WI - Bleeding Kansas results in an earlier American civil war?

In 1856, an attempt at popular sovereignty result in what would become known as Bloody Kansas. What if the tension was higher and the civil war started earlier? How would a Franklin Pierce Presidency react to the war, how might it affect the '57 and '61 elections?
 
  1. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened Kansas Territory to possible slavery under "popular sovereignty", was enacted in 1854, not 1856.
  2. The popular phrase was "Bleeding Kansas", not "Bloody Kansas".
  3. Presidential elections were in 1856 and 1860, not 1857 and 1861.
As to higher tensions, it is hard to see how the nation could have been more inflamed. Southern actions (repeated invasions of Kansas by pro-slavery Border Ruffians from Missouri) were deeply offensive to many northerners. But there was little they could do about it in the Northern states - secession would be obviously useless, and only a handful of extreme abolitionists preferred disunion to coexistence with slavery. The Pierce and Buchanan administrations openly connived with pro-slavery elements in Kansas, so there was no reason for Southerners to rebel against Federal authority.

However - suppose that some of the Free-Soil men in Kansas (the great majority) resisted the Ruffians, perhaps killing some in an ambush. The enraged Ruffians respond with a brutal massacre of Free-Soil settlers, which hits the newspapers at the end of September 1856.

As noted in another recent thread, in the PA and IN state elections in October 1856, Whig/Republican/Know-Nothing "fusion tickets" narrowly lost to the Democrats OTL. ITTL, the news from Kansas tips these elections the other way. This causes the Ws/Rs/K-Ns to proceed with fusion tickets of presidential electors (which OTL were dropped). The continued impact of the Kansas news tips the November results to those fusion tickets; and under the terms of the fusions, the electoral votes go to Fremont, who is elected, triggering secession and civil war.
 
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