| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.4 | The History Cooperative

*Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. By Nicole Etcheson*. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. xiv + 370 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)
Historians have called the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act one of the great political miscalculations in American history. Illinois senator Stephen Douglas believed that by allowing western settlers to decide the fate of slavery for themselves the act would end the bitter debates over slavery that had debilitated Congress. By replacing the Missouri Compromise's prohibitions of slavery in the Nebraska territory with "popular sovereignty," Douglas also sought to overcome southern opposition to the creation of a territorial government for the region. With the divisive slavery issue muted, Douglas hoped Congress could then get on with the process of expanding "Christianity, civilization, and Democracy" to the West (p. 9).	1
In Bleeding Kansas, Nicole Etcheson recounts the tumultuous events that followed the act's passage. Rather than ending the slavery debates in Congress, the Kansas-Nebraska Act inflamed sectional animosities and created a political crisis. The act outraged northerners who had regarded the Missouri Compromise as a sacred pact. And Kansas erupted into violence, as heavily armed pro-slavery and free soil settlers poured into the state.	. . .

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