KTWU Sunflower Journeys 1707A - Making Kansas Bleed
Produced by Amanda Shaw
Narrator: Seven people died that morning in the Battle of Blackjack—just one of the deadly encounters in the era known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Though estimates have reached more than 200, historians today believe little more than 50 people actually perished in conflict in the Kansas Territory. But the gunshots would sound loudly across an already tense nation approaching civil war. But what made Kansas bleed? Jonathan Earle: This all got started in 1853-54, when a senator from Illinois named Stephen Douglas, famous for debating Abraham Lincoln in 1858, decided that the only way a trans-continental railroad that he really wanted to see built to unify the country, to connect California which is now a state with the rest of the white population in the eastern half of the country, the best way to build a trans-continental railroad was to have it go from San Francisco near the gold fields, all the way to Chicago, where Stephen Douglas happened to own some real estate that he hoped would be the eastern terminus of this railroad. And of course, the railroad would have to go through Indian land. Douglas introduces this big law, first the Nebraska Act, later called the Kansas-Nebraska Act that provided to organize the territory that basically stretches from the Canadian border all the way to the northern border of Oklahoma. That was going to be called Nebraska. Narrator: But Senator Douglas had to first convince his party to go his way. In 1854, the Democrats consisted mainly of moneyed, slave-holding southerners who favored a small federal government and wanted to see slavery spread. Jonathan Earle: What Douglas did, Douglas is a Democratic politician, if you’re going to succeed in the Democratic Party, you’re going to have to curry the favor of southerners, slave holders, essentially. So he says to the slave holders who he wants to vote for this, “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, I’ll split Nebraska Territory into Nebraska in the north, something called Kansas in the south, and the implicit message there is that Kansas would be open to slavery, which the southerners desperately, desperately wanted. They wanted to increase the number of slave states. Narrator: But many Americans weren’t anxious to see slavery spread beyond the south. Congress had, in 1820, allowed Missouri to enter the union as a slave state alongside the free state of Maine—providing for equal representation in the Senate. Jonathan Earle: And that’s how we get this thing called the Missouri compromise that said, henceforth, north of this line, that essentially the southern border of Missouri, there won’t be any more slave states. This compromise is enforced for about 30 years, and then here comes Stephen Douglas in 1854, saying, well, maybe we’ll have slavery north of that line. People were aghast. People who were not abolitionists, who weren’t even very even anti-slavery, were really taken aback by this decision that showed a lot of people on the fence that slave holders really did control the federal government. Narrator: The government decided on popular sovereignty—that is, to leave the question of slavery in Kansas to the settlers who lived there by time of statehood. Jonathan Earle: Douglas basically gets the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed, so it’s true, it’s a territory now. And basically there is going to be a foot race to see who is going to get here first. It’s pretty clear from the beginning, from January, 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act is passed, that it’s going to be a flashpoint. People started organizing. For example, the New England Emigrant Aid Company starts in New England and basically makes it cheaper and easier for New Englanders who oppose slavery to come here, and they start coming with Beecher’s Bibles, Sharp’s Rifles. Really, both sides were ready to fight by 1855. Narrator: The bloodiest days of bleeding Kansas occurred the spring of 1856. May 21st: Lawrence is “sacked” by Missouri Sheriff Samuel Jones and a pro-slavery posse. May 22nd: Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner is beaten on the floor of the U.S. Senate after criticizing the Lawrence attack. May 24th: John Brown and his men murder several pro-slavery settlers on Pottawatomie Creek. June 2nd: The Battle of Blackjack near Baldwin City. The violence continued throughout the summer until the government was forced to step in and calm the scene. Jonathan Earle: And it becomes clearer and clearer that the majority of settlers in Kansas Territory are anti-slavery. So it becomes harder and harder to propagate the fiction that the people have chosen this pro-slavery state government. And of course, when Abraham Lincoln wins the election and the south secedes, it becomes very easy for Kansas to enter the Union as a free state, which it does in 1861. Narrator: Studying this violent time period just got a little easier. The Kansas State Historical Society, along with the University of Kansas, has undertaken the enormous task of creating an online database of historical material related to the Kansas Territory. Pat Michaelis, Kansas State Historical Society: We want students to use these materials and have access to them and with the technology that’s now available, through the internet; we can create a website that provides much broader access to these materials that has ever been available in the past. In the past, you either had to come here and look at them, which is pretty hard for a middle-school student out in Garden City to do , or read printed versions of them that might have been edited and published somewhere, but certainly, getting to the massive materials that we’re putting on the website would have been pretty hard. Narrator: Anyone who visits territorialkansasonline.org can search through over eight thousand pages of documents, as well as museum items and photographs. The historical society hopes their efforts will help get Kansans excited about their state’s unique beginnings. Pat Michaelis: I hope so. One of the things I’ve always loved about working at the historical society is that when I read a letter that somebody wrote in 1850, it just makes it so much more tangible. “When old Brown saw them, he gathered all the men in town with pitchforks and clubs and every other implement of warfare, to man the works.”
This transcript is from KTWU's Sunflower Journeys 2004 season. A production of: |
