Union Army Total War Policy in Missouri: The Palmyra Massacre 1862

Following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854—which allowed Kansas to allow or reject the institution of slavery by popular sovereignty—a destructive and sometimes bloody border war between Kansas and Missouri partisans raged for six years.

The grizzly Manson-style murder of five settlers from Missouri in Pottawatomie, Kansas, in 1856, by the radical abolitionist, John Brown, helped fuel a growing flame of regional distrust. Brown was later hanged in 1859 after an unsuccessful attempt to capture the U.S. arsenal in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He had planned to start a bloody slave insurrection.

The fact that Brown was praised in many of the pulpits, newspapers, and political debates in New England greatly alarmed the South. This added more fuel to the already smoldering issues of States Rights and enormous, unfair tariffs.