Jonathan Earle

A collection of essays picked up on a recent trip through Missouri and Kansas. If you paid attention in American History class, you might remember the Missouri Compromise, the Wilmot Proviso, the Dred Scott decision, squatter sovereignty, and Bloody Kansas. The blood was shed in arguments over whether Kansas would be a free state or a slave state. I learned a number of interesting things:

The argument over “free soil” versus “slavery” was not so such about equal rights but about keeping black people out of Kansas; the “free soil” people proposed banning not just slaves, but free blacks. (There were exceptions to this; with documented cases of blacks being helped to escape slavery by Kansans).

Black suffrage took a long time in Kansas and Missouri, even with Republican governments. The Republicans were more concerned with preventing former Confederates from voting than with allowing blacks to do so – even when prominent black leaders said they didn’t care about “rebels” voting, as long as the got the vote themselves. The question was rendered moot by the 15th Amendment in 1870.

Kansans patted themselves on the back for their tolerance after voting down slavery. Kansas had its share of lynchings, but the newspapers always played them down as against the State’s character, often claiming it was “southerners” that had perpetrated the crimes.

The Sack of Lawrence was celebrated annually by a picnic among the surviving raiders. This sometimes got some public criticism but never any official interference. Ironically, one of the four attendees at the last picnic (in 1929) was Henry Wilson, a black man who had served as cook to William Quantrill’s raiders.

Confederate sympathizers claimed (with some justification) that while “Bloody Bill” Anderson and Willaim Quantrill were vilified as murderers and looters, Kansas Jayhawkers laid waste to western Missouri with equal enthusiasm and were treated as heroes. The University of Kansas sports teams are called the Jayhawks, the annual football games between Kansas and Missouri (now discontinued as Missouri has moved to a different conference) were called the Border Wars, and Missouri fans sometimes showed up with William Quantrill shirts.

A map, some illustrations, endnotes, a sparse index, and the scores of all the Kansas-Missouri football games. For more, see (Civil War on the Western Border and The Civil War in Kansas.… (altro)

Like the book overview summarizes, prior historical scholarship on Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War era tends to focus on either state, but rarely ever both or the region as a whole. This compilation of essays by editors Jonathan Earle and Diane Mutti Burke succeeds in their effort to bridge the gap, highlighting the territorial conflicts that precipitated and/or were the symptoms of the coming Civil War.

Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri is more scholarly than narrative, which is not surprising given the nature of the publication, but I recommend it anyway for those who want a more careful examination of the region's growing pains in the mid-19th century.… (altro)