History

Bad Blood: The Border War That Triggered the Civil War

In the years leading up to the Civil War, a bloody conflict between slaveholders and abolitionists focused the nation's eyes on the state of Missouri and the territory of Kansas. Told through the actual words of slave owners, free-staters, and border ruffians, "Bad Blood" presents the complex morality, and life-and-death decisions faced by those who lived on the border from 1854 through 1860.