November 28th

Today we took a lot of notes, here are the basics:

RIGHT NOW SLAVERY'S A REALLY BIG ISSUE

"Bleeding Kansas"
-pro slavery people are fighting with anti slavery people on whether or not Kansas should become a free state
-Missouri (slave state) has a lot of interest in making Kansas a slave state
-when it comes time to create a legislature, Missouri and Senator Atchinson send "border ruffians" over the state lines to cast illegal votes for representatives in favor of slavery
-the elections are corrupted and a pro slavery legislature is established
-then the actual settlers of Kansas (anti slavery) are upset that the national government is letting this take place so they boycott all the elections and just establish their own legislature, constitution and governor
-things get out of hand and it leads to violence

Other stuff:
-lots of irish immigrants (some german)
-Americans very anti-immigration, don't like that they're catholic and drink a lot
-the Whig party's on the way out
-the American party is established (nicknamed: know-nothings)
-platform: pro slavery, anti immigration, anti catholic schools
-they end up falling apart after a little while
-eventually it's just Republicans, Southern Dems, and Northern Dems