Border ruffians were driven by the rhetoric of politicians such as David Rice Atchison, Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow, John H. Stringfellow, editor of the pro-slavery newspaper Squatter Sovereign (Atchison, Kansas), and Speaker of the House in the First Kansas Territorial Legislature, the so-called Bogus Legislature. and Rev. Thomas Johnson, a Methodist preacher. Samuel J. Jones, and Daniel Woodson, a proslavery newspaper editor, In particular, Atchison called Northerners "negro thieves" and "abolitionist tyrants". He encouraged Missourians to defend their institution "with the bayonet and with blood" and, if necessary, "to kill every God-damned abolitionist in the district". Few of the ordinary border ruffians actually owned slaves because most were too poor. Their motivation was hatred of Yankees and abolitionists, and fear of free Blacks living nearby. Kansas slavery was small-scale and operated mainly at the household level. Most of the Kansans, according to historian David M. Potter, were concerned primarily about land titles. He pointed out that, "the great anomaly of 'Bleeding Kansas' is that the slavery issue reached a condition of intolerable tension and violence ... in an area where a majority of the inhabitants apparently did not care very much one way or the other about slavery." Frank W. Blackmar's encyclopedia of Kansas history summarizes how the rank-and-file among border ruffians took pride in both how they were called and what they were doing: The presence of violent bands of both Kansan and Missourian combatants made it difficult for settlers on the Kansas–Missouri border to remain neutral. History The history of border ruffians is woven into the historical context of Bleeding Kansas, or the border war, a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas in 1854–1859. Kansas Territory was created by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. The Act repealed the previous Federal prohibition on slavery in that area. Instead, the locally elected territorial legislature was to decide on the slavery issue. The first territorial census, taken in January–February 1855, counted 8601 people; 2905 were deemed eligible to vote; there were 192 enslaved in the Territory. After the Kansas–Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed Kansans to vote on slavery, the opponents from both sides of the slavery debate started to recruit settlers to increase support of their causes. Immigration to Kansas Proslavery immigrants aided by the Lafayette Emigration Society, and anti-slavery settlers, established their own territorial enclave (such as Atchison and Leavenworth), and Free-State immigrants aided by