Bleeding Kansas was a violent period in the Kansas Territory over the issue of slavery, lasting five years from 1854 to 1859. Pro-slavery forces, often from Missouri, clashed with anti-slavery forces, resulting in over 200 deaths. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed residents to vote on slavery, violating the Missouri Compromise. Pro-slavery forces established a government, adopting Missouri’s slave code, while anti-slavery settlers set up another. Violence escalated, including the Pottawatomie Massacre and the Marais de Cygne Massacre. A state constitution was adopted in 1859, and Kansas became a state in 1861.
Bleeding Kansas, also known as Bloody Kansas, was a period of violence over the issue of enslavement in what was then Kansas Territory. It lasted about five years, from the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act until the adoption of a state constitution. Conflict between pro-slavery forces, often from the neighboring slave state of Missouri, and anti-slavery forces, made up of abolitionists and members of the Free Soil movement, claimed the lives of more than 200 people in all. The most famous of the bloody incidents that gave Bleeding Kansas its name are the Sacking of Lawrence, the Pottawatomie Massacre, and the Marais de Cygne Massacre.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was formulated to gain Southern support for the creation of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. It allowed residents to vote on whether slavery would be allowed in each location. However, this was a violation of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery in territories north of a certain latitude, including the land that would become Nebraska and Kansas. Despite northern outrage, the bill passed on May 30, 1854, forming the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
Nebraska was far enough north that it couldn’t become a slave state. Most settlers in Kansas Territory were also opposed to slavery, but elections held in the fall of 1854 and spring of 1855 established a pro-slavery government there. This occurred because of men known as Border Ruffians or Bushwackers – thousands of pro-slavery Missouri residents, often armed and threatening violence – crossing the border to cast their ballots in Kansas elections. The government adopted Missouri’s harsh slave code, made it illegal to speak or write against slavery, and retroactively legalized the many Missouri votes that had established their government. In response, Kansas settlers calling themselves the Free Soilers set up another anti-slavery state government.
The federal government recognized the pro-slavery governing body as the official state government, a decision that was the first large-scale act of violence in Bleeding Kansas. Many leaders of the antislavery government lived in Lawrence, and proslavery forces went there to arrest them. This, in turn, led to fires and looting in the city, but nobody was killed. In retaliation, abolitionist John Brown led a small group that called on the Northern Army to kill five pro-slavery settlers in the town of Pottawatomie Creek, an act that became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.
Violence escalated after the events at Lawrence and Pottawatomie Creek. One of the bloodiest events of the period was the Marais de Cygne massacre, in which five men were killed and five others wounded by pro-slavery Missourians in May of 1858. This was one of the last violent acts in Bleeding Kansas. A loose state constitution was adopted the following summer, although Kansas would not become a state until 1861, after the Confederate states seceded.
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