About this item
Highlights
- 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.
- About the Author: Thomas Goodrich is the author of Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861-1865 and the coauthor of The Day Dixie Died: Southern Occupation, 1865-1866.
- 296 Pages
- History, United States
Description
About the Book
A powerful narrative of the bloody prologue to the Civil War, "War to the Knife" covers the 1854 shooting war between pro-slavery men in Missouri and free-staters in Kansas over control of the Kansas territory. 30 photos.Book Synopsis
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. "War to the knife and knife to the hilt," cried the Atchison Squatter Sovereign.In 1854 a shooting war developed between proslavery men from Missouri and free-staters in Kansas over control of the territory. The prize was whether Kansas would become a slave or a free state when admitted to the Union, a question that could decide the balance of power in Washington. War to the Knife is an absorbing account of a bloody episode in our nation's past, told in the unforgettable words of the men and women involved: Robert E. Lee, William Tecumseh Sherman, Sara Robinson, Jeb Stuart, Abraham Lincoln, William F. Cody, and John Brown--hailed as a prophet by some, denounced as a madman by others.
Because the conflict soon spread east, events in "Bleeding Kansas" have largely been forgotten. But as historian Thomas Goodrich reveals in this compelling saga, what America's "first civil war" lacked in numbers, it more than made up for in ferocity.
Review Quotes
"A high-decibel retelling of the story of sectional strife in the settling of Kansas....An absorbing chronicle of surface events."
About the Author
Thomas Goodrich is the author of Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861-1865 and the coauthor of The Day Dixie Died: Southern Occupation, 1865-1866.