Freedom s Struggle i

Freedom s Struggle On the cover: This 1983 illustration by artist Hugh Brown depicts a dragoon escorting a wagon train across the prairie. The wagon ruts that remain today at such sites as Mount Mitchell near Wamego are a testament to the state s history and how its stories are imbedded in the landscape. Illustration: courtesy of Hugh Brown and the National Park Service, Harper s Ferry Center iii

Topeka Capital-Journal 2016. All Rights Reserved. These articles ran in the Topeka Capital-Journal between February 2015 and January 2016. They are reprinted here with permission of the Topeka Capital-Journal. This book was printed on an Espresso Book Machine at Woodneath Press, Woodneath Library Center, Mid-Continent Public Library, in Kansas City, MO. Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area, PO Box 526, 200 W 9th Street, Lawrence, KS 66044 www.freedomsfrontier.org iv

Contents Contents... v Forward... ix About Jan Biles... xi Scope of Project... xii Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area Timeline... xiii Freedom s Frontier: Heritage area borne from struggle Bleeding Kansas proposal ruffled Missourian s feathers (February 11, 2015)... 1 Free or slave Kansas? A decision that split the nation Slavery question creates 2 governments, 2 capital in Kansas Territory (March 9, 2015)... 9 John Brown s legacy remains controversial Kansas battle cemented abolitionist s reputation (April 13, 2015).... 21 One war atrocity, two different accounts Questions remain about senator s involvement in burning of Osceola (May 12, 2015)... 33 Who were the bushwhackers? Guerrillas were known for their ambush tactics (June 10, 2015)... 43 General Order No. 11: Scorching of Missouri Missourians exiled, property burned in attempt to get rid of bushwhackers (July 14, 2015)... 49 Battle of Island Mound: First fighting in Civil War for any black troops 1st Kansas Colored s bravery allowed regiment to enter federal service (August 11, 2015)... 63 v

Secret network in Kansas helped blacks escape slavery Underground Railroad in Kansas transported as many as 2,000 passengers (September 14, 2015)... 73 Freedom s Frontier: Union betrayal leads to war atrocity Thousands of Indians, slaves die in S.E. Kansas (October 13, 2015)... 81 Black exodus: A journey fueled by hope African- Americans migrate west to escape post-war oppression (November 9, 2015)... 93 Surviving segregation: first-hand accounts from Kansas, Missouri Jim Crow laws restricted lives of blacks for nearly 100 years (December 7, 2015)...103 Freedom s Struggle: History parallels happenings in today s world Ongoing fight for equality plays out on college campuses (January 4, 2016)...115 Sites to Visit...125 Special Thanks...131 vi

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Forward We ve always had storytellers. From the first people who painted the walls of their caves to our present day digital displays, telling a good story engages and enlivens. Sharing, preserving and telling stories of the western migration, of the border war and the enduring struggle for freedom, lead volunteers on both side of our shared state line to create the Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area. It helps to have good friends who are good storytellers. That s the blessing of Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area s partnership with the Topeka Capital-Journal. Thanks to the commitment and permission of TCJ Publisher Zach Ahrens, we are able to share this exceptional collection of stories and pictures of our heritage area with you. While always available online, we wanted to create this physical copy of those stories and pictures to help you understand what all of us working together under the Freedom s Frontier banner are attempting to do in sharing, preserving and telling these stories. Enjoy! Jim Ogle Executive Director FFNHA Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area ix

About Jan Biles Jan Biles wrote the articles in this book. She has worked since 2002 for the Topeka Capital-Journal, where she has served as weekend editor, senior writer and currently niche products editor. Prior to coming to the Topeka Capital-Journal, she worked at the Lawrence Journal-World, Hutchinson News and Pittsburg Morning Sun, all in Kansas. Before embarking on her journalism career, Biles was an English and journalism teacher at Jayhawk-Linn High School in Mound City; a teacher of students with learning disabilities at Louisburg middle and high schools; and education consultant for the Joplin Regional Center for Developmental Disabilities. Her most recent teaching assignment was as an adjunct professor teaching advance reporting at Baker University in Baldwin City. Biles holds a bachelor s degree in English and a master s degree in counselor education, both from Pittsburg State University. xi

Scope of Project Freedom s Struggle was an ongoing project of The Topeka Capital-Journal about the events that unfolded in the Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area in Kansas and Missouri, from pre-civil War battles to the enduring struggle for freedom. Freedom s Struggle included several online components that can be viewed at http://cjon. co/1iw9nae. Those features include: A slide show of Freedom s Frontier sites in Kansas and Missouri A calendar of events for the heritage area Video walking tours of various Freedom s Frontier sites Maps and timelines Additional features were added as the project progressed. xii

Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area Timeline 1999: Territorial Kansas Heritage Alliance formed to plan for the sesquicentennial of the Kansas Territory in 2004. 2001: TKHA brings in National Park Service and heritage area representatives to provide information about developing a heritage area in eastern Kansas. 2002: Lawrence City Commission/Douglas County Commission appoint a committee to explore the feasibility of establishing a heritage area in Douglas County. January 2003: About 75 people from several counties in Kansas attend Heritage Summit in Lawrence. Working name of emerging heritage area determined to be Bleeding Kansas and the Enduring Struggle for Freedom Heritage Area. 2004: Required feasibility study presented to NPS and Kansas congressional delegation. In March, identical bills establishing Bleeding Kansas heritage area introduced in both House and Senate; both died in committee. 2005: Legislation to establish the Bleeding Kansas heritage area re-introduced in Congress. After pushback from Missouri congressional delegation, Sen. Jim Talent adds 12 Missouri counties to the bill. June 2006: House Committee negotiations led to an agreement that the official name would be Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area. xiii

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Freedom s Frontier: Heritage area borne from struggle Bleeding Kansas proposal ruffled Missourian s feathers Looking north to northwest, the Topeka Fort Riley Road runs through the grasslands toward Mount Mitchell near Wamego. Photo: Courtesy of Mount Mitchell Prairie Guards About 34 miles west of Topeka, Mount Mitchell rises from the prairie. In July and August, the ungrazed grasses on the mound are known to grow 7 feet high. The landscape is strewn with pink quartzite boulders, carried to the area 600,000 to 700,000 years ago when glacial ice sheets from what is now Wisconsin and South Dakota stretched into the area. On the summit is an Indian burial ground, a reminder of the native peoples who lived there 1,000 to 2,000 years ago and later were removed by the government to land designated as Indian Territory. 1

Ruts and swales of an old trail on the eastern side of the mound are testaments to the nation s westward expansion. John C. Fremont and his guide, mountain man Kit Carson, led an expedition along the trail in 1843. A decade later, the route would provide reliable passage between newly established Topeka and Fort Riley. Between 1857 and 1861, as border wars over slavery spilled blood in Kansas and Missouri and the Civil War loomed, the trail became a branch of the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses that helped escaped slaves reach freedom. Chapters of the nation s history were written on Mount Mitchell and other natural environments in eastern Kansas. About 15 years ago, a group of historians and tourism agencies launched a grassroots effort to establish a national heritage area to preserve the stories embedded in the territorial landscape. They narrowed the focus to Bleeding Kansas, the violent confrontations between freestate and pro-slavery forces along the Kansas-Missouri border from 1854 to 1861. Establishing the heritage area, however, proved to be dicier than expected. The words Bleeding Kansas would cause simmering North versus South resentments to bubble to the surface, and a new border war in Congress would turn the effort on its ear. A Kansas idea In the mid-1990s, a group of historians, economic development officials and others from across the state began exploring ways to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Kansas Territory in 2004. But it was hard for the Legislature or anyone else to understand why that was 2

important, said Judy Billings, former director of the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau. So, the group decided to incorporate in 1999 as the Territorial Kansas Heritage Alliance and produce a brochure focusing on abolitionist John Brown that could be used to promote Kansas. Brown, who believed the only way to end slavery was with an armed insurrection, played a major role in the bloody border wars. But Billings thought more than a brochure could be done to bring the state s pre-civil War history to a larger stage. The idea of a national heritage area came to mind. As luck would have it, then-douglas County Commissioner Charles Jones also had been learning about heritage areas and came to her with a similar idea. TKHA members were intrigued and sought advice in 2001 from National Park Service and heritage area representatives on what was needed to bring their idea to fruition. They told us it would take 10 years to do it, Billings said. We didn t believe them. Over the next three years, monthly grassroots meetings continued and a feasibility study was completed and approved by the National Park Service regional office in Omaha. The name for the proposed 28-county heritage area Bleeding Kansas and the Enduring Struggle for Freedom Heritage Area had been selected. It was time to go to Washington, D.C. In March 2004, identical bills establishing the Bleeding Kansas National Heritage Area were introduced in both the House and Senate. Both died in committee. 3

The legislation was reintroduced in 2005, and Billings traveled to the capital to testify before the Senate Energy and Resources Subcommittee on National Park Service. Because of time restraints, the subcommittee s members couldn t ask her any questions. Sen. Jim Talent, R-Missouri, apparently had plenty of questions. The next thing I knew, he was saying, Why aren t there any Missouri counties? and These are the counties I want in, she said. He said Ike Skelton (D- Missouri) was a senior member of Congress and a historian and he should have been consulted. The first shot of the modern-day border war had been fired. Missouri perspective Terry Ramsey, former director of the Bushwhacker Museum in Nevada, Mo., remembers attending a few Kansas Territorial Heritage Alliance meetings. She had been invited because the violence of Bleeding Kansas crossed into Missouri. What became obvious to me was they wanted to tell the Kansas stories, and my job was to tell the stories of southwest Missouri, Ramsey said. To disregard the Missouri perspective of that history seemed, well, disrespectful. A national heritage area has to be authorized by Congress, and it became a political thing. They had to convince the entire Congress, not just the Kansas delegation, she said. The name itself Bleeding Kansas was like a jab from John Brown s pike. That did not go down very well with other congressmen, especially those from Missouri. 4

That title was saying Kansas was good and Missouri was bad, she said. Talent wanted 12 Missouri counties added to the bill introduced by the Kansans. Skelton s office wanted to name the heritage area and had submitted a list of demands that included which counties in Missouri would be added and stipulations that representatives from both states would sit on its board of trustees. It became a Pepto Bismol moment, Ramsey said. The Carnegie Building in Lawrence serves as the headquarters of the Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area. Exhibits in the building give an overview of the heritage area s history, from the border wars between Kansas and Missouri to the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case to continuing struggles for freedom. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal Historians on the Kansas side wanted to stand their ground. The demands from Missouri created conflict among TKHA members over what compromises they were willing to make. Animosity between the two sides of the border was equal. Missouri was against the Kansas story, and Kansas was against the Missouri story, Ramsey said. When 5

we started off the opinion was if I was recognizing the Kansas story I was somehow invalidating Missouri s story. It became clear that congressional approval hinged on telling both sides of the border war story. TKHA members voted on a new name: Freedom s Frontier National Heritage Area. The new moniker seemed to satisfy Skelton and the rest of the Missouri delegation. Missouri is another part of our story good, bad or indifferent, Billings said. We had to teach ourselves to understand that. We are obligated to tell both sides. On Oct. 12, 2006, President George W. Bush signed enabling legislation to create the heritage area and make it eligible for federal funding. A committee of representatives from Kansas and Missouri was given three years to create a management plan. Moving forward As the management plan committee began its work, Ramsey said, members became more aware of how their histories were connected and how important the geographic features and landscape like the prairie grasses, quartzite boulders and frontier trail at Mount Mitchell were to shaping history. Hard feelings over the congressional battle began to subside. We discovered what was happening was we were strengthening each other s stories, she said. Three themes kept tying their stories together: shaping the frontier, the Missouri-Kansas border war and the enduring struggle for freedom. Our stories center around the changing definition of freedom slavery, women s rights, indigenous tribes, 6

immigration issues. We all have very strong stories in the Freedom s Frontier boundaries that address these issues, Ramsey said. Today, the heritage area encompasses 29 counties in eastern Kansas and 12 western Missouri counties and joins 49 other heritage areas in the United States. Managed as a grassroots organization of partners, the heritage area receives about $300,000 per year from the federal government and is required to match the amount with private donations or funds allocated by state, county or city commissions, historic sites and other entities. In addition to its summer youth camps and efforts to place signage on highways and at historic sites, Freedom s Frontier s future projects include awarding grants for school field trips, in-services for educators and kiosks at its partner sites throughout the state. Billings said Freedom s Frontier is a source of tremendous pride. It s proof you don t have to have a road map, she said. You just have to feel it s the right thing to do and try to convince people their participation will benefit them as they go along toward the future. 7

Free or slave Kansas? A decision that split the nation Slavery question creates 2 governments, 2 capital in Kansas Territory Tim Rues, site administrator at Constitutional Hall State Historic Site in Lecompton, stands beside a painting showing free-stater James Lane protesting the proslavery constitution convention in Lecompton. Rues often portrays Lane during historical reenactments. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal It was no secret Sen. Stephen A. Douglas wanted to be president. The short but dominant Democrat from Illinois, nicknamed Little Giant, lost his first bid for the presidency in 1852, when he failed to get his party s nomination because he lacked the backing of Southern states. At the time, the nation was firmly divided over the issues of slavery and the opening of new territories for settlement. The states were equally divided as pro-slavery or anti-slavery. 9

The U.S. House opposed slavery, while the U.S. Senate supported it. However, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act stoked fears among Northern abolitionists that the needle on the country s moral compass was turning south. Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, all escaped slaves were to be returned to their masters; law enforcement officers could be fined $1,000 if they didn t arrest runaway slaves; and citizens who aided a runaway slave by giving them food or shelter could be subject to a $1,000 fine and imprisonment. Douglas knew if he ever were to grab the presidential golden ring, he would have to please the pro-slavers and retain the backing of Northerners. His strategy: The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which would create the Kansas and Nebraska territories and open the land for settlement. But the proposed legislation didn t stop there. Douglas had written into the act the provision of popular sovereignty, giving white male inhabitants the power to determine whether the territories would enter the Union as free or slave states. He wanted people to decide slavery at the ballot box, said Tim Rues, site administrator at Constitution Hall State Historic Site in Lecompton. The Kansas-Nebraska Act also allowed for the negation of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude, with Missouri as the exception. Douglas act meant slavery could conceivably reach as far west as the Pacific Ocean. That was the purpose, so Douglas could say to the South, Look what I ve done. I ve made expansion of slavery possible. But he didn t fool anybody, said Don 10

Lambert, historian and member of Friends of the Free State Capitol Inc. Douglas assumed Nebraska would follow the lead of Iowa, its free-state neighbor, and Kansas would enter as a slave state because of its proximity to Southern-leaning Missouri maintaining the political balance in Congress. The senator from Illinois was wrong. Instead, the strategy he hoped would take him to the White House set in motion an uprising marked by election fraud and conflicts that reached from the Kansas-Missouri border to the chambers of Congress. Constitutional Hall State Historic Site in Lecompton contains several exhibits about territorial Kansas and its struggle to become a free state. Lecompton was the proslavery capital of territorial Kansas. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal New England abolitionists, who believed slavery was immoral, migrated west, settling in Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, Osawatomie and other towns. Free-soilers, who argued free men on free soil was a better economic system than slavery, rallied with the abolitionists. At the same time, pro-slavery factions from Missouri tried 11

Timeline: A Free State is Born 1820: Congress enacts the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting slavery north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude. May 30, 1854: Kansas-Nebraska Act signed by President Franklin Pierce; established Kansas and Missouri territories, inhabitants to vote Kansas as free or slave state. March 30, 1855: Election of territorial pro-slavery bogus legislature; passed by fraudulent voting by Missourians. July 2, 1855: Bogus Legislature meets at Pawnee. Aug. 8, 1855: Lecompton named territorial capital by Bogus Legislature. Oct. 23, 1855: Topeka Constitution Convention opens in Constitution Hall in Topeka to establish free-state government and constitution. Jan. 24, 1856: President Franklin Pierce declares Topeka government to be in rebellion. May 22, 1856: U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner assaulted in Senate chambers after speech in support of free-state Kansas. July 3, 1856: U.S. House passes Topeka Constitution; Senate prevents final vote. July 4, 1856: Federal troops break up the Topeka legislature in Constitution Hall. 12

Oct. 19, 1857: Lecompton Constitutional Convention opens; writes pro-slavery constitution that is later rejected by voters. May 18, 1858: Leavenworth Constitution approved by voters; prohibits slavery and allows black citizenship; later rejected. July 5, 1859: Wyandotte Constitutional Convention opens; writes anti-slavery constitution approved by voters and Congress. Jan. 29, 1861: Kansas admitted as a free state. Sources: Lecompton Historical Society; Territorial Kansas Online 13

to show they had roots in the Kansas Territory to justify their voting in upcoming elections. Two thousand slaves from Missouri had been brought to Kansas to show Kansas already was a slave state, Lambert said. Flags hang over a chair inside Constitution Hall in Topeka. The historic building is currently being restored. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal President Franklin Pierce chose Andrew Reeder, a Pennsylvania lawyer and Democratic Party member, to be the first governor of the Kansas Territory. Reeder, a popular sovereignty supporter, called for the first election on Nov. 29, 1854, to select a delegate to Congress. Missourians flooded across the border, ensuring the election of a pro-slavery congressman. Protests by freestaters went unheeded; their fears proved well-founded the following spring. 14

During the first legislative election on March 30, 1855, in pro-slavery Lecompton, an estimated 5,000 Missourians showed up at the polls. When election judges refused to accept their ballots, they were threatened. The Missourians were so menacing that free-staters and freesoilers stayed away. There were twice as many votes cast as there were people. There were 3,000 white males (in Kansas Territory) and 6,000 votes were cast, Rues said. The first legislature was outrageously fraudulent. Because of the influence of the border ruffians, Reeder ordered the Legislature soon known as the Bogus Legislature to convene in July 1855 at Pawnee, a fourday ride west from Lecompton. Kansas Historical Society records indicate Reeder charged the legislators with designating a capital, writing a constitution, deciding if Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state and organizing a militia, among other duties. The legislators met in Pawnee for five days before voting to move the government to the Shawnee Manual Labor School in Fairway, near the Missouri border. There, they selected Lecompton as the territorial capital and passed a law that made helping fugitive slaves and speaking and writing against slavery in the territory a felony punishable by imprisonment. Free-staters and free-soilers were incensed. They retaliated by creating the Free State political party and setting up a separate government in Topeka. After the summer of 1855, we had competing governments 20 miles apart, Rues said. Mirror governments were set up two governors, two legislatures and two constitution halls, all to control Kansas. 15

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington aligned themselves with whichever territorial government fit their Northern or Southern allegiances. Battle over constitutions Free-staters wanted to write an anti-slavery state constitution and get its approval by Congress before their counterparts would submit a pro-slavery document. Forty free-state delegates gathered on Oct. 23, 1855, in Topeka at an unfinished Constitution Hall to piece together a constitution. These delegates didn t necessarily see eye to eye on anything, so there were unlikely alliances, Lambert said. Although a proposal to give women the right to vote only received eight votes, the final draft took a hard line on slavery, declaring the practice illegal in Kansas and refusing to recognize any person as a slave, including those in other states. That was illegal, and they had to know that, Lambert said. Their actions were commendable given the country was pro-slavery at the time. The Topeka Constitution passed in the U.S. House by two votes on July 3, 1856, but was prevented from coming to a vote in the Senate, in part due to Douglas political maneuvering and its denouncement by President Pierce. By that time, the escalating conflict in Kansas already had spilled into the chambers of Congress. On May 20, 1856, Sen. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, delivered a speech titled The Crime Against Kansas, which derided Southern senators for 16

their support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. An angry South Carolina congressman, Preston Brooks, declared the speech libelous. Two days later, Brooks entered the Senate chambers and beat Sumner with a walking cane until it broke and the senator was bloody and unconscious. Pierce eventually declared the Topeka government to be a rebellion and sent in federal Army troops and cannons on July 4, 1856, to disperse the free-state government, Lambert said. The Bogus Legislature met in September 1857 at Constitution Hall in Lecompton to draw up a document that would protect the rights of slaveholders by allowing inhabitants to keep the slaves they owned, banning free blacks from living in the territory and guaranteeing voting privileges for white males. President James Buchanan, elected in 1856, backed the Lecompton Constitution. However, after a candle box concealing fraudulent votes during the state vote to ratify the Lecompton Constitution was discovered, congressional support for the pro-slavers faded and a new referendum was allowed. On Aug, 2, 1858, in a final vote that was heavily supervised by order of territorial Gov. James Denver, the Lecompton Constitution was rejected, 11,300 to 1,788. The growing free-state hold in the territory was reflected in the final two attempts to write a state constitution. The unsuccessful Leavenworth Constitution prohibited slavery and gave all men, including freed slaves, the right to vote. The Wyandotte Constitution, approved by territorial voters on Oct. 4, 1859, secured voting rights for white males 21 years or older and reset the western boundaries 17

of Kansas, from the Continental Divide east to the 25th meridian, where it stands today. Although it denied most voting rights to women, the approved constitution allowed them to vote in school district elections, own property and have equal rights in the possession of their children. Collateral damage Skirmishes between free-state and pro-slavery forces had turned bloody by the time Kansas was admitted as the 34th state on Jan. 29, 1861. Abolitionist John Brown, who had killed pro-slavers in Kansas and Missouri, had been hanged at Harpers Ferry, Va. Missouri ruffians continued to threaten free-staters along the border shared with Kansas. It was the first time in history that white men were dying in Kansas over the issue of slavery, Rues said. Several Southern states had seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America. In Topeka, when it came time to name its streets, city fathers refused to memorialize Pierce, opting instead to celebrate his political rival, Sen. Henry Clay. The ramifications of Douglas presidential ambitions came to bear as the national Democratic Party splintered and the Republican Party was born. Douglas gained the 1860 presidential nomination for the Northern Democratic Party and was defeated by Republican Abraham Lincoln, an anti-slavery congressman from Illinois. On April 12, 1861, Confederates attacked Fort Sumner, the act most historians pinpoint as the official start of the Civil War. 18

Fort Sumner was the first battle of the Civil War officially, Rues said, but to men and women in eastern Kansas and western Missouri it began on May 30, 1854, with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. 19

John Brown s legacy remains controversial Kansas battle cemented abolitionist s reputation Kerry Altenbernd, who is portraying abolitionist John Brown, talks about the battle between Brown s militia and pro-southern forces led by Capt. Henry Pate on June 2, 1856, east of Baldwin City. Brown defeated Pate s men in what some historians consider the first battle of the Civil War. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal BALDWIN CITY Abolitionist John Brown knew enough about military strategy to know better than to attack an enemy in broad daylight. So, he and his men waited until dark on June 1, 1856, to start the four-mile trek from Prairie City to Black Jack Springs, where Capt. Henry Pate and his 35-man pro-southern militia from Missouri were camped along Captain s Creek. 21

Pate was preparing to carry out his orders to capture Brown but he had already made one miscalculation that day. Pate sent five boys to raid (Prairie City) that Sunday morning and expected nothing but an easy time of it. But the church was having a revival, and free-staters were there with their rifles, said Kerry Altenbernd, onsite tour coordinator at Black Jack Battlefield and Nature Park near Baldwin City. Three of Pate s men were captured; the other two escaped. Among the church-goers were Brown and freestate militia Capt. Samuel Shore, who learned about Pate s camp from the captured men, and assembled their followers to quash the proslavery threat. After nightfall, the 25 men in the free-state militias started their advance, thinking they could surround and attack Pate s troops before dawn. It didn t work out that way, Altenbernd, president of the Black Jack Battlefield Trust, said. The free-state forces stayed off established trails so they wouldn t be detected. But the terrain was rough, and they couldn t carry lanterns because the lights would have been seen for miles on the treeless landscape. They only had the starlight to navigate by, he said. They didn t make it there (by daylight). The two men who had escaped at Prairie City had made it back to the campsite in time to warn Pate of the approaching free-staters. The captain positioned his men behind four wagons in a semicircle near the creek and posted sentries on the hillsides. As Brown s and Shore s militias approached at sunrise, one of the sentries fired igniting what some historians consider the first battle of the Civil War. 22

Prelude to Black Jack Brown, born in 1800 in Torrington, Conn., realized the brutalities of slavery at age 12 when he witnessed a slave owner beat a black boy he had befriended with a coal shovel. Jeff Quigley, Black Jack Battlefield Trust board member and site manager for Black Jack Battlefield and Nature Park near Baldwin City, says how abolitionist John Brown is viewed is determined in large part by one's political leanings and geographical ties. Some see Brown as a martyr who gave his life to end slavery, while others view him as a murderous maniac. Photo: Jan Biles The Capital-Journal When Illinois abolitionist-editor Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in November 1837 for taking a stance against the lynching of a black man, Brown, a devoted Calvinist living in Ohio, vowed to do whatever it took to end slavery. Within two years, he was drawing up plans to lead a slave revolt. But Brown also had another side. He failed at 16 different businesses in his life, Jeff Quigley, Black Jack Battlefield Trust board member and site manager for the battlefield/nature park, said. 23

During an economic downturn in September 1842, Brown filed for bankruptcy, leaving his family destitute. He and two of his sons eventually moved to Springfield, Mass., where they formed a company to market wool. Brown crossed the Atlantic Ocean to sell wool in England, but he was unwilling to barter at a price lower than he expected, causing the company to go under. By fall 1855, five of Brown s sons had moved to territorial Kansas, establishing Brown Station west of Osawatomie and vowing to fight slavery. They had failed at farming and were sick (with ague), Quigley said. Brown received a letter from two of his sons saying they needed his help and begging him to come to Kansas. They also asked him to bring guns. Brown picked up revolvers and broadswords in Ohio and brought those out to Kansas, he said. When he got there, it was already starting to come to a head, and there were skirmishes with pro-southern (forces). His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun. Mine was bounded by time. His stretched away to the silent shores of eternity. I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and abolitionist leader known for his oratory skills 24

At the time, no one in the territory knew who Brown was. That didn t last long. The following May, after the sacking of Lawrence by pro- Southern Missourians, Brown and other free-staters bent on retaliation rode to Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, pulled five proslavery settlers three men and two teenagers from their beds and hacked them to death. The butchery terrified both free-staters and pro- Southerners. He immediately was looked upon as the man to get and to stop, Quigley said. They saw him as a murderer. After the massacre, Pate, a 24-year-old lawyer and newspaper man in Westport, Mo., who was present at the sacking of Lawrence, was deputized as a U.S. marshal to seek out and capture 56-year-old Brown. Pate formed the Shannon Sharpshooters, named after proslavery Kansas territorial Gov. Wilson Shannon, who opened the arsenal in Liberty, Mo., and supplied them with federal firearms. Pate s announced purpose was to get Brown, but he tried to drive free-staters out of the Kansas-Missouri area, Altenbernd said. Near Osawatomie, Pate arrested two of Brown s sons, Jason and John Jr., who were beaten, placed in chains, tied behind wagons and dragged to Camp Sackett, near Lecompton. Brown was thinking of his imprisoned sons as he led the militias toward Black Jack Springs in the darkness of night. Brown wanted to doubly get Pate, he said. 25

This illustration shows where the militias of John Brown and Samuel were positioned during the battle with Capt. Henry Pate s forces. The dotted line shows the path of Frederick Brown rode his horse through the battle lines, causing Pate to think free-state reinforcements were coming from Lawrence. Illustration: Chris Marshall Special to the Capital-Journal Clash at the creek After Pate s sentry fired his gun at Black Jack Springs, the free-state militias charged toward the wagons lined up at the Y-shaped creek. Pate was not a military man. He thought wooden wagons would stop musket balls. They didn t, Altenbernd said. Pate abandoned the wagons and ordered his men to take cover along the creek s eastern branch. Brown s men positioned themselves at the western branch. The creek had banks on both sides and made a natural fortification, he said. They were less than 100 yards from each other in the battle. The reason both sides were not shot to pieces was because they could duck down to reload. 26

Although Brown failed at selling wool in England, he succeeded in studying the country s battles and military strategies, giving him an edge against the inexperienced Pate. The free-state militia was down to eight or nine men Shore turned tail during the battle. Pate s number had dwindled to 20. To ensure his enemy couldn t escape, Brown ordered two of his men to shoot Pate s horses and mules. Pate knew he was stranded and was worried reinforcements were coming from Lawrence, Altenbernd said. Brown had positioned his son Frederick, who was in his early 20s, away from the front line and put him in charge of the militia s horses. Suddenly, Frederick rode a horse between the two lines of battle, yelling Father, we have surrounded them and we ve cut off their lines of communications. Fearing the arrival of free-state reinforcements, Pate put up a white flag and the fighting stopped. The battle had lasted nearly three hours. Although several men were injured, no one was killed. The defeated captain approached his foe, thinking the truce would be honored. Pate didn t know it was John Brown, Altenbernd said. Brown pointed a pistol at Pate and said he was his prisoner. Brown escorted his captives to Prairie City, where he negotiated surrender terms and prisoner exchanges, and then moved to a campsite 81/2 miles further south. 27

On June 5, dragoons from Fort Leavenworth, under Col. Edwin Sumner and Lt. Jeb Stuart, arrived at Brown s camp and ordered him to disband his militia and release the prisoners. He complied. Brown s victory at Black Jack Springs cemented his reputation as a guerrilla warrior. That reputation was tested on Aug. 30, 1856, when a few hundred border ruffians attacked free-state Osawatomie, killing Frederick. Brown and about 40 men tried to defend the town, but they were forced to retreat and watch the town burn. I have only a short time to live only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause, Brown said afterward. He done more in dying, than 100 men would in living. Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who helped rescue other slaves via the Underground Railroad and Union spy during the Civil War Controversial legacy A determined Brown headed to New England to raise money for his grandest plan: a raid on the U.S. Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. Brown intended to steal the almost 200,000 weapons stored at the arsenal and use them to arm freed slaves in his imagined slave uprising in the South. At the fundraisers, Brown displayed a trophy from the Battle of Black Jack Pate s bowie knife, which he later 28

took to a Connecticut blacksmith and asked if he could make a thousand of them to be attached to 6-foot poles. Known as pikes, the weapons were to be used during the raid on Harpers Ferry. On Oct. 16, 1859, Brown and 21 other men attacked the arsenal. Word of the breach spread quickly, and townspeople and local militiamen fought back, eventually forcing Brown s men to take refuge in an engine house. Federal forces, led by Col. Robert E. Lee, arrived two days later, and after negotiations with Brown failed, the troops stormed the engine house and captured the raiders. Ten of Brown s men were killed, including his sons Watson and Oliver. Brown and seven others were captured. Brown was found guilty of treason and hanged on Dec. 2, 1859, in Charlestown, Va. Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against the state. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right. Abraham Lincoln, who would be elected president in 1861 Quigley said Brown s raid widened the division between the North and South the arming of slaves panicked a lot of people in the South. 29

John Brown did one thing well fighting against slavery, he said. The Civil War didn t start because of John Brown, but it accelerated very rapidly because of him. Brown s legacy remains unsettled: Was he a martyr or a maniac? Quigley, who was born and raised in Lafayette County, Mo., said the answer lies in one s political leanings and geographical ties. At the time, Brown was perceived as mentally unstable by pro-southerners who considered black people as chattel and free-staters stunned by the Pottawatomie Creek murders. Still, others rallied behind Brown, seeing his actions as an eye for an eye for wrongs done by Southern sympathizers or part of God s plan to end slavery. Both sides thought they were right and fighting on the side of God, Quigley said. When you break it down, that he was instilling fear in the hearts of people in order to change something political and form another outcome and doing it for his religion, it fits the mold it lines up with the definition that s terrorism. 30

John Brown s Journey May 9, 1800: John Brown born in Torrington, Conn. 1837: Abolitionist-editor Elijah P. Lovejoy is murdered and Brown vows to destroy slavery. 1849: Brown moves to a farm in North Elba, N.Y., where blacks and whites live together on nearly equal terms. Oct. 7, 1855: At the request of his sons, Brown comes to Brown Station, west of Osawatomie in the Kansas Territory. December 1855: Brown forms the Liberty Guards and participates in the Wakarusa War, about six miles from Lawrence. One free-state man killed. May 24-25, 1856: After the sacking of Lawrence, Brown directs the murder of five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. June 2, 1856: Brown s militia defeats Henry Clay Pate s forces at Battle of Black Jack near Baldwin City. Aug. 30, 1856: Brown s men defeated at Battle of Osawatomie. Brown s son, Frederick, is killed. 1857: Brown raises funds in New England; returns to Kansas in November to recruit men for raid of Harpers Ferry, Va. Dec. 20, 1858: Brown directs raid into western Missouri that freed 11 slaves. Oct. 16-18, 1859: Brown s raid on Harpers Ferry fails. Dec. 2, 1859: Brown is hanged at Charlestown, Va.; buried at family farm in North Elba. Sources: University of Missouri-Kansas City; Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, Spring-Summer 2004 Edition 31

One war atrocity, two different accounts Questions remain about senator s involvement in burning of Osceola Joan McPeak, president of the St. Clair (Mo.) County Historical Society, stands at the junction of the Osage and Sac rivers in Osceola, Mo., which was burned and looted in September 1861 by the Kansas Brigade, which was under the command of James H. Lane, a U.S. senator from Kansas. McPeak says the effects of the burning are still being felt today. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal OSCEOLA, MO. Osceola had been left unprotected on Sept. 22, 1861, a time when the state was divided by Union loyalists, Southern sympathizers and Missouri rebels trying to protect their homeland. Since the building of its first home in the mid-1830s, Osceola had grown to be a prosperous port at the junction of the Osage and Sac rivers in Missouri, where shipments of goods from New Orleans were off-loaded and hauled to points west and south on wagon trains or ox carts. 33

But the Civil War was in its fifth month secessionist troops fired on Fort Sumter, S.C., on April 12, 1861 and nearly all of the able-bodied men in Osceola had joined the estimated 12,000 troops amassed by Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, a leader of the Missouri State Guard, to fight against a Union garrison at Lexington, Mo. The population of Osceola had narrowed to mostly old men, women and children. It was a ripe plum, said Joan McPeak, president of the St. Clair County Historical Society in Osceola. Ready to pluck the plum was the Kansas Brigade, the combined 3rd, 4th and 5th Kansas Volunteers commanded by James Henry Lane, a U.S. senator from Kansas. The militia also became known as Lane s Brigade, and generically as Jayhawkers. The Kansas Brigade was still stinging from a loss 21 days earlier against Price s forces at the Battle of Dry Wood Creek near Fort Scott. Adding salt to the wound was Price s victory in August 1861 over Union troops at the Battle of Wilson s Creek near Springfield, Mo. Price s goal was to clear Union loyalists from Missouri and ultimately retake the state for the Confederacy. Lane, determined to stop him, organized more than 1,200 troops to counter his mission. As Price and the Missouri State Guard moved north into Lexington in mid-september 1861, Lane and his mixed brigade of infantry, cavalry and artillery crossed the Kansas-Missouri border at Trading Post near Pleasanton and sacked the Missouri communities of Butler, Morristown and Papinsville before ending their bloody, fiery offensive at Osceola, leaving economic and emotional wounds from which the town has yet to recover. 34

Truth or legend? During the late-night hours of Sept. 21, 1861, the Kansas Brigade arrived on the southwestern edge of Osceola. The troops waited until 2 a.m. the next day to start their march into the port city. However, word of Lane s offensive had spread to Osceola, and before the brigade could enter the town, they were fired upon by about 20 militiamen armed with rifles and shotguns under the leadership of Missouri State Guard Capt. John M. Weidemeyer. The Missouri militia was far outnumbered and couldn t match the firepower of the Kansas brigade s artillery and soon retreated, leaving the town unguarded. The Kansas Brigade descended on Osceola at sunrise and began ransacking the city. What happened next depends on the storyteller. According to McPeak, the first stop for Lane and his men was the bank, which supposedly had more than $100,000 in deposits. But our spies found out (Lane was coming) so the old men buried it, she said, adding the removal of the money so enraged Lane that he ordered his men to loot businesses and homes, burn the city s structures and raze the St. Clair County Courthouse with artillery shells. The burning of the town wasn t enough for the Jayhawkers, McPeak said. Lane rounded up 12 men on the town square, conducted a drumhead court-martial that found them guilty of treason and shot them, she said. Nine of the Missourians were fatally wounded. Two men died later from their wounds; the remaining victim survived. 35

While the ruins of the town smoldered, she said, Lane s men cracked open kegs of liquor to celebrate and began loading up their spoils. Osceola historian Richard Sunderwirth, in his book The Burning of Osceola, Mo., claims Lane stole tons of lead, 3,000 sacks of flour, 500 pounds of sugar and molasses, 50 sacks of coffee, 350 horses, 400 cattle, powder kegs, silk dresses, shoes, sugar, bacon slabs, furniture, barrels of brandy and other items. Sunderwirth contends the Kansas Brigade also left town with about 200 slaves, citing an article noting many of the slaves were sold into Louisiana rather than being freed in Kansas. By the time they departed Osceola to head to Kansas City to continue their pursuit of Price, he wrote, many of Lane s men were so drunk they couldn t walk and had to be loaded into wagons or carriages and carted out of town. Topeka attorney Bryce Benedict, author of Jayhawkers: The Civil War Brigade of James Henry Lane, says the Missourians account of what happened in Osceola makes for a good story, but several aspects of their account aren t true. Lies, lies, lies, Benedict said. Letters from Union soldiers indicate Lane was never in Osceola. Instead, the Kansas regiments were led by Cols. James Montgomery, John Ritchie and William Weer. Records indicate Montgomery and Ritchie voted to burn the town; Weer opposed the action. Lane was leading a separate detachment of troops than the one that occupied Osceola, he said, adding the commander learned of the town s burning when he encountered the Kansas regiments as they were retreating from the town. 36

Furthermore, Benedict said, he has found no contemporary account of an execution happening on that day in Osceola. No one has identified the men who were killed, he said, pointing out the victims names certainly would have been known by their neighbors. Topeka attorney Bryce Benedict, author of Jayhawkers: The Civil War Brigade of James Henry Lane, says his research disputes some of the claims by Missourians against James Henry Lane, who commanded the 3rd, 4th and 5th Kansas Volunteers during the Civil War. Photo: Jan Biles The Capital-Journal Benedict believes the Missourians may be confusing what happened in Osceola with Lane s earlier attack on Morristown, where five prisoners were sentenced to death in a kangaroo court and executed. During wartime, the military appropriates supplies for its own use or to deprive the enemy. However, when troops take supplies or other items for their personal use, it crosses into stealing. 37

We don t know the extent of looting (at Osceola), he said. We know a number of items were taken. We don t know how much thievery there was because no inventory was taken. Benedict also disputes the notion that the Kansas regiments sold the slaves that followed them out of Osceola. They did free them, either by directly spiriting them out of Missouri or by turning a blind eye to the slaves escaping, he said. Regardless, Benedict said, the burning of Osceola was completely unjustified and the killing of prisoners at Morristown was nothing short of murder. There was no military reason for it, he said. The burning was a war crime. No coming back Osceola never recovered from the sacking by the Kansas Brigade. Many residents left the burned city seeking a safer place to live; others stayed but had a difficult time restoring their lives. A month after the burning of Osceola, the Confederacy recognized Missouri as a seceding state. As a result, the city received no help from the federal government with its reconstruction, and the state became a battleground between Union and Confederates forces. There was no safe place, McPeak said, describing how both armies pillaged crops and supplies as they marched across the land. You really didn t know who your enemies were. 38

Lane didn t fare well in the long run either. Questions arose about whether he had been authorized to lead the Kansas Brigade in an offensive against the Missouri towns. The attack on Osceola was criticized for escalating anti-union sentiment in Missouri. Two years later, in August 1863, the memory of Osceola helped fuel William Quantrill and other Missouri bushwhackers during their retaliatory raid on Lawrence, killing more than 160 men and boys. Lane was re-elected to the U.S. Senate in 1865, but he quickly lost favor in Kansas after supporting the reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson, according to the Kansas Historical Society. Lane grew despondent and shot himself in the head in 1866. Today, Osceola s population hovers at 950. Only a few items from the sacking remain a grand piano played by a doctor s wife to help ease the pain of the injured being treated in their home and sections of the spiral staircase from the shelled county courthouse. A large monument in the town s cemetery stands in memory of citizens of Osceola murdered by Kansas Jayhawkers and the Union Army. Confederate flags mark other grave sites. In 2011, the Osceola Board of Aldermen passed a resolution saying it was time for The University of Kansas to drop the mascot name Jayhawk and end its association with a group of domestic terrorists. McPeak said the Kansas Brigade s motive for targeting Osceola remains unclear. She believes the Jayhawkers were looking to rob the bank. Sunderwirth argues the attack on the port city was instigated in part because it was the home of Lane s rival, 39

Sen. Waldo Johnson, an adviser to Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Other historians suggest the regiments wanted to free slaves in the area and abort efforts by proslavery Missourians to secede from the Union. Regardless, McPeak said, the town didn t deserve the Kansans wrath. Nobody from here had done anything to Jim Lane that we know of, she said. A cap-and-ball revolver dug from a yard in Osceola, Mo., is thought to have been carried by a bushwhacker. Collection at the Bushwhacker Museum in Nevada, Mo. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal 40

Who were the bushwhackers? Guerrillas were known for their ambush tactics Will Tollerton, coordinator of the Bushwhacker Museum and Historic Jail in Nevada, Mo., says the southwest Missouri town was the bushwhacker capital during the Civil War era. Bushwhackers were mounted guerrillas who used hit-and-run tactics, such as ambushes, to harass Union forces along the Kansas-Missouri border. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal NEVADA, Mo. Bushwhackers were Missouribased Confederate partisans who believed they were defending their homes and families against the federal government and Union sympathizers during the Civil War era, according to Will Tollerton, coordinator of the Bushwhacker Museum and Historic Jail in Nevada, Mo. And like the Jayhawkers across the border in Kansas, these bands of cavalry which ranged from 10 to hundreds of men burned and looted towns and killed civilians for their cause. There were thousands of these bushwhacker groups, Tollerton said, explaining how 43

Nevada was the bushwhacker capital of Missouri. They had no formal structure, and many came and went as they pleased. Many of them were teenagers. A display at the Bushwhacker Museum and Historic Jail in Nevada, Mo., demonstrates how Missourians were divided by the Civil War. Some fought for the Confederacy or sympathized with the Union, while others wanted to defend their property from both sides. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal Tollerton said bushwhackers were guerrillas who used hit-and-run tactics, such as ambushes, to harass Union forces along the Kansas-Missouri border. They typically wore civilian clothes or the captured uniforms of their enemy. Southern-sympathizing women supported their activities by bringing food to their camps, serving as spies or tending to the wounded. It was hard to tell who was a bushwhacker, he said. A bushwhacker could be a farmer by day and a bushwhacker by night. While Union officials saw bushwhackers as outlaws, many of the Missouri guerrilla leaders held Confederate or Missouri State Guard commissions. The Ranger Partisan Act of 1862 authorized guerrilla activities for the effectual annoyance of the enemy. Some of the bushwhacker leaders were considered heroes in Vernon County (where Nevada is ), he said. 44

After the war, Tollerton said, most bushwhackers returned to their homes, while some chose exile in Texas or Mexico. Many became upstanding citizens. Others, like Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger, who rode with William Quantrill s raiders, turned to crime. The Missouri Constitution of 1865 required the bushwhackers and other citizens to swear an oath of allegiance to the Union before they could vote or hold public office. Tollerton said the law, known as the ironclad oath, was harsh and disenfranchised a lot of people before it was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1867. Cannonballs recovered after battles during the Civil War, as well as other related items, are on display at the Bushwhacker Museum and Historic Jail in Nevada, Mo. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal 45

The Confederate government issued its own money, including these $2 and $3 bills. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal 46

A pistol is secured in the belt of a Confederate uniform on display at the Bushwhacker Museum and Historic Jail in Nevada, Mo. Photo: Emily DeShazer The Capital-Journal 47

General Order No. 11: Scorching of Missouri Missourians exiled, property burned in attempt to get rid of bushwhackers Don Peters, executive director of the Cass County Historical Society in Harrisonville, Mo., talks about General Order No. 11, issued on Aug. 25, 1863, by Union Brigadier Gen. Thomas Ewing. The order removed thousands of residents from Jackson, Cass, Bates and part of Vernon counties in Missouri in an attempt to control the area s guerrillas. Their farmsteads and crop fields also were burned. Peters is pointing to a copy of a painting by George Caleb Bingham that depicts the aftermath of Order No. 11 and later was used as propaganda against Ewing during his campaign for the governorship of Ohio. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal HARRISONVILLE, Mo. Union Brigadier Gen. Thomas Ewing had to face a harsh reality on Aug. 22, 1863. The day before, William Quantrill and his band of nearly 400 bushwhackers from slave-holding Missouri had sacked Lawrence, a free-state stronghold. Quantrill and his men burned nearly all of the town s businesses and murdered 180 men and boys. 49

Ewing, commander of the District of the Border, realized the Union Army was unable to control the Missouri guerrillas, known for their strike-and-run tactics and ability to disappear into the Missouri countryside, where Southern sympathizers often provided them with food, clothing, horses and shelter. They re almost like dust in the wind, Don Peters, executive director of the Cass County Historical Society in Harrisonville, Mo., said of the raiders. If the Union Army was to ever control Missouri, Ewing knew the bushwhackers had to be squashed in a fashion that was both drastic and dramatic. Quantrill s raid on Lawrence handed the brigadier general a reason to retaliate. On Aug. 25, 1863, Ewing issued General Order No. 11 a controversial edict that removed every person in Jackson, Cass, Bates and northern Vernon counties in Missouri from their homes and then set fire to their farmsteads and crop fields. It was called the Burnt District because it was just a ravaged land, Peters said. The enemy in charge Ewing took command of the District of the Border, which included Kansas and eight Missouri counties Jackson, Cass, Bates, northern Vernon, Lafayette, Johnson, Henry and St. Clair on June 26, 1863. The state of the district at that time? Complete chaos. Not only were Union officials unable to control the Missouri guerrillas, but they also couldn t rein in the Jayhawkers, their Kansas counterparts. The bad blood between the Southern sympathizers and the free-staters during the Bleeding Kansas days continued into the Civil War with intensified hatred and bitterness. 50

Neither side was without fault, said Ralph Monaco, a Kansas City-area attorney and author of Scattered to the Four Winds: General Order No. 11 and Marital Law in Jackson County Missouri, 1863. Missourians were outraged that Ewing was appointed commander of the district: As a member of the Leavenworth Constitutional Convention, he helped Kansas enter the Union as a free state in 1861 and was elected as its first chief justice. He resigned from the judgeship in 1862 to enter the military, commanding a regiment that fought bushwhackers in Arkansas and what is now Oklahoma. They put the enemy in charge, Monaco said, adding Ewing also was the brother-in-law of William Tecumseh Sherman, a Union Army general who would become known for the capture and burning of Atlanta in September 1864. Not everyone in the Missouri border counties, however, was a Southern sympathizer or bushwhacker supporter. Some residents were loyal to the Union and federal government; others held no allegiance and were only concerned about protecting their farmsteads from the opposing armies that crisscrossed their land. Missourians learned to be cautious when asked which side they favored during the war. A knock on the door would bring the heart to the mouth of anyone, Monaco said. Being asked where your sympathies were could bring death. Ewing knew shortly after his appointment that he had to get a hold on the district. On Aug. 18 22 days after taking command and three days before Quantrill s raid on Lawrence he issued General Orders No. 9 and 10. 51

General Order No. 10 Headquarters District of the Border Kansas City, Mo, August 18, 1863. I. Officers commanding companies and detachments, will give escort and subsistence, as far as practicable, through that part of Missouri included in the District, to all loyal free persons desiring to remove to the state of Kansas or to a permanent military stations in Missouri-including all persons who have been ascertained, in the manor provided in General Order No. 9 of this District, to have been the slaves of persons engaged in aiding the rebellion since July 17, 1862. Where necessary, the teams of persons engaged in aiding the rebellion since July 23, 1862, will be taken to help such removal and after being used for that purpose, will be turned over to the officer commanding the nearest military station, who will at once report them to an Assistant Provost Marshall, or to the District Provost Marshall and hold them subject to this order. II. Such officers will arrest and send to the District Provost Marshall for punishment, all men (and all women, not heads of families) who willfully aid and encourage guerrillas; with a written statement of the names and residence of such persons and of the proof against them. They will discriminate as carefully as possible between those who are compelled by threats or fears to aid the rebels and those who aid them from disloyal motives. The wives and the children of known guerrillas, and also women who are heads of families and are willfully engaged in aiding guerrillas, will be notified by such officers to move out of this district and out of the State of Missouri forthwith. They will be permitted to take unmolested, their stock, provisions and household goods. If they fail to remove promptly they will be sent by such officers under escort to Kansas City for shipment South, with their cloths and such necessary household furniture as may be worth removing. 52

III. Persons who have borne arms against the Government and voluntarily lay them down and surrender themselves at a military station, will be sent under escort to the District Provost Marshall at these Head Quarters. Such persons will be banished with their families to such State or district out of this department as the General Commanding the Department may direct, and will there remain exempt from other military punishment or account of their past disloyalty, but not exempt from civil trial for treason. IV. No officer or enlisted man, without special instructions from these Head Quarters will burn or destroy any buildings, fences, crops or other property. But all furnaces and fixtures of blacksmith shops in that part of Missouri included in the District, not at military stations, will be destroyed and the tools either removed to such stations or destroyed. V. Commanders of companies and detachments serving in Missouri will not allow persons not in the military service of the United States to accompany them on duty except when employed as guides, and will be held responsible for the good conduct of such men employed as guides and for their obedience to orders. VI. Officers and enlisted men belonging to regiment or companies, organized or unorganized, are prohibited going from Kansas to the District of Northern Missouri without written permission or order from these Head Quarters or from the Assistant Provost Marshal at Leavenworth City or the Commanding officer at Fort Leavenworth or some Officer commanding a military station in the District of Northern Missouri. By Order of Brigadier General Ewing P.B. Plumb, Major and Chief of Staff 53

General Order No. 11 Headquarters District of the Border, Kansas City, August 25, 1863. 1. All persons living in Jackson, Cass, and Bates counties, Missouri, and in that part of Vernon included in this district, except those living within one mile of the limits of Independence, Hickman s Mills, Pleasant Hill, and Harrisonville, and except those in that part of Kaw Township, Jackson County, north of Brush Creek and west of Big Blue, are hereby ordered to remove from their present places of residence within fifteen days from the date hereof. Those who within that time establish their loyalty to the satisfaction of the commanding officer of the military station near their present place of residence will receive from him a certificate stating the fact of their loyalty, and the names of the witnesses by whom it can be shown. All who receive such certificates will be permitted to remove to any military station in this district, or to any part of the State of Kansas, except the counties of the eastern border of the State. All others shall remove out of the district. Officers commanding companies and detachments serving in the counties named will see that this paragraph is promptly obeyed. 2. All grain and hay in the field or under shelter, in the district from which inhabitants are required to remove, within reach of military stations after the 9th day of September next, will be taken to such stations and turned over to the proper officers there and report of the amount so turned over made to district headquarters, specifying the names of all loyal owners and amount of such product taken from them. All grain and hay found in such district after the 9th day of September next, not convenient to such stations, will be destroyed. 3. The provisions of General Order No. 10 from these headquarters will be at once vigorously executed by officers commanding in the parts of the district and at the station not subject to the operations of paragraph 1 of this order, 54

and especially the towns of Independence, Westport and Kansas City. 4. Paragraph 3, General Order No. 10 is revoked as to all who have borne arms against the Government in the district since the 20th day of August, 1863. By order of Brigadier General Ewing. H. Hannahs, Adjt.-Gen l. A pass signed by Brigadier Gen. Thomas Ewing on Nov. 18, 1863, allows a woman to enter the Burnt District "for the purpose of securing property abandoned while obeying General Order No. 11." Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal 55

Order No. 9 allowed the slaves of Southern sympathizers who had sought refuge at military stations to enter the Union Army or be escorted to Kansas or Unioncontrolled Missouri towns. Order No. 10 permitted the arrest of any man who aided the Missouri guerrillas; the exile of women and children known to associate with guerrillas; and the banishment of individuals who had taken up arms against the federal government and then surrendered. The orders laid the groundwork for Ewing s most brutal action. He was already ready to issue Order No. 11, Monaco said. Exile and destruction Peters said the requirements laid out by General Order No. 11 were simply stated: 56

All residents in Jackson, Cass, Bates and northern Vernon counties were required to leave their homes within 15 days. Excluded from the order were those living within one mile of Independence, Hickman s Mills, Pleasant Hill and Harrisonville, which were Union-controlled military posts. Those proving their loyalty to the Union, with witnesses vouching for them, would get a certificate that allowed them to travel to a military station in the district or any part of Kansas, except its eastern border. Those who couldn t prove their loyalty would be removed from the district. All grain and hay found in the fields or under shelters before Sept. 9 would be confiscated and taken to military stations. Grain and hay found after Sept. 9 would be destroyed. At the time of the order, most of the district s men between the ages of 18 and 40 had left their homes to fight in the war. Remaining were old men, women and children. Many of them heard about Order No. 11 for the first time when Union troops arrived at their doorsteps. The women and children took the brunt of this, Peters said. Families were given 15 minutes to gather a horse and whatever possessions they could carry or put into a cart or wagon before they were exiled from the district. There are many accounts of people burying silverware, jewelry and even mattresses thinking they could come back and get them later, Monaco said. After confiscating whatever supplies and livestock they needed, the Union troops burned nearly every farmstead and field in the 3½-county area. Scorched ground could be seen for miles. Pigs and other farm animals roamed the area foraging for food. 57

The reason they did it was because it was easy, Peters said of the evacuation and destruction. About 2,800 farms were contained in the 2,200-squaremile Burnt District. A few homes were purposefully spared by the fire-starters, perhaps because the owners were known to be Union loyalists or aided federal troops in the past. No one really knows the reason they survived. That s one of the questions we have, Peters said. The aftermath While Ewing believed Order No. 11 was a strong and necessary military move, Jonathan Earle, dean of the Honors College at Louisiana State University and coauthor of Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri: The Long Civil War on the Border, said the edict ended up being counterproductive and having unintended consequences. Instead of getting rid of the bushwhackers, it pushed them into central Missouri or farther south, where they continued their strike-and-runs. It made the average Missourian very, very anti-union, said Earle, former director of the University Honors Program at The University of Kansas and former associate director of the Dole Institute of Politics in Lawrence. It had a lasting economic effect. It had repercussions that would last a decade. In 1860, about 400,000 people lived in the district; after Order No. 11, the population was nearly zero. Exiled Missourians had to be granted special permission to return to the charred land where their homes once stood. While some county records were salvaged, documents at the Bates County Courthouse were destroyed. 58

The county had no official business for three years. Everything just froze, said Peggy Buhr, director of the Bates County Museum in Butler, Mo. When people returned, they owed three years of back taxes, even though the land had grown over and lots of rattlesnakes and Mother Nature had reclaimed the area. Only about 30 percent of the people came back. The Burnt District Monument can be found on the west side of Harrisonville, Mo. The monument resembles a chimney, one of the few structures that still stood in the area after General Order No. 11. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal 59

Land that wasn t reclaimed was purchased in large part by land speculators banking on a revival as railroads extended west and the area s coal deposits were mined. Rough time in history General Order No. 11 would come back to haunt Ewing, mainly in the form of a protest painting by George Caleb Bingham that was showcased during Ewing s failed run for governor of Ohio in 1880. Bingham, who was Missouri state treasurer, wanted Ewing to rescind Order No. 11 and vowed to make Ewing infamous with pen and brush after he was rebuked. The painting, which some researchers contend didn t accurately depict what happened in the Burnt District, was used as a propaganda tool against Ewing. People who saw the painting thought the order was a nefarious one, Earle said. I won t go as far as to say A plaque on the lawn of the Bates County Courthouse in Butler, Mo., commemorates the evacuation of citizens and the burning of farmsteads as a result of General Order No. 11. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal 60

Bingham s painting cost him the election. Ewing went on to become a two-term U.S. congressman from Ohio and attorney for physician Samuel Mudd and two other conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Monaco points to Order No. 11 as an example of government overreach. During times of crisis, during times of terror, the federal government will expand its authority and compromise the rights of its citizens, he said, citing Japanese internment camps during World War II and door-to-door searches after the Boston marathon bombing in April 2013. Was Order No. 11 a tyrant s act against the civil liberties of individuals, or was it an act of military necessity that demanded action? Earle said the bitterness over Order No. 11 can be seen today in efforts to keep the Confederate flag flying and the lingering embrace of the idea of a lost cause. While historians study and debate General Order No. 11, discussions about the Burnt District often are absent in classrooms. Perhaps it is a war atrocity people would rather forget or deny. My hypothesis is it was a rough time in our history because it focused on civilians, and people don t want to talk about it, Peters said. It s an unfavorable realism of war. 61

Battle of Island Mound: First fighting in Civil War for any black troops 1st Kansas Colored s bravery allowed regiment to enter federal service Peggy Buhr, director of the Bates County Museum in Butler, Mo., says a 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry patrol marched into Bates County on Oct. 27, 1862, to clear out 400 guerrillas who had congregated at Hog Island, a marshy space along the Marais des Cygnes River. It was the first time citizens in that area of Missouri had seen black troops. And believe me, word spread across the county in a hurry, she said. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal BUTLER, Mo. The black soldiers of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry were beginning to question in the fall of 1862 if they were ever going to see battle. Many of the soldiers had enlisted in the regiment that summer in response to U.S. Sen. James Lane s passionate effort to recruit black troops in eastern Kansas to fight in the Civil War an action unauthorized at the federal or state level. 63

But, as the war raged on, the regiment s 500 men escaped slaves from Missouri and Arkansas, freemen who moved to Kansas, slaves who had been stolen by Jayhawkers during border-war raids on Missouri towns were becoming skeptical, even though they were training to fight every day. The desertion rate in the fall of 1862 was high because they weren t getting paid, they had bad equipment, and they weren t able to fight, said Ian Spurgeon, author of Soldiers of the Army of Freedom: The 1st Kansas Colored, the Civil War s First African American Combat Unit. Their fears were they would only be used for manual labor by the federal government. At the time, no black troops had fought in the war. Many white Americans both in the North and the South believed blacks could never attain the skills or possess the bravery needed for combat and were better suited to be cooks, laborers and aides. However, the Union army along the Kansas-Missouri border had two problems: ongoing skirmishes with pro- Southern guerrillas, known as bushwhackers, and a white population too small to replenish its ranks. By fall 1862, the 1st Kansas Colored had been assigned to Fort Lincoln, a few miles north of Fort Scott, where they were, indeed, doing manual labor. Union forces knew Missouri guerrillas and Confederate recruiters had gathered in Bates County, Mo., about a 11/2-day march from Fort Lincoln. A Union commander ordered a patrol of 240 black soldiers and 12 white officers from the 1st Kansas Colored to march into Bates County and rout out the guerrillas.it was a decision that would alter American history and the way black soldiers were viewed by the nation. 64

Blood spilled On Oct. 27, 1862, the 1st Kansas Colored patrol marched into Bates County ready to clear out the estimated 400 guerrillas who had congregated at Hog Island, a marshy space along the Marais des Cygnes River. It was the first time the public had seen black soldiers marching, said Peggy Buhr, director of the Bates County Museum in Butler, Mo. And believe me, word spread across the county in a hurry. In 2008, a life-size bronze statue of a 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry soldier was unveiled on the courthouse lawn in Butler, Mo. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal 65

Unsure of the size of the bushwhacker band, the 1st Kansas Colored sent runners to Paola to bring back Union reinforcements and then commandeered the home of Enoch and Christiana Toothman for its headquarters. The Toothman family had moved to Bates County sometime in the early 1860s from West Virginia, Buhr said. They had seven children two sons and five The Battle of Island Mound State Historical Site, with an interpretive trail loop and monument, is on 40 acres of the Enoch and Christiana Toothman farm, about 7 miles west of Butler. The site was established in 2012 by the Missouri State Parks Department. The Toothman farm was occupied by the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry in October 1862. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal daughters. It is believed both of the sons were involved in guerrilla activities. Enoch we have no information on, but we can safely assume his thinking was that of his sons. One of the sons had been arrested that summer and remained imprisoned at Fort Lincoln. Enoch and the other son were away fighting, leaving Christiana and the girls behind. 66

The black soldiers created a barracks and used fence rails to build breastworks at the Toothman farm, which they renamed Fort Africa. There was a little teasing and taunting with the guerrillas for the next day or so, she said. On Oct. 29, a detachment of about 30 black troops engaged the guerrillas as a distraction so a foraging party could search for salt, cornmeal and other supplies. That s when a series of encounters (began) that led to what is now known as the Battle of Island Mound, Buhr said. Once the black troops had returned to their camp, the guerrillas set the tallgrass prairie on fire. The 1st Kansas Colored responded with a backfire to prevent the flames from reaching Fort Africa. The smoke provided cover for the bushwhackers as they fired on the black troops. The guerrillas then withdrew, hoping the Kansas troops would run after them. The 1st Kansas Colored took the bait. Eight black soldiers were sent out from Fort Africa to locate the guerrillas. However, they traveled farther than they were ordered, and once they were out of sight of their commanding officers, an additional 20 men were dispatched to find the first squad. The Kansas troops walked into an ambush near a low hill known as Island Mound. bout 130 guerrillas, on horseback and armed with shotguns, pistols and sabers, attacked the black soldiers, who were on foot and carried rifles with bayonets. The bushwhackers outnumbered the black soldiers by sixfold during the hand-to-hand combat. It was a very quick and bloody encounter at point-blank range, Spurgeon said, explaining how reinforcements from Fort Africa arrived and the guerrillas retreated over the top of Island Mound. 67

The black soldiers fought valiantly, Buhr said. They were extremely courageous and brave in holding their ground. This was a life-or-death struggle for them, and they knew that. The Kansas regiment lost eight men white officer Capt. Andrew Crew, six black troops and a soldier of Cherokee descent. Eleven other men were wounded. Crew was buried in Leavenworth; graves were dug for the others just north of the Toothman home. Casualties among the guerrillas were unknown, but thought to be of equal number. (It was) a draw of sorts, but certainly considered a victory for the 1st Kansas, Buhr said. The day after the battle, Union reinforcements moved in and found the guerrillas had abandoned their stronghold at Hog Island, leaving behind livestock and supplies. News of the Battle of Island Mound spread to the East Coast, and the black troops were praised from sympathizers on both sides of the war. Union officer Lt. R. Hinton told the Daily Conservative newspaper in Leavenworth the battle proved that negroes are splendid soldiers. The New York Times quoted pro-southern guerrilla captain Bill Turman, of Butler, saying the black devils fought like tigers. A Forgotten history The 1st Kansas Colored left Bates County on Nov. 1, 1862, and became the fifth black regiment mustered into the federal army on Jan. 13, 1863, less than two weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted. It was a double-edged sword, Spurgeon said, explaining black soldiers with officer rankings in the 1st Kansas 68

Bill Turman, a Missouri guerrilla captain, was impressed with the bravery shown by the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry during the Battle of Island Mound. Turman said the devils fought like tigers. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal Colored were demoted once they became part of the federal army. The black troops continued to distinguish themselves throughout the war. On July 2, 1863, blacks fought alongside whites for the first time at Cabin Creek in Indian Territory now Oklahoma turning back Confederate troops. Fifteen days later, at Honey Springs in Indian Territory, they again defeated the Confederates. The worst day for the 1st Kansas Colored came on April 18, 1864, at Poison Springs, Ark., where 117 of its men died and 65 were wounded the highest losses of any Kansas regiment during the war. The Confederates brutally executed the captured and wounded left on the battlefield. They were subject to one of the worst racial atrocities of the war, Spurgeon said. 69

The 1st Kansas Colored was mustered out of service in October 1865. Many of the troops returned to Kansas, while others settled in Indian Territory or Arkansas. They became regular and well-respected citizens (who were) hardworking and rebuilding themselves in their communities, he said. The black soldiers weren t immediately recognized after the war perhaps because of their skin color or because national attention had shifted from small skirmishes like the Battle of Island Mound to larger, bloodier battlefields like Gettysburg, where more than 7,800 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed and more than 27,000 were wounded. By the end of the war, so many battles had been engaged, (Island Mound) was a little footnote that no one cared about, Spurgeon said. Efforts to preserve the history of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry have been made in Kansas and Missouri. The Kansas Museum of History has preserved three 1st Kansas Colored flags, including a regimental flag inscribed with the names of the battles in which the soldiers fought. In 2008, a life-size bronze statue of a 1st Kansas Colored infantryman was unveiled on the courthouse lawn in Butler. Four years later, the Missouri State Parks Department established the Battle of Island Mound State Historical Site, with an interpretive trail loop, on 40 acres of the Toothman farm, about 7 miles west of Butler. The 1st Kansas soldier is the only Civil War marker in our county, Buhr said. I think that speaks highly of the respect that the citizens here held toward this story. 70

Emancipation Proclamation President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of the Civil War. The proclamation declared all individuals held as slaves within the rebellious states free. However, the freedom it promised depended upon a Union military victory. The declaration didn t end slavery in the nation. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery intact in border states and exempting parts of the Confederacy that had come under Union control. The proclamation called for the acceptance of black men into the Union army and navy. By the end of the Civil War, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and their own freedom. The original Emancipation Proclamation is in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. With the text covering five pages, the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off. Source: National Achives and Records Administration 71

Secret network in Kansas helped blacks escape slavery Underground Railroad in Kansas transported as many as 2,000 passengers Martha Parker, director of the Wakarusa River Valley Heritage Museum in Clinton, talks about the free-staters who settled in the valley west of Lawrence and their ties to the Underground Railroad. Parker profiles many of the settlers in her book, Angels of Freedom. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal Escaped slave Ann Clarke hunkered down in the dead of night in a ravine near Lecompton. She could hear her trackers approaching as she lay still in the thick brush, waiting for the sun to rise and illuminate the landscape so she could creep out and continue on her path to freedom. Clarke about 40 years old saw a man with a book under his arm walking along a nearby road, heading east toward Lawrence. A book? He must be an educated man or maybe an abolitionist, she thought. 73

Clarke had a choice: She could stay on the run or take a chance the man would hide her from the proslavery posse hunting her down to get the reward money offered by her masters. A few weeks earlier, Clarke had made her first escape attempt from her owners, only to be captured by the posse and taken to Lecompton, where they hoped to collect the reward, according to Angels of Freedom by Martha Parker, director of the Wakarusa River Valley Heritage Museum in Clinton. While her captors ate and drank that evening, Clarke went to the kitchen to clean herself up. She studied her surroundings, and when the other women in the kitchen let their guard down, she ran into the night, ending up in the brushy ravine, where she emerged to see the man with the book. Clarke approached the traveler and recognized him as Dr. Barker, a neighbor of her owner, George W. Clarke. After hearing her plea for help, Barker told her to follow the ravine south to the back of his house, where she could find refuge. Clarke stayed at Barker s property for one or two days, before being taken in a wagon hidden under a layer of several comforters to Lawrence and then to the home of Caroline Scales, at 429 Quincy St. in Topeka. The stone house in Topeka was a station on the Underground Railroad, a series of hiding places established across the nation by white and black abolitionists to help fugitive slaves reach freedom. When the house was built in 1856, an enormous hogshead that was shipped to Topeka from New Orleans was placed inside its cellar. The hogshead a cask that could hold several hundred gallons was used as a hiding place for runaway slaves on their way to the Canadian border. 74

When Ann came, we put some straw, clothes and blankets into the hogshead and had her stay in it, John Armstrong, an abolitionist and conductor on the Underground Railroad, wrote in Reminiscences of Slave Days in Kansas in 1895. Mrs. Scales kept boarders, and during the day, while they were out, Ann used to come up in the kitchen and do a great deal of housework. Clarke remained at the Scales home for six weeks while Armstrong raised $70, borrowed a closed carriage and team of mules and made arrangements to take her to Iowa, where she would be turned over to Quakers and guided to Canada, according to the Kansas Historical Society. As many as a dozen slaves crowded into the Scales cellar until it was safe for them to venture out, cross the river and head north on the Jim Lane Trail to the next Underground Railroad station near Holton. The trail laid out by free-state politician James Lane ran from Topeka to the Kansas-Nebraska border. The trip from Topeka to Iowa took about three weeks. The conductors and freedom seekers known as passengers or cargo often traveled on foot, stopping at designated safe houses along the route that offered protection, food and transportation. I suppose I have kept three hundred slaves in the house at 429 Quincy street, all told, and every one of them was taken North and eventually reached Canada, The Topeka Daily Capital reported Armstrong saying in January 1910. A dangerous thing Armstrong, a prominent figure in establishing the Underground Railroad in 1857 from Topeka to Civil 75

Bend, Iowa, worked hand in hand with Scales and several other Topeka residents to help slaves reach freedom. The network was headquartered in the basement of Constitution Hall, 429 S. Kansas Ave. It was a dangerous, clandestine endeavor. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made aiding fugitive slaves a federal crime punishable by six months in prison and a $1,000 fine. Five years later, the proslavery Kansas territorial government enacted legislation saying any person who spoke, wrote or printed materials for the purpose of The Historic Ritchie House and Cox Communications Heritage Education Center, 1116 S.E. Madison, provides interactive learning experiences about the Underground Railroad. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal assisting escaped slaves would be found guilty of a felony and sentenced to death. Additionally, those who helped slaves escape their masters would be committing grand larceny and face death or imprisonment with hard labor. Pro-slavery spies and slave hunters kept tabs on those suspected of aiding slaves. Topekan John Ritchie, who 76

George Bernheimer, a volunteer at the Historic Ritchie House and Cox Communications Heritage Education Center, talks about the home Topeka abolitionists John and Mary Jane Ritchie built in the mid-1860s. John Ritchie, who owned a limestone quarry, took part in two Kansas constitutional conventions and was part of a volunteer militia. His wife provided food to slaves seeking freedom along the Underground Railroad. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal operated a limestone quarry and participated in two Kansas constitutional conventions, and his wife, Mary Jane, were among their targets. Mary Jane carried food in a water pail to a spring at the back of their house where escaped slaves would hide, while John helped fugitives traveling the Jim Lane Trail, said Melinda Abitz, who develops education programs at the Historic Ritchie House and Cox Communications Heritage Education Center. What the Ritchies were doing was a very dangerous thing, Abitz said. It took dedication and conviction. One night, soldiers advanced on the Ritchie home in the hope of capturing fugitive slaves, she said. A deputy tried 77

to enter the home by breaking open the door with an ax. But the intruders stopped dead in their tracks and then left when they heard the click of sharpshooters on the other side of the door. Northeast of Topeka, Clarina Nichols, a women s rights advocate and associate editor of the Quindaro Chindowan, an abolitionist newspaper, sheltered escaping slaves at her home in Quindaro, near the Missouri River in Wyandotte County. My cistern every brick of it rebuilt in the chimney of my late Wyandotte home played its part in the drama of freedom, Nichols recalled. One beautiful evening late in October 61, as twilight was fading from the bluff, a hurried message came to me from our neighbor Fielding Johnson You must hide Caroline. Fourteen slave hunters are camped on the Park her master among them. Into this cistern Caroline was lowered with comforters, pillow and chair. A washtub over the trap with the usual appliances of a washroom standing around, completing the hiding. Into the light The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery in 1865, and the operations of the Underground Railroad once so secretive were revealed. Today, more than 80 sites in Kansas homes, churches, forts, cemeteries, museums help tell the story of the Underground Railroad. Although it is impossible to know exact figures, the National Park Services National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program estimates as many as 2,000 people escaped slavery or the threat of the return into slavery from 1854 to 1865 because of the Underground Railroad in Kansas. 78

Nationally, the number of runaway slaves who used the Underground Railroad is estimated to be more than 100,000. But the stories of the courage and determination of the network s conductors, station masters and passengers were seldom documented because those involved were breaking the law. We know about it through testimony or bits of information left by people. We can t document a lot, said Kim Warren, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas. Historians think there were hundreds of depots and conductors, thousands of enslaved people who moved through the network. But only the people involved knew the accurate account. Little is known about the whereabouts of the Underground Railroad passengers once the Civil War ended, Warren said. Abolitionists sometimes learned of former slaves marrying after their escape or joining the Union Army, she said. A few passengers returned to Kansas after making their escape to other free states. According to the Kansas Historical Society, Armstrong and Clarke kept in touch after their journey together on the Underground Railroad: Armstrong recorded that Ann wrote him several times in the years to follow. 79

Freedom s Frontier: Union betrayal leads to war atrocity Thousands of Indians, slaves die in S.E. Kansas Opothleyahola, speaker for the Muskogee Indians, led about 10,000 Indians and 600 slaves from Indian Territory to Kansas in the winter of 1861-62 because they didn t support the Confederate Army. Union officials told him food and shelter would be available at Fort Row, northwest of Humboldt, but that was not the case. Thousands of Opothleyahola s followers died of starvation, freezing temperatures or disease. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal FREDONIA Opothleyahola, speaker for the Muskogee Indians, urged all of the Midwestern tribes to 81

convene for a council meeting in late 1859-early 1860 to signal their loyalty to the Union. It was a hard sell. Months later, the first shots of the Civil War were fired, and Indian nations were being courted by both Confederate and Union armies. Several tribes were leaning toward the South for economic, political and personal reasons. The movement of whites from Southern states west meant Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, would be bordered by Confederate states Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, according to Tracing Trails of Blood on Ice, an article by Willard Johnson, professor emeritus of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In large part, Johnson wrote, the federal money pledged under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 to tribes in the southern United States to relinquish their ancestral homelands and move west of the Mississippi River were backed by bonds from Southern states. Plus, many Indians, including Opothleyahola, owned slaves both black and Indian a practice they maintained after settling in Indian Territory. Even though he proposed a pro-union rally, Opothleyahola, in truth, wanted to remain neutral in the war. But as Southern sympathies swelled among the Indian nations and white encroachment loomed, he realized lines were being drawn and fewer people were standing behind him. Additionally, Union soldiers in Indian Territory had been pulled out, leaving the area unprotected from Confederate forces. Opothleyahola came to believe the preservation of the Muskogee tribe, also known as the Upper Creek, would require leaving their homes once again for an unknown land this time, free-state Kansas. 82

Little did the Muskogee leader know he would be betrayed and end up guiding thousands of his followers to their deaths. Escape to Kansas Opothleyahola, whose name means good shouting child, was born in present-day Alabama in 1798. He declared his allegiance to the federal government after fighting for the Upper Creek/Muskogees in the War of 1812 and the Creek War of 1813-14, an Alabama-based war among various Creek factions and federal and state militias. He also was a successful entrepreneur who built a 2,000-acre plantation in Alabama and owned about 25 slaves. Emma Crites, president of the board of directors of the Wilson County Historical Society in Fredonia, talks about how Opothleyahola, a speaker for the Muskogee Indians, contacted President Abraham Lincoln in mid-august 1861 to request help in his and his followers' escape to Kansas from Indian Territory. Although he sought the help of Union officials, Opothleyahola wanted to remain neutral in the war. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal 83

Opothleyahola s family was wealthy. They had huge homes, land and slaves, said Gwendolyn Martin, of Yates Center, former Woodson County commissioner and supporter of the Woodson County Historical Society. After President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, the Muskogees could sell their land and receive money to move to land west of the Mississippi River or they could stay in Alabama, become citizens and be subjected to state laws. In 1837, Opothleyahola left his plantation behind and led about 8,000 members of his tribe, as well as their slaves, along the Trail of Tears from Alabama to Indian Territory, where he eventually was able to again establish a plantation with slaves, livestock and crops, Martin said. When word got out that Opothleyahola would be leading his tribe and its slaves into Kansas the quickest exit from Indian Territory Chickasaws, Seminoles, Quapaws, Cherokees, Kickapoos and members of other tribes, as well as freed and runaway slaves, began gathering at his plantation to join the trek. In mid-august 1861, Opothleyahola contacted President Abraham Lincoln, requesting help in their escape from Indian Territory, said Emma Crites, president of the board of directors of the Wilson County Historical Society in Fredonia. Within a month, he received a letter stating the federal government would help and directing him to lead the refugees to Fort Row, about 8 miles north of Fredonia in Wilson County, where they would be safe and receive food and other supplies. The 14-day exodus of nearly 10,000 Indians and 600 slaves began in December, during treacherous winter weather and under the threat of attacks by Confederate loyalists. 84

Opothleyahola s band drove back Confederates during two attacks but lost many of its supplies in the battles. The third conflict, near present-day Tulsa, was devastating, Martin said. They fled in the middle of the night without food and transportation many nearly naked during weather that began with sleet and turned into a bitterly cold snowstorm. A blind eye Undeterred, Opothleyahola and his followers continued the icy trek along the Verdigris and Neosho rivers into Wilson County. When they finally reached Fort Row, they found a home guard militia of about 80 men, a storage facility of less than 200 square feet and a couple of other small buildings. The soldiers didn t know the Indians and slaves were coming, and certainly didn t have enough food or shelter for them or their animals. Opothleyahola expected to find some place to house livestock, horses, buildings to protect them from the weather and food, and none of that was there, Crites said. As the Indians and slaves trickled into the area over the winter and camped on the frozen prairie, Opothleyahola pleaded with federal authorities to send aid. His plea went unanswered as the refugees faced starvation and death from exposure. Opothleyahola and other survivors eventually were moved 12 miles to Fort Belmont, a small structure about 5 miles south of Yates Center in Woodson County, where 240 refugees died in January and February 1862 and more than a hundred amputations were performed. Among them I saw a little Creek boy, about eight years old, with both feet taken off near the ankle, others lying 85

Carla Green, left, executive director of the Woodson County Chamber of Commerce, and Gwendolyn Martin, of Yates Center, former Woodson County commissioner and supporter of the Woodson County Historical Society, stand near the land south of Yates Center where Fort Belmont once stood and Opothleyahola, speaker for the Muskogee Indians, is buried in an unmarked grave. Opothleyahola led about 10,000 Indians and 600 slaves from Indian Territory to Kansas in the winter of 1861-62 to escape the encroachment of the Confederate Army. Union officials told him food and shelter would be available at Fort Row, northwest of Humboldt, but that was not the case. Many of the refugees died of starvation, freezing temperatures or disease. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal upon the ground whose frosted limbs rendered them unable to move, George Collamore, an investigator from the Office of Indian Affairs, wrote to William P. Dole, commissioner of Indian Affairs, after a visit to the fort. In late January 1862, A.B. Campbell, a surgeon with the U.S. Army, visited the Indian encampment on the Verdigris River, where he found 4,500 Indians including children living among decaying carcasses of an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 ponies. Most of the people were in rags or naked and eating horses and dogs to survive. 86

Campbell walked around the camp distributing five wagonloads of supplies, which included 45 quilts, 40 pairs of socks, three pairs of pantaloons, seven undershirts, four pairs of drawers, a few shirts, pillows and pillowcases. Many of the refugees grew ill after eating moldy bacon supplied by Fort Leavenworth. Army officials later said the bacon had been condemned by fort officials and pronounced suitable only for making soap grease. An outbreak of smallpox killed many of the Indians and slaves at Fort Belmont. They had sent in blankets that had been exposed to smallpox, Martin said, referring to supplies delivered from a fort near the Arkansas- Oklahoma border. On Feb. 5, 1862, Campbell wrote a letter to Joseph K. Barnes, surgeon and medical director at Fort Leavenworth, imploring the U.S. Army to send more aid. It is impossible for me to depict the wretchedness of their conditions. Their only protection from the snow upon which they lie is prairie grass and from the wind and weather scraps and rags stretched upon switches, he wrote. They greatly need medical assistance. Many have their toes frozen off; others have feet wounded by sharp ice and branches of trees lying on the snow. But few have shoes or moccasins. They suffer from inflammatory diseases of the chest, throat and eyes. Those who come in last get sick as soon as they eat. Means should be taken at once to have the horses which lie dead in every direction through the camp and on the side of the river removed and burned, lest the first few warm days breed a pestilence amongst them. Why the officers of the Indian Department are not doing something for them I cannot understand. Common 87

humanity demands that more should be done and done at once to save them from total destruction. Help was finally authorized by Congress on May 28, 1862, and supplies sent to William Coffin, the Southern superintendent of Indian Affairs in LeRoy, for distribution. It was too little, too late. An estimated 2,000 of the Indian Territory refugees died of disease, battle wounds or weather during the journey or after their arrival in Kansas. Reports by settlers were the ground was covered with pony bones like snow a year later, Crites said. Rebuilding and reparations The young Indian men who remained healthy eventually were routed to LeRoy, home to a small local militia. About 1,000 of them and perhaps some of the slaves were recruited and marched to Camp Hunter in Humboldt, where they were inducted into the Union Army as the 1st Indian Home Guard Regiment, under the command of white officers. The 1st Indian regiment fell apart, leading to the formation of the 2nd Indian Home Guard Regiment, which fought border battles in Indian Territory, Missouri and Arkansas. After Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, bringing an end to the Civil War, a number of the Indians returned to Indian Territory, while many of the black former slaves remained in Kansas. Opothleyahola and his followers wanted to reclaim their land in Indian Territory from the Confederates and asked the U.S. Army to intercede. But he never saw his home again. 88

Opothleyahola, a leader of the Muskogees for 40 years, died in 1863 in Leavenworth and was buried in an unmarked grave close to Fort Belmont and alongside his daughter, who had died of pneumonia while waiting for aid from the federal government to arrive. His followers, however, continued the fight to seek reparation for the property they lost during the war. Martin said a lawsuit filed against the government by the Indians was settled after about 15 years, with the Indians receiving a portion of a penny for every dollar they lost. It was a long, long time before life returned to normal for all of them, Crites said. Opothleyahola s betrayal and the atrocity that followed aren t often discussed by historians these days. How can one explain a government allowing thousands of men, women and children to starve or freeze to death? Were supplies so sparse everything had to be routed to Union troops on the front lines? Was Kansas too far west to be of concern to officials in Washington? When Crites watches the news and sees the destitution and lack of hope of Middle Eastern refugees seeking relief in Europe after being driven from their homes by civil war and terrorists, she is reminded of Opothleyahola and wonders if their escape and the lives lost will be forgotten as time goes on, too. Crites, Martin and Carla Green, executive director of the Woodson County Chamber of Commerce, are among those working to keep Opothleyahola s story alive. A stretch of US-75 highway between Caney and Lyndon bears his name, but they are hoping a historic byway or some other memorial can be established in southeast Kansas to remember the tragic exodus of the Muskogees. It s a story that needs to be told, Green said. 89

A memorial to Opothleyahola can be seen at 700 N. Main St. in LeRoy. The building includes information about the Muskogee speaker and the betrayal that led to the deaths of many of his followers. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal 90

Black exodus: A journey fueled by hope African-Americans migrate west to escape post-war oppression Sherri Camp, a genealogy librarian at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, has been researching her great-great-great grandfather, Sanford Clark, who was among the African-Americans migrating from the South to Kansas after the Civil War. Clark and his family settled in Eskridge, where they grew crops and raised livestock. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal Sanford Clark knew he would have to move west if he and his family were to escape the racism of the South and truly know the meaning of freedom. The Civil War was over, but anyone who thought the tentacles of slavery were going to be pried off without backlash was mistaken. 93

The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to Clark and other recently freed slaves, and the 15th Amendment granted the right to vote to black men. But some white Southerners worked to keep African- Americans chained economically, politically and socially. Others, like the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, embraced vigilantism, threatening and terrorizing blacks with lynchings and other violent acts. Clark, who was born Dec. 31, 1846, in Christian County, Ky., and had lived in Kentucky and Tennessee by the 1870s, headed with his wife, Harriet, to Kansas, home of famed abolitionist John Brown and the bloody border war against slavery. They needed a place to escape from the tyranny, said Sherri Camp, a genealogy librarian at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library and Clark s great-greatgreat granddaughter. They had to come to Kansas because Kansas represented freedom. The Clarks likely traveled by train and on foot at night to Topeka and then to Eskridge, where they purchased a 60- acre farm in the early 1890s and Clark worked as a mason tender. Unless you were strong and had been trained to work on the land, you had a bad time, said LaDawndra Robbs, Camp s sister and a geography/history teacher at Central High School in St. Joseph, Mo. Luckily, none of our family met tragedy. Post-war South Reconstruction the era from the Civil War s end until 1877 is perhaps best described by author and civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois: The slave went free; stood a brief 94

LaDawndra Robbs, a geography and history teacher at Central High School in St. Joseph, Mo., talks about her great-great-great grandfather, Sanford Clark, who was among the African-Americans migrating from the South to Kansas after the Civil War, during an interview at the St. Joseph Black Archives Museum in St. Joseph, Mo. Clark and his family settled in Eskridge. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal moment in the sun; then moved back into slavery. They had a sense life could be different, there was vastly more than being slave, said Bruce Mactavish, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Washburn University. There was a brief moment in the sun of hope and opportunity. After the war, federal troops were deployed to the South to maintain law and order and protect blacks as former Confederate states returned to the Union. African- Americans were participating in conventions to write state constitutions and being elected to public office. They were establishing schools and churches. Voting, higher education, churches, participating in government signal the potential for real change. They felt 95

a rush of pride and possibility, Mactavish said. They began to walk with their heads held high, and whites didn t like it. Some Southern states and cities acted quickly to pass black codes to restrict the rights of African-Americans. The code adopted by St. Landry parish in Louisiana stated blacks couldn t rent a house or gather for public meetings after sunset; must be in the service of a white person or former owner; and must have a special permit or permission to pass within the limits of the parish, preach to black congregations, carry firearms and sell or barter articles. Unlike Clark, who was fortunate to have saved enough money after the war to buy the Kansas farm, purchasing property or starting a business for most blacks in the South was out of the question. Few had the skills necessary to secure a job outside of farming, so many of them ended up as sharecroppers, working for their one-time masters for a share of the crop, or tenant farmers. Many black farmers became indebted to the landowners or earned too little to provide for their families. President Rutherford B. Hayes ended Reconstruction in 1877 and recalled federal troops, allowing white Southerners to oppress blacks without interference. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states succeeded in blocking blacks from voting and having their voices heard. African-Americans decided they wanted more the freedom for which the Civil War was fought. With that moment in the sun, some people have the opportunity to dream and hope, Mactavish said. If they have this drive and hope, where do they go? They go west. 96

Singleton s influence African-Americans began moving to free-state Kansas during and shortly after the Civil War. As railroads cut through the prairie, more land was opened for settlement. Many blacks migrating to Kansas were recruited by Benjamin Pap Singleton, a former slave from Tennessee who had escaped to the North during the war and then returned to Tennessee with the dream of helping freed blacks improve their lives, said Edna Wagner, executive director of the Richard Allen Cultural Center and Museum in Leavenworth. Singleton posted flyers urging blacks to leave the South for Kansas, portrayed as a new promised land where they could purchase acreage, farm the land and live free. They learned of his efforts through word-of-mouth, Wagner said, adding most blacks who were enslaved couldn t read or write. Under the Homestead Act of 1862, individuals were allowed to settle up to 160 acres of land and lay claim to the property after five years. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 granted an additional 160 acres if the settlers planted and maintained trees on the land. The land was free as long as they worked it, and they were free as long as they worked, Wagner said. In 1877, Singleton led nearly 300 blacks to Cherokee County near Baxter Springs. As the settlement flourished, he organized other colonies to come to Graham County, where the all-black town of Nicodemus was established, and Dunlap in Morris County, according to the Kansas Historical Society. By 1878, political changes in the South further restricted 97

the rights and opportunities of blacks and continued to threaten their safety, causing a second wave of nearly 20,000 African-Americans to migrate to Kansas. The movement, from 1879 to 1881, became known as the Great Exodus a reference to the Israelites exodus from Egypt in the Bible and African-Americans who left Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana and other Southern states were called Exodusters. Although many white Southerners didn t see African- Americans as equals or want to interact with them, they depended on them for cheap labor. So when black workers started to leave, Southerners looked to their elected officials to stop the exodus. A U.S. Senate committee in 1880 met for about three months to probe the cause of the black migration, but accomplished little because of partisan quarreling. White Southerners resorted to beatings and intimidation to try to stop blacks from leaving. Adding to the pressure were black leaders, including statesman Frederick Douglass, who claimed the Exodusters were abandoning African-Americans who chose to stay in the South and implored them to give the systems put in place after the war a chance to work. Missouri to Kansas Many blacks leaving the South boarded steamers on the Mississippi River that would take them to St. Louis. The Exodusters came with little money or food and no idea how to cross Missouri to get to Kansas. Local black leadership wanted to provide enough money and supplies to move these migrants out of St. Louis as quickly as possible, the city of St. Louis website states. Some were concerned that these immigrants would become an economic drain on the African-American community s limited resources; others feared that 98

increased numbers of poor blacks would confirm white stereotypes of racial inferiority. The Committee of Twenty-Five was formed in early March 1879 to provide transportation and temporary housing for thousands of Exodusters who passed through St. Louis on their way west. However, some St. Louis residents grew to resent the black migrants entering their city, with at least one local newspaper publishing stories disparaging the travelers and those trying to help them. Like St. Louis, Kansas was unprepared to deal with the thousands of blacks coming into the state. Most Exodusters arrived by steamboats landing in the river cities of Wyandotte, Atchison and Kansas City, the Kansas Historical Society website states. They had often traveled through areas riddled by yellow fever. The cities were overwhelmed with the large number of needy persons. Shelter and food had to be provided. Some of the travelers boarded trains west; others put down roots in the river cities or nearby Leavenworth, where the presence of a fort and black regiments nicknamed buffalo soldiers made them feel safe. On May 8, 1879, Gov. John St. John formed the Kansas Freedman s Relief Association, which established colonies for the Exodusters in Wabaunsee, and Chautauqua and Coffey counties. The relief association also constructed a temporary shelter in Topeka, known as The Barracks, near the railroad yards on the north side of the Kansas River. Many of the blacks who stayed in Topeka settled in an area known as Tennessee Town. Established in 1880, the neighborhood, bounded by S.W. 10th on the north, Washburn on the west, Huntoon on the south and S.W. Clay on the east, flourished as its residents planted 99

gardens and built homes, churches and schools. In 1893, the Rev. Charles Sheldon established the first black kindergarten west of the Mississippi River at Central Congregational Church. Other black neighborhoods in Topeka included the Ritchie addition, The Bottoms along 1st Avenue and Redmonsville in North Topeka, all of which were destroyed in the mid-20th century by floods, urban renewal or the construction of Interstate 70. After the exodus Many of the Exodusters and other black migrants were disillusioned with what they found once they arrived in Kansas. The promised land was no Eden. Surviving meant hard work on a hard land with few resources something they already knew how to do. When they got here and found open land and nothing else, they started building their own communities, Wagner said. It was a joy, a freedom to know It s ours. They came to work, but they were working for themselves now. The Clarks raised crops, livestock and four sons on their Eskridge farm. The generation that came out of slavery was hardworking and wanted to make a better life for themselves, and he succeeded, Camp said. By March 1909, Clark co-owned six lots in Eskridge, which were sold to the Colored Second Baptist Church for $600. Mr. Clark had always been very rugged and strong and blessed with good health, and was only sick a short-time 100

before his death, an obituary documenting his death at age 66 in April 1912 states. Clark s wife continued to live on the farm, which was sold by the estate after her death. In 1870, Kansas was home to 17,108 African-Americans, according to the Kansas Historical Society. Ten years later, the number had grown to 43,107. Some black migrants eventually returned to the South because they couldn t adjust to life on the prairie or missed their families, Wagner said. Many of those who stayed became entrepreneurs, craftsmen, laborers, political leaders or doctors, lawyers and other professionals. It may cost you pain and grief, Wagner said, but it doesn t matter where you start. It s where you end. Edna Wagner, executive director of the Richard Allen Cultural Center and Museum in Leavenworth, talks about the dangers faced by African-Americans who moved from the South to Kansas after the Civil War with the hope of building a better life. Many of them passed through Leavenworth or decided to settle in the community. Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal 101

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Surviving segregation: first-hand accounts from Kansas, Missouri Jim Crow laws restricted lives of blacks for nearly 100 years Robert Nelson, of Fort Scott, a retired radiology technology instructor, said he could sit anywhere in movie houses and restaurants and stay in any hotel room while he was stationed with the Army in Germany during the 1950s. That wasn t the case in the United States, where many places were segregated. Photo: Jan Biles The Capital-Journal Author and historian Sonny Gibson learned early about the line separating blacks and whites. Gibson spent part of his childhood in Calvert, Texas, a segregated town where blacks lived west of the main street and whites lived to its east. 103

On the east side of the main street was the post office, bank and movie theater, and you had to stay on the west side unless you were going to those three places, Gibson, 78, of Kansas City, Mo., said. I was very much instructed to never cross the street unless I was sent on an errand to the post office or the bank because (my family) couldn t protect me from anything once it started. As a child, Gibson heard about African-Americans who crossed the line and received beatings at the hands of white citizens. It was acceptable. It was the normal way of life, he said. When you are conditioned to accept a way of life, it doesn t seem wrong to you. When Gibson was 8 or 9 years old, his family moved to Kansas City, where he attended segregated schools and quickly learned the social boundaries for blacks. You could go into Woolworth s, but you couldn t sit down. You had to stand at the (lunch) counter, he said, adding African-Americans were relegated to the balconies in movie houses and could only picnic on Watermelon Hill at Swope Park. That seemed normal to me because I had subscribed to that way of life, he said. You knew you didn t have confrontations with white I should say, redneck people. They were rude, violent and disrespectful, and you made efforts to avoid them. Birth of Jim Crow Jim Crow was the term used to describe the racial caste system that developed in the United States following the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until the 1960s. The term entered popular culture in the 1820s when Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a white actor and musician, 104

depicted blacks as lazy, singing and dancing fools during short skits between play scenes at the Park Theater in New York City, according to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia in Big Rapids, Mich. Rice worked in blackface, using a burnt cork to darken his skin. Author, historian and lecturer Sonny Gibson, of Kansas City, Mo., spent his early childhood years in Calvert, Texas, a segregated town where blacks lived west of the main street and whites lived to the east. Gibson retired in 1989 as branch chief of fair housing with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Photo: Jan Biles The Capital-Journal Jim Crow became a stock character in minstrel shows, and by the 1880s the term Jim Crow had become a racial epithet for blacks. Under the Jim Crow system, African-Americans were considered second-class citizens who were intellectually, emotionally and socially inferior to whites, according to the museum s website. Black codes were established to segregate blacks and bolster the status of whites by taking away many of the rights granted to blacks by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. 105

In the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, the Supreme Court stated racial segregation did not necessarily mean inequality and that as long as state governments provided legal freedoms and legal processes for blacks that were equal to whites, they could maintain separate institutions. As a result, blacks were denied the use of public transportation and public facilities and barred from juries, neighborhoods, schools and jobs, according to the museum s website. In addition, some states tried to restrict the voting rights of blacks through poll taxes; grandfather clauses indicating only those with ancestors who voted before the Civil War could cast ballots; white primaries, where only Democrats could vote and only whites could be Democrats; and lengthy literacy tests. In addition to discriminatory laws, blacks understood the etiquette between blacks and whites and the punishment that would be inflicted if the rules were broken, according to the website. The rules included: A black man couldn t touch the body of a white woman, even a handshake, because he risked being accused of rape. Blacks had to use courtesy titles, such as Mr. or Miss, when addressing whites. Whites often addressed adult black men as boy. A white person could cut in front of a black person waiting in line. A black person could never claim or demonstrate they knew more than a white person. Beginning in 1915, legal judgments began to chip away at Jim Crow laws. One of the biggest blows was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ended segregation in public schools. 106

Gibson, who graduated from R.T. Coles Vocational High School in 1954, earned a bachelor s degree in social work at Park University and later worked as area director for the Model Cities Program and branch chief of fair housing with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development until his retirement in 1989, said his initial reaction to the Brown v. Board decision wasn t positive. I was confused at the time. I thought it was one of the worst decisions because it was not about quality of education but the association of black and white children, he said. They got the worst white teachers to come to the black schools, and (the teachers) didn t try to reinforce any compassion in education. Testing the rules An admonishment from a teacher decades ago still resonates with 78-year-old historian Joe Louis Mattox, of Kansas City, Mo., a lifetime member of the NAACP, Greater Kansas City Black History Study Group member and recipient of the 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Spirit of Unity Award. Mattox, who lived with his single mother in a three-room house in the colored section of Caruthersville, Mo., and earned money as a teenager picking cotton, was determined to win a contest to raise the most dollars for new band uniforms at his segregated high school. So he started knocking on the front doors in the white neighborhood he walked through to get to his school, holding a cup and asking for a donation when the door opened. He was turned away at the first two houses where he stopped, but a woman at the third home instructed him to go around the house to the back door. She gave me $1, so I went to the back doors of the other houses and raised the most money, he said. 107

But instead of celebrating his win, his teacher rebuked him. Some things you have to do to stay in your place, she told him, but you don t have to go to the back door. Mattox, whose mother worked as a domestic and whose father cut the hair of white men in a segregated barbershop in Arkansas, said his high school teachers rejected excuses from students for not bettering themselves. We were told we had to be better than white kids because the world was not fair, he said. Historian Joe Louis Mattox, of Kansas City, Mo., received the Martin Luther King Jr. Spirit of Unity Award in 2014 for his role in changing discriminatory policies against blacks in public facilities and housing. Mattox was the first African-American to become a certified property manager in Kansas City, Mo., and the first black member of the Jaycees in Independence, Mo. Photo: Jan Biles The Capital-Journal Mattox took those lessons to heart. After he enrolled in 1957 to study history and government at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., he found himself among marchers during a protest to integrate the local bowling alley. 108

In 1962, when he went to see Birth of a Nation at the Waldo Theater in Independence, Mo., and was told the theater didn t patronize blacks, he wrote a letter to the city s Human Relations Commission reporting the incident. Within a few weeks, the theater ended its discriminatory policy. In 1968, as a junior executive for the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, he wanted to live in downtown Kansas City and applied for an apartment at Quality Hill, a complex of five high-rise buildings with only white tenants. The property manager polled residents to see if they objected to Mattox the first black member of the Jaycees of Independence, Mo., and the first African- American certified property manager in Kansas City, Mo. moving into the complex. The only people who didn t object was the building with the pet owners, he said. After Mattox moved in, the building s swimming pool suddenly closed for repairs, and his neighbors wouldn t speak to him. He finally was able to break the ice when he found himself on an elevator with a woman and her little, tail-wagging dog. I said Hello and How ya doing? to the dog, and the lady responded with We re going to the doctor today, he said, adding he and the woman continued to converse with each other via the pet. But there was no socialization, no friendliness. Disgusted and humiliated Segregated schools without adequate supplies, movie theaters with designated colored sections or first-floor 109

corners and restaurants where only white people were seated were the norm in the 1930s-50s when Robert Nelson was growing up in the southeast Kansas town of Fort Scott. It wasn t until Nelson enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Germany that he discovered what it was like to sit anywhere at a concert or check into a hotel without being turned away because of the color of his skin. I had more freedom there than in my own country, he said. Nelson, 81, was born in 1934 in the coal-mining town of Fleming, Ky. His father, who worked in the mines, died from cerebral spinal meningitis when Nelson was about 2 1/2 years old. His widowed mother gathered up her eight children and moved to Fort Scott, where she and Nelson s father had married in 1915 at the county courthouse. His mother later married a man who worked for the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad and had a ninth child. Although he lived only a few blocks from Eugene Ware Grade School on the east side of Fort Scott where his white neighborhood playmates learned to read and write Nelson was required to attend Plaza School, an allblack school on the city s northern edge. It was separate but not very equal, he said, recalling how he and some other boys asked to take part in the girls cooking class because they had no materials in their shop class to build anything. Nelson and the other black students attended an integrated high school with all white teachers. Their lockers were segregated along the north end of the school. He was able to play football in his senior year, knowing black students before him were denied that opportunity. 110

As I got into high school, I realized why (segregation) was happening, he said. In 1955, Nelson enlisted in the Army hoping to enter an X-ray technology program, but ended up being assigned to the medical corps. In the Army, I felt there was no segregation. I could sit anywhere in a theater, I could sit anywhere to eat as long as I was on the base, he said. After completing basic training at Camp Chaffee in Arkansas, Nelson was sent to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, for his medical training. When he boarded the bus in Fort Scott that would take him to a stopover in Dallas, he sat in the first available seat. When he stepped off the bus, he was greeted by a colored waiting room sign that directed him to a small, shabby area for black riders. There I was in my dress uniform and sitting in this waiting room, he said. When it was time to board the bus to San Antonio, Nelson struck up a conversation with a white soldier also going to the military base. They boarded the bus together and sat in the first open seats. The driver came back and stood by me and said I had to move. I realized I was sitting in the white area of the bus. I was disgusted and humiliated. It was my first experience with it, he said. Once I was on the post, I could do whatever I wanted again. After eight weeks of training, Nelson was sent to Germany, where he worked in a post dispensary in Wertheim. When he learned the soldier who ran the X-ray machine was rotating back to the States, he volunteered to fill the spot and eventually was transferred to a field hospital in Darmstadt. 111

The freedom he felt in Germany during the next 2 1/2 years was uplifting. When he returned to Fort Scott, he felt the stifling force of segregation again. Nelson tried to get a job as an X-ray technologist but was told he needed to be certified. So he applied to the X-ray technology program at Stormont-Vail Hospital and traveled to Topeka for a day-long application process that included a battery of aptitude tests. He was unsure if hospital officials knew he was black prior to that day. A few days later, Nelson received a rejection letter. I read the letter, tore it up and put it in the trash, he said. I remember one sentence in the letter: We prefer having students with no prior experience. Eventually, Nelson was accepted into a two-year X-ray technology program at the Alexian Brothers Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago. The school paid for his tuition, meals, room, laundry and medical care. He was the only black student in the program. After he graduated, Nelson was hired by the University of Michigan Hospital s radiology department, where he worked for five years before being asked in 1966 to teach and help establish an X-ray technology program at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Mich. Nelson, who went on to earn bachelor s and master s degrees from the University of Michigan, continued teaching at Washtenaw until his retirement in 1994. Two years later, after he and his wife had moved back to Fort Scott, he was elected to the board of trustees at Fort Scott Community College. A city park a short distance from his home bears his last name. My, things have changed, he said. 112

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Freedom s Struggle: History parallels happenings in today s world Ongoing fight for equality plays out on college campuses Jonathan Butler, center, addresses a crowd on Nov. 9 in Columbia, Mo., following the resignation of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe after days of protests over concerns about the administration s handling of racial issues. With changes afoot, the University of Missouri is facing a challenge: how to repair the school s image nationally and statewide. Photo: Jeff Roberson The Associated Press Journalist Lucile Bluford knew racial injustice when she saw it. And she seldom let it sneak by without calling it by its rightful name. Born in 1911 in North Carolina, the daughter of a science teacher who later taught at the all-black Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Mo., she was well aware of the fallacies of the separate-but-equal rule in education. 115

A high school newspaper writer who finished first in her graduating class in 1928, Bluford couldn t enroll at the University of Missouri-Columbia, home to the nation s oldest and most respected journalism school, because the university didn t accept students with her skin color, according to the State Historical Society of Missouri. African-American students were expected to study at Lincoln University, an all-black college in Jefferson City. Lincoln University, however, didn t have a journalism program. So, Bluford much like the Exodusters who journeyed to the promised land 50 years earlier packed her bags and crossed the state line to realize her dreams at the University of Kansas. But KU wasn t a safe haven for black students either. The cloud of Jim Crow hung low over the campus. Bill Tuttle, professor emeritus of American studies at KU, said black students were banned from participating in intercollegiate athletics, band, glee club, the debate team, student council, ROTC and other on-campus activities. They were forced to sit in segregated areas at concerts and basketball games and couldn t live in dormitories or join fraternities. Black students were allowed to use the university s swimming pool on the last day of the month in order to fulfill a swimming requirement for graduation. Later that day, the pool would be drained and then refilled for the enjoyment of the white students, Tuttle said. By May 1923, the Ku Klux Klan had a grip on the state, with an estimated 60,000 Kansans on the roster of local chapters. A new pep club, called the Ku Ku Klan and later the Ku Ku Club, emerged at KU. 116

The club s members, wearing white sheets and hoods, would march across campus to Memorial Stadium, where they would sell programs and then put on stunts between the halftimes of football games, Tuttle said. In 1939, after graduating from KU with high honors and working at black-owned newspapers in Atlanta and Kansas City, Mo., Bluford applied to the University of Missouri School of Journalism graduate program. She again was turned away. She tried 11 times to enter the graduate program, filing several lawsuits and being denied each time, according to the State Historical Society of Missouri. In 1941, the Missouri Supreme Court finally ruled in Bluford s favor. In response to the court s decision, the university closed the graduate program, claiming it couldn t operate because a majority of its professors were serving in World War II. The accepted, oftentimes sanctioned, discrimination at the Kansas and Missouri campuses was a reflection of the struggles of freedom taking place across the nation struggles Kansas Gov. Henry Allen described in 1922 during his fight against the proliferation of the KKK as the curse that rises out of unrestricted passions of men governed by religious intolerance and racial hatred. Campus clashes More than a decade after Bluford was granted the right to sit in the classrooms at the University of Missouri, the battle for equality in Kansas and Missouri pressed on. Laying the groundwork for change were lawyers, pastors, activists and everyday citizens who carried the banner of the civil rights movement and whose efforts led to 117

such legal landmarks as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ended segregation in public schools, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. But the laws didn t silence the unrest in the nation as Vietnam War protestors, civil rights advocates and law enforcement officers clashed in the streets and on university campuses. By the beginning of the next decade, Lawrence had become a tinderbox. In April 1970, the Kansas Union sustained $1 million in damages from an arson fire. Three months later, on July 16, blood stained the streets when a police officer responding to reports of gunfire and shootings in East Lawrence fatally shot former KU freshman Rick Tiger Dowdell, a 19-year-old black man from Lawrence, in the base of his skull as he fled down an alley, according to information compiled by historian-lecturer Douglas Harvey for the KU History website. Four days later, after fire bombings and sniper fire, police advanced toward rock- and bottle-throwing protestors, firing tear gas and weapons into the crowd. A bullet fatally wounded Harry Nicholas Nick Rice, an 18-yearold white KU freshman from Leawood who was fleeing the scene. Another bullet struck the leg of Merton Olds, a black graduate student from Topeka. The police officer who shot Dowdell was temporarily suspended with pay and later exonerated of wrongdoing, according to the website. A Kansas Bureau of Investigation report said the agency couldn t determine if Rice was killed by a law enforcement-fired bullet. Even to this day, not all the details of events are clear, and some information remains suppressed, Harvey wrote. 118

Clarence Lang, chairperson and associate professor of African and African-American Studies at the University of Kansas, says history isn't "simply about inert, dead events, but it's also about how the past can be a burden or an opportunity in whatever moment we happen to occupy." Photo: Chris Neal The Capital-Journal Violence also spilled into the streets of Kansas City, Mo. Two years earlier, a bloody race riot broke out after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tenn. Students marched to protest the government s decision not to close schools on April 9, the day of King s funeral. Kansas City Police Department officers deployed tear gas as students gathered outside city hall, according to Kansas City Star reports. A fiery riot and gunfire erupted, leaving five civilians dead, at least 20 individuals hospitalized and more than 100 adults and 11 juveniles arrested. 119

Repeating history? Clarence Lang, chairman and associate professor of African and African-American studies at KU, doesn t believe history repeats itself, but said the parallels between the events of the past and today s conflicts over racial equality and social justice can t be denied and need to be better understood. If we can think historically, then we can act in ways that are informed by an understanding of not only what s changed for the better but also for the work that we still need to do, Lang said. History is not just simply about antiquity. It s not just simply about inert, dead events, but it s also about how the past can be a burden or an opportunity in whatever moment we happen to occupy. A renewed awareness of bigotry, prejudice and unequal justice has surfaced during the past three years, shaken to life by the 2012 shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida by former neighborhood watch A Ferguson, Mo., police officer listens to a protester outside the police station on March 4 in Ferguson. On that day, the Justice Department cleared a white former Ferguson police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices it called discriminatory and unconstitutional. Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast The Associated Press 120

Blane Harding, former director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, led discussions in November 2014 on the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., at the Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence. Photo: Orlin Wagner The Associated Press captain George Zimmerman; the August 2014 police shooting of unarmed, 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; the July 2014 death of 43-year-old African-American Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., after a police officer put him in a chokehold; the November 2014 police shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy holding an air gun; and the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in April while in police custody in Baltimore. The Black Lives Matter movement and the collective protests at the University of Missouri, KU and other campuses across the nation have captured headlines as the cries for equity and change have grown louder, he said. Whether we re talking about women s suffrage, civil rights for African-Americans, minimum wage, building accessibility, environmental protections they re all the result of groups of people coming together to fight about them, Lang said. 121