Thirteen of the nation's leading scholars on the Kansas and Missouri "Border Wars" in the late 19th century will be meeting today (THUR) and tomorrow (FRI) at the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas. KU history professor Jonathan Earle is one of the conference organizers. He says that analyzing what happened in the Bleeding Kansas era is now challenging traditional ways of thinking about the U-S Civil War.
The conference brings together scholars who have rarely interacted outside the pages of scholarly journals. The papers being discussed at the conference will be part of a public presentation on the Civil War in November at the Kansas City Public Library.