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The Events Of Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty In The Civil War

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The United States was a turbulent and politically divided place in 1850’s and leading up the Civil War. The Kansas Territory exemplified the treacherous nature of the U.S. experiencing all the issues that Congress tried to ignore in order to hold together the Union. Nicole Etcheson details the events in her book Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. Most people used the name Bleeding Kansas to describe the violent atmosphere of the territory. The violence stemmed from Stephen A. Douglas’s idea of popular sovereignty that is allowing the people to vote on the admission of slavery into the state’s constitution. People from the North and the South, mostly Missouri, flooded into Kansas for cheap land and a chance to vote on slavery’s …show more content…

Before the events of Bleeding Kansas happened, Congress had to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The second draft of the act championed by Stephen Douglas passed because it allowed popular sovereignty to decide if slavery would be permitted in the new territories. When understanding the events of Bleeding Kansas, it is best to follow the four distinct constitutions drawn up by the settlers. The first attempt at a constitution came from free-staters in Topeka. While the Topeka constitution prohibited slavery, it “clearly compromised the varied attitudes on race…” (75). Creating a state that did not allow slavery was more important than black rights. A proslavery legislature created the Lecompton constitution to counter the free-staters. Etcheson wrote that “Their first loyalty was to making Kansas a slave state…” (141). Their goal was to allow slavery to expand to Kansas and protect slave owners. Another legislature later tried to pass the Leavenworth constitution. The constitution was far more radical than the Topeka constitution because it allowed free blacks to vote on the constitution and provided a vote for black suffrage (178). The aim of the free staters had changed from being against slavery to expanding black rights. The final constitution was the Wyandotte constitution. It also prohibited slavery but left suffrage up to the legislature. There was no huge debacles or excitement because most accepted that Kansas was going to be free. In the beginning of Kansas there was two separate groups that did not care about black rights, but by the end the liberty of blacks was a normalized

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