document
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.

label levels:

"Bleeding Kansas" was a term used by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune to describe the violent hostilities between pro and anti-slavery forces in the Kansas territory during the mid to late 1850s. The Kansas Territory had been established by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, with the intent that Nebraska would be a free state, and Kansas would be a slave state. Northern abolitionists organized and funded several thousand settlers who, it was hoped, would vote to make Kansas a free state. The votes in 1854 and 1855 were pro-slavery, due in large part to the "border ruffians"- men who were pro-slavery and came over the border from Missouri. David Starr Hoyt, from Deerfield, Massachusetts, was an officer in the Mexican War, and in 1856, led several thousand men to the fighting in Kansas. He was killed near Lawrence, Kansas, by "border ruffians" on August 12, 1856. Lawrence had been the site of a raid by the "border ruffians" on May 21, 1856 which made national headlines and is often regarded as one of the first shots of the Civil War. The Gazette & Courier was the newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts, from July 20, 1841 until June 24, 1932. Before 1841 the newspaper's name changed quite frequently, with Gazette a frequent part of the title.

top of page