- Joined
- Aug 12, 2011
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- Elliott Bay
I am reading The Caning by Puleo. He opens with an outline of Bleeding Kansas and I have questions. The sequence of events, generally, started with Boston Abolitionists forming a company to settle Kansas as a free state. Southern editors went nuts and urged brave and honorable men from the South to go to Kansas and resist this threat to slavery. A free state next to Missouri would encourage slaves to run away.
Thousands of men from all over the South overwhelmed the polling places and attacked free spoilers, etc. etc. My question is where did all these guys come from? I can understand the Bostons getting settlers, but organizing as many as 6,000 men to vote for a slave state is something of a surprise. Did all these guys quit their day jobs and leave their farms? Did slave holders leave management of slaves to others? What did they expect to gain by going to Kansas other than bringing it into the Union as a slave state and balancing out California's admittance as a free state.
I wonder if this phenomenon doesn't tell us more about the average Confederate enlistee in 1861. My hunch is that average men in slave states were almost by default personally invested in the system even if they didn't hold slaves. Any Bleeding Kansas specialists out there?
Thousands of men from all over the South overwhelmed the polling places and attacked free spoilers, etc. etc. My question is where did all these guys come from? I can understand the Bostons getting settlers, but organizing as many as 6,000 men to vote for a slave state is something of a surprise. Did all these guys quit their day jobs and leave their farms? Did slave holders leave management of slaves to others? What did they expect to gain by going to Kansas other than bringing it into the Union as a slave state and balancing out California's admittance as a free state.
I wonder if this phenomenon doesn't tell us more about the average Confederate enlistee in 1861. My hunch is that average men in slave states were almost by default personally invested in the system even if they didn't hold slaves. Any Bleeding Kansas specialists out there?
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