Some accounts of the Border War give the impression of a continuous state of war between pro-slavery Missourians and the Kansas free-staters from 1856 on through the end of the Civil War. However, I don’t think that was the case. Welch (Border Warfare in Southeast Kansas, page 120) states the Hamelton raid culminating in the Marais des Cygne Massacre(5/19/58) was the last invasion of Kansas Territory by Missourians. Brown conducted his raid (resulting in the liberation of 11 slaves and the killing of Cruise) on December 20, 1858, and later that year Snyder robbed a Bates County resident of about $6,000 worth of goods (Herklotz, Jayhawkers in Missouri, Missouri Historical Review, page 279). In November of 1860, Frost’s was dispatched from St. Louis in the “Southwest Expedition” to protect the Missouri Border from Kansans, but that was more over rumors of what Jennison was threatening to do (following the string of murders he committed in Linn County, Kansas) than any actual raids launched from Kansas into Missouri (Herklotz, Chapter III). Thus, it seems that during the period June 1858 through the outbreak of civil war in April 1861, there had been no warfare between residents of Missouri and Kansas, and only a few isolated raids by the Kansans (resulting in one death).
Am I missing something significant?