War Letters, "Bleeding Kansas"

Pro-Slavery vs. Free State factions

Certain explanatory notes are necessary in understanding the Kansas military experience, as Kansas and its citizens endured situations not found anywhere else in the world; namely, the "Bleeding Kansas" war from 1854 -1861.

Up to the mid 1850s, new territories gaining admission to the Union did so in pairs-one free state and one slave state-so as to maintain a balance between the two sections. Knowing that this situation must eventually be resolved, Congress legislated that the citizens of the newly established Kansas Territory would determine (by popular sovereignty) their slave status. Once Congress passed this legislation, settlers from both sections raced into the territory as quickly as possible; both sides trying to gain a majority. All the while, the two factions organized militias and fought each other tenaciously. Eventually the population of the free state faction gained a majority, they convened a valid constitutional convention, wrote a constitution prohibiting slavery, submitted that constitution to Congress in the fall of 1860, which Congress ratified on January 29, 1861, and the "Bleeding Kansas" years were over. During the fight, some of those involved wrote to their families and friends back east. Most of the letter still extant were written by free staters (pro-slavery partisans, in all likelihood, left Kansas so that they could keep their slaves; as they would have been manumitted if they had remained).

For more information on the "Bleeding Kansas" era, see the online exhibit Willing to Die for Freedom.

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