Readers' Guide

Introduction

These books examine the issues and characters that defined territorial Kansas. With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, the country, deeply divided on the issue of slavery and states' rights, turned its attention to Kansas. Kansas Territory was formed at that time under the policy of "Popular Sovereignty," which meant that settlers of the new territory could determine for themselves whether Kansas would permit slavery. These unique circumstances led to the tragic set of events known as "Bleeding Kansas," in which zealots on each side of the slavery issue vied for control of the new territory by participating in a guerilla war.

Although not all of the books have a direct bearing on the subject of Kansas, they focus on the issues that dominated the debate over what the territory would eventually become—a free or a slave state. Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852, is a great political novel, sentimentally dramatizing the heartbreaking consequences of the nationally sanctioned (through the institution of the Fugitive Slave Act, which Congress passed in 1850) practice of slavery. In many ways, Kansas Territory was a battleground, and with T.H. Gladstone's The Englishman in Kansas, we have a foreign correspondent's dispatches from the field, his impressions of Kansas as written for his English audience. Prompted by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to explore a period in American history when ideology and violence intersected, Jane Smiley wrote The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, a novel about a young woman's bittersweet and ultimately tragic experiences in Kansas Territory. If there is one emblematic figure for this tumultuous place and period, that person would be John Brown, the subject of Merrill D. Peterson's John Brown: The Legend Revisited, an examination of the influence Brown's career and death has had on American culture.

Required Readings

Gladstone, T.H. The Englishman in Kansas
Peterson, Merrill D. John Brown: The Legend Revisited
Smiley, Jane. The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly

Recommended Readings

Abing, Kevin J, "Before Bleeding Kansas: Christian Missionaries, Slavery, and the Shawnee Indians in Pre-Territorial Kansas, 1844-1854," Kansas History 24, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 54-71.

Ayres, Carol Dark. Lincoln and Kansas: Partnership for Freedom. Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 2001.

Berwanger, Eugene H. The Frontier against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy. Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1967.

Cohen Stan. John Brown. The Thundering Voice of Jehovah: A Pictorial Heritage. Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1999.

Cecil-Fronsman, Bill. "'Death to All Yankees and Traitors in Kansas': The Squatter Sovereign and the Defense of Slavery in Kansas," Kansas History 16, 1 (1993): 22-33.

Cecil-Fronsman, Bill. Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina. Lexington : University Press of Kentucky , 1992.

Craik, Elmer LeRoy. "Southern Interest in Territorial Kansas, 1854-1858," Kansas Historical Collections, 1919-1922 15 (1922): 334-450.

Decaro Jr., Louis A. Fire from the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown. New York: New York University Press, 2002.

Dobak, William A. ed., "Civil War on the Kansas-Missouri Border: The Narrative of Former Slave Andrew Williams," Kansas History, VI (Winter 1983): pp. 254-65.

Fellman, Michael. "Rehearsal for Civil War: Antislavery and Proslavery at the Fighting Point in Kansas, 1854-1856," in Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman, eds., Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), pp. 287-307.

Fleming, Walter L. "The Buford Expedition to Kansas," American Historical Review 6 (October 1900): 38-48.

Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. New York : Oxford University Press, 1970.

Fredrickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914. New York : Harper and Row, 1971.

Gaeddert, G. Raymond. "First Newspapers in Kansas Counties," Kansas Historical Quarterly 10 (February 1941): 3-33.

Genovese, Eugene D. The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in the Interpretation. New York : Pantheon Books, 1969.

Gridley, Karl. "John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-1859: A Militant Abolitionist's Relationship with the Free State Fortress" in Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community, editors Dennis Domer and Barbara Watkins. Lawrence, KS: U of Kansas Continuing Education, 2001.

Grimsted, David. American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Hodder, Frank H. "The Railroad Background of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill," Mississippi Valley Historical Review , XII (June 1925), pp. 3-22.

Jenkins, William Sumner. Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935.

Johnson, Samuel A. "The Emigrant Aid Company in Kansas," Kansas Historical Quarterly, I (1931-1932), pp. 429-41.

Johnson, Samuel A. The Battle Cry of Freedom: The New England Emigrant Aid Company in the Kansas Crusade . Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1954.

Litwack, Leon F. North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States 1790-1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Lovejoy, Julia Louisa. "Letters from Kansas," Kansas Historical Quarterly 11 (February 1942): 29-44.

Malin, James C. "The Pro-Slavery Background of the Kansas Struggle," Mississippi Valley Historical Review , X (December 1923), pp. 285-305.

Malin, James C. "The Topeka Statehood Movement Reconsidered: Origins," Territorial Kansas : Studies Commemorating the Centennial ( Lawrence : University of Kansas Publications, Social Science Studies, 1954), pp. 33-68.

Malin, James C. The Nebraska Question, 1852-1854. Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, 1953.

Masur, Louis. "Slavery and Abolition," 1831: Year of Eclipse. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002.

Nichols, Alice. Bleeding Kansas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954.

Oakes, James. Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990.

Rawley, James A. Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1969.

Robinson, W. Stitt Jr. "The Role of the Military in Territorial Kansas," Territorial Kansas : Studies Commemorating the Centennial, pp. 70-100.

SenGupta, Gunja, "Bleeding Kansas: A Review Essay," Kansas History 24, no. 4 (Winter 2001/2002): 318-41.

Shoemaker, Floyd C. "Missouri 's Prosalvery Fight for Kansas, 1854-1855," Missouri Historical Review 48 (April 1954): 221-236.

Smiley, Jane. "Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain's 'Masterpiece.'" Harper's (January 1996): 61-67. Tise, Larry E. Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

Watts, Dale E. "How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas?: Political Killings in Kansas Territory, 1854-1861." Kansas History 18.2 (September 1995): 116-129.

Weld, Theodore. American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839.

"When Kansas Became a State," Kansas Historical Quarterly , XXVII (Spring 1961): pp. 1-21.

Web Resources

Territorial Kansas Online 1854-1861: A Virtual Repository for Territorial Kansas History is an extensive website of primary resources created by the Kansas State Historical Society and the Kansas Collection of the University of Kansas Spencer Research Library, with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This repository uses contemporary accounts and memoirs, newspaper articles, personal letters, diaries, photos, and maps, as well as scholarly books and articles, to "bring to life the settling of Kansas during the fierce debate over slavery."

This "Bleeding Kansas Gallery" of Kansas Territorial online primary resources--letters, diaries, histories, memoirs, and reports-- was created by the Kansas Collection of the University of Kansas Spencer Research Library.

John Brown/Boyd B. Stutler Database
Photos of John Brown and his family. Contemporary artists' renderings of the 1859 Harpers Ferry raid and Brown's trial. More than 100 of Brown's letters and manuscripts.

John Brown's Holy War
Background on Brown and Harpers Ferry raid; teacher's guide; maps; people and events associated with Brown, including the Pottawatomie Massacre.

Troubles in Kansas
Lists of the individuals who settled Kansas, early voters, report of the U.S. Congress House of Representatives' special committee to investigate the troubles in Kansas; further reading.

What We've Made of Uncle Tom - The Christian Science Monitor
Assesses the significant influence that Uncle Tom's Cabin has had on American culture and describes how this novel has become a cultural artifact and a" Rosetta Stone" for black images in American media.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture - University of Virginia
A comprehensive and useful site on Uncle Tom's Cabin and American culture. American reviews of the novel, as well as African American and proslavery responses and media interpretations.

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