Schofield to speak in Chanute Thursday

Well-known area historian Arnold Schofield will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Tioga Hotel in Chanute on the topic of "Bleeding Kansas Massacres -- Saints or Sinners?"

Thursday's event is part of a series of lectures on "The Story of Bleeding Kansas" presented by the Chanute Art Gallery and the Tioga Hotel. Dr. Jim Hoy, Emporia State University, spoke on Jan. 10, and historian Charles Clark of Kansas City will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Tioga Hotel on the theme, "Those Missourians Had a Real Plan for Kansas."

Schofield, a Fort Scott resident, is a past historian at the Fort Scott National Historic Site and is currently the site administrator at Mine Creek Battlefield State Historic Site. He is an authority on the Bleeding Kansas era.

Chanute Art Gallery founder and chairman Elly McCoy said admission to each evening's event is $5 per person, and that the Chanute Art Gallery, near the hotel, currently has a Bleeding Kansas exhibit and will be open on those nights.

"We'll have refreshments, and we invite everyone to come over to the gallery," she said.

The Bleeding Kansas era was a violent time in this area's history. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed residents of those territories to vote on the issue of whether slavery would be allowed. With his bill, Stephen Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, contradicted the provisions of the Missouri Compromise, under which slavery would have been barred from both territories. This created outrage among those with antislavery beliefs, but Douglas obtained enough backing to push it through Congress.

The "popular sovereignty" provision spurred both proslavery and antislavery activists to rally their forces, who exerted pressure on the public to vote in their favor. Emotions grew heated as opposing beliefs clashed. Debates became arguments, and arguments flared into violence. Brawling led to planned raids and bloodshed among neighbors as well as back and forth across the Kansas-Missouri line.

The violence provoked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act's popular sovereignty provision made it a major step toward the Civil War.