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Events on Friday 7 December 1855 1
1855Wakarusa WarArmed standoff in Kansas Territory over slaveryPro-slavery and free-state militias mobilized around Lawrence, Kansas, in a tense armed confrontation known as the Wakarusa War. The crisis was defused by negotiation before large-scale fighting broke out, but it foreshadowed the violence of "Bleeding Kansas." The dispute centered on whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave or free state.