I didn't see the presentation. History Channel hasn't really had many programs about history lately.

It's difficult for people today to understand how people in the 1850s felt about current news. With the advent of the telegraph, newspapers expanded at a rapid clip. Suddenly people could read about recent events in faraway places and become emotionally engaged. In the minds of people North and South, Kansas became so important that whole families migrated there to take part in the struggle to claim it as a slave or free state. Many of them returned to their native states by 1860 with conflict fresh on their minds.

I'm familiar with partisans in the abortion issue, and know feelings to be intense. However, it's unusual for folks on either side of the issue to shoot to kill or drag people out of their homes and hack them to death as they did in Kansas.