Author: Donald Gilmore Publisher: Pelican Publishing ISBN: 9781455602308 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 392
Book Description
During the Civil War, the western front was the scene of some of that conflictï¿1/2s bloodiest and most barbaric encounters as Union raiders and Confederate guerrillas pursued each other from farm to farm with equal disregard for civilian casualties. Historical accounts of these events overwhelmingly favor the victorious Union standpoint, characterizing the Southern fighters as wanton, unprincipled savages. But in fact, as the author, himself a descendant of Union soldiers, discovered, the bushwhackersï¿1/2 violent reactions were understandable, given the reign of terror they endured as a result of Lincolnï¿1/2s total war in the West. In reexamining many of the long-held historical assumptions about this period, Gilmore discusses President Lincolnï¿1/2s utmost desire to keep Missouri in the Union by any and all means. As early as 1858, Kansan and Union troops carried out unbridled confiscation or destruction of Missouri private property, until the state became known as "the burnt region." These outrages escalated to include martial law throughout Missouri and finally the infamous General Orders Number 11 of September 1863 in which Union general Thomas Ewing, federal commander of the region, ordered the deportation of the entire population of the border counties. It is no wonder that, faced with the loss of their farms and their livelihoods, Missourians struck back with equal force.
Author: Jonathan Halperin Earle Publisher: ISBN: 9780700619283 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
"This multi-faceted study gives readers a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the violence that erupted--long before the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter--along the Missouri-Kansas border by blending the political and military with the social and intellectual history of the populace. The fifteen essays together explain why the divisiveness was so bitter and persisted so long, still influencing attitudes 150 years later"--
Author: Michael Woods Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1317339142 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
Between 1854 and 1861, the struggle between pro-and anti-slavery factions over Kansas Territory captivated Americans nationwide and contributed directly to the Civil War. Combining political, social, and military history, Bleeding Kansas contextualizes and analyzes prewar and wartime clashes in Kansas and Missouri and traces how these conflicts have been remembered ever since. Michael E. Woods’s compelling narrative of the Kansas-Missouri border struggle embraces the diverse perspectives of white northerners and southerners, women, Native Americans, and African Americans. This wide-ranging and engaging text is ideal for undergraduate courses on the Civil War era, westward expansion, Kansas and/or Missouri history, nineteenth-century US history, and other related subjects. Supported by primary source documents and a robust companion website, this text allows readers to engage with and draw their own conclusions about this contentious era in American History.
Author: Kristen Epps Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 0820350508 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 285
Book Description
Slavery on the Periphery focuses on nineteen counties on the Kansas-Missouri border, tracing slavery's rise and fall from the earliest years of American settlement through the Civil War along this critical geographical, political, and social fault line.
Author: Jonathan Earle Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 0700619291 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
Long before the first shot of the Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter, violence had already erupted along the Missouri-Kansas border—a recurring cycle of robbery, arson, torture, murder, and revenge. This multifaceted study brings together fifteen scholars to expand our understanding of this vitally important region, the violence that besieged it, and its overall impact on the Civil War. Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri blends political, military, social, and intellectual history to explain why the region’s divisiveness was so bitter and persisted for so long. Providing a more nuanced understanding of the conflict, it defines both what united and divided the men and women who lived there and how various political disagreements ultimately disintegrated into violence. By focusing on contested definitions of liberty, citizenship, and freedom, it also explores how civil societies break down and how they are reconstructed when the conflict ends. The contributors examine this key chapter in American history in all of its complexity. Essays on “Slavery and Politics in Territorial Kansas” examine how the border region was transformed by the conflict over the status of slavery in Kansas Territory and how the emerging conflict on the Kansas-Missouri border took on a larger national significance. Other essays focus on the transition to total warfare and examine the wartime experiences of the diverse people who populated the region in “Sectional Crisis and Civil War on the Western Border.” Final articles on “The Border Reconstructed and Remembered” explore the ways in which border residents rebuilt their society after the war and how they remembered it decades later. As this penetrating collection shows, only when Missourians and Kansans embraced a common vision for America—one based on shared agricultural practices, ideas about economic development, and racial equality—could citizens on both sides of the border reconcile.
Author: Jay Monaghan Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 9780803236059 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 468
Book Description
The first phase of the Civil War was fought west of the Mississippi River at least six years before the attack on Fort Sumter. Starting with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Jay Monaghan traces the development of the conflict between the pro-slavery elements from Missouri and the New England abolitionists who migrated to Kansas. "Bleeding Kansas" provided a preview of the greater national struggle to come. The author allows a new look at Quantrill's sacking of Lawrence, organized bushwhackery, and border battles that cost thousands of lives. Not the least valuable are chapters on the American Indians’ part in the conflict. The record becomes devastatingly clear: the fighting in the West was the cruelest and most useless of the whole affair, and if men of vision had been in Washington in the 1850s it might have been avoided.
Author: Diane Eickhoff Publisher: ISBN: 9780976443421 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Get ready to rethink everything you knew about the Civil War. Did you know it was on the prairies of Kansas where the first shots in America's greatest conflict were fired? That it was Missouri where African-American soldiers first marched into battle? Those are just two of many surprising finds you'll make when you explore the Missouri-Kansas Border Region with this guide, designed by a historian and a journalist who have traveled every mile of this contentious border. Since it was first published in 2013, "The Big Divide Travel Guide" has made its way into thousands of glove boxes and travel bags. Inside this completely updated edition you'll find themed driving tours, over 130 recommended sites, suggestions for kids and parents, maps, and the insights of two experienced road trippers.
Author: Nicole Etcheson Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 0700614923 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
Few people would have expected bloodshed in Kansas Territory. After all, it had few slaves and showed few signs that slavery would even flourish. But civil war tore this territory apart in the 1850s and 60s, and "Bleeding Kansas" became a forbidding symbol for the nationwide clash over slavery that followed. Many free-state Kansans seemed to care little about slaves, and many proslavery Kansans owned not a single slave. But the failed promise of the Kansas-Nebraska Act-when fraud in local elections subverted the settlers' right to choose whether Kansas would be a slave or free state-fanned the flames of war. While other writers have cited slavery or economics as the cause of unrest, Nicole Etcheson seeks to revise our understanding of this era by focusing on whites' concerns over their political liberties. The first comprehensive account of "Bleeding Kansas" in more than thirty years, her study re-examines the debate over slavery expansion to emphasize issues of popular sovereignty rather than slavery's moral or economic dimensions. The free-state movement was a coalition of settlers who favored black rights and others who wanted the territory only for whites, but all were united by the conviction that their political rights were violated by nonresident voting and by Democratic presidents' heavy-handed administration of the territories. Etcheson argues that participants on both sides of the Kansas conflict believed they fought to preserve the liberties secured by the American Revolution and that violence erupted because each side feared the loss of meaningful self-governance. Bleeding Kansas is a gripping account of events and people-rabble-rousing Jim Lane, zealot John Brown, Sheriff Sam Jones, and others-that examines the social milieu of the settlers along with the political ideas they developed. Covering the period from the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act to the 1879 Exoduster Migration, it traces the complex interactions among groups inside and outside the territory, creating a comprehensive political, social, and intellectual history of this tumultuous period in the state's history. As Etcheson demonstrates, the struggle over the political liberties of whites may have heightened the turmoil but led eventually to a broadening of the definition of freedom to include blacks. Her insightful re-examination sheds new light on this era and is essential reading for anyone interested in the ideological origins of the Civil War.
Author: Jonathan Earle Publisher: ISBN: Category : Electronic books Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
Focuses on the violence that erupted-long before the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter-along the Missouri-Kansas border. Blends political, military, social, and intellectual history to explain why the divisiveness was so bitter and persisted so long, still influencing attitudes 150 years later.
Author: Donald Gilmore
Author: Jonathan Halperin Earle
Author: Michael Woods
Author: Kristen Epps
Author: Jonathan Earle
Author: Larry E. Wood
Author: Jay Monaghan
Author: Diane Eickhoff
Author: Nicole Etcheson
Author: Jonathan Earle