Bleeding Kansas-1853-1857
Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois (the man who would lose to Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860) almost single-handedly moved the North and South towards civil war. Of course, Douglas didn't know this at the time.
What did Douglas do that changed history? He saw a business opportunity and being a businessman he jumped on it. Douglas grew rich through land speculation. This is a fancy way of saying that Douglas bought western land cheap and sold it to settlers who were pouring into Illinois and elsewhere in the mid-1800s. When Douglas heard talk of a transcontinental railroad that would one day stretch from coast to coast, Douglas naturally wanted that railroad to pass through his land. Secretary of State Jefferson Davis had other ideas for the route this future railroad would take. Naturally, he saw a more southerly route through Texas and onto California.
Douglas' plan to build a railroad that connected Chicago to San Francisco would have to cross through a vast unorganized territory that was leftover from the Louisiana Purchase. Douglas introduced a bill to Congress that would organize a land reserved for Indians into a formal (the first step to statehood) where settlers could buy land and set up farms and towns. The climate of the Great Plains was too dry, and the winters too cold for plantation agriculture. Like California, this battle was purely symbolic.
In Kansas, pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces rushed into the new territory. Urged on by politicians in their home states, the new territory would become a real battleground over the future of slavery. Most whites, whether for or against slavery, carried deeply racist views and wanted nothing more than to keep free blacks out of Kansas.
When an election was called to set up a territorial government in 1855, pro-slavery forces from Missouri surged across the border to cast fraudulent votes. Despite cries of fraud, Kansas elected a pro-slavery legislature. Violence quickly broke out as pro-slavery forces marched into the anti-slavery town of Lawrence and smashed the printing press where an abolitionist newspaper was printed.
The sack of Lawrence would not go unpunished. John Brown, a radical abolitionist, gathered a posse and marched on Pottawatomie Creek, a pro-slavery town where they "drug five men from their houses and hacked them to death in front of their screaming wives and children..."
The two attacks led to a guerrilla war throughout 1856 and by the time the dust settled 200 people were dead and over $2 million dollars in property was destroyed.
In Congress, the debate naturally turned into a fight over slavery and states' rights. Pro-slavery forces in Congress refused to vote for the creation of the Nebraska Territory unless slavery was allowed to expand there too. Of course, this land was north of the 36th parallel established by the Missouri Compromise and therefore off limits to slavery. The only solution was to get rid of the Missouri Compromise. One southern radical, Senator David Atchison put it this way, Nebraska would "sink in hell" rather organize it as a free state.
That's what Congress did. (No, not the sink in hell part). They decided to organize the leftover land into two territories Nebraska and Kansas under an act of Congress called- you guessed it- the Kansas-Nebraska Act. These two territories would eventually be carved into 7 different states. Anyone could bring their slaves into these two territories and eventually, once the necessary population had been achieved, each state would decide for themselves whether they wanted to be slave or free. At the time many people felt that popular sovereignty was the best way to keep the peace.
The plan backfired, big time... Northerners were outraged. In Boston people openly defied the Fugitive Slave Act by trying to rescue a slave being arrested by slave catchers. The issue became so heated that the President had to call in the National Guard. A letter directed at President Franklin Pierce threatened to murder him.
Map of the United States in 1854-1858
The Sack of Lawrence, Kansas
John Brown's Raid-1859
By 1859, the Civil War was just months away and violence was being carried out like a dress rehearsal before the opening of a play. John Brown was a radical abolitionist, hell-bent on ending slavery by any means necessary. Unlike abolitionists like Garrison and Douglass John Brown believed that he had a mission from God to rid the country of the evils of slavery. Brown was a take action sort of man and decided that the best way to accomplish this was by breaking into a federal armory and setting off a slave insurrection that would engulf the country. Under Brown’s logic, the best way to end slavery was to end the slave masters.
Brown and his sons had already been involved in the violence that was engulfing Kansas, after all, they were the ones who led the Pottawatomie Massacre in Kansas back in 1856. After Kansas, Brown moved east to drum up support for his cause to abolish "the wicked curse of slavery.”
John Brown decided that the only way to achieve this was to arm the slaves; that would set off a wave of violence against their masters. Slave rebellions were not common (there had been only nine in the United States since 1663) but they were something that every southern plantation owner lived in fear of. The latest slave rebellion was led by a Virginia slave named Nat Turner - who was deeply religious and claimed to see visions from God. On July 4th, 1831, he led a group of 22 slaves on attacks against whites that left 55 people dead. Nat Turner's rebellion led to a crackdown on the movement of free blacks and slaves alike. People became more vigilant - at times paranoid of future slave rebellions. All southern states passed laws to prevent black people from gathering in large groups. In some places, armed patrols were set up to travel the main roads at night to watch for runaway slaves.
John Brown had clubs and knives created to help arm the slaves but needed guns which could be found at a nearby (and lightly guarded) military arsenal in Harper's Ferry, VA. On October 16, 1859, Brown led a surprise raid on the arsenal and he and his sons managed to take over the place. Their goal: steal the guns and powder and arm nearby slaves who would, in turn, help other slaves rise up until the entire South was engulfed in revolution.
His plan didn't work. Brown managed to get in but was quickly surrounded by armed militiamen and then the Marines. Brown and his sons holed themselves up in a firehouse while holding a few hostages. Brown's sons attempted to surrender but were shot to death by the enraged crowd while holding a white flag of surrender.
Brown was captured, arrested and tried for treason. After being convicted he replied, "let them hang me.” That is exactly what happened. Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison wished "success to every slave insurrection against the South." The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson called Brown a saint. The effect of John Brown's raid was to confirm to southerners what the radical conservatives had been saying all along: That the North was leading a plot to destroy slavery.
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done." - John Brown, Dec 2nd, 1859
John Brown's hanging
Why It Matters
The issue of slavery had divided America even before the country had won its independence. But for decades most Americans had remained apathetic to the plight of the four million black Americans who were brutally being kept in bondage. The abolitionists themselves were never more than a small minority but their voices kept growing louder and more demanding until they could not be ignored any longer. The effect of the abolitionist movement in the South was more psychological. Too many southern slave owners held powerful positions in Congress and the Supreme Court for slavery to be in any real danger. But the militant attitude of the new abolitionists like Garrison and Brown were making them edgy enough to start seriously debating whether it was time to make a break with the Union and start their own country. Even up until the Civil War most northerners wanted nothing to do with abolition and when fighting broke out they claimed that they were fighting to preserve the Union not free the black man.
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