1850-1859---The Border War

1854-1859:                   

 The Border War: The Kansas Territory is divided between pro-slavery settlers (mostly from Missouri) and “Free Soilers” (mostly from the Old Northwest) who oppose slavery in the territory.   

Each group establishes its own Territorial Legislature, elects its own officials, selects its own capital, writes its own Constitution, and raises its own militia, elements of which attack each other violently and intermittently for years. 

The violence does not really end until the Civil War ends. Towns are burned and hundreds of Kansans are killed, including women and children, by “Border Ruffians,” “bushwhackers” and “regulators.” 

The “Little Civil War” in “Bleeding Kansas” soon spreads to Missouri, where many of the Border Ruffians reside, and where abolition advocates are challenging the State’s pro-slavery institutions. 

The dispute becomes essentially a proxy fight between North and South. The violence on the prairie is only a precursor to what is too soon to convulse the entire nation.