Editing Bleeding Kansas (section)

==Origins==
{{History of Kansas sidebar}}
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 United States|Northern]] and [[Southern United States|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 Territory|Utah]] and [[New Mexico Territory|New Mexico]] Territories to decide their own laws with respect to slavery by [[popular sovereignty|popular vote]], an act which set a new precedent in the ongoing debate over slavery.<ref name="Etcheson_1"/>

In May 1854, the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]] created from Indian lands the new territories of [[Kansas Territory|Kansas]] and [[Nebraska Territory|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 [[parallel 36°30' north|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to vote on the legality of slavery in their own territories—a notion which directly contradicted and effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise, as both Kansas and Nebraska were located entirely north of parallel 36°30' north and west of the Mississippi.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,<ref name=Rawley>{{cite book |last1=Rawley |first1=James A. |title=Race & Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War |url=https://archive.org/details/racepoliticsblee00rawl |url-access=registration |date=1969 |publisher=J. B. Lippincott Company}}</ref> and the most violent place in the country.

The term "Bleeding Kansas" was popularized by [[Horace Greeley]]'s ''[[New-York Tribune]]''.<ref name="20180212NHECDenial">{{cite web|last1=Denial|first1=Catherine|title=Bleeding Kansas|url=http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/25650|website=teachinghistory.org|publisher=National History Education Clearinghouse|access-date=February 12, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171109062336/http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/25650|archive-date=November 9, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> 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]&nbsp;... than any other State in the Union."<ref>{{cite news | title=Public Meetings. North American National Convention. Third Day. | newspaper=New York Daily Tribune | date=June 16, 1856}}</ref><ref name="20180212NHECDenial" /> The ''Tribune''{{'}}s first mention of "bleeding Kansas" is in a poem by Charles S. Weyman, published on September 13, 1856:

{{poemquote|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.<ref name="20180212NHECDenial" />}}

===Early elections===
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, Kansas|Leavenworth]] and [[Atchison, Kansas|Atchison]]. The administration of [[President of the United States|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 [[electoral fraud|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 [[History of the United States Democratic Party|Democratic]] candidate [[John Wilkins Whitfield]].<ref name=Politics>{{cite web |title=Territorial Politics and Government |url=http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=pol_govt&option=more |publisher=Territorial Kansas Online |access-date=June 18, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714143420/http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=pol_govt&option=more |archive-date=July 14, 2014 |url-status=live }}</ref> 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.<ref>Cutler, William G. ''History of the State of Kansas'', A.T. Andreas, (1883), "Territorial History, Part 8".</ref>
[[File:Frémont_Club_banner.png|thumb|Digital remake of the Fremont Club banner hung in [[Lancaster, New Hampshire]] to show support for Kansas.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Frémont Club banner - Kansas Memory |url=https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/209858 |access-date=2024-11-21 |website=www.kansasmemory.org}}</ref>]]
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 Soil Party|Free-Soilers]]" or "[[Free-Stater (Kansas)|Free-Staters]]". By far the most famous of these, and their leader, was [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown of Leavenworth]], who moved from Ohio.<ref name=LOC>{{cite web | title=Kansas Affairs | page=685 | url=https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/kansasaffairsspe00wald/kansasaffairsspe00wald_djvu.txt }}</ref> Many citizens of Northern states arrived with assistance from [[benevolent society|benevolent societies]] such as the [[Boston, Massachusetts|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 rifle]]s in crates labelled "Bibles"; they became known as [[Beecher's Bibles]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/beecher-bibles/11977 |title=Beecher Bibles - Kansapedia - Kansas Historical Society |access-date=February 21, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190210152637/https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/beecher-bibles/11977 |archive-date=February 10, 2019 |url-status=live }}</ref> Despite boasts that 20,000 New England [[Yankee]]s would be sent to the Kansas Territory, only about 1,200 settlers had emigrated there by the end of 1855.<ref>William Frank Zornow, "Kansas: a history of the Jayhawk State" (1957), p. 72</ref><ref name="Rawley" /> 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 [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republican]] and abolitionist sentiment, including Lawrence, Topeka, and [[Manhattan, Kansas]].<ref name="Rawley" /><ref name=Frontier>{{cite book | last = Olson | first = Kevin | title = Frontier Manhattan | publisher = University Press of Kansas | year = 2012 | isbn = 978-0-7006-1832-3}}</ref>

===First Territorial Legislature===
{{Main|1855 Kansas Territory elections}}
[[File:Bleeding Kansas Poster.jpg|thumb|1855 [[Free-Stater (Kansas)|Free-State]] poster]]
On March 30, 1855, the Kansas Territory held the election for its first territorial legislature.<ref name=Politics/> 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, Kansas|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.<ref name=Frontier/>

The proslavery legislature convened in the newly created territorial capital of [[Pawnee, Kansas|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 Methodist Mission|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".<ref>{{cite web|first=James D.|last=Richardson|author-link=James D. Richardson|title=A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents|publisher=Project Gutenberg|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11125/11125-8.txt|access-date=March 18, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930024455/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11125/11125-8.txt|archive-date=September 30, 2007|url-status=live}}</ref> The presence of dual governments was symptomatic of the strife brewing in the territory and further provoked supporters of both sides of the conflict.<ref>Thomas Goodrich, ''War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854–1861''. (2004). Ch. 1 iii.</ref>{{full citation needed|date=December 2023}}<ref>Elizabeth R. Varon, ''Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859''. (2007). Ch. 8.</ref>{{full citation needed|date=December 2023}}

In response to the disputed votes and rising tension, Congress sent a three-man [[Select or special committee (United States Congress)|special committee]] to the Kansas Territory in 1856.<ref name=Frontier/> 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.<ref name=Frontier/><ref name=Report>{{Citation | title = Report of the special committee appointed to investigate the troubles in Kansas | publisher = Cornelius Wendell | year = 1856 | url = http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?type=simple;c=moa;cc=moa;sid=1f5114455ee8820b080a95813f091487;rgn=title;q1=troubles%20in%20kansas;firstpubl1=1800;firstpubl2=1925;view=toc;subview=detail;sort=occur;start=1;size=25;idno=AFK4445.0001.001 | access-date = June 18, 2014 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110811023716/http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?type=simple;c=moa;cc=moa;sid=1f5114455ee8820b080a95813f091487;rgn=title;q1=troubles%20in%20kansas;firstpubl1=1800;firstpubl2=1925;view=toc;subview=detail;sort=occur;start=1;size=25;idno=AFK4445.0001.001 | archive-date = August 11, 2011 | url-status = live }}</ref> The report also stated that the legislature actually seated in Lecompton "was an illegally constituted body, and had no power to pass valid laws".<ref name=Frontier/><ref name=Report/> In other words, the Free-Staters' allegations of fraud were well founded, and the Lecompton legislature was indeed bogus.