Bleeding Kansas was all about slavery, or was it? If you read Nicole Etcheson's book, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era,she argues convincingly that the fundamental issue which led to Bleeding Kansas was one of the political liberties of whites

• Pro-slavery southerners felt they had a right to own black slaves and that others were trying to take that liberty away from them.
• White settlers who did not own black slaves believed in following majority rule with the ballot box and that others were trying to take that liberty away from them.

But the rallying cry was a simple question – Would Kansas be a free state or a slave state? Until 1854, the answer to this question was preordained.

Self-guided tour to sites of historical interest about Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas is the time period from the passage of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act to the acceptance of Kansas as the 34th state in the Union in January 1861. The stops for this tour are scattered over a wide geographic area.

This is an abridged version of the tour that exists over at theCivilWarMuse.com. The count of tour stops is the same, but there is a more complete description of each tour stop at the other website.