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NEH Crossroads of Conflict Border Wars Workshop 6/27-7/2/10 by Carl Graves: Grade 11
Tag Discussion about Kansas-Missouri Border Conflicts: Causes, Consequences, Lessons
This assignment is worth 40 points on your daily average. [4 times the normal homework points]
Rules: I put 4 chairs in the middle. Only students in these chairs can speak. Do not interrupt.
Take your turn and be polite. Once you have spoken, anyone not in the chairs can gently tag you
and take your place. Do not tag someone who just arrived in one of the chairs. Wait until that
person has spoken at least once before tagging him/her. When selecting whom to tag, pick
someone who has spoken more often. Remember that this is a discussion, not a debate, so you
need not attempt to contradict the previous person. You may reinforce or expand upon a
previous person’s comments, although you are welcome to take issue with a previous speaker as
well. I will grade you on the quality as well as the quantity of your contributions. Avoid simply
reading from this packet. Save it for a one-liner in support of a comment you have written down
or put in your head. You are also welcome to bring in material from the Norton textbook.
Purpose of activity: I want you to consider who and what were responsible for the dreadful
Kansas and Missouri guerrilla conflicts during the 1850s and the Civil War, and what insights
you can learn from these tragic events.
Questions, topics to consider:
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Why did settlers come to blows in Kansas territory in the 1850s?
Was one side more to blame than the other?
To what extent were Kansas and Missouri settlers concerned about slavery or white liberty?
Why was there such brutal guerilla warfare in Missouri during the Civil War?
Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers: was one side more (un)justifed than the other?
How did guerrilla war affect civilians of all political perspectives?
What were the links between the jail collapse and Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, as well as
his raid and the issuance of General Order No.11?
8. Can you think of alternative policies that could have reduced the Kansas-Missouri conflict?
9. Do the Border Wars give us insights relevant to other conflicts, such as Vietnam, Iraq,
Afghanistan, or the American Revolution?
10. To what extent does this history help you understand the KU-MU sports rivalry?
Note to teachers: This tag discussion format works well for me at the Pembroke Hill School, a
Kansas City college-prep private school with an average of 16 students per classroom. With
modifications, I suspect it could work in public school settings. My juniors will take part in this
assignment after they have covered textbook chapters about the road to war as well as the Civil
War itself. I use Mary Beth Norton, et al., A People and a Nation (8th edition brief edition.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008). This text devotes half a page to “Bleeding Kansas,” including
mention of fraudulent territorial elections, free-soilers creating their own government, the sack of
Lawrence, John Brown’s Pottawatomie Creek killing, later Kansas voters rejection of the
Lecompton constitution, as well as the fact that “armed bands of guerrillas roamed the territory.”
The chapter on the Civil War makes no mention of Kansas or Missouri!
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Origins of Bleeding Kansas
Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas. Lawrence: Kansas UP, 2004, p. 1-4.
“the political liberties of whites [are] crucial to understanding the meaning of Bleeding
Kansas…. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act sought to expand the political liberty of the territory’s
white men by giving them the power… to pronounce on the most contentious issue of the time,
black slavery…. But fraud occurred in election after election…. For proslavery Southerners,
white liberty depended on black slavery…. While Northerners emphasized choice at the ballot
box as essential to republican freedom, Southerners did not accept the primacy of majority rule if
it threatened established rights to hold slaves or the order that kept the much feared black
insurrection at bay. The proslavery/free-state division broke into violence not just because of
slavery but because each side feared the loss of political liberty threatened in the struggle over
slavery. In the nineteenth century, few whites cared about the suffering of slaves, but they did
care about their own political rights.”
Michael Fellman. Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the Civil War. New
York: Oxford UP, 1989, p. 12-19.
“Fighting the political question of the settlement of Kansas, abolitionists treated all
Missourians as quintessential ‘poor white trash’ in the race to settle the newly opened Indian
lands just to the west of Missouri…. Their honor impugned, many Missourians learned to hate
Yankees with an urgent energy that would color their behavior during the Civil War…. For
Northern settlers, the enemy was…poor southern white trash—‘Pukes’…they represented…the
degraded…condition the slave system forced upon the independent white of modest
means….Childish and drunken….regressive, barbarian types….Proslavery [Missouri] settlers
defined themselves as defenders of American institutions and of law and order….Northerners
were ‘the foreign foe’…a pack of evil hypocrites…. Peace-lovers who emigrated armed to the
teeth…. Devoted…to…’love for the nigger,’ which led them to steal him and set him free.”
Voting for Kansas territorial delegate and territorial legislature in 1854 and 1855
Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas. Lawrence: Kansas UP, 2004, p. 52-59.
“Through the ballot box, Kansas settlers were to decide the contested issue of slavery.
But faith in the ballot box presupposed general agreement on electoral practices that did not exist
in the nineteenth-century United States…. In the eastern states, advance registration of voters
was often required…. Residency requirements…varied in different states…. Widespread internal
migration in the United States, however, had undermined the idea that voting was tied
exclusively to residence….
In both the territorial delegate [to Congress] election in the fall of 1854 and the election
of a territorial legislature in March 1855, Governor Reeder’s proclamation specified that the
voter must actually reside and intend to continue residing in Kansas Territory…. Despite
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Reeder’s provisions, voting was both highly public and dependent on local norms…. [T]he
Missourians voting in Kansas came in such numbers and flaunted their presence so openly they
offended free-soil voters who felt intimidated, overwhelmed, and denied the choice offered by
popular sovereignty….
A Leavenworth man described how ‘The whole county was overrun on the day of the
election by hordes of ruffians from Missouri, who took entire possession of the polls in almost
every district, brow-beat and intimidated the Judges, forced their own votes into the ballotbox’….In the new towns near Leavenworth, Starr reported, ‘Some 1200 or 1400 Missourians
armed with bowie knives & revolvers took the polls…more than 40 free soilers were unable to
come to the polls at all’….[The pro-slavery candidate] Whitfield was elected with 2,258 votes
[the other two candidates received 553 votes]. A congressional investigation later concluded that
over 1,700 votes cast in the election were fraudulent….
The day of the [territorial legislature] election proved tumultuous. Frederick Starr
reported that Missouri River ferries carried eight hundred men a day, for three days prior to the
election, across the river. At the Leavenworth election, there appeared five times the number of
voters recorded in the census…. Intimidated, most free-soil supporters simply did not
vote….Similar irregularities occurred at other polling places….
A Missourian later recalled that he had voted at the March 1855 election while still
residing in Missouri. He intended to move to Kansas and, in fact, did so not long after the
election….many Missourians told a Lawrence man that they had a legal right to vote because
residents could vote and ‘they were residents while they were here’…. Missourians also
rationalized their actions by asserting that the threat to Missouri was so severe that it justified
measures that seemingly violated democratic processes…. Fearing that free Kansas would harbor
fugitive slaves and endanger the safety of slave property in their state, Missourians asked ‘If
Kansas be settled by Abolitionists, can Missouri remain a slave state?’….The importing of voters
and other types of ballot fraud Missourians practiced were, in fact, staples of U.S. elections at the
time…Free-soil voters, however, may have been genuinely shocked. Many came from New
England where such election irregularities were rare compared to the western states….The
[Kansas] territorial census earlier that month had found 2,905 voters in the territory, but over
6,000 men voted on March 30. Proslavery votes totaled 5,427…Missourians had gone too far.”
Kansas 1850s Violence
Augustus Wattles to William Hutchinson, excerpt from a letter April 28, 1858. Wattles, an Ohio
native and abolitionist, moved to southern Kansas Territory (Ft. Scott) in 1855 and served in the
Kansas territorial legislature. I have modernized some spelling and punctuation. From Territorial
Kansas Online, Kansas State Historical Society: Available at www.territorialkansasonline.org.
“[The following incident] reminds me of old times in Lawrence. On Monday night a
Free State man was brought in by a company of guerillas and sentenced to be shot. A company
of seven took him down into the timber & drew lots [to see] who should kill him. The lot fell on
Brocket [who] deliberately shot him dead. They stated that he was carrying a message from
Capt. Montgomery [free state soldier] and others to Crawford & others. They came to the Hotel
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& swore they would kill Crawford & others and came armed for the purpose of executing their
threats. Judge Williams, who overheard the plan of attack, accompanied them to the Hotel &
prevented a collision. Brocket presented his pistol several times at the Judge, threatening to shoot
him if he did not desist. But the Judge succeeded for the time. And now they compel the Free
State men to guard their homes and be ready for a fight night & day. This pro slavery party, who
owns no property here, are threatening to burn the town.”
J. Williams, Ft. Scott, letter May 16, 1858 to Kansas Governor Denver. James W. Denver
Collection, #328, Box 1, Folder 7, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. From Territorial
Kansas Online, Kansas State Historical Society, available at www.territorialkansasonline.org.
“Governor Denver, Sir….[I wish to tell you about] the true state of things in this region.
When I wrote to you to come and send additional forces of military…civil war in all its horrors
was initiated. Violence has started to run riot…Montgomery and his murderers, & robbers,
commenced his operations almost in sight of this place, in broad day light…and Griffith refused
to…interfere to save the settlers (his neighbors) from being robbed, & their families driven from
their homes….
Then…Clarke Brockett & Co many of whom had been robbed and driven by
Montgomery and his bandits from their homes in the county, taking advantage of the swell of
indignation, much roused the whole community, ‘pitched in’ for ‘retaliation’….
If the officers of the law will arrest Montgomery & his men…& prevent these men North
from coming down here, we will have no trouble in keeping the peace among our people….
This county is over run by horse thieves, who have, at present, at least, no connection
with Montgomery…Every night new cases occur. I suppose more than one hundred horses have
been stolen—Montgomery mounts his soldiers in this way—they start from the north on foot &
are mounted by the way as they come down & always return mounted. Some of them [call] it
‘pressing’ into the service of Lane’s Militia…’”
Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War
Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas. Lawrence: Kansas UP, 2004, p. 226-233.
“Many feared that [the outbreak of the Civil War] would bring renewed violence between
Kansas and Missouri….a young Missourian said…’I am glad war is coming; we want a chance
at Kansas’….Revenge motivated many Kansans who took up arms against Missouri’s
secessionists….Jayhawkers…referred to the Kansas counterparts of the Border Ruffians….On a
late September night [1861], Kansas Jayhawkers marched into Osceola, Missouri…loaded
wagons with store goods and set the town on fire before leaving….Missourians correctly
recognized that jayhawking subverted slavery. Many blacks accompanied the Union
soldiers….[Jayhawker James] Lane argued that traitors should lose their property….Many blacks
sought refuge in Kansas towns….Unthinkable only a few years earlier…Kansans had gradually
broadened their definition of liberty to include more rights for blacks….
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The war along the border was an irregular one. Once Price’s [Confederate] army pulled
out of Missouri, bushwhackers, as Confederate guerillas were called, carried on the Confederate
cause. On September 6, 1862, Confederate partisans under William Quantrill struck Olathe,
Kansas, and on September 17, Shawneetown. At Olathe, they robbed stores and homes, killed
three men, and tore down the Union flag over the recruiting office…”
Michael Fellman. Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the Civil War. New
York: Oxford UP, 1989, p. 11.
“Tens of thousands of pro-southern [Missouri] families remained hundreds of miles
behind Union lines, living next door to Unionists. Among these secessionists, enraged by the
mere fact of Union occupation as well as by its excesses right on their doorsteps, were many
young men of military age who had not gone south to join the regular Confederate army. A
majority of Missourians were left confused and feeling caught in the middle of a battle they had
wanted to avoid. They remained loyal to the Union yet deeply resentful of Federal force. They
were whipsawed between the two organized poles of power.”
Willard Mendenhall was a farmer and storeowner in Lexington, Missouri. Strongly proslavery,
he nevertheless owned no slaves and remained loyal to the Union despite the abuse he got from
Federal soldiers in the fall of 1862. From his diary, September 24, 1862, in Silvana Siddali, ed.,
Missouri’s War. Athens: Ohio UP, 2009, p. 134. I have modernized spelling and punctuation.
“Thousands of men of my political opinion were joining the southern army, some for
preferences, others because they considered it unsafe for them to remain in their homes. I will
stay at home…. [Colonel] Henry Neal’s [Union] militia commenced marauding on my place,
taking potatoes, etc…. [They] went to John Ewing’s and broke their furniture, took his wife’s
clothes, then set the house on fire. At [the house of] Thomas Shields (They have nearly
everything taken from them), [the Federals] looked at their piano and said they had broken many
of them since they left Independence [so the soldiers expected the Shields people to] thank them
if they did not break theirs. They forced Mrs. Grigg to play for them while they danced. As they
left the house, one of the men remarked to Mrs. Thomas Shields (who is quite a fine looking
young woman) that he liked her looks and would come back that night and stay with her. At Cal
Belle’s they took his horse, gold watch, some money, I do not know how much, and abused his
wife shamefully [feeling] of her person, and using insulting language. The outrages are too
numerous to write. I heard Colonel Stevenson had them put under arrest.”
Excerpt from an editorial in the Daily Missouri Democrat, a Republican newspaper, July 31,
1863. From Silvana Siddali, ed., Missouri’s War. Athens: Ohio UP, 2009, p. 210.
“There is not a Union man in Washington County [that] when he goes to bed at night
does not fear that he may be murdered before morning. A band of about twenty-five
bushwhackers is in this country and declared only last week that Potosi could not hold a Union
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man. A Union man, Reverend Wilson Adams, who was worth some $12,000 to $15,000, has
been shamefully ruined by them—been compelled to take refuge in Potosi with his family. The
rebels are in possession of his place. They took all his horses, and in fact everything is at their
mercy…”
Bushwhackers, Jayhawkers, prison collapse, Lawrence, General Order No. 11, Centralia.
Overview of editor Silvana Siddali, Missouri’s War. Athens: Ohio UP, 2009, p. 155-56.
“In August 1863, [Union] General Thomas Ewing Jr. had had enough of the guerilla
warfare that was raging across western Missouri. Ewing ordered that any citizens giving aid to
William Clarke Quantrill and his men were to be arrested. Ewing soon detained thirteen women
in the makeshift jail in Kansas City, Missouri. Among the detainees were Mary, Martha, and
Josephine Anderson, sisters of notorious bushwhacker William ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson. When
the building collapsed on August 14, killing four of the women and severely injuring many
others, Quantrill’s raiders vowed revenge. They chose as their target the city of Lawrence,
Kansas, long a stronghold of free-state sympathizers and the home of Senator James H. Lane.
Just after dawn on August 21, Quantrill and 450 men attacked the city, murdering between 140
and 190 men and boys in cold blood. They looted and burned most of the buildings, robbed the
bank, and left behind a scene of horrific destruction.
Newspapers around the country reported the massacre, prompting Ewing to strike again
at bushwhackers and their supporters in the countryside. On August 25, 1863, Ewing issued
General Order No.11, which commanded everyone living in Jackson, Cass, Bates, and Vernon
counties, as well as several other areas, to vacate their homes within fifteen days. The order did
not discriminate between loyal and rebel farmers; all residents were to leave. The purpose of the
order was to make it impossible for guerillas to survive in the western counties of Missouri by
removing any potential local support. In reality, the displacement resulted in widespread
suffering. Many families—mostly women, children, and elderly people—fled to the larger
towns, creating a serious refugee problem. Moreover, because the order provided for the
confiscation or destruction of grain supplies, the refugees (who included both Southern
sympathizers and loyal Unionists) suffered from shortages. Although some charitable aid
societies, including the Western Sanitary Commission, donated food and supplies to those living
near the large cities, many of the thousands of people who had fled their homes had to live on
government aid….
Throughout 1863 and l864, the violence continued to escalate despite the wholesale
evacuation of the western counties. On September 27, 1864, Bloody Bill Anderson launched a
horrific attack on Centralia, Missouri, looting and burning. Anderson’s men murdered twentytwo unarmed sick and wounded Union soldiers who came in on a train, scalping some of them.
In some parts of the state, 1864 brought the worst bushwhacking violence of the entire war. Men
and boys were murdered, and women were often the victims of personal insults and abuse,
especially if they were suspected of pro-Union sentiments. A number of black women suffered
physical assaults and rape….”
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Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence Remembered in Song
“Quantrill” composed by Doug DuBois, sung by his Euphoria String Band, Lawrence, KS,
from their album, Livin’ in the Free State, 1993, Red House Records. I omitted one verse.
“Oh, did you hear the screaming, and did you see the fight,
That happened in the sleeping town of Lawrence late last night,
Quantrill and his ruffians came and terrorized our town,
Burned all our buildings and shot our good men down.
Oh, did you see the evil, the hatred in their eyes,
And their pleasure as our men fell dead amidst our screams and cries,
I watched them shoot my father, though I tried to look away,
Mother held him desperately as his life slipped away.
My heart aches with the memory of my father who is gone,
And my one preoccupation is to shoot Bill Quantrill down,
Although I am a young boy, I’ll soon become a man,
And fight against these ruffians in any way I can.
Now we’ll rebuild our houses and we’ll rebuild our town,
And lay our dear departed in boxes in the ground,
As we leave the graveside our solemn oath will be,
Death to Missouri and death to slavery!”
“Quantrill” traditional. From Cathy Barton, Dave Para and Bob Dyer, Johnny Whistletrigger:
Civil War Songs from the Western Border, 1993, Big Canoe Records. I omitted the chorus.
“Come all you bold robbers and open your ears,
Of Quantrill the lion-heart you quickly shall hear;
With his band of bold robbers in double quick time,
They came to burn Lawrence just over the line.
They came to burn Lawrence, they came not to stay,
They rode in one morning at the break of the day,
Their arms were a-waving, their horses a-foam,
Quantrill was riding his famous grey roan.
They came to burn Lawrence, they came not to stay,
Jim Lane he was up at the break of the day,
He saw them a-coming, and got in a fright,
He crawled in a corn-crib to get out of sight.
Oh, Quantrill’s a fighter, a bold hearted boy,
A brave man or woman he’d never annoy;
He’d take from the wealthy and give to the poor,
For brave men there’s never a bolt on his door.”
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Separating Friend from Foe
Michael Fellman. Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the Civil War. New
York: Oxford UP, 1989, p. 162-164.
“’If I had my way I would devastate the whole region…and shoot every man I caught
running from the flames of the burning homes’…. This Iowa soldier articulated many of the
reasons for the loathing which most Union soldiers came to feel for Missouri civilians in this
guerrilla war. Life was cold, wet, endlessly boring, and punctuated by moments of violence when
a comrade might well be shot by someone out there in the dark. Civilians, snug and warm and
well-fed, ignorant and accursed, protected by Union troops, were in return aiding the hidden
enemy daily. Many soldiers wished to exterminate them all. Wishing that, they brutalized many
and killed some.
It was impossible with even the best of intentions to separate civilians from guerrillas and
to kill just the combatants, as the fighters blended into the general civilian population…. Any
Missourian might be a guerrilla no matter how peaceful he or she appeared…. Many soldiers
believed that there must have been an organized conspiracy in this civilian-guerrilla activity. Too
many carefully arranged ambushes and other attacks occurred for there not to have been careful
spying and tactical planning…. Union soldiers were aware that the guerrillas had far better
sources of information than they did. Good information multiplied the effectiveness of a
relatively small number of guerrilla attackers….Informed of Union troop movements against
them, guerrilla bands would simply split up and melt back into the civilian population or else
hide in difficult terrain….If they were operating close to home, which was often the case,
guerrillas would cut and run, each to his own domicile. Then which of the smiling, bland chaps
you met on their doorstep in the evening had shot up your patrol that afternoon?”
In Retrospect
Michael Fellman. Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the Civil War. New
York: Oxford UP, 1989, p. 265.
“Brigadier General John B. Sanborn from Minnesota had been a brigade commander with
Ulysses S. Grant in Tennessee prior to being assigned the southwestern district of Missouri in
October 1863. In a speech given in his home town of St. Paul in 1886, Sanborn tried to make
some moral sense out of the guerrilla war he had fought. He noted that the five counties of his
jurisdiction had had an average of 5,000 to 8,000 people each in 1860, but that by the end of
1864, the population had been reduced to about 300 per county. …’During one week a
Confederate force would pass through the country for a hundred miles or more and burn the
houses and destroy the property of every loyal man, and before my arrival the Federal forces
would soon go over the same section of the country and destroy the house and property of all the
disloyal.’ Although he had stopped such violent Federal countersweeps after assuming
command, on January 1, 1865, Sanborn accelerated the pace of depopulation by banishing 150
families, mainly headed by women, from his district. Twenty years later, Sanborn admitted that
no policy had worked, that every effort had poured fuel on the fire, and that both sides had been
culpable.”
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