Kansas was said to be “ bleeding”, during the Kansas Border War in 1856, while pro-slavery forces, commonly referred to as the “ border ruffians”, from the slave-state of Missouri, crossed into the territory of Kansas and terrorized the antislavery, “free-soil”, settlers there. In response to such violence, many of the abolitionist settlers in Kansas became militant, much like their historical contemporary John Brown. One such radical abolitionist in Kansas was Henry Ward Beecher. Henry Ward Beecher raised large sums of money, along with an abolitionist faction, the New England Immigration Aid Society, from the northeast. With these funds, Henry Ward Beecher had rifles and ammunition shipped from New England, to aid in the fighting. In an attempt to fool any border ruffians who might intercept the shipments, the crates containing the guns were labeled ‘Bibles’. Thus, those rifles ironically took on the designation of ‘Beecher’s Bibles’.
Sources:
www.infoplease.com
A People & A Nation by Norton et al.