Bleeding Kansas was a deadly guerrilla war between so-called Border Ruffians from Missouri in support of slavery on one side, and earnest abolitionists from New England on the other. The violence peaked on Kansas prairies in the decade before the US Civil War officially began, fought with guns, newspapers, artillery, and sometimes even broadswords. A Boston-based company seeded those earnest abolitionists into that prairie and eventually looked the other way as they transformed themselves from farmers to vigilantes and soldiers.
Continue reading Boston Goes to Bleeding Kansas (episode 195)