"Bleeding Kansas is a gripping account of events and people - rabble-rousing Jim Lane, zealot John Brown, Sheriff Sam Jones, and others - that examines the social milieu of the settlers along with the political ideas they developed. Covering the period from the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act to the 1879 Exoduster migration, it traces the complex interactions among groups inside and outside the territory, creating a comprehensive political, social, and intellectual history of this tumultuous period in the state's history."--Jacket.