"Bleeding Kansas"
- white settlers from both the North and the south began moving into the territory almost immediately after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act
- Results of the election were that pro-slavery forces elected a majority to the legislature, which immediately legalized slavery
- Outraged free-states elected their own delegates to a constitutional convention
- President Pierce denounced them as traitors and threw the full support of the federal government behind pro-slavery
- John Brown led a Pottawatomic massacre and became a symbol of the sectional controversy