How was the conflict in Kansas a small-scale rehearsal for the Civil War?

Answer 1

Bleeding KansasThe Kansas Territory became the center of attention in the battle between North and South over expanding slavery into the territories. Those southerners who voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Act (spliting the territory into two areas) assumed that Kansas would enter the union as a slave state. The Republican Party, however, wanted to repeal the Kansas-Nebraska Act and restore the provision in the Missouri Compromise that prohibited slavery in Kansas. Northern abolitionists began to work under the rules established by Senator Douglas, popular sovereignty, in order to get Kansas admitted as a free state. Both sides of the slavery question sent settlers into the territory of Kansas, in hopes of outnumbering the other side, and electing a territorial legislature and a future state constitution that would either outlaw, or permit slavery. So called "border ruffians" raided into Kansas creating violence on both sides of the issue. The most famous was John Brown, a noted abolitionist who felt he was called by God to free the slaves in the South and West. In 1856, a group of border ruffians raided Lawrence, Kansas, an anti-slavery town, burning the buildings and killing one citizen. Five days later, John Brown and his sons and followers raided a settlement along Pottawatomie Creek and ordered five proslavery Kansans executed with a farmer's scythe. The fighting that continued in Kansas became known as "Bleeding Kansas" and was a sign of the Civil War to come.

Answer 2

The US Civil War was characterized by huge field armies and heavy artillery. Additionally, railroads and sea battles and blockades dominated the war. There was nothing in the "Bleeding Kansas" episode of US history that influenced the US Civil War.