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This is a novel about Bleeding Kansas from 1854 to 1856. It is based on true stories of real people during the Bleeding Kansas era and how they changed history. Caleb May and his family were among the first white families to settle in the Kansas Territory after it was opened for white settlement in May 1854. The Mays were against slavery and settled in a very proslavery area of Kansas. Caleb joined the Kansas Legion, a secret Free-State militia that fought to keep Kansas free. He fights with the help of his son William, his loyal wife Maggie, and his friends against the wealthy and powerful proslavery leaders, David Atchison, Dr. John Stringfellow, and Charley Dunn.
President Franklin Pierce and his appointee Chief Justice Samuel Lecompte of the Kansas Supreme Court were proslavery Democrats. Their position, and the position of the Democratic Party, was that proslavery and free states could exist side-by-side peacefully. The newer Free-Soil, Free-State, and Republican Parties wanted to eliminate slavery everywhere, the President called them the parties of war. Kansas was thrust into the middle of this debate because the new Kansas-Nebraska law, the law that created the Kansas Territory, allowed the Kansas settlers to vote to make Kansas free or slave.
But who was allowed to vote? Missouri was a slave state, if someone came into Kansas to vote on election day from Missouri, could they vote? How was he different from someone who came into Kansas from Massachusetts a week before and staked a legitimate claim? Which votes were illegal, which were legal?
The novel takes the reader through the fight from both sides. Would Kansas be free or slave?
