In , Beecher sent rifles to anti-slavery forces participating in "Bleeding Kansas. Toggle navigation. Jump to: navigation , search. John Brown, who with others rode into Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas, a village of several slave-owning families, and killed five men during "Bleeding Kansas".
Etcheson, Nicole. Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, Fellman, Michael. Fess, Simeon D. Holt, Michael. The Political Crisis of the s. New York, NY: Wiley, Rawley, James A. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Roseboom, Eugene H. The Civil War Era: DeCaro, Louis A. Dee, Christine, ed.
Athens: Ohio University Press, President Pierce only recognized the proslavery legislature. Most settlers who had come to Kansas from the North and the South only wanted to homestead in peace. They were not interested in the conflict over slavery, but they found themselves in the midst of a battleground. Violence erupted throughout the territory. Southerners were driven by the rhetoric of leaders such as David Atchison, a Missouri senator. Atchison proclaimed the Northerners to be "negro thieves" and "abolitionist tyrants.
In fact, abolitionists were in the minority. Most of the Free State settlers were part of a movement called Free Soil, which demanded free territory for free white people. They hated slavery, but not out of concern for the slaves themselves.
They hated it because plantations took over the land and prevented white working people from having their own homesteads. They hated it because it brought large numbers of black people wherever it went. The Free Staters voted 1, to to outlaw black people, slave or free, from Kansas. Their territory would be white. As the two factions struggled for control of the territory, tensions increased.
In the proslavery territorial capital was moved to Lecompton, a town only 12 miles from Lawrence, a Free State stronghold. In April of that year a three-man congressional investigating committee arrived in Lecompton to look into the Kansas troubles. The majority report of the committee found the elections to be fraudulent, and said that the free state government represented the will of the majority. The federal government refused to follow its recommendations, however, and continued to recognized the proslavery legislature as the legitimate government of Kansas.
There had been several attacks during this time, primarily of proslavery against Free State men. People were tarred and feathered, kidnapped, killed. But now the violence escalated. On May 21, , a group of proslavery men entered Lawrence, where they burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two printing presses, and ransacked homes and stores.
In retaliation, the fiery abolitionist John Brown led a group of men on an attack at Pottawatomie Creek. The group, which included four of Brown's sons, dragged five proslavery men from their homes and hacked them to death. The violence had now escalated, and the confrontations continued. John Brown reappeared in Osawatomie to join the fighting there.
Violence also erupted in Congress itself. The abolitionist senator Charles Sumner delivered a fiery speech called "The Crime Against Kansas," in which he accused proslavery senators, particularly Atchison and Andrew Butler of South Carolina, of [cavorting with the] "harlot, Slavery. This included several tribes of Native Americans. Plains Indian tribes--the Kansas, Pawnees, and Osages--lived in and moved across Kansas, depending on the season. After , about 20 tribes who lived east of the Mississippi River were resettled west of Missouri under the federal government's Indian removal policy.
In the government began negotiations to move these tribes again. By the end of the various tribes had ceded much of the land in the Kansas and Nebraska territories to the federal government through various treaties and they were relocated to the area that became Oklahoma. Even before Kansas Territory was opened for settlement by non-Indians in the spring of , groups with varied political interests had formed to encourage settlement. The New England Emigrant Aid Society later Company and other groups formed to promote and support free state settlement, while Missourians with an immediate stake in the outcome poured across their border with Kansas.
The first organized group of New Englanders arrived in the territory in July and founded the city of Lawrence, making it the focal point of abolitionist activity. Before the end of the year Cyrus K. Holliday and others established the city of Topeka as another free state community. There was also activity by proslavery supporters. Stringfellow, "urged their people to resist the abolitionist plot to surround their state with free territory.
Proslavery Missourians founded Leavenworth about the same time. It is safe to say, despite the attention paid to the political tumult and violence known as Bleeding Kansas, that most of the people who came to Kansas Territory sought land and opportunity. Because of long held prejudices against African Americans, it is believed that a majority of those settling in Kansas wanted it to be free from, not only the institution of slavery, but from "Negros" entirely.
These settlers sought free-soil for whites only. Some Missourians may have been as concerned about preventing the establishment of a safe haven for run-away slaves on their western border as they were about having Kansas become a slave state. The Kansas population , in terms of the place of birth of residents, received its greatest contributions from Ohio 11, , Missouri 11, , Indiana 9, , and Illinois 9, , followed by Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and New York all three over 6, The territory's foreign-born population stood at roughly 12 percent, most of whom hailed from the British Isles or Germany.
Racially, of course, the population was overwhelmingly white. The census takers found only two slaves in Kansas Territory and "Free Colored" residents.
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