Chapter 44: Violent Raids and Reprisals Sweep Across “Bloody Kansas”

On May 21, 1856 a band of 300 Pro-Slavery militiamen armed with a cannon reduce Lawrence to rubble. Three days later abolitionist John Brown hacks five men to death in his Potawatomie Massacre. These acts set off open warfare over the summer between U.S. Senator David Atchison’s Pro-Slavery troops and the “Kansas Jayhawkers” under Brown and the fanatical General James Henry Lane.

By the end of the year the failure of “popular sovereignty” is apparent to all except for Franklin Pierce and his successor, James Buchanan, two Northern born men who exhibit blind allegiance to the South for their electoral successes.

Stephen Douglas is troubled by the election fraud and publicly lobbies for a “do-over” of the entire voting process. His stated rationale is that the minimum threshhold of 60,000 settlers was never met in Kansas.