### Chap­ter Two: Bleed­ing Kansas | 1850s, The Small and the Mighty

In this chap­ter, a his­tor­i­cal exam­i­na­tion reveals the pro­found impact of Andrew Jackson’s pres­i­den­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the lens of the infa­mous­ly flawed Dred Scott Supreme Court deci­sion of 1857. Dred Scott, an enslaved man from Mis­souri, assert­ed his claim to free­dom after being tak­en to free ter­ri­to­ries. How­ev­er, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Jus­tice Roger Taney, ruled that he lacked stand­ing in court since all African Amer­i­cans, enslaved or free, were not con­sid­ered U.S. cit­i­zens. This deci­sion was reflec­tive of the deeply entrenched sys­temic racism present in Amer­i­can soci­ety at the time.

Taney, a close advi­sor to Jack­son and him­self an enslaver, artic­u­lat­ed that African Amer­i­cans were viewed as an infe­ri­or class, devoid of rights unless grant­ed by the gov­ern­ment. This legal rul­ing also coin­cid­ed with the broad­er back­drop of the nation grap­pling with the divi­sive issue of slav­ery, a con­flict that would unrav­el into the Civ­il War.

The chap­ter fur­ther explores the Mis­souri Com­pro­mise and sub­se­quent Kansas-Nebras­ka Act of 1854, which intro­duced the con­cept of pop­u­lar sov­er­eign­ty, allow­ing new ter­ri­to­ries to decide their stance on slav­ery. This polit­i­cal maneu­ver caught the atten­tion of abo­li­tion­ists and proslav­ery advo­cates, cul­mi­nat­ing in the vio­lent con­fronta­tions known as Bleed­ing Kansas. This tur­moil arose as both fac­tions flood­ed into the ter­ri­to­ry to influ­ence the direc­tion of its laws, lead­ing to mur­ders and destruc­tion.

Franklin Pierce, the pres­i­dent at the time, faced per­son­al tragedies, includ­ing the death of his chil­dren and a trou­bled mar­riage, while his admin­is­tra­tion strug­gled to main­tain order amid ris­ing ten­sions. The Kansas-Nebras­ka Act, while aimed at facil­i­tat­ing west­ward expan­sion, exac­er­bat­ed divi­sions and set the stage for civ­il unrest.

As ten­sions esca­lat­ed, a notable inci­dent depict­ed is the attack by Pre­ston Brooks on Sen­a­tor Charles Sum­n­er in May 1856, a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the vio­lence per­me­at­ing Amer­i­can polit­i­cal dis­course. Brooks’s assault on Sum­n­er demon­strat­ed how deeply per­son­al and vir­u­lent the con­flict over slav­ery had become, fur­ther polar­iz­ing the nation.

The after­math of these events shaped the land­scape lead­ing to the Civ­il War, high­light­ing the fragili­ty of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy when it strug­gled to rec­on­cile the com­plex issues of state rights and human rights. Over­all, the chap­ter under­scores the sig­nif­i­cant role of indi­vid­ual actions and leg­isla­tive deci­sions in shap­ing a tumul­tuous peri­od in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.