Philanthropic Colonialism: New England Philanthropy in Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1860

Abstract

In 1854 the United States Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill which left the question of slavery in the territory up to a vote of popular sovereignty. Upon the passage of the bill, New England’s most elite class of citizens, led by Eli Thayer, mobilized their networks of philanthropy in New England to ensure the Kansas-Nebraska territory did not embrace slavery. The effort by the New England elite to make the territories free was intertwined in a larger web of philanthropic motivations aimed to steer the future of America on a path that would replicate New England society throughout the country. The process and goal of their philanthropy in the Kansas-Nebraska Territory was not dissimilar from their philanthropy in New England. Moral classification of those in material poverty mixed with a dose of paternalism and free labor capitalism was the antidote to the disease of moral degradation and poverty. When Missourians resisted the encroachment of New Englanders on the frontier, the New England elites shifted their philanthropy from moral reform to the funding and facilitation of violence under the guise of philanthropy and disaster relief. For six years, until the outbreak of the American Civil War, New England philanthropists facilitated and helped fund the conflict known as Bleeding Kansas.