Cover -- Half title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Series Editors' Preface -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- One Settlement and Strife -- Protecting Slavery in Kansas Territory -- Thomas Wells Describes Kansas -- A South Carolinian Enters Kansas Territory -- Imprisoned on Charges of Treason -- The Pottawatomie Massacre -- Kansas as an Outpost in a Larger War -- Ephraim Nute on the Doy Incident -- Two Joining the Union -- "What is Kansas, with or without slavery, if she should destroy the rights and union of the states?" -- Pursuing Women's Rights in Territorial Kansas -- The Fort Scott Democrat on Harpers Ferry -- Drought in Kansas Territory -- Miscellaneous Accounts of Conditions Resulting from Drought -- Thaddeus Hyatt's Appeal for Kansas Relief -- "The Irrepressible Conflict Grows Warm" -- "Freedom & Oppression grappled hand to hand" -- The Thirty-fourth State Joins the Union -- A Democratic Sheet Finds a Political Equilibrium -- "I begin to think Kansas fated" -- "No man in Kansas dares raise a secession flag" -- Three Patronage and Policy -- "Those having no guns must use broomsticks" -- "An effort is being made to get up a panic" -- Two Newspapers Assess Lane's Defense of His Brigade -- Kansas "no very agreable command" -- Lane a Charlatan Whose Appointment Would Imperil the Union -- Left to "the mercies of a vindictive and relentless force" -- "I must hold Missouri responsible" -- "The merits of the Kansas people need not to be argued to me" -- Four Kansas's Men in Blue -- Kansas Exceeds Its Quota -- A Wisconsin Soldier Moves through Kansas -- Excerpts from Joseph Trego's Letters -- A Douglas Democrat Pledges Himself to Lincoln -- "The cause of the war must be removed": The Letters of Samuel Ayers -- The First Kansas Colored Infantry at Island Mound, Missouri.

To Be Kept Here "will disable and Destroy us" -- Proud to Be in the West's Army -- John A. Martin Reports on the Battle of Chickamauga -- A Magnificent Effort, "But at what a sacrifice!" -- The Battle of Poison Spring, Arkansas -- The Diary and Letters of Webster Moses -- The Draft: "some one is to blame" -- The Diaries of David R. Braden -- Five Warfare along the Kansas-Missouri Border -- "Extermination is our motto" -- Life and Death on the Border -- The Lawrence Massacre -- "A Night of Terror" -- "Death, sudden and most unexpected" -- "The old border hatred": Official Report on the Lawrence Massacre -- "I shall not leave Lawrence untill it is destroyed the third time" -- A Young Signal Corpsman Sees Bushwhackers for the First Time -- James Lane on Sterling Price's 1864 Raid -- Six Kansans and Antislavery -- The Fugitive Slave Law in Kansas -- "First remove the cause of the disease, then cure" it. -- Fleeing into Kansas -- The Fort Scott Bulletin on Contrabands -- A Subscription to Aid Colored Volunteers -- "In the throes of deliverance from the monster slavery" -- Emancipation: Doing Right -- The Battle of Honey Springs -- "The onward march of Anti-Slavery" -- Worried that African Americans Would Gain the Vote in Kansas -- "They begin to think that the collord men can fight" -- The Lessons of the War -- Seven Politics and Prosperity -- Decrying the "depart in peace" Doctrine -- The Bond Swindle -- War and Prosperity -- Stutely Stafford Nichols and the Opportunities of War -- Kansas Men "are stealing themselves rich in the name of Liberty" -- Government Corruption in Kansas -- Quartermaster's Report, Fort Leavenworth, 1863 -- "Who is Loyal?" -- The Death of President Lincoln -- Eight The Continuing Mission -- "The Cherokees are arming and are preparing to invade Kansas" -- Losses Sustained during an 1861 Cherokee Raid.

"The most Experienced men are unable to control these savages" -- "Their country should be redeemed" -- A Member of the Indian Home Guard Writes of Neosho -- "The Indians seem to want to make peace" -- The Eleventh Kansas in the West -- Major Hancock on Indian Affairs in Kansas -- Nine The Promise of Kansas -- "Traversed by the Iron horse" -- Farming Continues amid the Distractions -- "We dont want any more cry of famine" -- Kansas Suffrage Song -- "Lands for the landless" -- The Railroad's Route -- Rocky Mountain Grasshoppers Come to Kansas -- "Ho for Kansas!" -- The Exodus "will test the boasted love of liberty in the north" -- Struggling to Provide for the Refugees -- "They still come" -- Timeline -- Discussion Questions -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index.