Has Doug taken a look at W. E. B. DuBois' _John Brown_ (NY: International Publishers, 1962 [first published in 1909])? Free state settlers in Kansas "found themselves in three parties: a few who hated slavery, more who hated Negroes, and many who hated slaves. Easily the political _finesse_ . . . might . . . have pitted the parties against one another in such irreconcilable differences as would slip even slavery through" (137). And yet, through a civil war known as "Bleeding Kansas" (from the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 to the Wyandotte constitution of 1858 which rejected slavery and suffrage for Blacks and women), free state settlers not only withstood the attacks of pro-slavery men but fiercely fought fire with fire -- "So Kansas was free. . . . Free because strong men had suffered and fought not against slavery but against slaves in Kansas" (143). Kansas wouldn't have become free -- and precipitated the Civil War that forced Abraham Lincoln to emancipate slaves in order to vanquish the Rebels -- if the "few who hated slavery" alone had fought against the pro-slavery party. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>