Border War (Kansas-Missouri rivalry)

The intense rivalry between the two universities can be traced to the open violence involving anti-slavery and pro-slavery elements that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of Missouri throughout the 1850s. These incidents were attempts by Missouri to influence whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state. The term Bleeding Kansas is often used to refer to the pre-war conflict, which continued into the Civil War and culminated with the Lawrence Massacre. SI.com supervising producer Dan George summed up the rivalry by stating "It's more than the schools it's a state thing going back to the Civil War, when William Quantrill's Confederate guerillas burned Lawrence and murdered nearly 200 people. Neither Missouri nor Kansas folks have forgotten it." Those on the Missouri side are quick to point out that the Jayhawkers were guilty of the same things crossing into Missouri, leading brutal raids and burning towns, and that Quantrill was part of a group that almost burnt down Columbia due to it being a Union stronghold.