War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861

This history shines a light on America's "first civil war": the bloody conflict in Kansas Territory between abolitionists and proslavery extremists.

Long before the secession crisis at Fort Sumter ignited the War between the States, men fought and died on the prairies of Kansas over the incendiary issue of slavery. The bitter conflict was described in the Atchison Squatter Sovereign newspaper as "war to the knife and knife to the hilt."

In 1854 a shooting war developed between proslavery men ...