Last week, we began to explore events leading to the outbreak of the Civil War. We continued this today by examining the outbreak of violence in Kansas and the Supreme Court's Dredd Scott Decision of 1857. In the late 1850s, "Bleeding Kansas" referred to the hostilities and violence that occurred in Kansas territory. The conflict centered on whether the new state of Kansas would allow or prohibit slavery. Congress had passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which allowed for popular sovereignty, stipulating that new settlers could decide for themselves on the issue. This resulted in a land rush of people to the new territory from both pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, each intent on political control. Tensions between the two sides escalated, eventually becoming violent. Pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" from neighboring Missouri were particularly infamous in their use of murder, arson, theft, and kidnapping. Anti-slavery abolitionist settlers, also called "Free-Staters," committed acts of violent reprisals as well. The Dred Scott decision, as it has come to be known, would set back the cause of free blacks, abolitionists and moral crusaders in the United States in ways not imagined before the decision was handed down. The court ruled that free or slave, blacks were not citizens.