in 1861 the united states stepped into an abyss as southern state seceded on mass the nation slid inexorably towards disaster the result a conflict that devastated the country killing up to three quarters of a million people today the civil war is a cornerstone of the american story a tale every school kid learns but what about the prelude what about the war before the war the war known as bleeding kansas erupting in 1855 bleeding kansas saw free soilers abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates all flood kansas territory determined to influence its upcoming constitution heavily armed they quickly turned to violence locking the region into a cycle of revenge killings arson and massacres yet the effects of this anarchy weren't just limited to kansas intimately connected to the wider politics of the day bleeding kansas helped radicalize a nation pushing it to the brink of war by the time the fighting ended america itself would be mere weeks away from acting out the same violence on a much grander scale both a portrait of a nation on the edge and a tale of how violence begets more violence this is bleeding kansas the civil war that helped spark the civil war [Music] it was 1854 when illinois senator stephen a douglas made the decision that wouldn't just torpedo his career but nearly drowned the nation alongside it one of the big political beasts of his day douglas was a northern democratic firebrand almost as skilled at politics as he was bizarre looking standing at a mere five foot four inches with an oversized head that didn't fit his body douglas was known as the little giant yet he was also a talented senator tipped as a likely future president someone who believed it was his mission to secure the american west in 1854 that meant finally organizing the territories beyond the missouri river as part of the louisiana purchase the region had come into america's possession way back in 1803 but the push to organize it into official territories had died out in 1820 when the missouri compromise outlawed the creation of new slave states above the 3630 parallel that meant that new territories would have to be free which in turn meant admitting them to the union would upset the balance of power between free and slave states so every time someone tried to open up these territories to settlement the southerners would be all like what any of the status a bunch of extra senators sure sure we'll also massage their balls while we're at it yeah okay no the result was deadlock without southern votes the territories were doomed to languish stuck outside the u.s proper but stephen douglas wasn't a political heavyweight for nothing he knew that he could crack this all that was needed was a clever compromise the linchpin of that compromise popular sovereignty under the little giant's proposals the region would be split into two territories kansas territory and nebraska territory that done each would vote on whether to be a slave or a free state the federal government would accept the will of the people and everything would be all sunshine and rainbows the only flaw was that a pro-slavery vote in either would effectively kill the missouri compromise but douglas was confident no one could argue with the cause of letting the people themselves decide after all popular sovereignty had been applied to utah and new mexico after they were admitted following the mexican-american war and nobody had crapped their pants over that but the little giant would quickly discover that what had worked before wouldn't work now rather than defuse the issue it just shoved his tiny foot deep into a nest of angry politicized hornets the passing of the kansas-nebraska act with southern help set off the mother of all backlashes senator charles sumner called it an atrocious plot to expand slavery that same year the republican party was founded in direct opposition but while there would be repercussions at the national level it was on the ground that douglas's first plan showed signs of violently unraveling since nebraska was so far north no one believed it would be anything but free but newly created kansas that was another matter bordering slave state missouri it could vote either way and that chilled abolitionists hearts almost as much as it excited pro-slavery advocates because if kansas could become a slave state that meant the missouri compromise was dead batman's slavery could potentially be expanded across the nation the balance of power in the u.s then would be decided in this new territory and the losers might well be consigned to oblivion both sides could only see one option they would have to make sure kansas voted the way they wanted it to [Music] with the election of the kansas territorial legislature set for march 1855 a starting pistol had been fired in abolitionists new england and slave owning missouri alike desperate plans were made to ensure the outcome they wanted for missourians the idea of being near surrounded by free states was seen as an existential threat the first stage an abolitionist plot to undermine the state equally abolitionists felt kansas becoming a slave state would open the door to this evil institution being imposed on everyone you know how today's political parties descend on swing states during the elections well it was that but times a billion and that meant the tricks were a billion times dirtier too in massachusetts businessmen founded the new england emigrant aid company or neac to help northern abolitionists resettle in kansas so they could influence the vote these northerners founded free state strongholds like topeka and oswatomi and most radically abolitionist of all the town of lawrence overall about 2 000 any ac types would settle in kansas ahead of the vote a mix of hardcore abolitionists and free soilers who were fine with deep south slavery but opposed to its spread in the context of a territory with a voting population of only around 3 000 that influx was pretty damn significant unfortunately they were more than matched by shenanigans on the pro-slavery side although plenty of slavery advocates had likewise moved to kansas territory those in missouri decided not to leave things to chance as march approached senator david rice atchison whipped up fears of an abolitionist plot to surround their state come the vote atchison personally led a force of missourians across the border to deliver a pro-slavery result known as border raffians the intruders intimidated free status threatened to shoot election officials and engaged in fraud on an eye-watering scale the town of leavenworth for example was recorded as casting five times as many votes as it had citizens one pro-slavery candidate remember out of a total voting population of under 3 000 claimed a 5 000 vote victory over his free state rival as senator atchison roared to his supporters there are 1100 coming over from platte county to vote and if that ain't enough we can send 5 000 enough to kill every god damned abolitionist in the territory but while the border ruffian's tactics were a win on paper in reality they'd just shot themselves in the foot even the most nakedly partisan observer had to admit that the election had been marred by fraud governor andrew reader even re-ran the contest in parts of the state returning new freestyle candidates but when the legislature finally sat it became clear the political games weren't over the pro-slavery majority immediately voted to overturn the re-run votes handing seats back to the fraudulently elected slave status in response the remaining three soldiers walked out that september they joined forces with the territories abolitionists and regular folk outraged at the ballot stuffing and set up their own legislature at topeka as paul gave way to winter kansas territory found itself in possession of two governments one free and one slave with most citizens prepared to only obey one of them with tensions rising preparations began for becoming violence in the free towns crates marked books or bibles began arriving courtesy of any eac inside were rifles and ammunition when things kicked off the free status would be ready at least that was the plan in truth though no one would be prepared for the violence that followed now before we get to the killing we should probably note who actually made up the population of kansas territory because while bleeding kansas would be about slavery very few people living there were actually slave holders nearly the entire pro-slavery population were just poor migrants who'd never owned slaves never would and supported their side simply because they were from the south likewise most free state has tended to be subsistence farmers many of whom were anti-slavery only because they hated the idea of having to share kansas with black people only a fraction of settlers in other words had any dog in this fight most simply wanted to be left alone to raise their families and just remember that as everything starts to unravel that almost everyone dying isn't some evil slaver or abolitionist extremist but an ordinary person forced by circumstances to just pick a side it was the same partisan filtering that would soon turn a regular death into political napalm on november 21 1855 free state charles dow was murdered by pro-slavery franklin coleman now this wasn't a political killing coleman and dow had been in a property dispute and coleman simply decided to settle said dispute with bullets but that's not how anyone else in this highly volatile territory saw it when pro-slavery sheriff samuel j jones investigated it was like wait this dead dude's a free stater crack the bud light boys we're gonna have a party rather than arrest coleman he arrested dao's free state of friends jacob branson a vindictive political act and one that would inspire immediate backlash that night a free state of posse sprang branson from custody spiriting him away to lauren's now heart of the anti-slavery forces sheriff jones demanded the governor call out the territorial militia but he didn't exactly want non-partisan backup the 2 000 strong militia that mustered were nearly all missourians and they were all pro-slavery rather than take branson back into custody they wanted to march on lawrence and smash the abolitionists wish sheriff jones was happy to oblige on december the first the town was surrounded inside free state has armed themselves what they assumed would be the final showdown in the end though it was just the warm-up act after six days of siege the militia shot and killed a civilian who tried to leave lawrence for his farm rather than escalate things the bloodshed seems to have made everyone hesitate to look sideways at one another and wonder uneasily we really want to do this guys when a brutal cold snap then hit it was enough to end the siege the wavering militia members decamped and scattered to their homes known as the wakarusa war this dark incident could have been the end of it the moment kansas tipped back from the cliff edge had it not been for sheriff goddamn jones clearly someone who loved to bear a grudge jones never forgot the disrespect that lawrence had shown him so the following spring he returned to the city to arrest those who'd helped spring branson from his clutches there on april 23 1856 someone shot him in the back while jones survived his wounds the free state legislature nearly didn't a few weeks later the territorial government ordered several of his members arrested in lawrence but this wasn't enough for the sheriff with both his ego and his body now wounded jones decided to settle matters with the free status once and for all raising 750 men he marched on lawrence on may 21 roads were blocked and cannons were aimed against the town then the mob attacked and bleeding kansas officially began the sack of lawrence was simultaneously shocking and surprisingly restrained on the shocking side the officers of the town's two anti-slavery newspapers were trashed the homes of abolitionists ransacked and burned and the free state hotel was bombarded with cannon fire on the other side of this ledger though the mob didn't kill a single person the only death recorded was when a pro-slavery rioter was hit by a chunk of falling masonry yet it wasn't the comparative restraint that free status saw in the town's destruction it was fire and smoke blood and tears a growing sense of threat that could only be answered in kind the destruction of lawrence may have restored sheriff jones honor but it had also set kansas territory on the path to war [Music] at almost the exact same time lawrence was going up in flames the kansas bloodshed was spreading to congress on the 19th of may senator charles sumner had given a speech attacking pro-slavery forces in the territory a speech that included some extremely unflattering remarks about a fellow senator unfortunately for sumner that senator had a relative in the house of representatives preston brooks who felt southern honor obliged him to repay the insult the day after the sack of lawrence brooks entered the senate found sumner and beat him so severely with a cane that he nearly killed him it was one of the worst acts of violence to ever take place in the senate and it would help push the fast developing civil war in kansas to new heights particularly when the free state press portrayed it as part of a slave power conspiracy to murder abolitionists for john brown such a sentence was less a warning and more an invitation a free state and newly settled in kansas territory john brown was also perhaps the most hardcore abolitionist in the whole of america like if abolition was a celebrity brown would have been standing for it so hard that even eminem's original stan would be all like dude obsessed much and just like stan brown would happily turn to murder in the name of his idol the news of lawrence's burning reached brown on the 22nd of may as he led a small party of free status to help protect the city appalled brown quickly changed direction heading now for pottawatomie creek there starting at 10 pm on the 24th of may brown his sons and followers exacted their bloody revenge slave stater james doyle was taken from his cabin and shot and two of his sons were hacked to pieces with broadswords a member of the pro-slavery legislature alan wilkinson was dragged from his wife's sick bed and stabbed to death finally a man named sherman was hauled out another cabin and murdered his body dumped in the creek behind his home the five murders brown and his associates committed that night became known as the pottawatomie massacre they shook the nation one congressman wrote the kansas fight has just occurred and times are stirring everybody here feels as if we are on a volcano while the sack of lawrence had ratcheted up the temperature it was pottawatomie that set the pot boiling over the first to move was the pro-slavery side under u.s deputy marshal robert l pate 50 border ruffians descended on free state at homesteads destroying furniture and intimidating the owners but news of this just invited more retaliation on the 2nd of june john brown and 30 men attacked pate and his ruffians outside present-day bolwin city known as the battle of blackjack it saw pate's men surrounded and forced into surrender while only four were injured in the fighting the engagement has been called the first battle of the american civil war the first organized violence conducted between two militias on opposite sides of the slavery debate more immediately it also added fuel to the kansas wildfire freaked out by the spreading violence the territorial governor fled leaving his pro-slavery secretary daniel woodson in charge woodson then used the military to shut down the rival free state legislature sparking yet another backlash in revenge radical abolitionist jim lane led a hundred men on a rampage attacking and burning three log cabins used as meeting points by the pro-slavery faction by the time they attacked the final cabin nicknamed fort titus on august the 16th they'd managed to loot a cannon as 34 slave status cowed inside they blasted away finally forcing a surrender after two had been killed and five badly wounded the battle of port titus ended with the cabin set ablaze and the slaves working there all set free on the free side nine had been wounded with one later dying of his injuries before titus was far from the end of kansas bloody summer it might already be nearly full but the worst was still to come if we're doing our jobs one thing you should have noticed by now is that the most distinctive feature of bleeding kansas was the way violence beget violence in this way it was perhaps closer to albania's 1997 collapse into disorder than a regular civil war in that it was dictated as much by vendettas as by commanders moving men to some grand plan that being said there were some set-piece battles the biggest of which was the battle of osawatomie centred on the town of the same name it's all missourians reverend martin white and john w reed lead 250 border ruffians to march on the settlement in the hope of flushing out john brown on august 30th they launched a surprise assault from the west immediately capturing and killing brown's son frederick although brown and his men fought back the battle would be a catastrophe forced to retreat across the murder zone river the free-staters first lost several men and then were forced to watch as oscar would homie was sacked and burned it was the high point of fighting that summer the first serious bloody battle of the period luckily it was also one of the last less than two weeks later on september 9 1856 john geary was installed as the new kansas governor his first order was to disband all state militia and bring in the us army to restore order this didn't completely end the violence the battle of hickory point fought five days later saw free state has bombarded a small pro-slavery settlement with a looted artillery piece but it did throw a wet blanket on the fire as the u.s army moved in many of the most violent men left the territory john brown for example slipped away to raise money by the end of the summer the low-scale war in canvas had seen around 38 people killed that might not sound like much especially compared to the hundreds of thousands that would die in the civil war but in context it was an appalling number as far as america was concerned 1856 had been a summer of anarchy towns had burned people have been murdered actual battles have been fought think back to the unrest of summer 2020 unrest that left only 25 dead think of how big an impact that had on the entire nation how america is still dealing with the fallout a year and a half later in 1956 bleeding kansas was that feeling on steroids a howl of anguish that had nearly broken the country sadly politicians in dc would soon conspire to make things even worse spring 1857 dawned with a new man in the white house the southern sympathizing democrat james buchanan a guy who was to the presidency what jared fogle was to sandwich-based snacks the moment his term began buchanan made it a top priority to get kansas admitted as a state unfortunately he did so without a single thought to what had caused the territory to explode in the first place buchanan removed the nonpartisan governor john geary as in the guy who would have calmed the violence replacing him with someone else he then allowed the pro-slavery legislature to hold a constitutional convention despite that legislature only being elected via ballot stuffing the result was the lecompton constitutional document that can be basically summed up as woo slavery repeated a billion times over when this document was put to public vote there was only two options except the pro-slavery constitution or except a watered-down version that didn't allow new slaves to be brought in but kept those already in kansas enslaved for life as one local drolly noted it was like being offered a choice between taking arsenic with bread and butter and taking it straight yet buchanan championed the le compton constitution pressuring congress to accept it perhaps the single most effective thing he could have done to re-raise tensions and where tensions went in 1850s kansas bloodshed inevitably followed 1858 began with both free and slave status in kansas on a knife edge the year before had seen new elections kick out the old territorial legislature and replace it with one that was majority free status but at the same time the lecompton constitution was still being pushed by buchanan perhaps this explains the flare-up violence that occurred along the missouri border that winter a flare-up that saw homes burned and five pro-slavery men separately murdered it was this return to violence that would soon power the last great atrocity of the period the murder zane massacre one of the homes burned along the border you see belonged to the pro-slavery charles hamilton but rather than leave kansas territory for good after his life went up in smoke hamilton crossed into missouri gathered up a group of 25 men and marched back into kansas to exact his revenge on the 19th of may 1858 his posse moved through the mardezan river valley pulling anyone suspected of anti-slavery sentiments from their homes and taken them prisoner once it swept through the valley hamilton released the very young the very old and anyone who like him was a freemason then he marched the remaining 11 men to a ravine lined them all up and had them shot this being an era of weaker weapons only five of the men actually died the other six were left to lie in the ditch and play dead all but one of them badly wounded in return this latest bloodletting inspired another attempt at violence hearing the massacre had been planned in the town of fort scott free state has marched on it determined to kill those responsible but by now federal troops were in kansas territory in force the posse were unable to enter fort scott and so a repeat of the bloodshed of summer 1856 was avoided that doesn't mean the tensions in kansas died down though over the next year there would be random assassinations as ordinary settlers were occasionally found dead murdered for their politics at the same time charles hamilton continued to harass border communities sometimes fighting small skirmishes with anti-slavery jayhawkers sometimes with federal troops yet by now the political fight that originally sparked bleeding kansas was nearly over with free status now in the ascendancy the lecompton constitution was killed for good by popular vote in 1858 the next year the new territorial legislature wrote the anti-slavery wyandotte constitution sending it off to congress for approval on the 31st of january 1859 after leading a raid that freed 11 states john brown left kansas territory for the final time taking his gang of extremists with him they'd resurface in virginia not 10 months later leading a raid on the harper's ferry arsenal a crime for which brown would hang but while it's harper's ferry that he's remembered for today it was in the nasty little civil war in kansas that john brown made his name and where he first got a taste for violence according to the kansas historical society the last murders of bleeding kansas took place in november of 1860. that same month abraham lincoln became president-elect of a nation torn apart in part because of the mayhem and anarchy emanating from kansas in the weeks following lincoln's victory southern states began seceding from the union while in the medium term and medium here means only a few months this would result in the civil war in the super super short term it ended the kansas conflict with fewer southern senators now sitting congress accepted the wyandotte constitution on the 21st of january 1861 voting for kansan statehood eight days later james buchanan signed kansas admission into law it joined the union as a free state just as the union teetered on the verge of collapse the admission of the sunflower state officially ended bleeding kansas after six years and 56 deaths for a civil war that's arguably a tiny death toll during the us civil war kansas would lose eight and a half thousand citizens so many orders of magnitude greater that it's like comparing nuclear armageddon to the wet fart but to only focus on those killed is to miss the point bleeding kansas was one of the key events that destabilized the u.s in this era paving the way for the civil war it was buchanan's insistence for example on approving the lecompton constitution that helped split the democratic party in 1860 allowing lincoln to win without a single southern electoral vote it was also amid the violence of bleeding kansas that lincoln morphed from an underdog to a serious candidate for his party's nomination after he visited the territory in december 1859 for all its effects on national politics though bleeding kansas is today perhaps best understood as a preview of what was to come in the organized battles between mostly northern free status and mostly southern pro-slavery forces in the sacking and burning of towns in the massacres of people on the other side of the political divide we can see a clear prelude to the fight that would soon consume the nation if the civil war was the main performance then bleeding kansas was the dark depressing overture for that reason if for no other it deserves its place in history so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do utilize that like button below make sure you are subscribed to this channel if you've got a suggestion for a future video please do leave it in the comments below and as always thank you for watching