War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861

by Thomas Goodrich

A powerful narrative of the border war between proslavery Missouri and free-state Kansas as prologue to the American Civil War.

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, Military History, American History, American Civil War, War

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read War to the Knife as part of my John Brown January reading project. The war in Kansas that preceded the American Civil War launched John Brown from obscurity onto history’s stage, where his bold, ruthless, and terrible actions begin his legacy that would lead through Harpers Ferry, the gallows, and on into iconic legend. So a book devoted to that Kansas warfare seemed appropriate.

War to the Knife was not what I was expecting. It is less a history than it is a compilation of contemporary accounts, drawn from newspapers and now obscure books like that by Kansas’s first governor, Charles Robinson’s Kansas Conflict. I am not exaggerating when I say that almost every page of this text is dominated by long quotations of contemporary accounts. This has value, as finding all of these various accounts scattered among newspaper archives, out of print books, and secondary sources would be daunting for most readers. Yet the almost total lack of historical analysis gives this book a copy/paste vibe that does not recommend it. So while this book could be a valuable resource for someone with a deep interest in the savage conflict in Kansas, if you are looking for a history, this is not your book. Two and a half stars rounded up for the value of the quotation collection.

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

We like to compartmentalize history, and the US civil war lends itself to the trope of Blue vs. Gray from 1861 to 1865. But as serious students of the period know, the American civil war began on the prairies of "Bleeding Kansas" in 1856. John Brown's hanging only ended the first phase, as Lincoln's assassination ended the second, and opened the door to the third - Reconstruction. Who actually won the civil war after the dust settled and the blood dried remains as uncertain as on the day of Brown's execution.

This Kansas is not the nice Middle America of Dorothy and Toto; nor the cozy "Little House on the Prairie" of TV fame. Goodrich describes in detail a rough, hard-bitten frontier society to whom violence came naturally even without divisive social issues. The Kansas story - as the first phase of civil war - ends appropriately enough at Harper's Ferry. Goodrich gives a nice summary account of this seemingly barren battle. It's hard not to resist seeing John Brown's raid as parallel to Fidel Castro's assault on the Moncada Barracks nearly a century later: both men were determined to drag their countries into a civil war few actually wanted. John Brown's hanging brought about national civil war; Castro's amnesty almost led to WW III.

Some might fault Goodrich for using so much contemporary documentation as a sign of scholarly laziness; I don't. It adds a nice period touch and makes the narrative come alive. Some reviewers see this book as "pro-slavery." With this I also do not agree, and I guarantee I'm more "leftist" than most readers. What Goodrich does display is not all vice or virtue lay on one side. Those readers who want a stirring tale of righteous free soilers striking for human liberty and the highest values of America will, naturally, be disappointed in the reality recounted here; as they were at the time by the larger war afterward.

Whatever Goodrich's negative feelings on Jews, Israel, slavery, or blacks, none of that is found in this book to my eye. Racism was common to both sides: most free-soilers wanted a Kansas free of blacks as well as slavery. By 1860 the diehards, like guerrilla chieftan Montgomery, seem to have forgotten what they were fighting for; to others, like William Quantrill, it seemed not to matter.

A good read on a largely bypassed chapter in 19th century US history.

[Miles · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a particularly pernicious pro-slavery account, all the more shocking for having been written in 1998. It's shocking that human beings such as Thomas Goodrich roam the earth and publish the praises of noble slave holders who treated their slaves so well. Read this only as you would study a monster in a strange zoo, trying to understand how it thinks.

By the way, the phrase "War to the Knife" is a giveaway of this author's sentiments - "War to the knife, knife to the hilt" was a slogan of the proslavery forces in Kansas.

[Scott Wise · Rating 2 out of 5]

An intriguing, in-depth look into a period of history that is often brushed over quickly with just a mention. It puts the context of the Civil War into a battle for the heart of the nation that was much broader than the historical 1861-1865 hot war. Battle lines and skirmishes were starting long before the Fort Sumter, and a cold war continued from the assassination of the president through the end of Reconstruction. An insurgent terrorist campaign continued well into the 20th century.

While this book covers the early escalation of armed conflict in Kansas, with ALOT of first-hand accounts, it tends to balance the Missouri and Kansas perspectives in a way that mirrors the post-war battle over perception. The book often gives the impression that the northern and southern perspectives and reactions to slavery are equally balanced. While informative of how people saw things at the time, it feels disingenuous towards the reality of the issue behind the conflict.

While Kansas was filled with violence, renegades, and guerilla fighters, one side was fighting to end slavery, while the other was fighting not only to preserve it but actively expand it. The book does NOT do enough to put that into context amidst the myriad of first-hand sources it cites. Most of the accounts from Missouri and proslavery Kansas, while first-hand, conveniently leave much of that out or actively gloss over it. I do not know the author's stance, but the consistency of this issue in the book is problematic.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year, I did a personal project in which I travelled to numerous historical sites around my area and tried to learn as much as I could. Considering the fact that I live near Kansas City, Missouri, many of these sites have to do with the likes of numerous partisan fighters, figures like The James Brothers, Bill Anderson, William Quantrill, and John Brown (just to name a few), so I suddenly became engrossed in the history of the nigh forgotten war that basically caused The American Civil War, as fought by these figures in an episode called “Bleeding Kansas”. My son and I visited places like The Battle of Blackjack Site, The Marais des Cygnes Massacre Site, and Fort Titus which feature prominently in this book at various times. Having this personal experience with these places was awesome whilst reading this book, as I felt a personal connection to almost every page as I read it – something that I don’t experience too often while reading a history book. In my honest opinion, this has been the best book I’ve read on “Bleeding Kansas”, and it’s not even close – it’s not a perfect book, which I will explain, but can teach a LOT no matter its flaws.

Thomas Goodrich tackles the topic of this gruesome episode of history, set during the not-so antebellum period, in a way that makes this book almost impossible to put down at times. It’s written in an investigative journalist style that stays clear of being too much like a stuffy scholarly text. It’s a very accessible book that grabs the reader with a shocking hook in the first chapter and never really lets go.

The topic at hand is largely the history of one man – the notorious freedom fighter “Osawatomie” John Brown, a man that believed himself on a mission from God to purge America of slavery. Brown took something that many abolitionists, the people fighting against slavery, would passively write letters about and took actual action to the horror or delight of many depending on what “side” you were on. The book starts out with Brown’s execution, then backs up to see how we got to that point, including every ounce of blood sweat and tears shed along the way. Within this framework we also see figures such as Brown’s family, James Buchanan, Stephen Douglas, Charles Robinson, James Lane, David Rice Atchison, and numerous partisan leaders get their time to shine. Its an exhausting look at the conflict, and the author leaves almost no stone unturned.

The biggest issue I have with this book, and it is a BIG one, is the fact that when Thomas Goodrich shows his biases, he REALLY shows them. An example of this is his opinion that slavery in Missouri or Kansas was somehow objectively “not as bad” as it was in The Deep South. I find it hard, myself, to come to terms with the mere notion of varying degrees of somebody owning another person, so these passages were a tough pill to swallow. He elaborates that Missouri and Kansas slaves were purportedly “happy to be slaves” a couple of times, a troubling “Lost Cause” statement if I’ve ever seen one. His evidence for this claim comes from the selected letters and dairies of slaveholders who write about how contented the slaves were in their station in life, as well as firsthand accounts of things such as a slave cheering on the arrest of an abolitionist. I was not taken aback, just somewhat disappointed.

Honestly, the author’s use of these documents are always my biggest issue with authors ONLY using first-hand accounts when discussing widely politicized things such as this. Sure, the accounts you get may be firsthand, which is the goal of any researcher, but lack any sort of filter for whatever awful moral stance the era may have had. I saw this firsthand last year when reading a few books about the so-called “Mormon Wars” of Missouri at roughly this same time period. Many sources are vehemently anti-Mormon if they were from residents of Missouri, whereas the accounts of The Mormons, themselves, were the exact opposite. It would be easy to cherry-pick these snippets to create a skewed narrative, which is sadly what we see here. As a reader, I knew that the truth was largely somewhere in the middle.

Thankfully, these passages are small asides and are not the “meat” of the book, in most other cases he seems to be somewhat balanced even if his stance is basically “both sides had some real assholes”. I know some people that take exception to thinking of either side as more of a gray area than “the good guys” or “the bad guys” and that may sour them on this book. I mean, I respect the hell out of John Brown for what he accomplished and what he was trying to do with his crusade against slavery. That said, I have a tough time painting him as a pure hero because he did some heinous stuff, a fact that even weighed on the man himself. I feel like if that’s what you are looking for, you’d be hard-pressed to find a book that is in no way critical of the abolitionist side of “Bleeding Kansas”. Most negative reviews I have seen are of this nature and I personally feel you cannot simply look for a book that reaffirms any sort of prejudices you may already have.

If you go into this with the mindset of knowing Thomas Goodrich has some of the same unpopular opinions that most Southern Civil War writers sadly share, and take the book for its meticulous retellings of the events that happened during the entirety of “Bleeding Kansas” you can still appreciate the lion’s share of the narrative. I’ve read some utterly worthless books on this topic, ones that basically were short books about John Brown that mentioned what happened in Kansas in passing. So far, I have yet to read anything that goes into this sort of detail on just about every aspect of those events (every election, every massacre, every raid etc.), and until I do I am holding that this is the foremost book on the topic despite it’s considerable flaws. If anyone has better options, I would be grateful for the recommendation. I would love to read more books like this from the author, but sadly I have a feeling his views on Reconstruction (a topic for some of his other work) are going to be vastly one-sided, and I’m not sure I want to do that to myself.

[Tyler Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine description of the war and it's characters, clearly written (good summary) but very racist and pro-slavery.

[Justin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a work of veiled racism. I only gave it a star so my review could be visible to others in the hopes that I can save someone else some time and sway potential readers away from this book. Throughout War to the Knife, Goodrich bombards the reader with first-hand accounts of the life and times of the Kansas-Missouri border conflict. Between those accounts, Goodrich inserts an apparent analysis he has woven together (near seamlessly) of an argument downplaying the tragedy of American slavery. I was particularly struck by a section in Chapter 6 in which Goodrich states:
"Although swift and terrible fates did indeed befall slaves who committed murder, rape, and other violent crimes, the punishments were seldom, if ever, more sever than that of white transgressors. Nevertheless, it was this last aspect of slavery that evoked the greatest outcry from abolitionists. In turn, it was this antislavery response to punishment that drew the ire of southerners and their charges of hypocrisy" (p. 102).
This "analysis" offered by Goodrich comes on the heels of an extensively quoted passage by a contemporary slaveholder professing that slavery is not so bad. In a review of the War to the Knife, James E. Sherow (The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 66.4: 2000), reveals Goodrich's tactic of making evidence for his version of history: "By stringing together block quote after block quote drawn from contemporary accounts, [Goodrich] paints a picture of malevolent abolitionists making war on slaveholders endeavoring simply to protect their property. Goodrich's selective quotes also depict slaves who were quite content to remain chattel" (p. 875).
Like Sherow, I found this tactic by Goodrich most apparent in the sixth chapter, or about halfway through the book. Goodrich does an ok job hiding his aims up to this point, but something about his interpretation of events set me off from the beginning. I couldn't nail it down until this chapter.
I don't normally stop reading a book halfway through, but in this case I did. I can't continue with it. Goodrich's version and interpretation of American History are written for a select audience of racists and revisionists. The worst part about this book is that it's written for mass consumption, not scholars. War to the Knife reads as if it were the truth when in fact it is a very narrow, doctored, and fallible narrative. I highly recommend anyone interested on this topic seek another work, as I am doing.

[Mr.Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thomas Goodrich solidified his role as American historian with his first published book Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre (1991). His straight-forward prose and patriotic fervor has appeared through all of his documentations on historic events. War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas 1854-1861 was published in 1998, contributing to the author’s collection by providing a detailed account of territorial tension before the Civil War.
“Bleeding Kansas” was a term used by Horace Greeley during the violent riots which took place in Kansas during the 1850s. Proslavery Missourians and antislavery free-staters disputed over the slavery vote in Kansas Territory for a number of years. The conflict did not cease until January of 1861 when Kansas officially became a Union state. Unfortunately, territorial tensions did not die with the slavery question in Kansas. Many feel that “Bleeding Kansas” was a primary cause of the Civil War. Thomas Goodrich captures the whole bloody episode by piecing together various primary reports, letters, and diaries of those involved in the quarrel; thus, revealing the motivations and agendas of both anti and proslavery sides.
From Benjamin Wade’s declaration that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill would bring “an eclipse of the sun,(p.5)” to the first shot of the Civil War, Goodrich’s book provides an exclusive and thorough account of events that led up to the Civil War. His pages are filled with firsthand sources the work gives the readers a look into one of America’s most infamous events.
While being a popular and accurate account of the “Bleeding Kansas” episode, the audience of Goodrich’s volume is in argument over the partiality of the piece. Some feel that War to the Knife is a “particularly pernicious pro-slavery account, all the more shocking for having been written in 1998 (Miles Hochstein),” while others believe that “readers will find his impartial examination a valuable asset (Robert Collins).” The author does use passages from both proslavery and antislavery sides, yet his book feels flooded with quotes from slaveholding Missourians (p.101-3). In addition, the only accounts from slaves in this book were of those blacks who were “content” with remaining in servitude. “War to the knife, knife to the hilt”, in fact, was a popular slogan used by proslavery forces during the time of territorial rebellion.
Goodrich’s tomb is fact-filled, emphasizing the fighting and the guerilla tactics employed during this period. In doing so however, the author omits important information such as the political motivation residing behind every decision. Stephen Douglas, for instance, who played a pivotal role in the whole episode, is barely mentioned. Buchanan’s role in the Lecompton Constitution and other events such as the effect of Lincoln’s election on territorial tension seem to have been deemed either unimportant by the author or irrelevant. This is frustrating and likens the reader to the effect that they are only receiving half of the “Bleeding Kansas” story.
Though Goodrich’s book consists largely of a series of varying articles and diary excerpts, his work never feels choppy. Readers of a broad audience can follow along without feeling disrupted by the selections from proslavery Missourians or abolitionists. Goodrich’s piecing together of the many passages is impressive and the reader feels as if the assorted accounts are all in accordance sequentially. However, I would not recommend this book to those with weak stomachs; some accounts included in War to the Knife concerning the riots are very descriptive.
War to the Knife describes all events through the latter half of the 1850s in the new Kansas Territory. Goodrich relays the facts and allows the reader to speculate the effect that “Bleeding Kansas” had on the American Civil War (1861-1865). The writer does not often interject and fills most of his pages with liable excerpts from newspapers and diaries, while also including maps and pictures. The style is different and unique, yet manages not to detract from the audiences’ reading experience. The author takes a brief moment in American history and expands it into good sized book which provides a thorough account of what happened in the Kansas Territory in the late 1850s. Even so, a qualm that most readers might have is the racist overtones that can be found in some of Goodrich’s writing; “Despite the arguments of abolitionists and their hypercriticism of slavery as cruel and inhuman, most Missourians could only smile (p. 101).” Goodrich attempts to defend the institution of slavery and it is clear that he reveres former southern slaveholders.
The author uses a good bit of primary sources in his work, and therefore the index in the back is adequate. A healthy bibliography is also accompanied by a series of notes showing that Goodrich is clearly well-read. He sets up his bibliography in chronological order; inserting sources in the order in which they were used, allowing for easy navigation between the back of the book to any given position.
War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas 1854-1861 was published in 1998. Due to extensive research and time, Goodrich was able to recreate the circumstances of the Kansas Territory disputes by piecing together various parts of the episode. Unfortunately, while informational, this volume contains many flaws; one being the fact that Goodrich hardly mentions the political motivations during “Bleeding Kansas,” and another being his bias. To address the issues, the author should dedicate a chapter to politics and meanwhile he should not describe slavery in Missouri as being “benign (p. 101).”
Albeit, if at times biased, Goodrich’s War to the Knife captures the essence of the pre-Civil War territorial tensions by delivering the definitive “Bleeding Kansas” documentation. The book was written for and perceived by a wide audience because of its straight-forward prose and reporting style. The manner in which Goodrich pieces together his composition is fascinating; utilizing articles, reports, quotes, diaries, and letters from primary persons to tell the story. Despite some of its flaws, racist overtones and omission of political activities, this volume is readable, informative, and allows for the audience to speculate “Bleeding Kansas’” effect on the subsequent Civil War.

[Kevin Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, and wish I had gotten to it sooner, because what seemed like a curious little bit of history 25+ years ago, when this was published, seems all too current today.

Goodrich did a lot of research for this, finding private letters, newspaper articles, and other primary sources from the participants in and witnesses to the atrocities of “Bleeding Kansas.” He’s a little TOO thorough — I think two or three examples of people dealing with rattlesnakes in their cabins would suffice, but Goodrich provides many more.

The motivations, actions, and tactics of the various parties in the fight for Kansas are well-documented here. What’s less clear is the big picture of why the abolitionist/anti-slavery settlers prevailed. Goodrich does do a good job of connecting Bleeding Kansas to the nationwide Civil War that followed, examining both the big picture of what a free Kansas portended for the slave power, and the role of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry (which gets its own chapter).

[Norman Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had some previous knowledge of the events in Kansas (I'm Canadian, so this is way outside of our normal history curriculum) so this was mostly new to me.

It is well-organized and quotes contemporary sources very extensively in order to flesh out the story. The connective tissue, written by the author, was generally good; I found it difficult at times to keep track of which side various characters were on but otherwise the narrative was fairly lucid. Thanks for the maps!

The demonizing of one side - not just the fact of it but even some of the words and tone - by the other had an eerily familiar sound to it, by the way.

[Larry Thill · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of the struggle for a free Kansa

Good outline of Kansas history from 1854-61. Set up for conflict by the Kansa Nebraska Act, Kansans fought each ither over the ussue if slavery. Murder, chicanery, fraud and intimidation were the result. Unlikely heroes and villains emerged. Corrupt leaders tried to stop the tide of settlers favoring Kansas as a free state. The conflict foreshaddowed the Civil War.

[Andy May · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is OK and has a lot of interesting detail on the people of the time, but the version I read (google books) is missing the pages past 231. No notes or bibliography. Buy another version if you need everything.

[Jack Dawes · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important and mostly dismissed piece of American history, Bleeding Kansas was the violent forerunner of the coming war. This book does well in presenting a broad look at the major players and key events of this sadly overlooked episode of the expanding United States.

[Scott Umphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very authoritative and great storytelling. Thomas Goodrich does not include all facts of the border war, but just enough to be a great storyteller.

[Raymond Ozuna · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s no room for angels in our heaven.

[William Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read, gave me a good insight into some of the events leading towards the Civil war

[Robert Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quotes from many original sources, mainly letters and diaries. Good read, but the emphasis on fighting during the Territorial period leaves out the politics, which I think is just as important.