How did bleeding Kansas contribute to the Civil War?

Answer 1

Kansas was a major area for fighting both before and during the Civil War. This was due to a Federal law passed known as the Kansas/Nebraska Act. This law was passed as part of a series of laws meant to compromise with the south over the slavery issue. The south wanted new states to become slave states, while the north did not. The Kansas/Nebraska Act recognized these two territories as new states, with the stipulation that the people of these states would choose for themselves whether the state would have slavery. This opened the door for both southern pro-slavery groups and northern abolitionist groups to flood into these states in order to try and influence the people there to take up their respective causes. Eventually fighting broke out between the two groups. The state became known as "bleeding Kansas" because of this. Once the Civil War broke out both sides wanted to have control over this area. The north wanted it so that they could try to cut the Confederacy in half, and the south wated it so that they could use it as a launching point for invasions into the north.

just because

Answer 2

The violence in the Kansas territory made slavery more of a national issue in both slave states and free states, and it intensified the debate about it. John Brown believed that slavery in the US would only be ended with violence, and later events proved him right.