The Civil War in Kansas, Ten Years of Turmoil

No other state’s history is so entwined with the American Civil War as that of the Sunflower State. By the time the war officially began in 1861, Kansas and Missouri had already been fighting for six years. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act left the Kansas Territory wide open for white settlement, and the stage was set for a battle that would ignite the nation. From the hopes and dreams of settlers and the exploits of John Brown to the Lawrence and Pottawatomie Massacres and the many other battles and skirmishes, historian Debra Goodrich Bisel tells that tumultuous story.

Background Information

American Civil War lasted from the bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861 to the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865. Kansas was a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery forces before being admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was intended by Southerners to bring Kansas into the Union as a slave state, but it failed in that and instead inspired the formation of the Republican Party. John Brown was an abolitionist who believed that violence against slavery was justified, as he showed in the assault at Harpers Ferry in 1860.

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The Civil War in Kansas, Ten Years of Turmoil

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