Bleeding Kansas

Bleeding Kansas was a violent struggle between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas Territory from 1854 to 1859 over whether slavery would be permitted there.

Kansas–Nebraska Act: A 1854 federal law organized Kansas and Nebraska territories and let settlers decide slavery by popular sovereignty. Its popular-sovereignty policy opened Kansas to competing campaigns over slavery.
Missouri Compromise: An 1820 federal agreement that admitted Missouri as a slave state and restricted slavery in much of the Louisiana Purchase. Its restriction was repealed in the legislation that opened Kansas to popular sovereignty.
John Brown: An American abolitionist who used armed violence against slavery, including in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry. His Kansas actions made him a leading symbol of militant antislavery resistance.
Caning of Charles Sumner: The 1856 assault on Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks in the U.S. Senate chamber. It followed a speech about Kansas and inflamed sectional anger beyond the territory.
Popular sovereignty: A political principle that lets residents of a territory decide whether slavery will be permitted there. The principle became the stated mechanism for deciding Kansas’s status.
Compromise of 1850: A set of federal laws addressing slavery and territorial questions after the Mexican–American War. Its use of popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico preceded the Kansas policy.
Charles Robinson: An antislavery leader who became the first governor of Kansas under the state constitution adopted in 1861. He helped organize the free-state movement and its rival territorial government.
Republican Party: A U.S. political party founded in the 1850s in opposition to the expansion of slavery into western territories. The Kansas crisis strengthened the party’s opposition to slavery’s expansion.
Topeka Constitution: An 1855 antislavery constitution drafted by Kansas free-state settlers, rejected by the federal government. It embodied the free-state movement’s attempt to establish a rival government.
Franklin Pierce: The fourteenth president of the United States, who signed the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854. His administration backed the law that organized Kansas Territory.

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