Description: This work is unique in antebellum Kansas literature in that it employs census data in an attempt to reconstruct the reality of the rank-and-file lives--both slave and free, northern and southern, native-born and foreign--that lay behind the stirring public images conjured by "Bleeding Kansas."
Brief description: GUNJA SENGUPTA is an assistant professor of history at East Texas State University.
Review Quotes:
Well written and crafted, this book provides something for those interested in the Civil War and Kansas history, as well as for those scholars interested in the interaction of politics and religion and in how race and class formed a seamless web of oppression limiting the opportunities for African Americans in the pre- and post-Civil War eras.
--Journal of American History