Copyright © 2017 by Robert K. Sutton
Foreword © 2017 by Bob Dole
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Rain Saukas
Cover photo credit: Sarin Images / Granger, NYC
Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1649-0
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1651-3
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to the memory of my mother and father
Robert H. Sutton and Evelyn W. Sutton
and to my mother-in-law
Florence R. Davidson
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The Awakening
Chapter 1: We Waked Up Stark Mad Abolitionists
Chapter 2: Nothing but a Beautiful Green Carpet
Chapter 3: I Shall Build a Cabin for Myself Forthwith
Chapter 4: You Might as Well Read Bibles to Buffaloes
Part II: The Conflict
Chapter 5: The Almost Bloodless Wakarusa War
Chapter 6: The Fabian Policy is the True One
Chapter 7: It Was the Grossest Outrage Ever Perpetuated
Chapter 8: The Latest Edition of the Herald of Freedom
Chapter 9: Will Buchanan See That Justice is Done?
Chapter 10: Glorious Intelligence! Kansas in the Union!
Part III: The War
Chapter 11: My Life Belongs to My Country, But My Heart Belongs to You
Chapter 12: Don’t Turn Your Back on This Bird
Chapter 13: We Could Stand No More
Chapter 14: Lawrence or Hell
Chapter 15: Oh God, the Heathen Are Come into Thine Inheritance
Epilogue: From Ashes to Immortality
Appendix: What Happened to the Players in This Story?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
Growing up and attending school in Russell, Kansas, we were steeped in the early history of our state and its founders. We learned that the earliest settlers were given the choice of whether they wanted slavery or not under the concept of popular sovereignty in the Kansas-Nebraska Act that created the territory.
Pro-slavery advocates from Missouri were willing to go all out to bring Kansas into the slave-state fold. Meanwhile, antislavery proponents were just as determined that Kansas would be free. The first salvo in the first battle came with the election for a territorial legislature in 1855. Today, we hear accusations of voter fraud or voter suppression, but in Kansas’s first territorial election, there was no question of voter fraud. Thousands of Missourians, having no intention of living in Kansas, crossed the border and voted to elect members of the territorial legislature who would do their bidding. This was the first step in their efforts toward making Kansas a slave state. The pro-slavery legislature went on to pass legislation protecting the institution of slavery, submitting the Lecompton Constitution to Congress in an effort to protect the institution of slavery when Kansas was admitted to the Union.
On the other end of the spectrum, antislavery proponents did everything they could to make Kansas a free state. Bob Sutton tells the story of Amos Adams Lawrence, an extraordinary man from Boston who “waked up” one morning as a “stark mad abolitionist” and devoted a substantial portion of his energy and fortune to ensure that Kansas would become a free state. Lawrence became the treasurer and benefactor of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, an organization that encouraged antislavery activists from the Northeast to leave everything behind and emigrate to Kansas, with the primary purpose of making the territory a free state. Many settled in the community—Lawrence, Kansas—that they named for their benefactor. They battled the pro-slavery legislature by establishing their own, albeit illegal, government. They created and elected members to their own legislature, and drafted and submitted their constitution to Congress, seeking admission for Kansas as a free state.
The battle that started as a war of words eventually became a war of violence called “Bleeding Kansas.” In time, the antislavery side prevailed and Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state on the eve of the Civil War. Kansans wholeheartedly supported the war, sending nearly all eligible men, or almost 20 percent of the entire state’s population, to fight for the Union. Thirty-eight percent of Kansas’s soldiers were casualties of the war, among the nation’s highest per capita.
But the wounds opened in the territorial period did not heal with statehood. In 1863, the Confederate guerrilla chieftain William Clarke Quantrill led a force of four hundred ruthless killers into Lawrence, Kansas, killing some two hundred men and boys and burning most of the buildings in town to the ground.
Balanced with the savagery of Quantrill’s attack, money and food poured into Lawrence from all over the country. Amos Adams Lawrence donated thousands of dollars in relief money after the raid and at the same time underwrote the initial funding to establish my alma mater in Lawrence—the University of Kansas. The residents of Lawrence were resilient and quickly rebuilt their town. Amos Lawrence and other benefactors set aside substantial portions of their relief money to aid the hundreds of children whose fathers were killed in Quantrill’s raid or in other battles of the Civil War. One key benefit: these children could attend the University of Kansas free of charge—quite a progressive program for the 1860s.
Bob Sutton does a wonderful job of capturing our state’s early history. His Kansas roots run deep. Sutton’s ancestors were among the earliest pioneers in Kansas, arriving and settling in Sutton Valley in Anderson County in early 1855. Sutton’s great-grandfather, Isco “Pony” (shortened from Napoleon) Sutton, served in the 16th Kansas Cavalry during the Civil War. In this carefully researched book, Sutton reminds us that 150 years ago our country underwent its most challenging transition period to date. The nation was fundamentally torn over the institution of slavery, and Kansas was at the center of that debate. In this scholarly but readable book, Sutton explains why the stakes were so high during this most momentous time in our history.
—Bob Dole
Former US Senator from Kansas
Preface
IN 1831, ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE left his native France and traveled to the United States, ostensibly to visit American prisons. But his journey carried him well beyond the penal system. He immersed himself in American culture, economics, politics, and society and recorded his observations in his Democracy in America (1835). Even today, most scholars recognize Tocqueville’s work as the most perceptive study of early nineteenth-century America. His purpose was to explain the United States to his fellow French people, but over time, we have come to recognize that he also described America to Americans. Among his many findings, Tocqueville noted that “western migration is an extraordinary phenomenon, in which [Americans] band togethe
r in search of fortune. The restless spirit which drives people to move west is very good for the country, because it prevents the population from being concentrated in only a few places.”
The phenomenon of westward expansion, fascinating to Tocqueville, also captured my imagination at a very early age. As a young child, my grandparents regaled me with the stories of their parents emigrating to Oregon. My great-grandfather traveled to Oregon by himself at age seventeen—with only the shirt on his back—and my great-grandmother was three weeks old when her family left Missouri on the Oregon Trail. My father also shared the accounts of his family’s frequent moves, ending with their settlement in Kansas. My great-great-grandfather, James Sutton, settled in Kansas in 1855. He brought his family from Osage County, Missouri, and settled in a region that would become part of Anderson County. James’s parents were from New Jersey. They moved to Pennsylvania, then to Hamilton County, Ohio, where James was born in 1809. He moved to Indiana, to Illinois, to Osage County, Missouri, then on to Kansas.
James’s son—my great-grandfather, Isco Napoleon “Pony” Sutton—fascinated me as well. Pony Sutton joined Company L, of the 16th Kansas Cavalry, late in the Civil War. The story that was passed down through the generations was that he was wounded four times and, as a result, died at an early age. From the depositions in his pension record, however, we learned that he contracted dysentery while in service and died from complications of the disease at age forty. Before he died, he was twice elected sheriff of Anderson County, and, in 1882, he was elected to the Kansas State House of Representatives as a member of the Greenback Party
Clearly, my ancestors on both sides of the family moved west to better themselves and the lives of their families. But the preparations required for each move must have been staggering. They needed to dispose of their property, purchase enough supplies and equipment for their journeys, and bid farewell to friends and family. Then, when they arrived at their destinations, they had to start from scratch. Whether they acquired land, started businesses, or went in search of jobs, most were confident, but unsure, of future success.
As Tocqueville observed, my ancestors and most pioneers moved to the West seeking their fortunes. Some were successful; others were not. There were exceptions, such as the Mormons who moved to Utah, hoping to free themselves from religious persecution. Others, such as the American fur trappers, combined adventure with their search for wealth. And still others headed west—not for financial gain, but to weaken the institution of slavery and bring about its ultimate destruction. They acted when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, opening up settlement in these two territories. Embedded in this law was the principle of popular sovereignty that allowed the citizens to decide whether or not they wanted slavery in their future states. Knowing little about the land and even less about their chances for economic success, abolitionists willingly left their lives behind to settle in Kansas, with the primary purpose of doing everything in their power to keep slavery out of their new home.
Their task was daunting. But to ease the prospect of traveling to and settling in this alien land, businessmen in the East were willing to risk vast sums of money to facilitate the migration. One such northeastern businessman, Amos Adams Lawrence, in his own words, went to bed one night a conservative businessman, and “waked up a stark mad abolitionist.” As quickly as he awakened, he combined his fortune and his energy with others in the New England Emigrant Aid Company to encourage abolitionists to emigrate to Kansas by making the trip as painless as possible. This financial support was crucial, but in addition to the challenges of building new lives in Kansas, immigrants quickly discovered that the pro-slavery residents of neighboring Missouri were just as passionate that Kansas should become a slave state. These Missourians were willing to stop at nothing to achieve their goal.
The epicenter of the antislavery movement, which also became the prime target for the pro-slavery side, was the community of Lawrence, Kansas. When Lawrence was more a dream than a reality, the first pioneers voted to name the community after Amos Adams Lawrence, recognizing his generous financial support. Whenever needed, Amos Lawrence opened his pocketbook to ensure that Kansas would become a free state, and that the town that bore his name would thrive. Amos Lawrence and many of the major players in the story have recorded their experiences. Whenever possible, as we whisk you back 150 years, we will share the challenges, the struggles, the tragedies, and the triumphs of Lawrence—the town and the person—through the eyes of the participants.
Acknowledgments
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN I published my first book, my mother-in-law extracted a promise from me. She made me promise that I would write another book. Well, Mom, it took some time, but I kept my promise. I just wish you and my mom and dad were still here to see this new volume.
Writing a book now is very different from the experience twenty-five years ago. Word processors were readily available, but the development of the Internet, with its amazing resources we now take for granted, was only in its infancy. Now, with the push of a computer button, researchers can access materials that for generations were only available in physical repositories. The Kansas State Historical Society and the University of Kansas, in partnership and with a major grant from the federally funded Institute for Museum and Library Services, has created a website that has proven to be an absolute gold mine of resources. Territorial Kansas Online has assembled government documents, diaries, letters, photographs, maps, newspapers, rare secondary sources, and historical artifacts from the collections of these two institutions. Researchers such as I can access scanned handwritten documents to capture the feelings experienced by the original writers, but as an added benefit, most letters are transcribed for easier reading. Photographs and scanned images of museum artifacts are constantly added to the site. I wish I could individually thank each person involved in developing this website. I cannot begin to tell you how valuable your work has been to writing this book.
A number of individuals have been important to bring this project to fruition as well. First, my agent, Greg Aunapu, saw the potential of this book and connected me with Joseph Craig at Skyhorse Publishing. Denise Roeper and Katherine Kiger provided excellent copyediting and proofreading. I am grateful to you all for producing this volume. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Robert Shimp, a former National Park Service colleague, who, on his own time, spent hours combing through the Amos Adams Lawrence Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Robert: I cannot thank you enough. Also former colleagues, Jeff Patrick, the librarian/historian and Ted Hilmer, the superintendent at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield provided a treasure trove of materials related to the participation of Kansas soldiers in the Battle at Wilson’s Creek. Thanks to Rick Hatcher, also of the National Park Service, for compiling the information on the battle. Katie Armitage, a Lawrence historian, directed me to a number of important sources and brought me up to date on how Lawrence currently commemorates the anniversary date of Quantrill’s Raid. Julie McPike with the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area guided me to valuable resources and provided encouragement as I worked on this book. Sara Keckeisen and Lisa Keys at the Kansas State Historical Society, Kathy Lafferty at the University of Kansas, Anne E. Cox at the State Historical Society of Missouri, Anne E. Cox at the State Historical Society of Missouri, and Isabella Donadio at Harvard University Portrait Collection, were enormously helpful in obtaining images from their collections.
When I completed the first draft, Nicole Etcheson, whom I consider the leading historian on the “Bleeding Kansas” period, graciously agreed to read the draft and offered enormously valuable insights, suggestions, and corrections to the document. David Martin and Glenn Willoughby also read and offered valuable critiques on the draft manuscript. My son, Lee David, offered helpful suggestions and edits as well. Thanks to your careful readings, the final product is much improved.
Finally, to quote the famous baseball player Lou Gehrig, I feel like the luckiest man on the fac
e of this earth to be married to my wonderful wife, Harriet Davidson. We have a strong and enduring partnership in nearly every way imaginable. So, when I asked her to take the time from her busy schedule to read my manuscript, she took it along on trips, got up early, and stayed up late to read the entire document. Her insights, her corrections, her critiques, and her suggestions have immeasurably improved the final product. More than this, from start to finish, Harriet has been a wonderful sounding board. She would enthusiastically support many ideas, tell me others needed more work, and for still others, she would help me relegate them to the trash heap. Through the whole process, her love, support, and thoughtfulness kept me going. I appreciate you more than you will ever know.
Introduction
IN THE SUMMER OF 1787, Congress was, for all intents and purposes, dysfunctional. Many members of the United States in Congress Assembled—the official title of the body under the Articles of Confederation—were in Philadelphia as delegates to the Federal Convention, deliberating over a new constitution. On most days, the remaining members of Congress could barely pull together a quorum to do business; on other days, not enough were present to even make a quorum. In the middle of the summer, however, Congress was back in business. The Reverend Manasseh Cutler, a lobbyist from Massachusetts, came to the seat of government in New York City on behalf of the Ohio Company of Associates. His clients were Revolutionary War veterans and land speculators from New England. His job was to convince Congress to sell a large tract of land in Ohio to his company at a bargain price. The government was strapped for money, and Rev. Cutler made the convincing argument that his clients would put money in the government coffers, and, by advertising the availability of land far and wide, they would stimulate settlement in Ohio. To move the deal along, Cutler offered stakes in the land company to recalcitrant Congressmen in exchange for their votes.
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