I understand the conflict over new states coming as slave or free in regard to additional senators favorable to the South. I don't have a good grasp of "Bloody Kansas" at all. There was a lot of killing and maneuvering by both sides. Seems like yeoman whites without slaves wanted land the big planters would grab up if the territory became a slave state. It was an economic struggle between rich and poor that nothing to do per se with the outmoded agricultural methods. Nobody ever cared about African cotton pickers. Slavery was dying out with all the mechanization. How the freed slaves would have assimilated under a peaceful transition is debatable.Their descendants are not doing so well. Nor are the uneducated whites "freed" from the workforce by off shoring to China and favored illegal immigration.
