Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas (1854–58) refers to the violent civil disturbances in Kansas over the question of whether the territory would be slave or free.Slavery was prohibited in land north of 36°, 30′ under the Missouri Compromise. But in 1854, Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois put forward legislation to organize the Kansas‐Nebraska Territory. To gain support from southern senators, the bill repealed the Missouri Compromise and called for popular sovereignty to determine the question of slavery. After a bitter struggle, the act passed in 1854, prompting many northern Democrats to defect to the newly formed Republican Party, which opposed the extension of slavery.
The Kansas‐Nebraska Act injected the debate over slavery into western settlement. Emigrants quickly moved into Kansas—some primarily motivated to make the territory free, others to make it a slave state. By the end of 1855, there were two rival governments in...
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