War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861
From the admirableBlack Flag(1995), a history of guerrilla warfare in the western theater of the Civil War, Goodrich turns to the rehearsal for that warfare: the "Bleeding Kansas" struggle of 1854^-61, when proslavery and free-soil militants slaughtered one another and innocent bystanders over whether Kansas should be a slave or a free state. During the fighting, both John Brown and William Quantrill began their careers, and the fighting also polarized supporters of both factions elsewhere in the country, accelerating the slide toward war. Goodrich is exemplarily impartial (unless one can call a distaste for bigoted thuggery a partiality), omits few of the gory details of his subject, and generally offers a more-than-adequate history of an episode whose horrifying body count is passed over too lightly too often. Perhaps the book is for dedicated (not to mention strong-stomached) Civil War students, but all of them, and collections catering to them, will find it invaluable.Roland Green--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.