Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:1 (Winter 2011).
Abstract
Bleeding Kansas has long been an important topic for political historians exploring how it influenced Congress, presidential campaigns, and the coming of the Civil War. Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel's book uses the insights of recent social historians to add depth to this political narrative, thereby strengthening our understanding of how antebellum Kansas changed America.
Bleeding Borders begins with a chapter that positions Kansas as a frontier territory. Oertel's antebellum Kansans are divided by race, but not just between white and black. Starting her history in the 1820s, Oertel finds that "white settlers' perceptions of and interactions with Kansas Indians played a crucial role in developing white racial identity." Drawing on studies of "whiteness," she finds that almost all white settlers compared themselves favorably to both the area's older and more recent Indian nations, setting the stage for her conclusion that white supremacy would be a common belief among whites on both sides of the slavery question. The only exceptions to that rule, she notes, were a handful of white abolitionists who worked with African Americans to stop attempts to bring slavery (and slaves) into the Territory. Oertel's section on the pervasiveness of slave resistance is particularly strong, and the African American efforts against enslavement that she chronicles help to explain both the desperation of the proslavery settlers and their ultimate failure.
Comments
Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.