The Bleeding Kansas period lasts from 1854 when Kansas was opened to white settlement until 1861, when it became a state. What were the people like? Why did thousands of people fight and die over the issue of slavery? Some claim it was only money, but this does not ring true, it had to be more than that for the fighting to be so fierce. During the 1850s, popular votes were used to determine which states were free and which were slave, why didn’t this work? Why was “popular sovereignty” a “living, creeping lie” according to the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln? And yet, popular sovereignty was the solution proposed by the anti-slavery Northern Democratic Presidential nominee, Stephen A. Douglas, why? For that matter, why did the Democratic Party split into two parties allowing Lincoln to slip in and win with 40% of the vote? Most importantly, why did so many pro-slavery Democrats come to Kansas and quickly become Republican and anti-slavery? This book examines the Kansas immigrants and their radical transformation. We use the immigrant’s first-hand accounts, from privately published autobiographies, published essays, letters, and standard histories to tell the story of the people of Kansas in this critical period in American history.