigilante violence in Kansas in hopes of abolishing slavery in that territory. The raid itself failed, and those who did not escape or die in the raid were later executed, including John Brown.

Nicole Etcheson
Ball State University

Woodson, Daniel

By Matthew E. Stanley, University of Cincinnati

Daniel Woodson was a proslavery newspaper editor, secretary of Kansas Territory, and a five-time acting territorial governor of Kansas during the late 1850s.

Buchanan, James

By Deborah Keating, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Two days after James Buchanan was inaugurated the 15th president of the United States, the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision, opening all American territories to slavery until the time came to seek admission as a state. Buchanan, sympathetic to the Southern cause despite being Northern born, wanted a ruling that supported “popular sovereignty,” a concept introduced in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) that allowed the settlers of Western territories—rather than the U.S. Congress—decide their status as slave or free states upon admission to the Union.

Stringfellow, Benjamin Franklin

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.

Topeka Constitution

By Tony O’ Bryan, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Free-Soil settlers in Kansas created the Topeka Constitution and elected their own legislature to manifest the democratic ideals of popular sovereignty and bring their struggle against proslavery forces in Kansas Territory to a national audience. When the ballot box failed to solve the dispute, settlers turned to bullets to settle their differences, and the violence over slavery in the territory brought “Bleeding Kansas” to national attention.

Bogus Legislature

By Jeremy Prichard, University of Kansas

The “Bogus Legislature” refers to Kansas Territory’s first governing body, established in 1855. Free-Soil and antislavery supporters in the area provided the moniker after widespread accounts of fraudulent voting in the March 30, 1855, election that selected the assembly’s initial members. The nickname stuck, and the partisan rift surrounding the two-year legislative session played a prominent role in the early years of Bleeding Kansas.

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