Kansas Contested

Kansas bled, but the whole country clashed. In the fateful years leading up to the American Civil War, the two sides of the slavery question faced off in the newly organized Kansas Territory. The question was, “Would Kansas be admitted as a free state, and block the expansion of slavery to the west, or would it be a slave state and open the western territories to slavery?” The question consumed the nation, and caused a civil war to erupt in Kansas. Kansas became the focus of competing strategies for gaining victory in this sectional contest. The North chose organized, systematic emigration to bring to the territory the voters needed to decide the issue according to the new principle of popular sovereignty. The South’s strategy hinged on the ability of slaveholders in the bordering slave state of Missouri to stake claims in the new territory or, if necessary, to vote there as “one day Kansans.” Joel Farrell tells the story of this contest that tore the nation apart. He tells it through the lens of these competing strategies, each of which achieved great successes and catastrophic failures. It is the story of bellicose national rhetoric, election fraud, territorial warfare and momentous debates in Washington. It is the essential story for understanding the origins of the American Civil War.

Joel Farrell is the author of three works of history, Venice’s Finest Hour: The Journey From Near Destruction to Greatest Glory, The Radical Greek Idea: Democracy in Ancient Athens, and Kansas Contested: The Pre-Civil War Clash of Proslavery and Free-Soil Strategies. He was born in Kansas and worked in upstate New York, until he and his wife moved to the Boston area where he now lives and writes.