In Bleeding Borders, Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel
offers a fresh, multifaceted interpretation of the quintessential
sectional conflict in pre-Civil War Kansas. Instead of focusing
on the white, male politicians and settlers who vied for control
of the Kansas territorial legislature, Oertel explores the
crucial roles Native Americans, African Americans, and white
women played in the literal and rhetorical battle between
proslavery and antislavery settlers in the region. She brings
attention to the local debates and the diverse peoples who
participated in them during that contentious period.
Oertel begins by detailing the settlement of eastern Kansas
by emigrant Indian tribes and explores their interaction with
the growing number of white settlers in the region. She analyzes
the attempts by southerners to plant slavery in Kansas and
the ultimately successful resistance of slaves and abolitionists.
Oertel then considers how crude frontier living conditions,
Indian conflict, political upheaval, and sectional violence
reshaped traditional Victorian gender roles in Kansas and
explores women’s participation in the political and
physical conflicts between proslavery and antislavery settlers.
Oertel goes on to examine northern and southern definitions
of “true manhood” and how competing ideas of masculinity
infused political and sectional tensions. She concludes with
an analysis of miscegenation–not only how racial mixing
between Indians, slaves, and whites influenced events in territorial
Kansas, but more importantly, how the fear of miscegenation
fueled both proslavery and antislavery arguments about the
need for civil war.
As Oertel demonstrates, the players in Bleeding Kansas used
weapons other than their Sharpes rifles and Bowie knives to
wage war over the extension of slavery: they attacked each
other’s cultural values and struggled to assert their
political wills. They jealously guarded ideals of manhood,
womanhood, and whiteness even as the presence of Indians and
blacks and the debate over slavery raised serious questions
about the efficacy of these principles. Oertel argues that
ultimately, many Native Americans, blacks, and women shaped
the political and cultural terrain in ways that ensured the
destruction of slavery, but they, along with their white male
counterparts, failed to defeat the resilient power of white
supremacy.
Moving beyond a conventional political history of Bleeding
Kansas, Bleeding Borders breaks new ground by revealing
how the struggles of this highly-diverse region contributed
to the national move toward disunion and how the ideologies
that governed race and gender relations were challenged as
North, South, and West converged on the border between slavery
and freedom.
A native of Kansas City, Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel
is an associate professor of history at Millsaps College in
Jackson, Mississippi.
|
