Book Review: A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War

A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War. By David S. Brown. New York: Scribner, 2024. Hardcover, 339 pp. $32.00.

Reviewed by Jeff Kluever

In his book, A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War, David Brown argues that the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act is the essential, elemental moment in the splintering of the Union, more so than Compromise of 1850, “Bleeding Kansas,” the Dred Scott decision, John Brown’s assault on Harpers Ferry, or even the election of Abraham Lincoln (3). This is not a new assertion. Brown himself quotes historians Allan Nevins, James McPherson, and Allen Guelzo who suggest or make similar claims about the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Brown’s contribution to the argument is to illustrate, often by highlighting specific individuals or anecdotes, how the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act demonstrably escalated the divide over the issue of slavery and the willingness to go to war over its future.

Part one of the book does a fine job summarizing the various compromises leading up to the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Scholars of this period will find little new or surprising in this section, but for readers less immersed in American history, the summary is necessary and does not overstay its welcome. Part two begins to detail the political debates around, and maneuvers to, pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law. It too is a perfectly adequate summary that continues into part three.

More importantly, the final chapters of part two begin the book’s exploration of reactions and responses to the act, often in chapters devoted to well-known characters like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Ralph Waldo Emerson, to lesser-known personalities like Eli Thayer, who helped establish the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company and William Walker, a filibuster who attempted to take Baja California and Sonora. Generally, these chapters offer a short biography of the individual discussed and then delve into their connection to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Most of these chapters effectively illustrate how the Kansas-Nebraska Act impacted the country by describing how the act influenced the individual. The chapter on Eli Thayer, who used the Kansas-Nebraska Act to secure funding for his Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, which encouraged free-soil immigration to Kansas, is an excellent example. Likewise, chapters highlighting Alan Bovay and his efforts to start the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, whose political ambitions re-awaken in response to the act, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, though slow to abolitionism, became an outspoken critic of fugitive slave laws and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, serve Brown’s argument quite well.

Perhaps the most powerful story presented in the text is that of Anthony Burns. Escaping from Richmond, Virginia, and captured in Boston, Massachusetts, Burns ended up returned to his enslaver, a victim of the Fugitive Slave Law. While Burns’ story is compelling, the response of Bostonian’s to his capture and trial is the best anecdote in support of Brown’s argument that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the turning point for the United States. As he writes, “In 1851 the Sims case [another case involving an escaped slave captured in Boston and returned to slavery] hardly provoked genteel Boston, but the Burns rendition, coming on the heels of the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, caused a firestorm of protest on both sides of the sectional divide.” (166) Or, as Boston industrialist Amos Lawrence recalled, “We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs & waked up stark mad Abolitionists.” (153)

Other chapters, however, are less effective. The chapter on William Walker, while an interesting story, does little to aid the author’s argument or enhance the reader’s understanding of the era. Likewise, the short chapter featuring Alexander Hamilton’s widow, Eliza, and the Gotham Fair, seems out of place. At times, readers may find themselves struggling to connect an anecdote back to the central point or reach the end of the chapter having lost the narrative thread.

Overall, A Hell of a Storm serves as a highly readable overview of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and how it altered the fate of our nation. Readers will likely find much in his book to support the key point, that “In return for granting southerners a rather empty right – neither Kansas nor Nebraska became slave states – Douglas’s bill more clearly stirred up a hornet’s nest of northern suspicion and distrust” ultimately leading to civil war. (284)

Jeff Kluever holds a bachelor’s degree in History from Grinnell College and master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Carroll University. He has worked as teacher, high school and college football coach, the Executive Director of a history museum, and Education Supervisor at a Civil War battlefield museum and living history plantation. He served on the board of directors of the Fort Des Moines Museum and Education Center and offers Civil War-themed tours of Woodland Cemetery for the City of Des Moines. In addition, Jeff has published a novel titled Waking the Shadows.