Looking at the Kaw River now, it seems hard to believe steamboats regularly traveled it when Kansas became a territory in 1854.

“You really wouldn’t think it could happen,” said Sonie Liebler, who has researched and written about steamboat travel on the Kansas River between 1854 and 1866. “It was short-lived but a very colorful era.”

Liebler will share her knowledge about Kaw River steamboats at the ninth annual Bleeding Kansas program series at Constitution Hall in Lecompton.

The program will focus on life, slavery and the violent conflicts in the Kansas Territory from 1854 through 1861. The series will kick off at 2 p.m. Sunday with a lecture from historian and author Craig Miner.

“After nine years, there’s a core following of people interested in the history of the Kansas Territory,” said Tim Rues, curator of Constitution Hall in Lecompton.

The weekly lectures are free and open to all.

Liebler, who received a master’s in history from Kansas State University in 1974, has studied steamboating along the Kansas River for about 20 years and will talk about the steamboats and the towns founded along the river.

Programs will be at 2 p.m. on Sunday for the next six weeks. The schedule is:

• Sunday — Craig Miner, history professor at Wichita State University, “Kansas Territory: The Theater of Strife and Tumult.”
• Feb. 6 — The Free Staters band, “Ho! For the Kansas Plains.”
• Feb. 13 — Brian Matthew Jordan, author and Tallmadge High School student in Tallmadge, Ohio, “Franklin Pierce and the Coming of the Civil War.”
• Feb. 20 — Sonie Liebler, historian and author, “Steamboating on the Kaw: A Frontier Adventure.”
• Feb. 27 — Matt Veatch, co-project leader for Territorial Kansas Online and assistant director of the library and archives at the Kansas State Historical Society, “Go Back in Time … Online!”
• Michelle Martin, history instructor at Fort Scott Community College, “Misinterpreted Martyrs: The Doyle Family & the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre.”