The Crime Against Kansas

 

Spring 1853:

Illinois Democrats Stephen Douglas and William Douglas, heads of the House and Senate committees on territories, herald bills to organize the Kansas territory for statehood to promote extending the railroad system further west.  The House passes their bill, but the Senate tables it in March.


The F Street Mess four Senate Democrats: 

David R. Atchison, Missouri, President pro-tempore (next in line for the presidency)
Andrew P. Butler, South Carolina 
Robert M.T. Hunter,   Virginia  
James M. Mason, Virginia  


January, 1854:

The first version of the new bill is rejected by southerners for lacking the strong support for slavery they wanted in the new territory.

Douglas concedes to their demands and adds a clause that lifts the ban of slavery north of the 36' 30" line established in the Missouri Compromise.  This started a storm of protest from anti-slavery northerners, but just enough northern Democrats aligned with with both southern Democrats and Whigs that the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed in Congress on May 22.  The bill proclaims the Kansas will be admitted as either a slave or free state depending on a majority vote from Kansans ( the idea is called popular sovereignty). Anti-slavery northerners howl about "Southern aggression."

Appeal of the Independent Democrats, Jan. 1854  (text) 
Salmon Chase, Charles Sumner, Joshua Giddings, Edward Wade, Gerrit Smith and Alexander De Witt

The Appeal criticized the overturning of the Missouri Compromise line.

"We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves."


Later 1854:

Northern Whigs were furious with southern Whigs who voted for the bill and the Whig party divided and started to crumble, and many anti-slavery northerners left the party. Antislavery northern men refused to embrace the northern Whig Party.


Anti-Nebraska Movement

Opposition Movement parties - Anti-Nebraska, Fusion, People's, Independent, Republican (in Ripon, Wisconsin)


1855:

In 1854, Amos Lawrence had formed the New England Emigrant Aid society to finance migration of antislavery men to Kansas.  Lawrence, Kansas is named after him.  Shortly after Lawrence’s founding, two newspapers were started: The Kansas Pioneer and the Herald of Freedom. Both papers touted the Free State mission which caused problems from the people of Lecompton, then the pro-slavery headquarters, located about ten miles northwest of Lawrence, and land squatters from Missouri. The Kansas Free State began in early January 1855. 


Senator David Atchison encourages Missouri "border ruffians" use violence against antislavery Kansans, and vote illegally for a pro-slavery territorial representative to Congress.  About 5,000 came and voted.  Pro-slavery men outnumbered Free Soilers 36 to 3 in the new legislature.  

Douglas and Atchison convince President Pierce to replace slavery moderate governor Reeder with the pro-slavery governor Wilson Shannon.  Shannon...

1)  makes antislavery speech illegal
2)  makes helping fugitive slaves a capital crime
3)  eliminates residency as a voting requirement

By autumn, free soilers outnumbered pro-slavery residents and refused to follow these laws.  After a pro-slavery man murders a free soiler, governor Wilson barely convinces 1,900s Missourians who crossed into Nebraska to attack Lawrence to disarm and return home.  

In October 1855, John Brown came to Kansas Territory to fight slavery. On November 21, 1855 the so-called "Wakarusa War" began when a Free-Stater named Charles Dow was shot by a pro-slavery settler.


1856:

May 21 - 800 pro-slavery men attack led by Sheriff Samuel Jones and joined by David Atchison, raid Lawrence burning the governor's home and Free State Hotel and sack stores in retaliation for the non-fatal shooting of a pro-slavery man. 

Charles Sumner's The Crime Against Kansas speech, May 19-20, 1856 attacks the F Street Mess.  His language is especially vitriolic.

On May 22, Andrew Butler's cousin, congressman Preston Brooks, repeatedly clubbed Sumner with a cane in Congress.  It takes Sumner three years to recover.  Southerner's cheered Brooks and this enraged not only antislavery northerners, but also moderate northerners who had, so far, supported the right to own slaves. Butler escapes legal charges and expulsion from Congress.

Back in Kansas, on May 24-25 antislavery zealot John Brown leads a small group of men who murder five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek.  Northern antislavery newspapers ignore Brown's violence and focus on the Border Ruffians and the Sumner caning. 


August 30 -  Thousands of pro-slavery men formed into armies and marched into Kansas. That same month, Brown and several of his followers engaged 400 pro-slavery soldiers in the "Battle of Osawatomie". The hostilities raged for another two months until Brown departed the Kansas Territory, and a new territorial governor, John W. Geary, took office and managed to prevail upon both sides for peace.  This was followed by a fragile peace broken by intermittent violent outbreaks for two more years.  


 1857

March -  The fraudulently elected state legislature overrides Governor Geary's veto of a bill for a constitutional convention.  Geary quits and is replaced by Robert Walker, a fair minded southerner.  When all pro-slavery men are elected to the constitutional convention, Walker asks for a referendum in Congress, the pro-slavery block - including Jefferson Davis, who convinced Buchanan not to support the referendum.


Another fraudulent election for a legislature is a pro-slavery landslide.   

The pro-slavery legislature at Lecompton drafts the state constitution stating that the rights to slaves as property is perpetual.  The Lecompton constitution was sent to Congress without a state referendum.  Buchanan backs the constitution.  Republicans and antislavery Democrats protest.

Seeing his constituency upset, Democrat Stephan Douglas, who started the Kansas-Nebraska affair on the pro-slavery side, switches positions and confronts Buchanan.  Southerners William LownesYancy and James Hammond demand passage and admonish Douglas.  Douglas, anti-slavery northern Democrats and Republicans united on April 1 and defeated the Lecompton constitution.



May 1858 - 1859 

The last major outbreak of violence was touched off by the Marais des Cygnes massacre in 1858, in which Border Ruffians killed five Free State men. In all, approximately 56 people died in Bleeding Kansas by the time the violence ended in 1859.