The creeks and hills of Kansas earned their names the hard way. When driving past Bloody Creek, you may rest assured that the name is not there because the settlers thought it was poetic. People died along that stream, and they most likely died because "men fought and died on the prairies of Kansas over the incendiary issue of slavery. 'War to the knife and knife to the hilt,' cried the Atchison Squatter Sovereign."
War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas 1854-1861 tells that story by gathering the accounts of the people who fought for control over the territory, the proslavery men from Missouri and the free-staters from Kansas.
They didn't think much of each other. According to "one Kansas correspondent to the New York Tribune, Missourians were little better than disgusting, degraded animals.
They are a queer looking set, slightly resembling human beings, but more closely allied, in general appearance, to wild beasts. An old rickety straw hat, ragged shirt, buttonless corduroys with a leather belt and a coarse pair of mud-covered boots constitute a 'full dress.' They never shave or comb their hair, and their chief occupation is loafing around whisky shops, squirting tobacco juice and whittling with a dull jack knife. They drink whisky for a living, and sleep on dry goods boxes . . . . They generally carry a huge bowie knife and a greasy pack of cards . . . . They are generally about six feet high, spindle-shanked and slab sided. It would be an insult to the brute creation to call them brutes . . . . They are 'down on' schools, churches, and printing offices, and revel in ignorance and filth.
In their turn, Missourians viewed "the Yankee as the embodiment of all that is stiff and cold, calculating and selfish." (from pages 71 and 72 of War to the Knife by Thomas Goodrich)
WAR TO THE KNIFE is a taste of what they believed, what they did, and who they were, and it is fascinating from beginning to end.
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