13. Bleeding Kansas was largely the result of voter manipulation
From 1854 to 1861 the territory of Kansas was torn with sectional strife over the issue of whether it was to be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state. During the period both abolitionists from the North and slavery supporters from the South violated the process of popular sovereignty – meaning the issue was to be decided by the people of Kansas – by participating in fraudulent elections and voter fraud. Non-residents of the territory were exhorted to cross the borders and participate in Kansas voting, an act acknowledged and winked at by two Presidents, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.
Voters from Missouri (slave) crossed to help ensure Kansas became a slave state. Voters from the north did the same in the hope of achieving the opposite. In 1855 a congressional delegation investigating voter fraud in Kansas reported more illegal votes had been cast than legal, by a wide margin. The fraudulent elections were soon displaced in the national attention by the open violence which raged in Kansas. Among the violence was voter intimidation practiced by both sides. Virtually every instance of voting during the seven-year period known as Bleeding Kansas contained elements of fraud, voter manipulation, and illegal voting.