Cite needed

[Lumpy]

I understand that back in the post-Civil War nineteenth century, a gunman with revolvers shot and killed some people in the Kansas State Legislature. But given the history of "Bloody Kansas", I can't narrow an online search enough. Can anyone help with this?

[smurfman]

I wonder if you aren't looking for Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, KS the capital, during the Civil War. The town was sacked and set on fire with the loss of a couple hundred town's people. That was about the only significant "attack" on/in the town I could find after looking at a timeline of significant events in that state's history.

[Lumpy]

No, iirc it was one person, it was after the Civil War, and it was at the state legislature, not Lawrence. But that shows the difficulty of searching for it, there are so many incidents in Kansas history.

[Rip Van Winkle]

I always thought "Bloody Kansas" referred to the clashes and transgressions between Jayhawkers (Red Legs) and the Border Ruffians.

[smurfman]

I can find only one reference to any shooting of a Kansas state legislator in your time reference. That was of a Senator Samuel Wood in Hugoton, KS in 1891.

There is a reference to a multiple shooting in Kirkwood, MO city hall in which 5 people were killed but that was in 2008. Those are the only incidents which seem to fit your recollection which involved someone being killed. Like you, I haven't found mention of anything specific for Kansas nor of any number of people only wounded.

[Lumpy]

False alarm- I finally chased down the incident I was thinking of. Thomas P. "Boston" Corbett- more famous as the man credited with killing John Wilkes Booth- while serving as an assistant doorman to the Kansas House of Representatives in 1887 pulled a revolver there. There are conflicting accounts but the broad consensus is that nobody was actually shot, and Corbett got committed to an insane asylum.