Free-State Party

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

By John Horner, Kansas City Public Library

In 1855 members of the Wattles family first settled in Kansas in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed territorial settlers to elect legislatures that would determine whether the territory would enter the Union as a free or slave state. The Wattles family came to Kansas with intentions of swaying these referendums toward the Free-State cause. Once they arrived, the family participated in Free-State Party politics, helped found the town of Moneka, edited an antislavery newspaper, connected with the radical abolitionist John Brown, and even advocated with some degree of success for women’s suffrage in Kansas.

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

Andrew H. Reeder was an American lawyer and politician most known for his involvement in “Bleeding Kansas,” first as the federally appointed governor of Kansas Territory, then as a leading force in the Free-State movement.

By Sarah Bell, University of Kansas

Julia Lovejoy and her family lived in Kansas Territory during the height of the “Bleeding Kansas” border tensions over the issue of slavery. She was a prolific writer and recorded the violent struggles between the Free-State and proslavery causes in letters she sent to Eastern newspapers. Her detailed descriptions of the events during this time provide important insight on the causes and consequences of the border wars.

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 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.

By Matthew E. Stanley, Albany State University

The Free-State Party was an antislavery political coalition that was organized in territorial Kansas in 1855 to oppose proslavery Democrats. From 1855 to 1859, party members thwarted the expansion of slavery into Kansas Territory by forcibly resisting proslavery forces on the ground and drafting antislavery legislation in conjunction with the national Republican Party.

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

The Wyandotte Constitution was the fourth and final proposed Kansas constitution following the failed attempts of the Topeka, Lecompton, and Leavenworth conventions to create a state constitution that would pass Congress and be signed as a bill by the president. For its time, the constitution expressed progressive ideas of liberty by explicitly prohibiting slavery, granting a homestead exemption to protect settlers from bankruptcy, and offering limited suffrage to women. When the lame duck President James Buchanan signed the bill approving the Wyandotte Constitution on January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as the 34th state, and it marked the end of five years of bitter conflict over slavery in Kansas Territory.

By Tony R. Mullis, U. S. Army Command and General Staff College

With a minimal level of actual violence, the Wakarusa War was not a war by traditional definitions - or even a battle. But it did threaten the outbreak of violence and reflect the growing political tensions that would lead to Kansas Territory being known as "Bleeding Kansas."

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