Kansas and Congress

armed pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers competed for control
- slave-state settlers and Missouri “Border Ruffians”
- northern abolitionists send settlers and supplies, armed “jayhawkers”
rival territorial governments were founded
free-state settlers gained the majority by 1856
enter militant abolitionist John Brown
- abolition as divine wrath, by violence if necessary
- several sons and son-in-laws were Jayhawkers
- 1855, Brown and his followers joined them in Kansas
May 21, 1856, 800 southerners raid and sack free-soil capital, Lawrence, Kansas
May 24, Brown’s faction kills 5 pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek with broadswords

same moth, Senator Charles Sumner made anti-slavery speech, insulting southern legislators
Republican Preston Brooks attacked him on the Senate floor with a cane
polarized reaction in the North and the South

by the 1850s, slavery was breaking the 2nd party system
- Whigs were dying out
- Democrats splitting along the sectional lines
Republican Party founded by 1854
by 1856, attracted Northern coalition
- “free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men”
- slavery shouldn’t expand beyond current limits
most saw slavery as economic and political threat:
- slavery was unfair competition for free laborers
- slaveholders’ power in the federal government was robbed northern free men of representation
- expansion of slavery would threaten free men’s access to land and resources in the west