Answer:
Bleeding Kansas is the term used to describe the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraksa Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, decreed that the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. Proslavery and free-state settlers flooded into Kansas to try to influence the decision. Violence soon erupted as both factions fought for control. Abolitionist John Brown led anti-slavery fighters in Kansas before his famed raid on Harpers Ferry.
Said to have been coined by Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, the label “Bleeding Kansas” was first fixed on that strife-ridden territory by antislavery publicists. The opening of the Kansas and Nebraska territories in 1854 under the principle of popular sovereignty provoked a protracted political crisis in both Kansas and the nation at large. Rival governments had been established in Kansas by late 1855, one backed by proslavery Missourians, the other by antislavery groups.
Although the Pierce and Buchanan administrations recognized the former, Republicans as well as a number of northern Democrats deemed it a fraud imposed by Missouri “border ruffians.” Civil conflict in Kansas accompanied the political polarization. The volatility to be expected of a frontier area was compounded by the activities of parties interested in the slavery issue–both the Missourians and the northerners who reputedly shipped free-state settlers and armaments to the region.
Step-by-step explanation: