Ithaca College

Historian Pearl Ponce was invited to participate in the Border Wars Conference from November 10-12, 2011.

The Border Wars Conference convened 17 leading scholars of the Civil War-era conflict in Kansas and Missouri, a region which saw some of the most widespread, prolonged, and destructive guerrilla fighting in American history, to explore a conflict that approached total war.  It engulfing the whole populace as Americans, divided by a border and ideology, grappled with issues of slavery and liberty in horrific ways, including robbery, arson, torture, murder and bloody raids on farms and settlements along this border separating a free and slave state.

Professor Ponce presented "The Noise of Democracy":  The Struggle over the Lecompton Constitution.  This paper distills a chapter from her larger project, "To Govern the Devil in Hell":  Territorial Kansas and the Crisis in Governance, 1854-1858, which is under contract for publication.  In addition, the Kansas City Public Library held a book signing where she signed copies of her recently published book, Kansas's War:  The Civil War in Documents.

More information on the conference can be found here.