Presidential Crises, Episode III: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War

The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

This week on The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Presidential Crises we examine two presidential crises from the 1850s: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War.

So far this season, we've seen the nation solidify under George Washington's leadership. Then, we saw the city named for our first president nearly burned to the ground by British forces little more than a generation later. The United States survived each of those crises, but by the 1850s, the new nation was starting to come apart.

This week, we took a look at two crises from the 1850s: the violent struggle between pro and anti-slavery factions over the political fortunes of future states, known as "Bleeding Kansas," and the less well-known fight between federal authorities, president James Buchanan in particular, and Mormon leaders over governance of Utah.

To put the coming Civil War into context and better understand these intertwined crises of federal expansion in the 1850s, we spoke with professor Sarah Barringer Gordon--Sally, to her friends--the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Barringer Gordon is one of the nation's experts on questions of constitutional religious freedoms. We then turned to professor Kellie Carter Jackson, who teaches in the department of Africana studies at Wellesley college. Dr. Carter Jackson’s work focuses on Black abolitionists and the role of violence in the ongoing battle for slavery’s abolition.

Explore all this and more in Season II, Episode III: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War. To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.