By Tony R. Mullis, U. S. Army Command and General Staff College
With a minimal level of actual violence, the Wakarusa War was not a war by traditional definitions - or even a battle. But it did threaten the outbreak of violence and reflect the growing political tensions that would lead to Kansas Territory being known as "Bleeding Kansas."
Free-State settler and future U.S. Senator from Kansas, James H. Lane, shoots and kills Gaius Jenkins over a land dispute. The dispute had divided the Lawrence Free-Stater community, with each man having his own supporters.
A skirmish breaks out in the Wakarusa River Valley near Lawrence, Kansas, following the murder of Charles Dow, a Free-State settler who is killed by the proslavery Franklin Coleman.