Most of the violence was relatively unorganized, small scale violence, yet it led to mass feelings of terror within the territory. The most horrific incident occurred in late May when one night abolitionist fanatic John Brown and his sons forced five southerners from their homes along the Pottawatomie Creek and murdered them in cold blood. Republicans used Bleeding Kansas as a powerful rhetorical weapon in the Election to garner support among northerners by arguing that the Democrats clearly sided with the pro-slavery forces perpetrating this violence.
In reality, both sides engaged in acts of violence—neither party was innocent. The violence surrounding Bleeding Kansas even made its way to Washington D. Sumner also made personal and insulting remarks against the two Senators. On May 22, , in retaliation for the degrading remarks made against his cousin, Brooks entered the Senate chambers and accosted Sumner at his desk, beating him with a cane until Sumner was a bloody unconscious pulp. The canning of Sumner inspired intense polarizing reactions.
In general, southerners were overjoyed that someone finally stood up and defended southern honor against the perceived encroaching abolitionist sentiment that increasingly threatened their societal foundation: slavery. On the opposite end of the spectrum, northerners were absolutely horrified over what they viewed as an egregious and violent expression of the slave power against northerners which would only continue unless the slave power was stopped.
Adding to this fear was the fact that Brooks retook his House seat in July , facing almost no negative repercussions. In contrast, Sumner was so badly injured that he could not return to his Senate seat until three years after the ordeal. The canning of Sumner and Bleeding Kansas drove many northern Know Nothings to the Republican Party, as they viewed it as the only political party actively opposing the slave power.
As the Republicans gained power the Democrats continued to fracture along sectional lines, which only increased with the crisis over the Lecompton Constitution. Popular sovereignty had a long pedigree in American politics. In , Democratic presidential candidate Lewis Cass adopted popular sovereignty as his policy for dealing with slavery in the lands acquired from Mexico.
Congress passed the Compromise of to settle the question of the Mexican Cession and, in his Kansas-Nebraska bill, Douglas claimed that the Utah and New Mexico provisions of that compromise were essentially precedents for popular sovereignty. Senators Salmon P. The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed in , paving the way for settlement of those territories. Events in Kansas Territory contributed to the Republican Party's growth and exacerbated the sectional conflict.
Iowans crossed the border into Nebraska and voted in territorial elections, but their numbers were small and Nebraska was expected to be a free state. In Kansas, a small civil war broke out between proslavery Missourians and settlers from the free states, rooted in the flawed implementation of popular sovereignty. Problems appeared in the first territorial election, for a delegate to Congress, in November Missourians crossed the river to vote in the territory.
At polls throughout the territory, armed Missourians threatened voters and election officials from the free states. Although a territorial census had shown that there were 2, eligible voters in the territory, proslavery candidates were elected to the so-called " Bogus Legislature " with majorities of over 5, votes.
Many of the Missourians who crossed the state line to vote did later settle in the territory. Many Northern settlers who felt deprived of their political rights abandoned Kansas, overcome by frontier hardships.
Nonetheless, the proslavery victory seemed to many a blatant violation of the polls. The newly elected territorial legislature passed a slave code for Kansas. But although Benjamin Stringfellow , publisher of a proslavery newspaper, boasted that Kansas now had slave laws as solid as any in the country, resistance was building.
The small number of New Englanders in Kansas now combined with the much larger number of Midwestern settlers to form a Free-State movement. In September , they assembled at Topeka and wrote a constitution for a free state of Kansas. Although many Northerners backed this Topeka movement, it was extra-legal and lacked legitimacy with the federal government.
For the next several years, the Free-Staters carried out a precarious balancing act. The Free-Staters engaged in a propaganda war. But fear of retaliation from the federal government, which called the Free-Staters traitors and recognized the proslavery territorial legislature as the legal government of Kansas Territory, restrained Free-Staters from going too far.
Events during the winter of gave the Law and Order movement its chance. In an altercation over a land claim, a Missourian killed a Free-State settler. While the murderer fled back to Missouri, Free-Staters terrorized the neighborhood, warning out settlers and burning houses.
Jones called for help, and territorial governor Wilson Shannon , a tippling Democrat from Ohio, called out the militia. Soon Lawrence was surrounded by proslavery forces in what came to be called the Wakarusa War. Free-State women, including Lois Brown and Margaret Wood, smuggled arms into the besieged town under their petticoats. Inside Lawrence, Jim Lane drilled Free-State forces while like-minded women, including Lois Brown and Margaret Wood, smuggled arms into the besieged town under their petticoats.
Shannon was anxious to disperse the militia, which seemed increasingly uncontrollable, and a nasty cold spell helped persuade the encamped proslavery men to disband. In the spring, Sheriff Jones returned to Lawrence, this time to arrest the men who had liberated his prisoner. Free-Staters did not cooperate and Jones was unable to make arrests.
When Jones, who had not been seriously injured, released his posse, these proslavery men ransacked Lawrence, destroying the Free State Hotel and throwing the newspaper press, The Herald of Freedom , into the Kansas River. Shortly after the Pottawatomie Massacre, Eastern abolitionists seeking to distance Brown from it denied his presence there. However, an testimony by James Townsley, an abolitionist friend of Brown, indicates that Brown personally led the massacre. John Brown, a Free-State settler, was on his way to Lawrence with a party of other settlers from southeastern Kansas when they heard that they were too late to protect the town.
That night, May 24, Brown led a small party, including his four sons, his son-in-law, and two other men that murdered five proslavery settlers along Pottawatomie Creek. On January 4, , Douglas introduced a bill designed to tread middle ground.
They wanted to explicitly repeal the line. It was all about slavery. Douglas introduced his revised bill—and the storm began. It became law on May 30,
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