War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861 (Stackpole Classics) - Softcover

Marching armies, cavalry raids, guerilla warfare, massacres, towns and farms in flames-the American Civil War, 1861-1865? No-Kansas, 1854-1861. Before there was Bull Run or Gettysburg, there was Black Jack and Osawatomie. Long before events 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. " Let the watchword be `Extermination, total and complete.'" In 1854 a shooting war developed between proslavery men in Missouri and free-staters in Kansas over control of the territory. The prize was whether it would be a slave or free state when admitted to the Union, a question that could decide the balance of power in Washington. Told in the unforgettable words of the men and women involved, War to the Knife is an absorbing account of a bloody episode soon spread east, events in "Bleeding Kansas" have largely been forgotten. But as historian Thomas Goodric

Thomas Goodrich is a professional writer whose focus is the American West. He is also author of "The Day Dixie Died: The Occupied South, 1864-1866," "War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861," and co-author of "Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerilla."