Bleeding Kansas and its impact on the Civil War - Research Paper Example

? Bleeding Kansas and its impact on the Civil War BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Bleeding Kansas and its impact on the Civil War IntroductionBleeding Kansas was a relatively short-lived, yet bloody series of battles and oppositions that occurred in what had been the Kansas Territory (prior to being admitted to the Union) and neighboring Missouri (already a state in the Union). Settlers in the Kansas Territory were largely abolitionist, believing that slavery had no place in the territory. Missouri, a pro-slave state, argued against the admittance of Kansas as a slave-free state which escalated violence and confrontation between these two radically different regions. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise was passed, a piece of legislation that was intended to separate the pro-slave South and the anti-slave North. The Missouri Compromise banned the practice of slave ownership in what was then the Louisiana Territory north of the 36°30? parallel, a line of latitude that now runs through Tennessee and Kentucky. Much of what is now the state of Missouri is above this circle of latitude, which began to fuel contention and opposition nearly immediately after passing the Missouri Compromise. In political and social circles, there was much disagreement that the Missouri Compromise, which served as the first legally-created point of division between pro-slavery and anti-slavery opposition, would ultimately lead to the destruction of the fledgling Union. Offered Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Holmes, a renowned U.S. Senator, “A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle…once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper” (Peterson, 1960, p.548). The Missouri Compromise, which endured between 1820 and 1854, alongside decades of politically-motivated rhetoric in media and politics, served as the foundation for what drove violence and contention in the Kansas Territory by 1854. Ultimately, the Missouri Compromise was repealed and made ineffective by the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 which introduced Kansas and Nebraska as Union territories, a new point of debate fuelling many years of hostility created by the implementation of the Missouri Compromise. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed settlers to establish their own governments and determine whether they would be pro- or anti-slave states. Now, in 1854, a new form of resentment and antagonism was building in the nation about the viability and ethical implications of slavery as a future national scenario, a point of controversy that led to the historical situation today referred to as Bleeding Kansas. The Local and National Mechanisms leading to Bleeding Kansas The most notable character fuelling the Bleeding Kansas scenario was U.S. Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas (Illinois) who designed and advocated the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The country, in need of expansion to fuel a growing and incomplete national economy, intended to terminate the Missouri Compromise so as to open new farming lands and ensure development of a more efficient and nationally-connected Transcontinental Railroad. Though a very ambitious piece of legislation, the influence of a democratically-dominant Senate continued to exert the notion of Popular Sovereignty, a belief that individual citizens maintained the right and determination to establish their own form of self-government separate from the Federal system. Stephen A. Douglas understood that many states and territories had well-established social and political sentiment about the viability of engaging in slavery, with a deep and growing division of sentiment that complicated creating relevant laws produced in the nation’s capital. Government representatives were regularly victims of anti-government sentiment during this time period as regardless of whether the government supported or refuted the relevance of slavery, pro- and anti-slavery advocates (abolitionists) continued to apply substantial pressure on their government representatives to secure the interests of either side of the debate. As such, Stephen Douglas and other democratic representatives allowed the term Popular Sovereignty to become a new form of rhetoric that essentially handed over the decision-making about whether to engage in slavery activities to the people of their territories or states. Politicians in the 1850s continued to deadlock on important national issues that would ultimately involve slavery, creating the ambition to find some form of political middle ground in order to satisfy public sentiment and secure their political careers (Morrison, 1997). Hence, Popular Sovereignty was built into the Kansas-Nebraska Act which would allow the citizens and politicians in these territories to determine whether the territory would allow slavery in their borders. Upon the passing of the Act in 1854, Kansas witnessed a population explosion consisting of anti-slavery and pro-slavery advocates in an effort to influence voting processes in the new territory to ensure their individual values would be recognized in legislation on the slavery issue (Etcheson, 2004). The main problem in this scenario, however, was that slavery had been abolished in Kansas since 1920 and the passing of the Missouri Compromise, meaning that the majority of citizens in the new Kansas Territory already maintained negative sentiment about the ethics of slavery practices. Media coverage about the impending voting associated with the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the language of popular sovereignty in the legislation fuelled a backlash of anti-slavery sentiment from other Northern states, which believed that the government was actually attempting to take sides on the slavery debate by opening the new Kansas Territory to potential slave practices. There was a general belief in the North that wealthy slave owners would flood the new Kansas Territory, buying up the most prime real estate in order to advance their slave-related ambitions which would leave common men (and those that did not believe in the integrity of slavery) with inferior land for development and wealth exploration. The Northern states also believed that the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was a significant betrayal against the many small-scale victories to abolish slavery that had been achieved since 1820. Ultimately, this led to the rapid creation of a new Republican Party that began to work tirelessly to attempt to halt the advance and continuation of slave practices, a party that finally led to the election of Abraham Lincoln as the party’s first governing president in 1860. At this point in history, there was much more media coverage of the events occurring in the Federal government, with printed news reporting on the debates occurring between important political actors in the nation’s capital. Prior to the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, several proposals had been developed by both democratic and republican representatives for how to divide and support the growth of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. In 1853, the Senate debated how to properly organize the Nebraska Territory before establishing the foundation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Missouri Senator David Atchison made it public that he would only support this Nebraska proposal if slave ownership were to be allowed in the new Nebraska Territory. During this period before passing the finalized Kansas-Nebraska Act, the issue of whether to allow slavery in the new Nebraska Territory became embroiled in Missouri politics. Atchison was stuck in a situation where he would either anger the interests of state railroad advocates or provoking slaveholders currently operating in Nebraska and Missouri. Senator Atchison was finally forced to take a position, which was given much public media coverage, deciding to back the slave owners when determining how to properly organize and set the boundaries for the Nebraska Territory. Atchison publicly stated that he would rather see Nebraska “sink in Hell” before he would vote in favor of a free slave state (Potter, 1976, p.121). Ultimately, the many proposals offered by Senator Atchison and many other government representatives that attempted to spell out the boundaries and organization of Kansas and Nebraska failed to provide worthwhile propositions, leading to Douglas’ introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which was finally put into law in 1854 after achieving a majority vote in Senate approving popular sovereignty that would allow the territory citizens to determine whether slavery would be allowed in both Nebraska and Kansas. However, the damage associated with the highly publicized contentions in government had already been done. It has fuelled a new type of debate between Northern and Southern citizens, politicians and slave-centric landowners that were further dividing the nation socially and politically. Whereas the debate about slavery had seemed to become more docile decades after the nation came to accept the standards of anti-slavery in Kansas and Nebraska under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, now there was a full-fledged national debate that was leading to more violent and aggressive confrontations across the country related to the slavery issue. With the advance of faster media coverage due to a building infrastructure across the entire country, the rhetoric from the nation’s capital and many independent, local newspapers continued to dramatize the events leading up to the final ratification of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Now that there was an established law that would allow Kansas and Nebraska to determine whether to allow slavery within their territory borders, the debate went from being a hostile national issue to a very aggressive local issue. At this time, Kansas was highly underdeveloped and the dimensions of frontier life were common, consisting of a set of values that different significantly from the more urban and socially-centric developed states in the Union. Lawlessness was common in the West due to the limited infrastructure of policing and political systems. Senator Atchison also served to fuel aggression in an environment where lawless behavior was common, which was not advantageous to securing peace and tranquility in Kansas as a sovereign territory free to make its own determinations. Atchison, when confronted about the potential problems associated with the debate between pro- and anti-slavery proponents, informed slavery proponents to fend off the “Northern vermin” using rifles as a means of protecting their “fertile prairies” and their “Negroes” (Ladenburg, 2007, p.56). Other events continued to fuel the impending Bleeding Kansas situation, including a situation involving a runaway slave from the new Western territory named Anthony Burns, who was able to foster an escape to Boston. During this time, there were laws established that made it a crime to assist a runaway slave (Landenburg, 2007). However, anti-slavery sentiment in Boston was significant and had been fueled by more public coverage of political and civil unrest across the country, which had citizens come forward in droves in an effort to protect Anthony Burns after his owner/master chased him across the country to retrieve his property. This was an example of the spread of lawlessness that was moving from the Western territories into even major urban regions of the country, thereby illustrating how quickly the nation was becoming divided and moderately anarchic as feelings ran so strongly about slavery in the mid-1850s. Then President Pierce actually had to send United States Marines to Boston at significant government expenditure in order to return Burns to his owner and reduce the civil unrest that was growing throughout the country. This type of activity with runaway slaves and angry masters seeking retrieval in Northern states continued to play out while the Kansas-Nebraska Act was being debated and after its implementation in the infancy stage. The Dynamics of Bleeding Kansas After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, there was a general national sentiment that Kansas would not be settled in large volumes by slave owners since it was considered to be far North in order to properly exploit the wealth potential of slave-operated land ownership. However, slave owners recognized that the Eastern side of Kansas maintained significantly fertile grounds that could be exploited along the Missouri River. Since Missouri was a slave state at the time, slave owners could find not only wealth opportunity, but also maintain better relationships both social and professional with a slavery-tolerant state. The 1855 census stated that approximately 8,500 people and 242 slaves had chosen to settle in Kansas (Landenburg). That same year was the year in which local voting in Kansas would determine whether slave ownership would be allowable in the new Territory. Missouri, which bordered two free states to the East and North, would be completely surrounded by anti-slave states and territories if the Kansas political system were to ratify allowance of slave activity in Kansas. As such, approximately 5,000 Missouri residents crossed the border into Kansas in order to cast illegal ballots in an effort to ensure that slavery would be allowable in the new territory (Landenburg). At this time, the Kansas governor Reeder made an appeal to President Pierce to investigate the allegations of illegal ballot dropping by Missouri residents, which also gained national media coverage illustrating the growing conflicts and lawlessness associated with slavery that was enduring in the new territory. Instead of investigating the situation, Pierce instead replaced Reeder with a slave-friendly governor. In response, anti-slave advocates immediately drew up their own state Constitution, delivered it to President Pierce in Washington D.C., and removed the federally-appointed governor in favor of another who would be more tolerant of abolitionist values. The difficulty is that Washington D.C. considered the federal appointments to be valid under the law, which now had Kansas operating with two governors and two local legislatures. Certain that this disparity between Federal government and Kansas government would lead to an armed conflict, anti-slave advocates began to procure and stockpile ammunitions in preparation for what was considered to be an inevitable and impending battle for sovereignty for the new Kansas territory. As the aforementioned was occurring, with bitter disputes between the validity and legality of the Kansas-appointed legislature and the Federally-mandated governorship of Kansas, the sentiment and opinion of important anti-slavery figures such as John Brown and Charles Jennison were gaining prominence in Kansas, Nebraska and the rest of the nation. John Brown was labeled a “monomaniacal” abolitionist with extreme views that armed conflicts would be the only viable method of removing the tyranny of slavery from the United States and its territories (Territorial Kansas, 2012, p.1). Brown was gaining considerable commitment toward abolishing what his followers believed were evil institutions. Between October 1855 and May 1856, John Brown was able to recruit and coerce a vast volume of anti-slavery advocates to migrate to the new Kansas Territory in order to fight to remove slavery from the region. Known as Border Ruffians, a large group of Missouri-based pro-slavery proponents, crossed into Kansas on May 21, 1856 in order to force citizens and politicians to accept slavery in this new territory. These Border Ruffians did not limit their activities to protest, instead they began stealing property of slave owners, ransacking homes of pro-slavery landowners, and committing a variety of crimes that were intended to coerce pro-slavery values using hostile and intimidating tactics. When word of this situation reached the East Coast, the violence was escalated and promoted by further violence occurring on the Senate floor between South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks and Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Brooks, a pro-slavery politician, physically and brutally attacked Sumner, striking him in the head with his walking cane that not only drew blood, but forced Sumner to lose consciousness. While this devastating battle was ensuing, several senators attempted to assist Brooks, but were halted by South Carolina representative Laurence Keitt (another pro-slavery advocate) who wielded a pistol and allowed Sumner to be beaten brutally (Velisek, 2010). When national word spread about this violent attack with prominent politicians in Washington, it served as justification for the spread of further violence in the Kansas Territory that was escalating out of control. On May 24, 1956, inspired by the violence in Washington, John Brown led another group of abolitionist men to attack a pro-slave settlement at Pottawatomie Creek in which Brown, his four sons and a group of armed men viciously murdered five pro-slavery men by hacking them to pieces with their swords. This finally sparked a response from President Pierce who assigned three Federally-supported investigators to enter the Kansas Territory to examine and report on the escalating violence. The initial report provided by the Federal representatives found that the Kansas elections had been influenced illegally by the presence of Border Ruffians. President Pierce, however, did not choose to intervene even though the report made recommendations that the anti-slave government should be allowed to govern the state to avoid violence. Instead, Pierce refused and continued to recognize the authority of the pro-slave government, many of which had been appointed by Federal means. On July 4, 1856, Pierce even sent armed troops to Topeka in an effort to break-up a meeting with the citizen-elected government that was operating simultaneously with the government elected improperly through influence of Border Ruffians from Missouri. In August of 1856, hostilities about the validity of two operating governments and the potentiality of Kansas becoming a full-fledged pro-slave state led to a very large army of pro-slave men to march into the Kansas Territory in order to engage Brown and his anti-slavery abolitionist groups in what was to become known as the Battle of Osawatomie. Though Brown and his armies worked diligently to defend the city of Osawatomie from pro-slavery forces, the town was eventually burned to the ground and utterly looted of its possessions. This battle gave the anti-slavery armies significant causalities, which led to the phrase Bleeding Kansas. John Brown was eventually driven out of the Kansas Territory for his role in promoting violence and his inability to defend against pro-slave violence. Shortly thereafter, a new Kansas governor, John W. Geary, gained political office and managed to develop legislation and policies that could strike a balance between both hostile positions regarding slavery. However, between 1857 and 1859, periodic episodes of violence in the Kansas Territory ensued, often involving Border Ruffians who were adamant about promoting their pro-slavery agenda. The last battle in 1858 involved with the Bleeding Kansas scenario, known today as the Marais des Cygnes Massacre, involved 30 men who were led by Georgia pro-slavery advocate Charles Hamilton that slaughtered five men in the city of Trading Post, Kansas maintaining anti-slavery values (KSHS, 2013). Between 1858 and 1861, though violence had somewhat settled within this frontier territory, hostilities within Kansas and across the country continued to escalate as general citizens, landowners and politicians remained deeply divided about the implications of allowing or abolishing slavery in the country. Stephen Douglas was again a prominent figure in the Bleeding Kansas situation when word was finally spread throughout the country that the original voted constitution of the Kansas Territory had been fraudulently established through influence by illegal Border Ruffians. The word of Pierce’s involvement in covering and being inactive about this situation forced him into early retirement (Ladenburg, 2007) and the democratic party found a new representative, James Buchanan, who was instrumental in assisting Kansas in voting for a new constitution that would be legally-mandated by legitimate voting processes. This essentially ended a nearly three-year travesty of violence in the Kansas Territory, though the influences of national division were still fuelling the impending Civil War. How Bleeding Kansas affected the Civil War Bleeding Kansas and the presence of rapidly-traveling media coverage showed general citizens, politicians and slavery advocates and opponents that violence could justify a position about slavery. The Bleeding Kansas scenario was the first situation in the country prior to the Civil War that involved significant bloodshed and even promoted prominent politicians to engage in violent confrontations over the slavery issue. Three months before the start of the actual Civil War, Kansas entered the Union as a slave-free state, which was supported by the efforts of Buchanan, the democratic party, and legitimate voting processes from a majority that were abolitionists. Bleeding Kansas represented a triumph in the minds of Northern citizens in the effort to remove slavery from the United States, illustrating that victory could be achieved through violent action that would be the only viable method of ensuring that the anti-slavery agenda was fulfilled. Though many anti-slave advocates had been slaughtered, ultimately Kansas won its bid to become a slave-free state that was only achievable through murder and other aggressive behaviors. Though somewhat subjective, Bleeding Kansas seemed to be represented as an icon that inspired others to consider taking up arms against opponents in the slave debate should a full-scale national Civil War ensue. Kansas entering the Union as a free state illustrated to the South that the North was quite serious about securing an end to slavery by whatever means were required. It was actually the Southern states that started the conflict leading to the American Civil War when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina in an effort to drive out the Northern presence from this important military facility. It should be recognized also that John Brown, the prominent abolitionist involved in many of the bloody massacres in Bleeding Kansas, was never prosecuted or otherwise punished for his involvement in stirring up this violence. As such, it likely provided the North with a sense of martyrdom which illustrated that involvement in full-scale hostile engagements with opponents would be without significant consequences even when aggression is utilized as a means of promoting a perceived important agenda. The Southern sentiment that was firm about the importance of securing longevity for slave ownership both economically and strategically was likely infuriated when Kansas had entered the Union as a free state just months prior to the attack on Fort Sumter. This would have illustrated to the South that unless they took action, the growing anti-slavery sentiment in both society and politics would ultimately win, thereby making paupers out of wealthy businesspersons that actively engaged in slave ownership and slave trading. There is little doubt that Bleeding Kansas had significant influence in coercing aggression that led to the first shots in the American Civil War. Conclusion Bleeding Kansas, as illustrated, was promoted by a series of preliminary pieces of legislation and debates in Washington political systems about the future of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. At the same time, Missouri politics and social sentiment generally favored slave ownership and there was significant concern that Kansas, if introduced into the Union as a free state, would jeopardize the position of Missouri and its supportive Southern States. The ratification of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, coupled with growing hostility about the perceived fairness of popular sovereignty and pro-slave elections is what led to growing hostilities that now are defined as Bleeding Kansas. Though it is unclear whether the Civil War could have been prevented if Bleeding Kansas had not occurred, what is clear is that the national attention that was given to these events served as, at least, a moderate catalyst for the shots fired at Fort Sumter that triggered four years of civil aggression that ultimately ended slavery in the United States once and for all. The resentment and antagonism fuelled by Bleeding Kansas was instrumental in building support, both North and South, for the viability of the Civil War to ultimately determine the fate of human ownership. References Etcheson, Nicole. (2004). Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. Wichita: University Press of Kansas. KSHS. (2013). Marais des Cygnes Massacre, Kansas Historical Society. Retrieved May 8, 2013 from http://www.kshs.org/marais Ladenburg, Thomas. (2007). Chapter 11: Civil War in Kansas. Retrieved May 9, 2013 from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit5_11.pdf Morrison, Michael A. (1997). Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. University of North Carolina Press. Potter, David M. (1976). The Impending Crisis: America before the Civil War – 1848-1861. New York: Harper Perennial. Peterson, Merrill D. (1960). The Jefferson Image in the American Mind. University of Virginia Press. Territorial Kansas. (2012). John Brown: 1800-1859. Retrieved May 9, 2013 from http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi- bin/index.php?SCREEN=bio_sketches/brown_john Velisek, Joe. (2010). Preston Brooks Attacks Charles Sumner, The Baltimore Organ. Retrieved May 10, 2013 from http://www.baltimoreorgan.com/organ/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id =1051:preston-brooks-attacks-charles-sumner&catid=24:historicalflash&Itemid=50 Read More