| Bleeding Kansas: A Prelude to War |
| The 1820 Missouri Compromise
admitted Maine to the Union as a free state and Missouri as a slave
state, maintaining a balance in Congress of 12 states each, and
prohibited slavery north of latitude 36'30". However, when the
Kansas - Nebraska act was passed on May 30, 1854, it effectively
repealed the Missouri Compromise. The act opened the Kansas and
Nebraska territories to legal settlement and gave the settlers the
right to choose whether they would enter the Union as free or slave
states. At that time the population of Missouri was fairly evenly divided between pro-slavery settlers with Southern roots and free-thinking, pro-abolition immigrants, mostly German. As it happened, the greatest concentration of pro-slavery Missourians lived in the southwest corner of the state, on the Kansas border. With no natural border between the states to serve as a deterrent, confrontations between the two factions were common, fierce, and frequently deadly. |
For a more in-depth look at the time known as "Bleeding Kansas", check out the Fort Scott National Historic Site homepage.
Wikipedia has an article on Bleeding Kansas here.
The Missouri - Kansas Border War Network has another great site on the subject.
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