Bleeding Kansas

Violent slavery-related confrontations in Kansas territory in latter half of 1850s

Bleeding Kansas

Part of the prelude to the American Civil War

1856 map showing slave states (gray), free states (pink), and territories (green) in the United States, with the Kansas Territory in center (white)
| Date| 1854 (1854)–1861; 164 years ago (1861)

|

Location|

Kansas Territory

Result|

Antislavery settler victory

* Kansas admitted to the Union as a free state
* Fighting continues into the American Civil War

Belligerents

Antislavery settlers
(Jayhawkers/Free-Staters)

Supported by:

* United States (after 1860)[1]

Pro-slavery settlers (Border ruffians)

Supported by:

* United States (1854-1860)[1]

Commanders and leaders
John Brown|  No centralized leadership
Casualties and losses
Disputed – 100+[2]|  80 or fewer; 20–30 killed[2]

* v
* t
* e

Bleeding Kansas

* 1855 elections
* Wakarusa War
* Lawrence
* Pottawatomie
* Spurs
* Black Jack
* Franklin
* Fort Titus
* Osawatomie
* Marais des Cygnes

Events leading to the American Civil War

1. Northwest Ordinance (1787)
2. Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798–99)
3. End of Atlantic slave trade
4. Missouri Compromise (1820)
5. Tariff of 1828
6. Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)
7. Nullification crisis (1832–33)
8. Abolition of slavery in the British Empire (1834)
9. Texas Revolution (1835–36)
10. United States v. Crandall (1836)
11. Gag rule (1836–44)
12. Commonwealth v. Aves (1836)
13. Murder of Elijah Lovejoy (1837)
14. Burning of Pennsylvania Hall (1838)
15. American Slavery As It Is (1839)
16. United States v. The Amistad (1841)
17. Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842)
18. Texas annexation (1845)
19. Mexican–American War (1846–48)
20. Wilmot Proviso (1846)
21. Nashville Convention (1850)
22. Compromise of 1850
23. Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
24. Recapture of Anthony Burns (1854)
25. Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854)
26. Ostend Manifesto (1854)
27. Bleeding Kansas (1854–61)
28. Caning of Charles Sumner (1856)
29. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
30. The Impending Crisis of the South (1857)
31. Panic of 1857
32. Lincoln–Douglas debates (1858)
33. Oberlin–Wellington Rescue (1858)
34. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (1859)
35. Virginia v. John Brown (1859)
36. 1860 presidential election
37. Crittenden Compromise (1860)
38. Secession of Southern states (1860–61)
39. Peace Conference of 1861
40. Corwin Amendment (1861)
41. Battle of Fort Sumter (1861)

Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War, was a series of violent civil confrontations in the Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.

The conflict was characterized by years of electoral fraud, raids, assaults, and murders carried out in the Kansas Territory and neighboring Missouri by proslavery "border ruffians" and retaliatory raids carried out by antislavery "free-staters". According to Kansapedia of the Kansas Historical Society, 56 political killings were documented during the period,[3] and the total may be as high as 200.[4] It has been called a Tragic Prelude, or an overture, to the American Civil War, which immediately followed it.

The conflict centered on the question of whether Kansas, upon gaining statehood, would join the Union as a slave state or a free state. The question was of national importance because Kansas's two new senators would affect the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, which was bitterly divided over the issue of slavery. The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 called for popular sovereignty: the decision about slavery would be made by popular vote of the territory's settlers rather than by legislators in Washington, D.C. Existing sectional tensions surrounding slavery quickly found focus in Kansas.[5][6]

Missouri, a slave state since 1821, was populated by many settlers with Southern sympathies and pro-slavery views, some of whom tried to influence the Kansas decision by entering Kansas and claiming to be residents. The conflict was fought politically, and between civilians, where it eventually degenerated into brutal gang violence and paramilitary guerrilla warfare.

Kansas had a state-level civil war that would soon be replicated on a national basis. It had two different capitals (proslavery Lecompton and antislavery Lawrence, then Topeka), two different constitutions (the proslavery Lecompton Constitution and the antislavery Topeka Constitution), and two different legislatures (the so-called "bogus legislature" in Lecompton and the antislavery body in Lawrence). Both sides sought and received help from outside, with the proslavery side receiving aid from the federal government, as Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan openly supported the proslavery partisans.[1] Both claimed to reflect the will of the people of Kansas. The proslavers used violence and threats of violence, and the free-staters responded in kind. After much commotion, including a congressional investigation, it became clear that a majority of Kansans wanted Kansas to be a free state, but this required congressional approval, which Southerners in Congress blocked.

Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state the same day that enough Southern senators had departed, during the secession crisis that led to the Civil War, to allow it to pass (effective January 29, 1861). Partisan violence continued along the Kansas–Missouri border for most of the war, although Union control of Kansas was never seriously threatened. Bleeding Kansas demonstrated that armed conflict over slavery was unavoidable. Its severity made national headlines, which suggested to the American people that the sectional disputes were unlikely to be resolved without bloodshed, and it, therefore, acted as a preface to the American Civil War.[7] The episode is commemorated with numerous memorials and historic sites.

## Origins

[edit]

Part of a series on the

History of Kansas
Periods

* Timeline
* Pre-statehood before 1861
* Since statehood 1861–present

Topics

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* v
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As abolitionism became increasingly popular in the United States and tensions between its supporters and detractors grew, the U.S. Congress maintained a tenuous balance of political power between Northern and Southern representatives. At the same time, the increasing emigration of Americans to the country's western frontier and the desire to build a transcontinental railroad that would connect the eastern states with California urged incorporation of the western territories into the Union. The inevitable question was how these territories would treat the issue of slavery when eventually promoted to statehood. This question had already plagued Congress during political debates following the Mexican–American War. The Compromise of 1850 had at least temporarily solved the problem by permitting residents of the Utah and New Mexico Territories to decide their own laws with respect to slavery by popular vote, an act which set a new precedent in the ongoing debate over slavery.[7]

In May 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act created from Indian lands the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska for settlement by U.S. citizens. The act was proposed by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois as a way to appease Southern representatives in Congress, who had resisted earlier proposals to admit states from the Nebraska Territory because of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had explicitly forbidden the practice of slavery in all U.S. territory north of 36°30' latitude and west of the Mississippi River, except in the state of Missouri. Southerners feared the incorporation of Nebraska would upset the balance between slave and free states and thereby give abolitionist Northerners an advantage in Congress.

Douglas's proposal attempted to allay these fears with the organization of two territories instead of one, and with the inclusion of a "popular sovereignty" clause that would, like the condition previously prescribed for Utah and New Mexico, permit settlers of Kansas and Nebraska to vote on the legality of slavery in their own territories—a notion which directly contradicted and effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise, as both Kansas and Nebraska were located entirely north of parallel 36°30' north and west of the Mississippi. Like many others in Congress, Douglas assumed that settlers of Nebraska would ultimately vote to prohibit slavery and that settlers of Kansas, further south and closer to the slave state of Missouri, would vote to allow it, and thereby the balance of slave and free states would not change. Regarding Nebraska, this assumption was correct; the idea of slavery had little appeal for Nebraska's residents and its fate as a free state was already solidly in place. In Kansas, however, the assumption of legal slavery underestimated abolitionist resistance to the repeal of the long-standing Missouri Compromise. Southerners saw the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act as an emboldening victory; Northerners considered it an outrageous defeat. Each side of the slavery question saw a chance to assert itself in Kansas, and it quickly became the nation's prevailing ideological battleground,[8] and the most violent place in the country.

The term "Bleeding Kansas" was popularized by Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune.[9] The Tribune's first reference to "Kansas, bleeding", came on June 16, 1856, in a report on the North American National Convention. There, a Colonel Perry of Kansas reported that "Kansas, bleeding at every pore, would cast more votes indirectly for [the presidential candidate the convention settled upon] ... than any other State in the Union."[10][9] The Tribune's first mention of "bleeding Kansas" is in a poem by Charles S. Weyman, published on September 13, 1856:

> Far in the West rolls the thunder –
>  The tumult of battle is raging
>  Where bleeding Kansas is waging
>  War against Slavery!

> — "Fremont and Victory: The Prize Song By Charles S. Weyman". New York Daily Tribune. September 13, 1856.[9]

### Early elections

[edit]

Immediately, immigrants supporting both sides of the slavery question arrived in the Kansas Territory to establish residency and gain the right to vote. Among the first settlers of Kansas were citizens of slave states, especially nearby Missouri, many of whom strongly supported Southern ideologies and emigrated to Kansas specifically to assist the expansion of slavery. Proslavery immigrants settled towns, including Leavenworth and Atchison. The administration of President Franklin Pierce appointed territorial officials in Kansas aligned with its own proslavery views, and heeding rumors that the frontier was being overwhelmed by Northerners, thousands of nonresident slavery proponents soon entered Kansas with the goal of influencing local politics. Proslavery factions thereby captured many early territorial elections, often by fraud and intimidation. In November 1854, thousands of armed proslavery men known as "Border Ruffians" or "Southern Yankees", mostly from Missouri, poured into the Kansas Territory and swayed the vote in the election for a nonvoting delegate to Congress in favor of proslavery Democratic candidate John Wilkins Whitfield.[11] The following year, a congressional committee investigating the election reported that 1,729 fraudulent votes were cast compared to 1,114 legal votes. In one location, only 20 of the 604 voters were residents of the Kansas Territory; in another, 35 were residents and 226 nonresidents.[12]

Digital remake of the Fremont Club banner hung in Lancaster, New Hampshire to show support for Kansas.[13]

At the same time, Northern abolitionists encouraged their own supporters to move to Kansas in the effort to make the territory a free state, hoping to flood Kansas with so-called "Free-Soilers" or "Free-Staters". By far the most famous of these, and their leader, was John Brown of Leavenworth, who moved from Ohio.[14] Many citizens of Northern states arrived with assistance from benevolent societies such as the Boston-based New England Emigrant Aid Company, founded shortly before passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act with the specific goal of assisting anti-slavery immigrants to reach Kansas Territory. In a colorful story that may be legend, the abolitionist minister Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe's brother, shipped them Sharps rifles in crates labelled "Bibles"; they became known as Beecher's Bibles.[15] Despite boasts that 20,000 New England Yankees would be sent to the Kansas Territory, only about 1,200 settlers had emigrated there by the end of 1855.[16][8] Nevertheless, aid movements like these, heavily publicized by the Eastern press, played a significant role in creating the nationwide hysteria over the fate of Kansas, and were directly responsible for the establishment of towns which later became strongholds of Republican and abolitionist sentiment, including Lawrence, Topeka, and Manhattan, Kansas.[8][17]

### First Territorial Legislature

[edit]

Main article: 1855 Kansas Territory elections

1855 Free-State poster

On March 30, 1855, the Kansas Territory held the election for its first territorial legislature.[11] Crucially, this legislature would decide whether the territory would allow slavery. Just as had happened in the election of November 1854, "Border Ruffians" from Missouri again streamed into the territory to vote, and proslavery delegates were elected to 37 of the 39 seats—Martin F. Conway and Samuel D. Houston from Riley County were the only Free-Staters elected. Free-Staters loudly denounced the elections as fraudulent. Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder pleased neither side when he invalidated, as tainted by fraud, the results in only 11 of the 40 legislative races. A special election was held on May 22 to elect replacements, and the results were dramatically different; eight of the 11 delegates elected in the special election were Free-Staters. This still left the proslavery camp with an overwhelming 29–10 advantage.[17]

The proslavery legislature convened in the newly created territorial capital of Pawnee on July 2, 1855. The legislature immediately invalidated the results from the special election in May and seated the proslavery delegates elected in March. After only one week in Pawnee, the legislature moved the territorial capital to the Shawnee Mission, on the border with Missouri, where it reconvened, adopted a slave code for Kansas modeled largely on that of Missouri, and began passing laws favorable to slaveholders.

Free-Staters quickly elected delegates to a separate legislature based in Topeka, which proclaimed itself the legitimate government and called the proslavery government operating in Lecompton "bogus". This body created the first territorial constitution, the Topeka Constitution. Charles L. Robinson, a Massachusetts native and agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, was elected territorial governor.

Reeder had not been elected but appointed by President Pierce, at whose pleasure he served. Pierce fired him on August 16, 1855, replacing him with the very pro-Southern Wilson Shannon. Reeder left the territory and found it prudent to do so in disguise.

Pierce refused to recognize the Free-State legislature. In a message to Congress on January 24, 1856, Pierce declared the Topeka government "insurrectionist".[18] The presence of dual governments was symptomatic of the strife brewing in the territory and further provoked supporters of both sides of the conflict.[19][full citation needed][20][full citation needed]

In response to the disputed votes and rising tension, Congress sent a three-man special committee to the Kansas Territory in 1856.[17] The committee reported, in July 1856, that if the election of March 30, 1855, had been limited to "actual settlers", it would have elected a Free-State legislature.[17][21] The report also stated that the legislature actually seated in Lecompton "was an illegally constituted body, and had no power to pass valid laws".[17][21] In other words, the Free-Staters' allegations of fraud were well founded, and the Lecompton legislature was indeed bogus.

## Constitutional fight

[edit]

See also: Constitutions of Kansas

Much of the early confrontation of the Bleeding Kansas era centered formally on the creation of a constitution for the future state of Kansas. The first of four such documents was the Topeka Constitution, written by antislavery forces unified under the Free-Soil Party in December 1855. This constitution was the basis for the Free-State territorial government that resisted the federally authorized government, elected by Missourians who, congressional investigation soon revealed, committed fraud by voting in Kansas as residents and then returning to Missouri.[22] On June 30, 1856, after Pierce's declaration that the Topeka government was extralegal, Congress rejected ratification of the Topeka Constitution.

Pierce was succeeded in 1857 by James Buchanan. Like his predecessor, Buchanan was a Northerner sympathetic to the South and proslavery interests. That year, a second constitutional convention met in Lecompton, and by early November had drafted the Lecompton Constitution, a proslavery document endorsed by President Buchanan. The constitution was submitted to Kansans for a vote on a special slavery article, but Free-Staters refused to participate, since they knew that the constitution would allow Kansas slaveholders to keep existing slaves even if the article in question was voted against. The Lecompton Constitution, including the slavery article, was approved by a vote of 6,226 to 569 on December 21. Congress instead ordered another election because of voting irregularities uncovered. On August 2, 1858, Kansas voters rejected the document by 11,812 to 1,926.[23]

While the Lecompton Constitution was pending before Congress, a third document, the Leavenworth Constitution, was written and passed by Free State delegates. It was more radical than other Free-State proposals in that it would have extended suffrage to "every male citizen," regardless of race. Participation in this ballot on May 18, 1858, was a fraction of the previous and there was even some opposition by Free-State Democrats. The proposed constitution was forwarded to the U.S. Senate on January 6, 1859, where it was met with a tepid reception and left to die in committee.[24]

The fourth and final Free State proposal was the Wyandotte Constitution, drafted in 1859, which represented the anti-slavery view of the future of Kansas. It was approved in a referendum by a vote of 10,421 to 5,530 on October 4, 1859.[25] With Southern states still in control of the Senate, confirmation of the Wyandotte Constitution was indefinitely postponed. When senators from the seceding states left in January 1861, Kansas was immediately admitted—the same day—as a free state.[citation needed]

## Open violence

[edit]

On November 21, 1855, the so-called Wakarusa War began in Douglas County when a proslavery settler, Franklin Coleman, shot and killed a Free-Stater, Charles W. Dow, with whom Coleman had long been engaged in a feud that was unrelated to local or national politics. Dow was the first American settler to be murdered in the Kansas Territory. The decision by Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones to arrest another Free-Stater rather than Coleman and the prisoner's subsequent rescue by a Free-State posse erupted into a conflict that pitted, for the first time, armed pro-slavery settlers against antislavery settlers. Governor Wilson Shannon called for the Kansas militia, but the assembled army was composed almost entirely of proslavery Missourians, who camped outside the town of Lawrence with stolen weapons and a cannon.

In response, Lawrence raised its own militia, led by Charles L. Robinson, the man elected governor by the Topeka legislature, and James H. Lane. The parties besieging Lawrence reluctantly dispersed only after Shannon negotiated a peace agreement between Robinson and Lane and David Rice Atchison. The conflict had one other fatality, when Free-Stater Thomas Barber was shot and killed near Lawrence on December 6.

### Summer of 1856

[edit]

Main articles: Sacking of Lawrence, Caning of Charles Sumner, Pottawatomie massacre, and Battle of Osawatomie

On May 21, 1856, proslavery Democrats and Missourians invaded Lawrence, Kansas, and burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two antislavery newspaper offices, and ransacked homes and stores in what became known as the Sacking of Lawrence.[26] A cannon used during the Mexican–American War, called the Old Kickapoo or Kickapoo Cannon, was stolen and used on that day by a proslavery group including the Kickapoo Rangers of the Kansas Territorial Militia.[27] It was later recovered by an anti-slavery faction and returned to the city of Leavenworth.[27][28][29]

Preston Brooks attacking Charles Sumner in the U.S. Senate in 1856

In May 1856, Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts took to the floor to denounce the threat of slavery in Kansas and humiliate its supporters. Sumner accused Democrats in support of slavery of lying in bed with "the harlot of slavery" on the House floor during his "Crimes Against Kansas" speech.[30] He had devoted his enormous energies to the destruction of what Republicans called the slave power, that is the efforts of slave owners to control the federal government and ensure both the survival and the expansion of slavery. In the speech, Summer criticized South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, portraying Butler's pro-slavery agenda towards Kansas with the raping of a virgin, and characterizing his affection for it in sexual terms.[31] Two days later, Butler's cousin, the South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, attacked Sumner, nearly beating him to death on the Senate floor with a heavy cane. The action electrified the nation, brought violence to the floor of the Senate, and deepened the North–South split.[32] After nearly killing Sumner, Brooks was praised by Southern Democrats for the attack. Many pro-slavery newspapers concluded that abolitionists in Kansas and beyond "must be lashed into submission," and hundreds of Southern Democrat lawmakers after the attack sent Brooks new canes as an endorsement of the attack, with one of the canes being inscribed with the phrase "hit him again." Towns and counties renamed themselves to honor Brooks (Brooksville, Florida, Brooks County, Georgia, and others). Two weeks after the attack, American philosopher and Harvard graduate Ralph Waldo Emerson condemned Brooks and the pro-slavery lawmakers, stating: "I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute one state. I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom." In the coming weeks, many proslavery Democrats wore necklaces made from broken pieces of the cane as a symbol of solidarity with Preston Brooks.[33]

Digital remake of the flag carried by the Palmetto Guards while they attacked Lawrence, it was later captured near Oskaloosa.[34][35]

The violence continued to increase. John Brown led his sons and other followers to plan the murder of settlers who spoke in favor of slavery. At a proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek on the night of May 24, the group seized five proslavery men from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Brown and his men escaped and began plotting a full-scale slave insurrection to take place at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with financial support from Boston abolitionists.[36]

The proslavery territorial government, serving under President Pierce, had been relocated to Lecompton. In April 1856, a congressional committee arrived there to investigate voting fraud. The committee found that non-Kansas residents had illegally voted in the election, resulting in the proslavery government. President Pierce refused recognition of its findings and continued to authorize the proslavery legislature, which the Free State people called the "Bogus Legislature".

Tragic Prelude, in the Kansas State Capitol

On July 4, 1856, proclamations of President Pierce led to nearly 500 U.S. Army troops arriving in Topeka from Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley. With their cannons pointed at Constitution Hall and the long fuses lit, Colonel E.V. Sumner, cousin to the senator of the same name who was beaten on the Senate floor, ordered the dispersal of the Free State Legislature.[37]

In August 1856, thousands of proslavery men formed into armies and marched into Kansas. That month, Brown and several of his followers engaged 400 proslavery soldiers in the Battle of Osawatomie. The hostilities raged for another two months until Brown departed the Kansas Territory, and a new territorial governor, John W. Geary, took office and managed to prevail upon both sides for peace.

### 1857–1861

[edit]

Digital remake of US flag flown during the conflict, K stands for Kansas[38]

This was followed by a fragile peace broken by intermittent violent outbreaks for two more years. The last major outbreak of violence was touched off by the Marais des Cygnes massacre in 1858, in which Border Ruffians killed five Free State men. In the so-called Battle of the Spurs, in January 1859, John Brown led escaped slaves through a proslavery ambush en route to freedom via Nebraska and Iowa; not a shot was fired. About 56 people, though, died in Bleeding Kansas by the time the violence ended in 1859.[2]

There were still ongoing acts of violence even after Kansas adopted a free state constitution in 1859. In 1860, the Indian agent Col. Cowan and sixty United States dragoons burned down many free state supporting settlers' homes, while sparing settlers who came from the South or supported slavery.[39]

## Kansas admitted as a free state

[edit]

See also: Kansas in the American Civil War

The congressional legislative deadlock was broken in early 1861, when following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, seven Southern states seceded from the Union. Kansas's entry as a free state had already been approved by the House of Representatives, but had been blocked by Southern senators. When, early in 1861, the senators of the seceding states withdrew from Congress or were expelled, Kansas was immediately, within days, admitted to the Union as a free state, under the Wyandotte Constitution. While pro-Confederates in Missouri attempted to effect that state's secession from the Union, and succeeded in having a pro-Confederate government recognized by and admitted to the Confederacy, by the end of 1861, even that state was firmly in control of its Unionist government. Without control of Missouri, regular Confederate forces were never in a position to seriously threaten the newly recognized free state government in Kansas.

Nevertheless, following the commencement of the American Civil War in 1861, additional guerrilla violence erupted on the border between Kansas and Missouri and sporadically continued until the end of the war.

## Legacy

[edit]

### Heritage area

[edit]

In 2006, federal legislation defined a new Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area (FFNHA) and was approved by Congress. A task of the heritage area is to interpret Bleeding Kansas stories, which are also called stories of the Kansas–Missouri border war. A theme of the heritage area is the enduring struggle for freedom. FFNHA includes 41 counties, 29 of which are in eastern Kansas and 12 in western Missouri.[40]

### In popular culture

[edit]

The "Bleeding Kansas" period has been dramatically rendered in many works of American popular culture, including literature, theater, film, and television.

* Santa Fe Trail (1940) is an American Western film set before the Civil War, which depicts John Brown's campaign during Bleeding Kansas, starring Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn, and Raymond Massey.
* In Seven Angry Men (1955), Raymond Massey again plays John Brown.
* The Jayhawkers! (1959)
* Wildwood Boys (William Morrow, New York; 2000) is a biographical novel of "Bloody Bill" Anderson by James Carlos Blake.
* Bleeding Kansas (2008) by Sara Paretsky is a novel depicting social and political conflicts in present-day Kansas with many references to the 19th-century events.
* The Good Lord Bird (2013) is a novel by James McBride adapted into a 2020 miniseries starring Ethan Hawke as John Brown.[41]
* The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), an American western film set during and after the Civil War which depicts violence in the aftermath of Bleeding Kansas. The character of Granny, who is from Kansas, had a son who she said "was killed by Missouri ruffians in the Border War".
* Bad Blood, the Border War that Triggered the Civil War (2007), a documentary film[42]
* The November 8, 2014, episode of Hell on Wheels, titled "Bleeding Kansas", depicts a white family being slain for having slaves, who were then freed, in the name of religion[43]
* When Kings Reigned (2017), a docudrama directed by Ian Ballinger and Alison Dover is about fishermen living along the Kansas River during and after the Bleeding Kansas era and the persecution they faced from local governments.
* The Kents, a 12-issue miniseries of comics written by John Ostrander, explores the history of Superman's adoptive family set against the conflicts of the Bleeding Kansas era.

## See also

[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bleeding Kansas.

* Constitutions of Kansas
* Origins of the American Civil War

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c "Bleeding Kansas". History.com. April 7, 2021.
2. ^ a b c Watts, Dale (1995). "How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas? Political Killings in Kansas territory, 1854–1861" (PDF). Kansas History. pp. 116–129\. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 27, 2012. Retrieved January 9, 2009.
3. ^ "Bleeding Kansas". Kansapedia. Kansas Historical Society. 2016. Archived from the original on January 16, 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
4. ^ Finkelman, Paul (Spring 2011). "A Look Back at John Brown". Prologue Magazine. Vol. 43, no. 1\. Archived from the original on June 23, 2016. Retrieved September 11, 2021.
5. ^ "Bleeding Kansas". American Battlefield Trust. February 14, 2019. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
6. ^ "Bleeding Kansas (article)". Khan Academy. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
7. ^ a b Etcheson, Nicole. "Bleeding Kansas: From the Kansas–Nebraska Act to Harpers Ferry". Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri–Kansas Conflict, 1854–1865. The Kansas City Public Library. Archived from the original on July 22, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
8. ^ a b c Rawley, James A. (1969). Race & Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War. J. B. Lippincott Company.
9. ^ a b c Denial, Catherine. "Bleeding Kansas". teachinghistory.org. National History Education Clearinghouse. Archived from the original on November 9, 2017. Retrieved February 12, 2018.
10. ^ "Public Meetings. North American National Convention. Third Day". New York Daily Tribune. June 16, 1856.
11. ^ a b "Territorial Politics and Government". Territorial Kansas Online. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved June 18, 2014.
12. ^ Cutler, William G. History of the State of Kansas, A.T. Andreas, (1883), "Territorial History, Part 8".
13. ^ "Frémont Club banner - Kansas Memory". www.kansasmemory.org. Retrieved November 21, 2024.
14. ^ "Kansas Affairs". p. 685.
15. ^ "Beecher Bibles - Kansapedia - Kansas Historical Society". Archived from the original on February 10, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2019.
16. ^ William Frank Zornow, "Kansas: a history of the Jayhawk State" (1957), p. 72
17. ^ a b c d e Olson, Kevin (2012). Frontier Manhattan. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1832-3.
18. ^ Richardson, James D. "A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents". Project Gutenberg. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved March 18, 2008.
19. ^ Thomas Goodrich, War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854–1861. (2004). Ch. 1 iii.
20. ^ Elizabeth R. Varon, Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859. (2007). Ch. 8.
21. ^ a b Report of the special committee appointed to investigate the troubles in Kansas, Cornelius Wendell, 1856, archived from the original on August 11, 2011, retrieved June 18, 2014
22. ^ Cutler, William G. History of the State of Kansas, A.T. Andreas, (1883), "Territorial History".
23. ^ Cutler, William G. "Territorial History, Part 55".
24. ^ Cutler, William G. "Territorial History, Part 53".
25. ^ "Wyandotte Constitution Approved". Archived from the original on November 5, 2014. Retrieved November 5, 2014.
26. ^ "First Sack of Lawrence | Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865". Archived from the original on February 15, 2019. Retrieved February 14, 2019.
27. ^ a b Kansas Historical Society (February 2017). "Old Kickapoo Cannon". Kansapedia – Kansas Historical Society. Archived from the original on May 15, 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
28. ^ Lull, Robert W. (2013). Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams: Leader of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and the 8th U.S. Cavalry. University of North Texas Press. ISBN 978-1574415025. Archived from the original on January 2, 2020. Retrieved June 2, 2018 – via Google Books.
29. ^ "Kickapoo Cannon". Blackmar's Cyclopedia of Kansas History. 1912. p. 69\. Archived from the original on May 15, 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2018 – via Kansas State History.
30. ^ "The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner (May 22, 1856)". United States Senate. Archived from the original on February 7, 2019. Retrieved February 7, 2019.
31. ^ Pfau, Michael William (2003). "Time, Tropes, and Textuality: Reading Republicanism in Charles Sumner's 'Crime Against Kansas'". Rhetoric & Public Affairs. 6 (3): 393. doi:10.1353/rap.2003.0070. S2CID 144786197. Archived from the original on August 14, 2019.
32. ^ Williamjames Hull Hoffer, The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism, and the Origins of the Civil War (2010)
33. ^ "3 Jun 1856, Page 2 - the Charlotte Democrat at Newspapers.com". Archived from the original on February 9, 2019. Retrieved February 7, 2019.
34. ^ "Southern Rights flag - Kansas Memory". www.kansasmemory.org. Retrieved November 21, 2024.
35. ^ "Our Captured Flag, Slough Creek". Jefferson County Jayhawkers and Forgotten Freestaters. September 11, 2017. Retrieved November 21, 2024.
36. ^ Schraff, Anne E. (2010). John Brown: "We Came to Free the Slaves". Enslow. p. 56\. ISBN 978-0-7660-3355-9. Archived from the original on May 11, 2016.
37. ^ Thomas K. Tate (2013). General Edwin Vose Sumner, USA: A Civil War Biography. McFarland. p. 53\. ISBN 978-0786472581. Archived from the original on May 3, 2016. Retrieved December 11, 2015.
38. ^ "31 STARS PLUS A "K" FOR BLEEDING KANSAS, AN EXTRAORDINARILY UNUSUAL FORM OF POLITICAL SYMBOLISM ON AN EARLY STARS & STRIPES, PRE-CIVIL WAR, CALIFORNIA STATEHOOD, 1850-1858". jeffbridgman.com. Retrieved November 20, 2024.
39. ^ A New Page in the History of the Territory The Trouble on the Cherokee Neutral Lands The Settlers Driven of by U.S. Dragoons Seventy-four Houses Burnt Discrimination in Favor of Pro-Slavery Men Archived February 3, 2023, at the Wayback Machine, nytimes.com/
40. ^ Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area Management Plan Appendices Archived November 29, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, Freedomsfrontier.org/
41. ^ Garth Franklin (August 3, 2019). "Diggs, Russell Join Hawke's "Good Lord Bird"". darkhorizons.com. Archived from the original on August 4, 2019. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
42. ^ Bad Blood, the Border War that Triggered the Civil War. Kansas City Public Television and Wide Awake Films. 2007. ISBN 978-0-9777261-4-1. Archived from the original on May 23, 2022. Retrieved May 22, 2022.
43. ^ "Hell on Wheels Season 4 Episode 11 Review: Bleeding Kansas". November 8, 2014. Archived from the original on November 9, 2014. Retrieved November 9, 2014.

## Further reading

[edit]

### Web

[edit]

* Territorial Kansas Online 1854–1861. A virtual repository for Territorial Kansas History, University of Kansas and Kansas State Historical Society, 2018

### Primary sources

[edit]

* Brown, Salmon (June 1935). "John Brown and Sons in Kansas Territory". Indiana Magazine of History. Vol. 31, no. 2\. pp. 142–150\. JSTOR 27786731.
* Sanborn, F. B. (February 1908). "The Early History of Kansas, 1854–1861". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 3rd. 1 [Vol. 41 of continuous numbering]: 331–359\. JSTOR 25079946.
* Sanborn, F. B. (August 15, 1905). "The Story of John Brown's Sacrifice". Alexander's Magazine. pp. 29–36.
* Winkley, J. W., M.D. (1905). John Brown the Hero. Personal Reminiscences. Boston: James H. West Company – via Project Gutenburg.`{{cite book}}`: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
* At least 24 pamphlets were published in 1858 dealing with Kansas issues. A listing is in the papers of John Brown biographer Oswald Garrison Villard, here.
* U. S. House of Representatives, 34th Congress, 1st Session (1856), Report of the Special Committee appointed to investigate the troubles in Kansas; with the views of the minority of said Committee, Washington, D.C., archived from the original on August 11, 2011, retrieved June 18, 2014`{{citation}}`: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
* Sumner, Charles (1856). The crime against Kansas. The apologies for the crime. The true remedy. Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, in the Senate of the United States, 19th and 20th May, 1856. Boston: John J. Jewitt.
* Napton, Wm. B.; Price, Sterling; Oliver, M.; Woodson, S. H. (1855). "Address to the people of the United States [on slavery in Kansas]". Address to the people of the United States, together with the proceedings and resolutions of the Pro-slavery Convention of Missouri, held at Lexington, July, 1855. St. Louis, Missouri. pp. 3–15.`{{cite book}}`: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

### Scholarship

[edit]

* Childers, Christopher. "Interpreting Popular Sovereignty: A Historiographical Essay", Civil War History Volume 57, Number 1, March 2011 pp. 48–70 in Project MUSE
* Earle, Jonathan and Burke, Diane Mutti. Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri: The Long Civil War on the Border. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2013.
* Epps, Kristen. Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016.
* Etcheson, Nicole. "The Great Principle of Self-Government: Popular Sovereignty and Bleeding Kansas", Kansas History 27 (Spring-Summer 2004):14–29, links it to Jacksonian Democracy
* Etcheson, Nicole. Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (2006)
* Goodrich, Thomas. War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854–1861 (2004)
* Johannsen, Robert W. "Popular Sovereignty and the Territories", Historian 22#4 pp. 378–395, doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.1960.tb01665.x
* Malin, James C. John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-six. (1942)
* Miner, Craig (2002). Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State, 1854–2000.
* Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: vol. 2 A House Dividing, 1852–1857 (1947), Kansas in national context
* Nichols, Roy F. "The Kansas–Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography", Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1956) 43#2 pp. 187–212 in JSTOR
* Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (1976), Pulitzer Prize; ch. 9, 12
* Reynolds, David S. John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (2005)
* SenGupta, Gunja (March 1993). "'A Model New England State': Northeastern Antislavery in Territorial Kansas, 1854–1860". Civil War History. 39 (1): 31–46\. doi:10.1353/cwh.1993.0057. S2CID 144183135.

## External links

[edit]

* Documentary On Bleeding Kansas
* Kansas State Historical Society: A Look Back at Kansas Territory, 1854–1861
* Access documents, photographs, and other primary sources on Kansas Memory, the Kansas State Historical Society's digital portal
* NEEAC. History of the New-England Emigrant Aid Company. Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1862.
* PBS article on Bleeding Kansas.
* Territorial Kansas Online: A Virtual Repository for Kansas Territorial History.
* U-S-History.com.
* Online Exhibit – Willing to Die for Freedom, Kansas Historical Society
* Map of North America during Bleeding Kansas at omniatlas.com

* v
* t
* e

Armed conflicts involving the Armed Forces of the United States

Listed chronologically

Domestic|

* Shays' Rebellion
* Whiskey Rebellion
* Fries's Rebellion
* 1811 German Coast uprising
* Turner's Rebellion
* Dorr Rebellion
* Bleeding Kansas
* Utah War
* Harpers Ferry raid
* American Civil War
* New York City draft riots
* American Indian Wars
* Colfax Riot
* Brooks–Baxter War
* Battle of Liberty Place
* Vicksburg riot
* Range War
* Hamburg riot
* Great Railroad Strike of 1877
* Lincoln County War
* Rock Springs Riot
* Seattle riot of 1886
* Johnson County War
* Coal Creek War
* Homestead strike
* Pullman Strike
* Colorado Coalfield War
* Red Summer
* Battle of Blair Mountain
* Tulsa riot
* Bonus Army
* Puerto Rican revolts
* Ole Miss riot of 1962
* 1960s ghetto rebellions
* 1969 Greensboro uprising
* Kent State shootings
* Wounded Knee Occupation
* 1992 Los Angeles riots
* 2020 racial unrest
* 2021 U.S. Capitol attack
* 2025 Los Angeles protests

Foreign|

* American Revolutionary War
* American–Algerian War (1785–1795)
* Quasi-War
* First Barbary War
* War of 1812
* Second Barbary War
* First Sumatran expedition
* Second Sumatran expedition
* 1840 Fiji expedition
* Ivory Coast expedition
* Mexican–American War
* 1855 Fiji expedition
* Second Opium War
* 1858 Fiji expedition
* Formosa Expedition
* Korean Expedition
* Spanish–American War
* Philippine–American War
* Boxer Rebellion
* Banana Wars
* Border War
* World War I
* Russian Civil War
* World War II
* Korean War
* Bay of Pigs Invasion
* Vietnam War
* Dominican Civil War
* Iranian Revolution (Operation Eagle Claw)
* Invasion of Grenada
* Lebanese Civil War (1983 Beirut barracks bombings)
* Invasion of Panama
* Gulf War
* Somali Civil War (Operation Gothic Serpent)
* Intervention in Haiti
* Bosnian War
* Kosovo War
* War in Afghanistan
* Iraq War
* War in North-West Pakistan
* First Libyan Civil War
* War against the Islamic State
* Iraq
* Syria
* Cameroon
* Libya
* Yemeni civil war

Related|

* Conflicts in the U.S.
* Wars involving the U.S.
* Timeline of U.S. military operations
* Length of U.S. participation in major wars
* Territorial evolution
* Military history
* History of the Central Intelligence Agency
* Casualties of war
* Peace movement
* List of anti-war organizations
* Conscientious objector
* Cold War
* War on terror
* War crimes

* v
* t
* e

Riots and civil unrest in the history of the United States (1607–1865)

Colonial era &
1776–1789|

| Massachusetts|

* 1689 Boston revolt
* Boston bread riot (1710–1713)
* Knowles Riot (1747)
* Liberty affair (1768)
* Boston Massacre (1770)
* Shays' Rebellion (1786–1787)

|

New York|

* Leisler's Rebellion (1689–1691)
* New York Slave Revolt of 1712
* New York Conspiracy of 1741
* Battle of Golden Hill (1770)
* 1788 doctors' riot

North Carolina|

* Culpeper's Rebellion (1677)
* Cary's Rebellion (1711)
* War of the Regulation (1765–1771)
* Battle of Alamance (1771)

Pennsylvania|

* Philadelphia Election riot (1742)
* Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783

Virginia|

* Gloucester County Conspiracy (1663)
* Bacon's Rebellion (1677)
* Chesapeake rebellion (1730)

Others|

* Plundering Time (Maryland, 1644)
* Protestant Revolution (Maryland, 1689)
* Stono Rebellion (South Carolina, 1739)
* Gaspee affair (1772)
* Pine Tree Riot (1772)

1789–1849|

| Iowa|

* Honey War (1839)
* Bellevue War (1840)

|

Massachusetts|

* Ursuline Convent riots (1834)
* Abolition Riot of 1836
* Broad Street Riot (1837)

New York|

* Eggnog riot (1826)
* New York anti-abolitionist riots (1834)
* Flour riot of 1837
* Anti-Rent War (1839–1845)
* Astor Place Riot (1849)

Ohio|

* 1792 Cincinnati riot
* Cincinnati riots of 1829
* Cincinnati riots of 1836
* Cincinnati riots of 1841

Pennsylvania|

* Whiskey Rebellion (1791–1794)
* Fries's Rebellion (1799–1800)
* Philadelphia race riot (1834)
* Destruction of Pennsylvania Hall (1838)
* Buckshot War (1838)
* Lombard Street riot (1842)
* Muncy Abolition riot of 1842
* Philadelphia nativist riots (1844)

Rhode Island|

* 1824 Hard Scrabble race riot
* 1831 Snow Town race riot
* Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842)

Others|

* 1811 German Coast uprising
* Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)
* Blackburn Riots (1833)
* Baltimore bank riot (1835)
* Snow Riot (1835)

1849–1865|

| California|

* Squatters' riot (1850)
* San Francisco Vigilance Movement (1851–1856)

|

Illinois|

* Lager Beer Riot (1855)
* Charleston riot (1864)

Kansas|

* Bleeding Kansas (1854–1861)
* Wakarusa War (1855)
* Sacking of Lawrence (1856)
* Pottawatomie massacre (1856)
* Battle of Black Jack (1856)
* Battle of Fort Titus (1856)
* Battle of Osawatomie (1856)
* Battles of Franklin's Fort (1856)
* Marais des Cygnes massacre (1856)
* Battle of the Spurs (1859)

Maine|

* Bath anti-Catholic riot of 1854
* Portland Rum Riot (1855)

Maryland|

* Know-Nothing Riots of 1856
* Baltimore riot of 1861

Michigan|

* 1849 Detroit riot
* Detroit brothel riots (1855–1859)
* Detroit race riot of 1863

New York|

* New York City Police riot (1857)
* Dead Rabbits riot (1857)
* Brooklyn riot (1862)
* Buffalo riot of 1862
* New York City draft riots (1863)

Ohio|

* Cincinnati riot of 1853
* Cincinnati riots of 1855
* Battle of Fort Fizzle (1863)

Others|

* Erie Gauge War (1853–1854)
* Bloody Monday (1855)
* Washington D.C. Know-Nothing Riot (1857)
* New Orleans Know-Nothing Riot (1858)
* John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (1859)
* Morrisite War (1862)
* Southern bread riots (1863)

Related|

* List of incidents of civil unrest in Colonial North America
* Mass racial violence in the United States

* v
* t
* e

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

John Brown's raiders|

* Osborne Perry Anderson
* John Brown
* body
* Oliver Brown
* Owen Brown (son)
* Watson Brown
* John Anthony Copeland Jr.
* Barclay Coppock
* Edwin Coppock
* Shields Green
* Albert Hazlett
* John Henry Kagi
* Lewis Sheridan Leary
* Francis Jackson Meriam
* Dangerfield Newby
* Aaron Dwight Stevens

Secret Six|

* Thomas Wentworth Higginson
* Samuel Gridley Howe
* Theodore Parker
* Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
* Gerrit Smith
* George Luther Stearns

Other individuals|

* John Wilkes Booth
* Mary Ann Day Brown (wife)
* Owen Brown (father)
* John Brown, Jr.
* James Buchanan
* Samuel Chilton
* John E.P. Daingerfield
* Israel Greene
* George Henry Hoyt
* Andrew Hunter
* Stonewall Jackson
* Robert E. Lee
* James M. Mason
* Richard Parker
* Wendell Phillips
* Richard Realf
* James Redpath
* George Sennott
* Heyward Shepherd
* Lysander Spooner
* George H. Steuart
* J. E. B. Stuart
* Lewis Washington
* Walt Whitman
* Henry A. Wise

Locations|

* Allstadt House and Ordinary
* B & O Railroad Potomac River Crossing
* Beall-Air
* Charles Town, West Virginia
* Gibson-Todd House
* Harpers Ferry Armory
* Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
* Historic District
* John Brown's Fort
* Kennedy Farm
* Sandy Hook, Maryland
* Winchester, Virginia

Afterwards|

* Battle Hymn of the Republic
* Burning of Winchester Medical College
* Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
* Heyward Shepherd monument
* John Brown (biography)
* John Brown Farm State Historic Site
* John Brown Farm, Tannery & Museum
* John Brown House (Akron, Ohio)
* John Brown Museum (Osawatomie, Kansas)
* John Brown's body
* John Brown's Body (poem)
* John Brown's Body (song)
* John Brown's last speech
* John Brown's Provisional Constitution
* "The Last Days of John Brown"
* The Last Moments of John Brown
* "A Plea for Captain John Brown"
* "Remarks After the Hanging of John Brown"
* Tragic Prelude
* Virginia v. John Brown

Related|

* Abolitionism in the United States
* La Amistad
* Battle of Black Jack
* Battle of the Spurs
* James Madison Bell
* Bleeding Kansas
* Cloudsplitter
* John Brown's War Against Slavery
* John Stuart Curry
* George DeBaptiste
* Frederick Douglass
* Ralph Waldo Emerson
* Fire on the Mountain
* Wm. Lloyd Garrison
* The Good Lord Bird (book, miniseries)
* Haitian Revolution
* Victor Hugo
* Elijah P. Lovejoy
* Marching Song (play)
* James Montgomery
* Origins of the American Civil War
* Battle of Osawatomie
* Quindaro Townsite
* Allan Pinkerton
* Pottawatomie massacre
* Santa Fe Trail (film)
* Seven Angry Men
* Storer College
* Henry David Thoreau
* To Purge This Land with Blood
* Harriet Tubman
* Nat Turner
* Denmark Vesey
* Wakarusa War
* Walt Whitman
* Winchester and Potomac Railroad

* v
* t
* e

Kansas in the American Civil War

Background|

* Origins:
* Kansas–Nebraska Act
* Bleeding Kansas
* Wakarusa War
* Lawrence
* Pottawatomie
* Spurs
* Black Jack
* Franklin
* Fort Titus
* Osawatomie
* Marais des Cygnes

* Combatants:
* Union
* Campaigns:
* Missouri

Battles|

* 1861:
* Osceola
* 1863:
* Lawrence
* Brooklyn
* Baxter Springs
* 1864:
* Marais des Cygnes
* Mine Creek

Related topics|

* General Order 11

* Category

* v
* t
* e

Missouri in the American Civil War

Origins|

* Liberty Arsenal
* Capture of Camp Jackson
* Harney–Price Convention

Combatants|

* Confederacy
* Union

Campaigns|

* Shelby's Raid
* Price's Missouri Expedition

Battles|

| 1861|

* Boonville
* Cole Camp
* Carthage
* Battle of Dug Springs
* Athens
* Wilson's Creek
* Dry Wood Creek
* 1st Lexington
* Blue Mills Landing
* Fredericktown
* 1st Springfield
* Belmont
* Blackwater Creek
* Mount Zion Church

|

1862|

* Roan's Tan Yard
* New Madrid
* Moore's Mill
* Kirksville
* 1st Independence
* Lone Jack
* 1st Newtonia
* Island Mound
* Clark's Mill

1863|

* 2nd Springfield
* Hartville
* Cape Girardeau
* Chalk Bluff

1864|

* Fort Davidson
* Sedalia
* Glasgow
* 2nd Lexington
* Little Blue
* 2nd Independence
* Big Blue
* Westport
* Marmiton River
* 2nd Newtonia

Involvement
(by city or town)

* Centralia
* Osceola
* St. Louis

Leaders|

| Confederate|

* John S. Marmaduke
* Sterling Price
* Joseph O. Shelby

|

Union|

* Samuel R. Curtis
* Thomas Ewing Jr.
* Nathaniel Lyon

Aftermath|

| Monuments and
memorials|

* Athens
* Carthage
* Fort Davidson
* Island Mound
* Lexington
* Newtonia
* First Newtonia
* Second Newtonia
* Wilson's Creek

|

Cemeteries|

* Confederate Home

Related topics|

* General Order 11
* Bleeding Kansas

* Category
* Commons

* v
* t
* e

American Civil War

Origins

* Origins

* Timeline leading to the War
* Bleeding Kansas
* Border states
* Compromise of 1850
* John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
* Kansas-Nebraska Act
* Lincoln–Douglas debates
* Missouri Compromise
* Nullification crisis
* Origins of the American Civil War
* Panic of 1857
* Popular sovereignty
* Secession
* South Carolina Declaration of Secession
* States' rights
* Proclamation 80

|

Slavery|

* African Americans
* Cornerstone Speech
* Crittenden Compromise
* Dred Scott v. Sandford
* Emancipation Proclamation
* Fire-Eaters
* Fugitive slave laws
* Plantations in the American South
* Positive good
* Slave Power
* Slavery in the United States
* Treatment of slaves in the United States
* Uncle Tom's Cabin

Abolitionism|

* Abolitionism in the United States
* Susan B. Anthony
* James G. Birney
* John Brown
* Frederick Douglass
* William Lloyd Garrison
* Lane Debates on Slavery
* Elijah Parish Lovejoy
* J. Sella Martin
* Lysander Spooner
* George Luther Stearns
* Thaddeus Stevens
* Charles Sumner
* Caning
* Harriet Tubman
* Underground Railroad

* Combatants
* Theaters
* Campaigns
* Battles
* States

| Combatants|

| Union|

* Army
* Navy
* Marine Corps
* Revenue Cutter Service

|

Confederacy|

* Army
* Navy
* Marine Corps

Theaters|

* Eastern
* Western
* Lower Seaboard
* Trans-Mississippi
* Pacific Coast
* Union naval blockade

Major campaigns|

* Anaconda Plan
* Blockade runners
* New Mexico
* Jackson's Valley
* Peninsula
* Northern Virginia
* Maryland
* Stones River
* Vicksburg
* Tullahoma
* Gettysburg
* Morgan's Raid
* Bristoe
* Knoxville
* Red River
* Overland
* Atlanta
* Valley 1864
* Bermuda Hundred
* Richmond-Petersburg
* Franklin–Nashville
* Price's Missouri Expedition
* Sherman's March
* Carolinas
* Mobile
* Appomattox

Major battles|

* Fort Sumter
* 1st Bull Run
* Wilson's Creek
* Fort Donelson
* Pea Ridge
* Hampton Roads
* Shiloh
* New Orleans
* Corinth
* Seven Pines
* Seven Days
* 2nd Bull Run
* Antietam
* Perryville
* Fredericksburg
* Stones River
* Chancellorsville
* Gettysburg
* Vicksburg
* Chickamauga
* Chattanooga
* Wilderness
* Fort Pillow
* Spotsylvania
* Cold Harbor
* Atlanta
* Crater
* Mobile Bay
* Franklin
* Nashville
* Five Forks

Involvement|

| States and
territories|

* Alabama
* Arkansas
* Arizona
* California
* Colorado
* Connecticut
* Dakota Territory
* District of Columbia
* Delaware
* Florida
* Georgia
* Hawaii
* Idaho
* Illinois
* Indian Territory
* Indiana
* Iowa
* Kansas
* Kentucky
* Louisiana
* Maine
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* Michigan
* Minnesota
* Mississippi
* Missouri
* Montana
* Nebraska
* Nevada
* New Hampshire
* New Jersey
* New Mexico
* New York
* North Carolina
* Ohio
* Oregon
* Pennsylvania
* Rhode Island
* South Carolina
* Tennessee
* Texas
* Utah
* Vermont
* Virginia
* Washington
* West Virginia
* Wisconsin

|

Cities|

* Atlanta
* Charleston
* Chattanooga
* New Orleans
* Richmond
* Washington, D.C.
* Winchester

Leaders

| Confederate|

| Military|

* R. H. Anderson
* Beauregard
* Bragg
* Buchanan
* Cooper
* Early
* Ewell
* Forrest
* Gorgas
* Hill
* Hood
* Jackson
* A. S. Johnston
* J. E. Johnston
* Lee
* Longstreet
* Morgan
* Mosby
* Polk
* Price
* Semmes
* E. K. Smith
* Stuart
* Taylor
* Wheeler

|

Civilian|

* Benjamin
* Bocock
* Breckinridge
* Davis
* Hunter
* Mallory
* Memminger
* Seddon
* Stephens

Union|

| Military|

* Anderson
* Buell
* Burnside
* Butler
* Du Pont
* Farragut
* Foote
* Frémont
* Grant
* Halleck
* Hooker
* Hunt
* McClellan
* McDowell
* Meade
* Meigs
* Ord
* Pope
* D. D. Porter
* Rosecrans
* Scott
* Sheridan
* Sherman
* Thomas

|

Civilian|

* Adams
* Chase
* Ericsson
* Hamlin
* Lincoln
* Pinkerton
* Seward
* Stanton
* Stevens
* Wade
* Welles

Aftermath

| Constitution|

* Reconstruction Amendments
* 13th Amendment
* 14th Amendment
* 15th Amendment

|

Reconstruction|

* Alabama Claims
* Brooks–Baxter War
* Carpetbaggers
* Colfax riot of 1873
* Compromise of 1877
* Confederate refugees
* Confederados
* Eufaula riot of 1874
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Freedman's Savings Bank
* Homestead Acts
* Southern Homestead Act of 1866
* Timber Culture Act of 1873
* Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
* trial
* efforts
* timeline
* first inquiry
* second inquiry
* impeachment managers investigation
* Kirk–Holden war
* Knights of the White Camelia
* Ku Klux Klan
* Ethnic violence
* Memphis riots of 1866
* Meridian riot of 1871
* New Orleans riot of 1866
* Pulaski (Tennessee) riot of 1867
* South Carolina riots of 1876
* Reconstruction acts
* Habeas Corpus Act of 1867
* Enforcement Act of 1870
* Enforcement Act of February 1871
* Enforcement Act of April 1871
* Reconstruction era
* Reconstruction military districts
* Reconstruction Treaties
* Indian Council at Fort Smith
* Red Shirts
* Redeemers
* Scalawags
* South Carolina riots of 1876
* Southern Claims Commission
* White League

Post-
Reconstruction|

* Commemoration
* Centennial
* Civil War Discovery Trail
* Civil War Roundtables
* Civil War Trails Program
* Civil War Trust
* Confederate History Month
* Confederate Memorial Day
* Decoration Day
* Historical reenactment
* Robert E. Lee Day
* Confederate Memorial Hall
* Disenfranchisement
* Black Codes
* Jim Crow
* Historiographic issues
* Lost Cause mythology
* Modern display of the Confederate flag
* Red Shirts
* Sons of Confederate Veterans
* Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
* Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War
* National Society Daughters of the Union 1861-1865
* Southern Historical Society
* United Confederate Veterans
* United Daughters of the Confederacy
* Children of the Confederacy
* Wilmington insurrection of 1898

Monuments
and memorials|

| Union|

* List
* Grand Army of the Republic
* memorials to Lincoln

|

Confederate|

* List
* artworks in Capitol
* memorials to Davis
* memorials to Lee
* Removal

Cemeteries|

* Ladies' Memorial Associations
* U.S. national cemeteries

Veterans|

* 1913 Gettysburg reunion
* 1938 Gettysburg reunion
* Confederate Memorial Hall
* Confederate Veteran
* Grand Army of the Republic
* Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the U.S.
* Old soldiers' homes
* Southern Cross of Honor
* United Confederate Veterans

* Related topics

| Military|

* Arms
* Armies
* Campaign Medal
* Cavalry
* Confederate Home Guard
* Confederate railroads
* Confederate revolving cannon
* Field artillery
* Infantry
* Medal of Honor recipients
* Medicine
* Naval battles
* Official Records
* Partisan rangers
* POW camps
* Rations
* Signal Corps
* Turning point
* Union corps badges
* U.S. Balloon Corps
* U.S. Home Guard
* U.S. Military Railroad

|

Political|

* Committee on the Conduct of the War
* Confederate States presidential election of 1861
* Confiscation Act of 1861
* Confiscation Act of 1862
* Copperheads
* Diplomacy
* Emancipation Proclamation
* Habeas Corpus Act of 1863
* Hampton Roads Conference
* National Union Party
* Politicians killed
* Radical Republicans
* Trent Affair
* Union Leagues
* U.S. Presidential Election of 1864
* War Democrats

Music|

* Battle Hymn of the Republic
* Dixie
* John Brown's Body
* A Lincoln Portrait
* Marching Through Georgia
* Maryland, My Maryland
* Names from the War
* When Johnny Comes Marching Home
* Daar kom die Alibama

By ethnicity|

* African Americans
* German Americans
* Irish Americans
* Italian Americans
* Native Americans
* Catawba
* Cherokee
* Choctaw
* Seminole

Other topics|

* Baltimore riot of 1861
* Battlefield preservation
* Bibliography
* Confederate war finance
* Confederate States dollar
* Espionage
* Confederate Secret Service
* Great Hanging at Gainesville
* Great Revival of 1863
* Gender issues
* Juneteenth
* Naming the war
* New York City Gold Hoax of 1864
* New York City riots of 1863
* Photographers
* Richmond riots of 1863
* Salt
* Supreme Court cases
* Tokens
* U.S. Sanitary Commission
* Women soldiers

Related|

* List of films and television shows about the American Civil War

* Category
* Portal

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Franklin Pierce

* 14th President of the United States (1853–1857)
* Senator from New Hampshire (1837–1842)
* U.S. Representative for NH at-large (1833–1837)

Life|

* Doughface
* 9th Infantry Regiment
* Battle of Contreras
* Battle of Churubusco
* 1852 United States presidential election
* 1852 Democratic National Convention
* Old North Cemetery

Presidency|

* Inauguration of Franklin Pierce
* List of federal judges appointed by Franklin Pierce
* Young America movement
* Gadsden Purchase
* Ostend Manifesto
* Kansas–Nebraska Act
* Bleeding Kansas
* Topeka Constitution
* 1856 Democratic National Convention

Public image|

* Franklin Pierce Homestead
* Franklin Pierce House
* Pierce Manse
* Franklin Pierce University
* Mount Pierce
* Pierceton, Indiana
* Pierce County, Washington
* Pierce County, Georgia
* Statue of Franklin Pierce

Family|

* Jane Pierce (wife)
* Benjamin Pierce (father)
* Benjamin Kendrick Pierce (brother)

* ← Millard Fillmore
* James Buchanan →

* Category

* v
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James Buchanan

* 15th President of the United States (1857–1861)
* 17th United States Secretary of State (1845–1849)
* U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania (1834–1845)
* U.S. Representative for PA–4 (1823–1831)
* U.S. Representative for PA–3 (1821–1823)

Life|

* Electoral history of James Buchanan
* 1844 Democratic National Convention
* Oregon Treaty
* 1848 Democratic National Convention
* Wheatland
* Doughface
* 1852 Democratic National Convention
* Ostend Manifesto
* 1856 United States presidential election
* 1856 Democratic National Convention
* Woodward Hill Cemetery

Presidency|

* Inauguration of James Buchanan
* Dred Scott v. Sandford
* List of federal judges appointed by James Buchanan
* Panic of 1857
* Utah War
* Bleeding Kansas
* Lecompton Constitution
* 1858 United States elections
* Paraguay expedition
* United States House Select Committee to Investigate Alleged Corruptions in Government
* Corwin Amendment
* Lincoln transition

Public image|

* James Buchanan Memorial
* Buchanan's Birthplace State Park
* Buchanan, Michigan
* Buchanan, Georgia
* Buchanan, Missouri
* James Buchanan High School
* Raising Buchanan

Family|

* Harriet Lane (niece, acting First Lady)
* James Buchanan Henry (nephew)

* ← Franklin Pierce
* Abraham Lincoln →

* Category

* v
* t
* e

History of the United States

* Timeline
* Outline

Events

| Pre-Colonial|

* Geological
* Pre-Columbian era

|

Colonial|

* Exploration of North America
* European colonization
* Native American epidemics
* Settlement of Jamestown
* Thirteen Colonies
* Atlantic slave trade
* King William's War
* Queen Anne's War
* Dummer's War
* First Great Awakening
* War of Jenkins' Ear
* King George's War
* Prelude to Revolution
* American Enlightenment
* French and Indian War
* Proclamation of 1763
* Sugar Act
* Stamp Act Congress
* Sons of Liberty
* Boston Massacre
* Boston Tea Party
* Intolerable Acts
* First Continental Congress
* Continental Association

1776–1789|

* American Revolution
* War
* Second Continental Congress
* Lee Resolution
* Declaration of Independence
* Treaty of Paris
* Confederation period
* Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
* Pennsylvania Mutiny
* Shays' Rebellion
* Northwest Ordinance
* Drafting and ratification of the Constitution

1789–1815|

* Bill of Rights
* Federalist Era
* Whiskey Rebellion
* Quasi-War
* Jeffersonian era
* Louisiana Purchase
* War of 1812

1815–1849|

* Era of Good Feelings
* Missouri Compromise
* Monroe Doctrine
* Jacksonian era
* Trail of Tears
* Nat Turner's slave rebellion
* Nullification crisis
* Westward expansion
* Mexican–American War
* Seneca Falls Convention
* First Industrial Revolution
* Second Great Awakening

1849–1865|

* Antebellum Era
* California Gold Rush
* Greater Reconstruction
* Prelude to War
* Compromise of 1850
* Fugitive Slave Act
* Kansas–Nebraska Act
* Bleeding Kansas
* Dred Scott decision
* Election of Lincoln
* Secession
* Civil War
* Emancipation Proclamation
* Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

1865–1917|

* Reconstruction era
* Amendments
* First transcontinental railroad
* Ku Klux Klan
* Enforcement Acts
* Compromise of 1877
* Second Industrial Revolution
* Gilded Age
* The Gospel of Wealth
* Assassination of James A. Garfield
* Chinese Exclusion Act
* Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
* Haymarket affair
* Sherman Antitrust Act
* Progressive Era
* Spanish–American War
* Imperialism
* Assassination of William McKinley
* Square Deal
* Nadir of American race relations

1917–1945|

* World War I
* Paris Peace Conference
* First Red Scare
* Roaring Twenties
* Prohibition
* Women's suffrage
* Tulsa race massacre
* Second Klan
* Bath School disaster
* Harlem Renaissance
* Great Depression
* Wall Street crash of 1929
* Dust Bowl
* New Deal
* World War II
* Pearl Harbor
* home front
* Manhattan Project
* Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1945–1964|

* Strike wave of 1945–1946
* Start of Cold War
* Truman Doctrine
* Early Cold War
* North Atlantic Treaty
* Korean War
* Ivy Mike
* McCarthyism
* Post-war boom
* Project Mercury
* Civil Rights Movement
* Early–mid Cold War
* Cuban Missile Crisis
* Assassination of John F. Kennedy

1964–1980|

* Great Society
* Space Race
* Project Gemini
* Apollo program
* Mid Cold War
* Détente
* Vietnam War
* Fall of Saigon
* Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
* Counterculture
* Second-wave feminism
* Gay liberation
* Stonewall riots
* Watergate scandal
* Pardon of Richard Nixon
* Iran hostage crisis
* Moral Majority

1980–1991|

* Reagan era
* Reaganomics
* Iran–Contra affair
* Crack epidemic
* Late Cold War
* Invasion of Grenada
* Reagan Doctrine
* End of the Cold War
* Space Shuttle program
* War on drugs
* Invasion of Panama

1991–2016|

* Gulf War
* NAFTA
* Los Angeles riots
* WTC bombing
* Waco siege
* Republican Revolution
* Oklahoma City bombing
* Columbine
* Bush v. Gore
* September 11 attacks
* War on terror
* War in Afghanistan
* Iraq War
* Hurricane Katrina
* Virginia Tech shooting
* Great Recession
* Killing of Osama bin Laden
* Rise in mass shootings
* Tucson
* Aurora
* Sandy Hook
* Orlando
* Black Lives Matter
* Obergefell v. Hodges

2016–present|

* Unite the Right rally
* Continued rise in mass shootings
* Las Vegas
* Parkland
* El Paso
* Uvalde
* COVID-19 pandemic
* recession
* George Floyd protests
* January 6 insurrection
* Afghanistan withdrawal
* Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization
* Support of Ukraine
* Indictments of Donald Trump

Topics

* American Century
* Antisemitism
* Cultural
* Cinema
* Music
* Newspapers
* Sports
* Demography
* Immigration
* Economy
* Banking
* Education
* Higher education
* Flag
* Government
* Abortion
* Capital punishment
* Civil Rights
* Corruption
* The Constitution
* Debt ceiling
* Direct democracy
* Foreign policy
* Law enforcement
* Postal service
* Taxation
* Voting rights
* Journalism
* Merchant Marine
* Military
* Army
* Marine Corps
* Navy
* Air Force
* Space Force
* Coast Guard
* Party Systems
* First
* Second
* Third
* Fourth
* Fifth
* Sixth
* Religion
* Genocide
* Slavery
* Sexual slavery
* Technology and industry
* Agriculture
* Labor
* Lumber
* Medicine
* Railway

Groups

* African American
* Asian American
* Chinese American
* Filipino American
* Indian American
* Japanese American
* Korean American
* Thai American
* Vietnamese American
* European American
* Albanian American
* English American
* Estonian American
* Finnish American
* Irish American
* Italian American
* Lithuanian American
* Polish American
* Serbian American
* Hispanic and Latino American
* Mexican American
* Jewish American
* Middle Eastern American
* Egyptian American
* Iranian American
* Iraqi American
* Lebanese American
* Palestinian American
* Saudi American
* Native Americans
* Cherokee
* Comanche
* Women
* LGBTQ
* Gay men
* Lesbians
* Transgender people

Places

| Territorial evolution|

* Admission to the Union
* Historical regions
* American frontier
* Manifest destiny
* Indian removal

|

Regions|

* New England
* The South
* The West Coast

States|

* Alabama
* Alaska
* Arizona
* Arkansas
* California
* Colorado
* Connecticut
* Delaware
* Florida
* Georgia
* Hawaii
* Idaho
* Illinois
* Indiana
* Iowa
* Kansas
* Kentucky
* Louisiana
* Maine
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* Michigan
* Minnesota
* Mississippi
* Missouri
* Montana
* Nebraska
* Nevada
* New Hampshire
* New Jersey
* New Mexico
* New York
* North Carolina
* North Dakota
* Ohio
* Oklahoma
* Oregon
* Pennsylvania
* Rhode Island
* South Carolina
* South Dakota
* Tennessee
* Texas
* Utah
* Vermont
* Virginia
* Washington
* West Virginia
* Wisconsin
* Wyoming

Federal District|

Washington, D.C.

Insular areas|

* American Samoa
* Guam
* Northern Mariana Islands
* Puerto Rico
* U.S. Virgin Islands

Outlying islands|

* Baker Island
* Howland Island
* Jarvis Island
* Johnston Atoll
* Kingman Reef
* Midway Atoll
* Navassa Island
* Palmyra Atoll
* Wake Island

Cities|

* Urban history
* Cities

* List of years
* Historiography
* Category
* Portal

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