Tag: Kansas-Nebraska Act

“Acts of Lawless Violence”: The Office of Indian Affairs, and the Coming of the Civil War in Kansas

“Acts of Lawless Violence”: The Office of Indian Affairs, and the Coming of the Civil War in Kansas

On November 26, 1855, Indian Agent John Montgomery hand delivered a notice to the wife of George W. Gray, warning the squatters that they were now “required to abandon your ‘claim’ or ‘location’ on the Half Breed and Kansas Indian Reserve on the Grasshopper Creek.”  If they ignored this official ...
Read More
Portrait of James Buchanan

In “Defense” of James Buchanan

Journalists, pundits, the public, and even some scholars love to celebrate James Polk as a “man of destiny,” successful president, “a political chess master,” and an “expansionist leader” with a “republican vision” who, through “extraordinary diligence,” worked to “spread the blessings of American democracy.”[1] James Buchanan, on the other hand, ...
Read More