Bleeding Kansas; also called Bloody Kansas was a series of violent political confrontations in the western territory involving the strict sectional differences between Free-States and Slave-States. Most of the fighting took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of the state of Missouri between 1854 and 1861. At the heart of the conflict was the debate of whether Kansas would allow or outlaw slavery. The Kansas- Nebraska Act of 1854 tried to bring compromise to a situation that was already out of control. It was a law that allowed the people of Kansas to vote for a decision to be free or slave. They help more than one election voted for both options while fighting over it. Eventually Kansas was admitted as a free state in 1861 but it was too late because the civil war had begun.
The citizens of Kansas did not want this decision to have anything to do with outsiders; they believed that it should have been settle based on popular vote of the current residents. Instead people flocked to Kansas just to be able to vote. Kansas was ground zero for the battle between three different sections of America; North, South, and West. The voting process was a challenge because most of the current residents of the territory were pro-slave but many free abolitionists came just to vote.
Kansas became a State on January 29th, 1861.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2952.html
I believe that Bleeding Kansas was sort of like our political parties today. Instead of fighting with fists, Democrats and Republicans fight with politics.
What do you think of Bleeding Kansas?
Would you call Bleeding Kansas the “Civil War Part 1”? It is interesting that the fighting here lasted longer than the fighting in the Civil War.
Do you think that anything like Bleeding Kansas could happen again but over something different?
What are the issues that divide us today?