Overview

The opening of the Kansas Territory to settlement in 1854 created the most violent place in America: ""Bleeding Kansas"" the newspapers of the day called it. Proslavery Missourians called Border Ruffians attacked settlers who demanded that the Territory enter the Union as a Free State: knifings, the burning of barns and houses, shootings, and guerilla raids became commonplace. Ezra Middleton, a newspaper reporter and arrival from slave-holding Missouri, finds himself at the center of the conflict, crossing paths with violent abolitionist John Brown; James Butler (Wild Bill) Hickok, Union sharpshooter and spy; William Quantrill, Confederate guerilla, who massacred 200 unarmed and boys and burned Lawrence to the ground; and William (Buffalo Bill) Cody, Pony Express rider, Indian fighter, and Union trooper; and the bitter rivals for power, Charles Robinson and U.S. Senator James Lane. Middleton's war ends when, at the Battle of Westport, the citizen-soldiers of the Kansas militia and the Union cavalry turn back a desperate Confederate invasion and end the Civil War in the West. Over time, Middleton changes as persons and events transform him from indifferent observer, to Free-State advocate, to staunch abolitionist, and finally to militiaman, as he and his compatriots struggle to preserve the Union and build on the Kansas prairie a just and peaceful society.

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Alan Elliott Craven is a retired Shakespeare scholar and former college dean residing with his wife, Janice, in San Antonio, Texas. He has three adult children. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he lived in Lawrence, Kansas for a number of years. His family has deep Midwestern roots, the Cravens settling in Missouri before 1830. As boys, his father and uncle knew the outlaw Frank James in Kearney, Clay County, Missouri. His mother's family moved to Kansas in 1861, the year the state was admitted to the Union. They homesteaded at Dry Ridge, Bourbon County, Kansas. Nine boys in the family fought for the Union in the Civil War, including his great-grandfather. In the presidential election of 1860, his great- great- grandfather and two other men were the only ones in their precinct to cast votes for Abraham Lincoln.

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