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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era
by Nicole Etcheson.
Illustrated, endnotes, bibliography, index, 370 pp., 2004. University of Kansas Press, 2501 West 15th St., Lawrence, KS 66049-3905, $35 plus shipping.
The sesquicentennial of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 is spawning numerous new books examining the era known as “Bleeding Kansas” from Northern, Southern and military perspectives. Scholars are still debating the same question: What caused the violence in Kansas? Was this a struggle over land, slavery or political power? What is the connection between events and Kansas and the Civil War? A welcome and thoughtful addition to this debate is Nicole Etcheson’s Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. Northern and Southern settlers viewed the Kansas territory as a good place for economic success, from farming or land speculation. Both sides agreed that popular sovereignty should allow for the people to decide the future of slavery in Kansas, as an extension of political liberty. But the disagreement, and according to Etcheson the major cause of the violence in Kansas, was competing definitions of “white mans liberty.” To Northerners, liberty was always tied to a right to decide the form of political and cultural institutions at the ballot box, essentially deciding one’s own future. Northern settlers, denied a fair chance to vote on their institutions and future, believed they were being “enslaved” by the Slave Power, their liberties denied them (pp. 65-66). Southerners supported popular sovereignty as long as it did not threaten the “liberty” of Southern whites to own slaves. Slave ownership was exempt from the will of the majority, and any threat to this right must be suppressed (pp. 46-48). Free speech did not include abolition speeches, or any viewpoints threatening slavery in Missouri. In fact, Missouri slave owners felt the threat to slavery justified any extreme actions. Etcheson’s main point is that the violence in “Bleeding Kansas” stems from these competing views of liberty. All the major players and events are covered well in the book, from Charles Robinson, Senator David Atchinson and Governor John Geary to the Lecompton Constitution, the first Sack of Lawrence in 1856 and numerous clashes between “Border Ruffians” and “Jayhawkers.” The author also points out differences between territorial governments, and competing views of land ownership and the right to vote, both of which played a major role in creating the conflict in Kansas. Several problems exist in the book. Etcheson argues that the violence in Kansas and its emphasis on liberty spreads directly from the Plains and causes the events leading to the Civil War. But the author loses her liberty focus as the book goes on, and does not prove her point. By chapter seven there is little evidence demonstrating most Americans worried about liberty as much as Kansans did. She also claims that the violence radicalized white Kansans into civil rights advocates, an argument refuted by post-Civil War racism in Kansas. The author also fails to balance her research with military sources. While citizens on both sides felt the army was working for their enemies to steal personal liberties, the military saw its role and acted otherwise. This balance is missing in the book. Readers will find a book that is well constructed and illustrated, with plenty of details for scholars and good writing for everyone. Because her arguments on liberty are well conceived, Etcheson’s Bleeding Kansas should take its place next to Alice Nichols’s Bleeding Kansas, James A. Rowley’s Race and Politics, Gunja SenGupta’s For God and Mammon and other standards on this era.
William D. Young
William D. Young is a fulltime professor of history at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City. He is the author of several books, including Fort Riley: Citadel of the Frontier West. He lives in historic Lawrence, Kan., with his wife and children.
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