Fort Scott: Where Bleeding Kansas Was Fought in the Streets

Fort Scott was established as a military post in eighteen forty-two to protect settlers on the Permanent Indian Frontier, then abandoned in eighteen fifty-three and auctioned off. Within two years the buildings became the nucleus of a civilian town, and the town immediately became a battleground. When Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in eighteen fifty-four and invited settlers to decide by vote whether Kansas would be free or slave, Fort Scott became one of the most fiercely contested towns in the territory.

Pro-slavery settlers occupied one hotel; Free-State abolitionists occupied another, directly across the parade ground. Both sides armed themselves. Men were killed in the streets, homes were burned, and the town was raided repeatedly.

James Montgomery led Free-State guerrillas against federal troops stationed here. Kansas finally entered the Union as a free state in January eighteen sixty-one, but the violence of the Bleeding Kansas era had already etched Fort Scott into the history of the national crisis over slavery.