Publisher's Synopsis
This book includes events that led up to the American Civil War. Kansas is where it all began. The book starts out with the U.S. Presidential Elections of 1852 and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which allowed settlers, not Congress, to determine by popular vote, if they wanted to be admitted into the United States as a Free State or a Slave State. Streams of emigrants began to settle from Midwestern States, Northern States, and Southern States to make land claims in the Kansas Territory. It became a battleground. Politics, violent murders, rivalry governments, and election fraud in Kansas Territory, all played an important role leading up to the American Civil War. Abolitionist John Brown, his militants, and his sons, played a role in the violent murders in the Kansas Territory. Details of John Brown's raid into neighboring State of Missouri are also included, where he freed 11 slaves, murdered a slave owner, and stole several ox, wagons, supplies, and valuables. He was condemned by both Free-State and Pro-Slavery newspapers across the country, as well as the President of the United States and the Governor of Missouri, who both offered a combined reward of $3,250 for the capture of John Brown. He was a wanted man on the run. John Brown's unsuccessful raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, including Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart's involvement, and John Brown's subsequent hanging, are noted in the book. All major battles during the Civil War in Kansas are mentioned in the book, with troops strength details, casualty details, and colored battlefield maps showing the positions of the troops, including Maj Gen Sterling Price's retreat southwards with 500 supply trains, and Quantrill's Lawrence Massacre, where over 200 men and boys in town were killed, and where the town was pillaged and burned. This massacre became the bloodiest atrocity in the American Civil War. The book summarizes the places to stay and places to visit in Kansas by County, including battlefields, historical sites, museums, and cemeteries.
