Kansas State Historical Society – Jefferson County Jayhawkers and Forgotten Freestaters

Jesse Newell’s Rifle Company Roster: Bob Newell, Died in Battle

September 6, 2020September 7, 2020 jeffcojayhawkersLeave a comment

Russell Robert shell The_Oskaloosa_Independent_Sat__Aug_31__1861_ — Excerpt from Captain Avra P. Russell’s letter about the death of his third lieutenant, Bob Newell. Oskaloosa Independent, Aug. 31, 1861. Image from newspapers.com; article viewable here.

(Bob Newell was a free-state rifleman who rode escort for “The Immortal Ten,” the Kansans whose covert rescue mission freed Underground Railroad conductor John Doy from a Missouri jail in 1859. [See story here. ] Bob, just 21, was among about 20 Jefferson County, Kansas, men summoned to help The Immortal Ten on the last 20 miles of their dangerous rescue. This post introduces the young Robert Newell, killed two years later in the Civil War Battle of Wilson’s Creek in Missouri. Captain Avra P. Russell wrote to Jesse Newell about his son’s battlefield death. (Captain Russell’s letter is transcribed here.)

Captain Russell’s letter glistens as a death notification that could only have been written early in a war. It is mournful, respectful, laudatory, personal. And it was early: early in Kansas statehood, early in the Civil War, early in Robert Newell’s life.

Carefully composed but written with an unbearable purpose, the captain’s letter told Jesse Newell that his son Robert had died in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in southwest Missouri, August 10, 1861.

“The terrible battle at Springfield, fought on the 10^th … deprived you of a very promising son, and me of a brave Lieutenant and highly cherished friend,” the August 18 letter told Jesse and Rosannah Newell, Oskaloosa, Kansas.

Bob Newell, as he was known, died at 23 years of age. He and his younger brother, Abram, had rushed into Union army service alongside many other young Kansans when the new state raised its first two regiments. He mustered in to Company G, Second Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Bob was elected third lieutenant of Company G, serving under Captain Avra P. Russell.

robert newell muster roll ks memo 2 — These images are from the Kansas State Historical Society’s “Civil War soldiers name index, Kansas volunteer regiments, 1861-1865” on Kansasmemory.org. Bob Newell’s regiment’s page is here. The partial images show Newell’s age, rank, date of enlistment and mustering in and his death.

The young Newell’s brief life as a soldier began around June 20, barely two months after the Civil War began. And it was just the fifth month Kansas had existed as a state, a free state that forbade slavery.

Newell “…had taken a very active and efficient part through the day, manifesting a coolness and perfect self control almost unexampled in one so young and inexperienced on the field,” Captain Russell wrote of the battle and Bob’s part in it.

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek, a Union loss, was significant as the first major Civil War battle fought west of the Mississippi River. It gave the Confederates control in southwest Missouri.^[i] Union forces were about 5,400 men; the Confederate and Missouri secessionist troops about 11,000. Losses were heavy for both sides: The Union lost about 1,235 men killed, wounded or missing and the Confederates and Missouri secessionist troops about 1,100.[ii] To understand the battle conditions Bob and his comrades fought in, told from a young Iowa soldier’s view, read this Emerging Civil War blog post here.

LoC Battle of Wilson's Creek, near Springfield, Missouri — This image, “Battle of Wilson’s Creek, near Springfield, Missouri” shows the battlefield death of Union Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon and was published in *Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper* on Aug. 24, 1861. It is held by the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002736810/

Bob Newell’s death came shortly after Union Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon was killed on the Wilson’s Creek battlefield.[iii] Lyon’s death was the first of a Union general in the Civil War.

Jesse Newell passed Captain Russell’s condolence letter on to The Oskaloosa Independent, which published it Aug. 31, 1861. See the transcript here. It ran with a letter written home by another of Jesse Newell’s sons, Abram, a 21-year-old private in Bob’s unit. Abram was shot in the hand in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and remained with the 2^nd Kansas until October 31^st when the regiment finished its service.^[iv] Abram’s “Dear Parents” letter may be seen here.

BLEEDING KANSAS, JEFFERSON COUNTY STRIFE

Boots on the ground experience in the Kansas-Missouri border war over slavery had already initiated Bob Newell and a good many other Kansas soldiers to Kansas-Missouri violence. Bob had emigrated to Kansas Territory at 18 years old in 1856. He grew to adulthood in the Bleeding Kansas years when Missourians and partisans from southern states fought to make Kansas a slave state and freestaters fought to keep it free of slavery.[v]

Skirmishes popped up between Missouri and southern proslavers trying to drive freestaters out of Jefferson County and freestaters trying to rid their county of the marauders.[vi] After the peak of Jefferson County strife in September 1856, Jesse Newell was slapped with an arrest warrant that charged him with fighting against the proslavers.[vii] He provided his own complaint back to the territorial governor, describing the 1856 war occurring in Jefferson County:

Jesse Newell included a frightening anecdote that included his boy, Bob.

“…[This] country is infested with guerrilla bands, for they have taken me and my son Robert out and threatened to hang us both. And since that time they have threatened to hang my brother-in-law Joseph Phitsimons [Fitzsimmons] and have destroyed my property in throwing down my fences and destroying my grain and threatening to burn my house and break up my [saw] mill.”

Named for his grandfather, Robert Newell was born in Richland County, Ohio, in 1838 and moved with his family to the two-year-old state of Iowa when he was 10 years old. The family lived in Mahaska County, not far from a namesake town of Oskaloosa, Iowa. Bob’s two older brothers, Valentine and John, emigrated to Kansas Territory in 1855, the rest of the family settling at what would someday be Oskaloosa, Kansas, in May 1856.

Within two years of settling, Bob Newell owned 160 acres of Jefferson County, Kansas Territory, farm land northwest of Oskaloosa, land that is held today by descendants of Jesse Newell. He also had an interest in his father’s steam-powered sawmill on the west side of the public square. [See the Google image of Oskaloosa, Kansas.]

GOOD TROUBLE

Kansas Territory, as close as it was to the slave-holding states of Missouri and Arkansas, became a draw for determined enslaved people to escape bondage. Lawrence and its Douglas County surrounds, just across the Kansas River from Jefferson County and Oskaloosa, was a hub for these freedom-seekers. There, plans and routes were fixed to help enslaved men, women and children find freedom and safety in the northern states and Canada. Lawrence and Douglas County were well-populated with eastern abolitionists who wanted to rid the nation of slavery all together, and they were willing to break the law to do so.

I haven’t yet discovered how involved Bob Newell’s father, Jesse, was in Underground Railroad activity, but he gave young Bob a taste of it in 1859.

Bob and his brother John Newell rode with about 18 other Oskaloosa area men in their father’s rifle company to play a small role in one of the most celebrated rescues in Kansas history. They stepped up to help the good trouble makers from Lawrence, the Immortal Ten, who in July 1859 quietly broke Underground Railroad conductor John Doy out of a Missouri jail.

Doy had been headed north from Lawrence with 13 freedom-seekers six months earlier when his group was ambushed by slave catchers.[viii] The catastrophe happened about eight miles south of Jesse Newell’s home in Oskaloosa, and Doy had been on his way to the Newell place. Jesse Newell had agreed to help Doy and his party of freedom-seekers in some way as they continued north. [This link explains what we know about Jesse Newell’s role.]

The ambushers took the entire group hostage: Doy, his two assistants and the 13 men, women and children who had risked all for freedom. The ambushers hurried their prisoners across the border into Missouri and jailed Doy.

Six months later, the Immortal Ten swept Doy from his St. Joseph, Missouri, jail cell, crossed the Missouri River and began their dangerous trip south through Kansas to Lawrence. Suspecting they were being followed, the group’s leader, James B. Abbott,[ix] got word to Jesse Newell to bring his rifle company to be an escort guard for the last 20 miles of the trip.

Bob Newell’s name appears just once in the John Doy rescue story, but it tells us plenty about his mettle.

NEWELL’S HALL

As Oskaloosa developed, Bob Newell built a sort of town hall for citizens, Newell’s Hall. He was building the wood-frame building at the southwest corner of Oskaloosa’s public square in August 1860, around the same time his father had built a two-story house for his family not far to the east.[x]

Newell’s Hall hosted local congregations of government, military and civil life. County Republicans, county court, church people all gathered there. Oskaloosans assembled at the hall to make sure Oskaloosa had a good enough road to connect it to the Smoky Hill Trail wagon route going from Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, to the gold mines of Colorado. (Oskaloosa won its place on the route.)

Courthouse square — Google map showing locations of the Newell’s sawmill, Bob Newell’s “Newell’s Hall” and Jesse Newell’s homestead. Google maps image, Imagery @2020 Maxar Technologies, USDA Farm Service Agency

Prim Methodists conducted a fund-raising festival at Newell’s Hall to furnish their new church. The October 3, 1860, edition of The Oskaloosa Independent cheerfully urged the ladies and gentlemen of Oskaloosa to pay $1 per couple to come and enjoy the festival. Immediately following the notice was a reply to the impertinent question of whether the festival would include dancing.

“Of course not,” was the organizer’s reply in the newspaper. “We would be surprised to learn that any gentleman or lady of self-respect, and a proper regard for religion and the church, would ever think for a moment, of dancing on such an occasion.”

After Bob Newell died at Wilson’s Creek, Henry F. Woolley had taken over Newell’s Hall. He operated a store on the first floor and the county court met upstairs. Eventually, Oskaloosa was erecting grander buildings. Newell’s Hall was pulled down in 1885 and The Oskaloosa Independent walked readers through a compressed Newell’s Hall history, starting with Bob Newell putting it up in 1860.

“Judge Pettit held district court in the lower room,” the newspaper recounted. “J. Gill Spivey there made a speech and took the oath as a [Union] militia officer, and afterward went south and got a commission in the rebel army.

“[U.S. Sen.] S.C. Pomeroy made a speech there, also, when he was senator, and [U.S. Sen. and Union General] Jim Lane made his appeal within its walls for ‘foot soldiers,’ who would go over to Missouri on foot and come back riding one horse and leading another.”[xi]

WAR

Kansas joined the Union as a state free of slavery on Jan. 29, 1861. Three months later, the Civil War began. The new state of Kansas legislature was still writing new laws, trying to determine which city should become the state’s capital and rushing through military-related legislation.

Kansas men were ordered to form “military companies” a few days after the Civil War’s start April 12, 1861. President Lincoln ordered that two full-out Kansas army regiments be filled from those militia-like military companies, and armed and equipped.

Oskaloosa’s public square filled with citizens on April 22 to create a military company.

Wareham Gibbs, a 71-year-old veteran (of the War of 1812, perhaps), marched the crowd from the public square to Newell’s Hall, according to the April 24, 1861, Oskaloosa Independent. The militia men went inside and voted to name their company the Union Guards.

Bob Newell was elected 3^rd sergeant of the Union Guards, and Jesse Newell signed up for the uniforms committee. Future Jefferson County military recruiter A.W. Spalding issued a patriotic speech, and so did J. Gill Spivey (And, yes, military records confirm that he did join the Confederates, as referenced above.) The crowd called for John F. Hinton, who declined to speak but instead played a rousing “Yankee Doodle.” The Independent article doesn’t note which instrument he played.

Bob Newell was among those leaving the militia group to join a fighting regiment, the Second Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry. The 2^nd Kansas organized and drilled in Lawrence during May and set out in June on a 40-mile march to Wyandotte, Kansas (now Kansas City, Kansas), and then across the Missouri River to Kansas City, Missouri. Newell’s comrades elected him third lieutenant of Company G under Captain Russell when they met at Kansas City.

2nd reg bravery from Leav T, The_Oskaloosa_Independent_Sat__Aug_31__1861 p1 — A portion of a soldier correspondent’s letter about the Battle of Wilson’s Creek to The Leavenworth Daily Times printed in The Oskaloosa Independent Aug. 31, 1861. The image is from newspapers.com and may be read here.

The 2nd Kansas’s job would be to help U.S. troops prevent Confederate and Missouri southern sympathizers from conquering Missouri, which was a slave state that did not secede from the United States.

Anonymous soldier correspondents kept Kansas newspapers abreast of Kansas soldiers’ experiences. Some grousing fell upon the long march to Kansas City, a lack of uniforms and their less-than-ideal weapons.

One of the correspondents, who was with Bob Newell’s Company G, wrote that the 2^nd Kansas regiment had learned at 8 a.m. on June 18 that they would march to Wyandotte. By 11 a.m. they had crossed the Kansas River at Lawrenece and moved east. They covered 12 miles before stopping at 5 p.m. for a quick supper at Little Stranger Creek, and then took up their march, guns shining in the moonlight.

“During the early part of the evening, bursts of songs, and jests and shouts of laughter echoed over the prairie,” the soldier correspondent wrote, his letter published June 29 in The Fort Scott (Kansas) Bulletin. “But later the unwonted fatigue bore down the exuberant spirits of the men and by 10 o’clock the lines were as quiet as a funeral procession.

“Here and there men would drop out of the ranks, and be down among the tall grass, doggedly determined to go no farther, and it required the utmost exertions on the part of the officers to rouse them to farther effort.”

After sleeping on the prairie grass the regiment was off again, “foot sore and tired.”

“Mile after mile of the weary march dragged slowly along beneath the broiling rays of the sun,” the correspondent wrote. “The blistered foot and parched tongues brought the enthusiasm of yesterday down to zero. The secessionists were cursed as the cause of all our sufferings and many and deep were the maledictions showered on their devoted heads.”[xii]

Soldier “M,” also in Bob Newell’s Company G, wrote that the 2^nd Second Kansas finally got part of their uniforms, “a single blouse to each man” when they reached Missouri. Soldier “M” was a correspondent for The Daily Times, Leavenworth.[xiii]

“Perhaps it is no fault of the Government, but still it seems to me that the Kansas volunteers have been treated with gross neglect in the way of clothing, “M” wrote on June 20. “The men grumble not a little about it. Another cause of complaint with the Second Regiment is the character of arms issued to us. They are the common musket, in very bad condition, and I believe they are condemned — if they are not condemned, they ought to be.”

Writing after the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, correspondent “F.A.R.” charged that the First and Second Kansas regiments had been “shamefully abused” from the start of the war.

“They have never yet received their uniforms, and are half naked, with no tents, and half of them without blankets.” F.A.R. wrote in the September 26 Vermont Phoenix of Brattleboro, Vermont.

“When they started from Fort Leavenworth [First Kansas] in the spring for the South they were provided with condemned tents and blankets, but now they are without either and compelled to sleep on the ground in the open air.

“In the late battle at Springfield [Wilson’s Creek] these two proved themselves the crack regiments, and certainly ought to be provided with clothing and camp equipage.”

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek showed the Kansas troops, considered “raw recruits” in some publications, would fight. The Battlefields.org Wilson’s Creek website page says even though the Confederates counterattacked the Union forces three times, they failed to break through the Union line.

The Confederates and Missouri forces then pulled back, but Union Major General Samuel D. Sturgis, who had taken command when Union Brigadier General Lyon was killed, realized his men were exhausted and running out of ammunition. Sturgis ordered his men to retreat.

“The Confederates were too disorganized and ill-equipped to pursue [Union troops],” the Battlefield.org website summarizes.[xiv]

Despite their loss, the Kansas Union troops won praise for their fighting as regiments and as individual soldiers.

Major John M. Schofield noted in an after-battle commentary that the Union troops’ food and supplies were low and that the soldiers had had to forage in the area.^[xv] They were exhausted from their long marches.

But just before the end of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, the “… Second Kansas Regiment [Bob Newell’s regiment], which had firmly maintained its position on the extreme right from the time it was first sent there, found its ammunition exhausted, and was ordered to retire, which it did slowly and in good order, bringing off its wounded.”

In his letter to Jesse and Rosannah Newell, Captain Russell strove to assure the bereaved couple that Bob Newell did not suffer in his battlefield death.

“He was killed almost by my side, at the close of the day, when we were retiring from the field, by the bursting of a shell,” Russell wrote. “The missiles entered the back part of his head, and he fell a corpse – never moved or spoke after falling.”

“[Bob Newell] – was continually in the front of the battle doing noble execution himself, and giving courage to the whole company by his intrepid example,” Captain Russell wrote, bypassing the cold brevity of a formulaic “we regret to inform you” letter that he might have to write later in the war as soldiers’ deaths multiplied.

Russell himself would soon die in the war. He died Dec. 12, 1862, from injuries he received in the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, five days earlier.^[xvi] He was 29 years old.

The soldier correspondent “M” who served with Bob Newell in Company G praised his regiment’s performance at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and mourned Bob Newell.

“The Kansas 2^nd was the last regiment to leave the field, and the only regiment that left with all the companies present, and in perfect order,” soldier “M” wrote August. 18, 1861, from camp near Rolla, Missouri.[xvii] “We left slowly, followed by the artillery and soon were off the field. As we were leaving, a shell thrown by the enemy fell and burst near us, killing our Third Lieutenant, Robert Newell, from Oskaloosa.

“He was struck on the back of the head, and killed instantly. He was a young man of sterling worth, and as true a heart as fought on the field. During the whole time he was at his post, cool and firm. His loss is keenly felt by us all.”

Abram Newell, Bob’s little brother, wrote in his letter home that Bob had been killed while his regiment was in retreat. The artillery shell that killed Bob also injured several other soldiers, Abram said.

“We did not have time to stop and bury him [Bob] then,” Abram wrote. “But he was decently buried afterwards.”

Soldiers who died at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek were buried on the battlefield and moved six years later to the National Cemetery at Springfield, Missouri. Bob Newell, like so many of the others who died that day, has no grave marker, according to the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield website.

[i] I am not knowledgeable enough about the Civil War to supply the big picture part of Robert Newell’s story at Wilson’s Creek. I hope readers will seek, in addition to Kristen Pawlak’s piece here, some of the many articles, papers and books about the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Ms. Pawlak’s recent article about the battle centers on a member of an Iowa regiment that according to the War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I., Vol. III fought alongside the First Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry and Bob Newell’s Second Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry in the U.S. forces’ Fourth Brigade.

The National Park Service operates the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, Republic, Missouri; its website: https://www.nps.gov/wicr/index.htm

Jefferson County sent soldiers to the battle in both the 1^st and 2^nd Kansas regiments. Jeremiah H. Bennet wrote about the Jefferson County soldiers at Wilson’s Creek in The Oskaloosa Independent in two articles:

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3603122/the-oskaloosa-independent/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/961239/wilsons-creek-and-jeffco-soldiers/#

[ii] The troops and casualty figures are from the Wilson’s Creek page on the Battlefields.org website. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/wilsons-creek

[iii] Lyon, beloved by his troops, had been a federal in the U.S. armed forces assigned to Kansas Territory after the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act took effect. He was favored by Kansas Territory freestaters. A soldier’s letter written eight days after the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and published in The Leavenworth Times said that Company G Corporal Marshall Edward Spurlock was among those who carried Lyon’s body from the battlefield.

[iv] Abram went on to serve in the Kansas State Militia in 1863 and 1864 as Kansas defended its borders against rebel invasion from across the Missouri border.

[v] The struggle was carried out both with violence and via political tugs of war and elections. The 1854 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act meant white men (no one else could vote) in Kansas Territory would decide whether to allow slavery in Kansas or to ban it. After defeating the earlier proslavery Kansas Territory government at the ballot box, freestaters in 1859 adopted a constitution prohibiting slavery in Kansas. Kansas became a state free of slavery on January 29, 1861, the time gap due to the U.S. Senate’s slave power opposing a free Kansas. But as southern states began walking out the secession door, enough Senate votes were left to admit Kansas free.

[vi] For background about “Bleeding Kansas” in Jefferson County, Kansas Territory, see earlier posts about the September 1856 “battles” of Grasshopper Falls, Slough Creek and Hickory Point. https://jeffersonjayhawkers.com/2018/01/26/the-battle-of-grasshopper-falls/

https://jeffersonjayhawkers.com/2017/09/11/our-captured-flag-slough-creek-part-i/

https://jeffersonjayhawkers.com/2016/10/10/north-of-the-kansas-river/

[vii]Jesse Newell’s complaint to Kansas Territory Gov. John Geary, dated Sept. 20, 1856, is held in the archives of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas. The Joseph Fitzsimmons mentioned in the complaint co-founded Oskaloosa with Jesse Newell.

[viii] Maj. James B. Abbott, the chief organizer of the Immortal Ten and the man who called for Jesse Newell to bring his rifle company and perform escort guard duty, wrote about the rescue and perilous journey from St. Joseph, Missouri, back to Lawrence, Kansas Territory. He read his account at the Kansas State Historical Society annual meeting in 1899. Near the end of his story, he names some of Jesse Newell’s rifle company members [some names corrected]. Read Abbott’s tale here.

“Thinking that it was more than likely that the horseman who followed us would endeavor to get reinforced at Lecompton and try to recapture Dr. Doy, word was sent to Captain Jesse Newell, of Oskaloosa, to furnish an escort; and when we arrived at his place we found the Captain on hand with the following-named officers of his rifle company, to wit: Jerome Hazen, First Lieutenant; J. I. Forbes, Second Lieutenant; John Newell, Gil. Tower, Robert Newell, James Monroe, Resolved Fuller, M. R. Dutton – privates; and eight or ten others. And without delay we passed on, most of the escort going to within a few miles of Lawrence, and the captain and a few of his men going the whole distance, where we arrived about six o’clock in the evening, and where we also found the streets lined with people…”

[ix] Abbott, endnote viii.

[x] The Newell-Johnson-Searle House, a wood-frame house and limestone cabin on Oskaloosa’s east side, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. Only some wood framing inside and portions of the house basement are original to Jesse Newell in 1860, but the small limestone cabin behind it has been dated as a few years older and as original to Jesse Newell. Jesse Newell’s descendants purchased the homestead plot and are busy with restoration.

[xi] The Oskaloosa Independent, Aug. 15, 1885, Page 3. Jefferson County built its brick courthouse in 1868, providing an official venue for court proceedings and other county functions. The public square upon which the courthouse sat was donated by Jesse Newell and Joseph Fitzsimmons, co-founders of Oskaloosa. The old brick courthouse was destroyed by a tornado in 1960 and replaced with a modern one.

[xii] Read the Fort Scott Bulletin newspaper article by an unnamed soldier here: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57635204/2nd-kansas-regiment-march-to-wyandotte/

[xiii] This excerpt was taken from a collection of war-time Leavenworth Dailey Times articles. Betts, Vicki,”[Leavenworth, KS] Daily Times, June 12, 1860-October 8, 1861” (2016). By Title. Paper 51. http://hdl.handle.net/10950/705

[xiv] Battlefield.org’s Wilson’s Creek page: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/wilsons-creek

[xv] From Major John M. Schofield’s communications of Aug 20, 1861, War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Series I., Vol. III. P 57. Copyright 1971, the National Historical Society. Schofield was acting adjutant general for the Army of the West at the time.

[xvi] Russell County, Kansas, is named for Avra P. Russell.

[xvii] Soldier “M”’s letter was printed in the Leavenworth Daily Times on Aug. 22, 1861. The information is taken from Kansans go to War: The Wilson’s Creek campaign as reported by the Leavenworth Daily Times Part II. Edited by Richard W. Hatcher III and William Garret Piston. Kansas History 16 (Winter 1993): 224-247. https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/1993winter_hatcher.pdf

Paper Voting: “All the Mammas”

February 7, 2020May 22, 2020 jeffcojayhawkersLeave a comment

Kansas Territory’s earliest elections carried massive voter fraud, much of it due to non-resident Missouri neighbors hoping to spread slavery into Kansas.

By 1858 elections were more carefully run and the opponents of slavery, Kansas freestaters, were winning. This isn’t to say that some of the pre-statehood paper election returns held at the Kansas State Historical Society don’t hold some thrilling stories. (Read some Jefferson County ones here. ) Or some odd ones. And almost universally, those aged voting records reveal what must have been a brutal job collecting and tallying votes in 1850s Kansas Territory.

My favorite among Jefferson County election results is a single vote cast for “All the Mammas” for the job of county school superintendent. On March 22, 1858, the vote for “All the Mammas” came from the Slough Creek precinct (soon to become Oskaloosa) in a batch of local office elections.

March 22 1858 summary — This image and all the Jefferson County territorial election images, including the “All the Mammas” clip, in this post were made from scans of original documents at the Kansas State Archives, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

Mind, whoever wrote in All the Mammas instead of voting for candidate Mr. McFarland (he won) to preside over the county schools knew women did not yet have the right to vote. But maybe he thought women would be better at running the schools. The 1859 Wyandotte Constitution that brought Kansas into statehood in 1861 did, however, provide for women to vote in school-related elections. Our voter was futuristic.

That single Slough Creek voter must really have enjoyed his patriotic duty that day because a string of other names appeared in the returns besides All the Mammas. Fanny (or Harry?) Cutthroat got a write-in vote for coroner, Billy Frenchman for probate judge, Mary Spendall for treasurer, Lucy Stone[i] for probate judge. You get the idea.

March 22 1858 Mammas — Image made from scans of original documents at the Kansas State Archives, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

If you’ve looked into any early Jefferson County history, you’ll recognize some of our free-state settlers’ names on these returns, including “Lawrence Avenger” Jerome Hazen, Jesse Newell, Benjamin Hoskinson, Matthew R. Dutton, J.F. Conwell, Jacob Boucher. Joseph L. Speer, Douglas County newspaper editor John Speer’s brother, was early in his long-time Jefferson County office-holding career on this ballot. (Further reading on Jerome Hazen may be found here and here , and about Jesse Newell here.)

March 22 1858 Jesse returns — Some of the Slough Creek tallies. Image made from scans of original documents at the Kansas State Archives, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

Paper election returns that were much simpler to make out (Kentucky precinct returns below) come from Jan. 4, 1858[ii], portraying the polling at Kentucky township, Jefferson County. This southern part of the county was largely proslavery. The photo shows only the first page of the voting results, but “Constitution with Slavery” won 58-13 in this precinct.[iii] A newspaper editor of those days wrote of some “humbuggery” in election returns for a south Jefferson County precinct around this time. I don’ know which returns he meant, but this one could be a candidate.

KY twp 1857 1858 — Nice and simple. Image made from scans of original documents at the Kansas State Archives, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

Polling in another south Jefferson County election — Oct. 4, 1858 – gives detailed results, a blizzard of barely readable returns (Kaw precinct, below), and it tells us how each voter voted. Some of the early elections included this now-private information. As for a quick, efficient read on how this election turned out, all I can say is the voters’ names are in the first column on the left. The candidates’ names are in the rows/cells across the top. Lots of numbers follow.

Kaw 1858 — Image made from scans of original documents at the Kansas State Archives, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

The Kansas Historical Society’s Kansas Memory pages include some Kansas Territory election returns, including these from the Fort Scott precinct in Bourbon County, here.

[i] Lucy Stone, Massachusetts, worked for abolition of slavery and for women’s voting rights.

[ii] January 4, 1858 is written on the front of this document by the Kansas State Historical Society, but the election judges wrote Dec. 21 inside, probably meaning 1857.

[iii] In this election, a constitution “with no slavery” didn’t mean what you might think. It meant people who already enslaved people in Kansas could retain slaves. But no additional slaves could be brought in, if this constitution was enacted, which it wasn’t.

Constitution Writing: A Free White State, Liberty and Racism

June 1, 2019April 13, 2020 jeffcojayhawkersLeave a comment

(Like the previous one, this post contains racist and inflammatory language uttered by elected delegates writing a constitution to make Kansas Territory the state of Kansas. Prohibiting or allowing slavery in Kansas was the monumental choice facing delegates, but predominant anti-slavery opinion made slavery’s abolition in Kansas a foregone outcome of the July 1859 constitutional convention. Instead, delegates argued repeatedly and graphically about human equality, human rights and racial integration at the convention, which ran from July 5 through July 29, 1859.)

In the end, the 35 Republicans and 17 Democrats elected to write a constitution labored little to banish slavery from the future state of Kansas.

After five years of battling over slavery and after three failed constitutions,[1] the delegates at the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention voted 48-1 to include these words in the Kansas Constitution: “There shall be no slavery in this State…”[2]

The convention’s swift dispatch of slavery, however, brought a torrent of convention agitation over alternative, harsh propositions to clip rights for people of African descent who might come to the new slavery-prohibiting state of Kansas.

Top of the list for convention Democrats (Democrats at the time largely supported slavery) was the “free white state” pitch to block all people of African descent from living in Kansas. Over and over again, the leading Democrats at the convention tried to work that provision into one section or another of the constitution draft. When it became evident that the majority of delegates weren’t having it, the Democrat delegates tried to write various exceptions into the document. Exceptions like this: If “negroes and mulattoes”[3] were allowed to live in Kansas, they would not be entitled to education in Kansas public schools; or if fugitive slaves from other states escaped to freedom in Kansas, they still could be captured and returned to slavery under their owners in slave states like Missouri.

And if people of African descent were allowed in Kansas public schools, they would have to learn in separate schools, never sharing classrooms or sitting side-by-side with white pupils.

One delegate even said he wanted an option through which white taxpayers’ money could be withheld from financing public schools that educated children of color.^[4]

Liberty and rights were the most contentious concepts the delegates dealt with as they pieced together words that still, today, define the rights of Kansans. And Kansas becoming a free state was remarkable, especially considering that the Kansas-Nebraska Act^[5] in 1854 had changed the slave-state versus free- state rules for new states entering the Union.

But while Kansans can be proud that 1850s settlers fought off slavery and saw Kansas enter the Union as a free state, those contentious proposals at the 1859 Wyandotte Constitutional Convention foreshadowed a future of segregated schools, lunch counters, movie theaters.^[6] [Read some examples here and here.] Deep prejudices against people with African blood in their veins did not fall away with the adoption of the free-state Kansas Constitution.

C B McClelland (2) — Clark B. McClellan, Jefferson County’s lone delegate to the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention in July 1859. Picture courtesy of the Jefferson County Historical Society in Oskaloosa, Kansas.

The constitutional convention convened July 5, 1859, at Wyandot city, now part of Kansas City, Kansas, on the state’s northeastern border. The constitution it produced was next approved by Kansas Territory voters in October 1859, sent on to Congress and then to President James Buchanan, who signed it Jan. 29, 1861. [Learn why it took so long here. ]

Based on its modest population, Jefferson County was allowed one delegate to the convention. Clark B. McClellan, a Democrat, was elected 278 to 249 over his Republican opponent in the June 1859 delegate elections. McClellan won heavy backing from the county’s minority of southern-leaning precincts that favored Democrats[7] (There were enslaved people in these townships, as shown by territorial censuses.).

At the Wyandotte convention McClellan, a popular Oskaloosa merchant, stuck to his party line on issues oppressive to people of African descent but wasn’t vocal during the floor debates. He crossed over to the Republican side on some votes. For example, he joined Republicans to squash plans to give Kansas slave owners leeway, six months to a year, to remove slaves from the territory once the new constitution kicked in (since it would make slavery illegal).

But for the most part, he voted with the other Democrats, who as the minority party lacked the votes to succeed. Nonetheless, they made frequent attempts with a flurry of amendments to make Kansas a free white state (no people of African descent allowed to live in Kansas) or to limit the education of black children.[8]

mcclellan store The_Oskaloosa_Independent_Wed__Nov_14__1860_ — Advertisement for Jefferson County delegate Clark B. McClellan’s store in Oskaloosa. Image from the Nov. 14, 1860, *Oskaloosa Independent*, newspapers.com.

William C. McDowell, a leading Leavenworth County delegate and a Democrat, led a share of the Democrats’ arguments to limit human rights through the constitution’s Bill of Rights section. vigorous charges to limit human rights in Kansas. He said he considered black people to be inferior to whites and felt duty-bound to follow his and his constituents “inclinations and feelings” and bar all black people from Kansas if they could not be enslaved..

“I regard this negro question as the only question of interest that was presented in the late canvass [June election],” McDowell told delegates on July 14.[9] “That the future State of Kansas should be free was conceded by all parties in this Territory; and whilst that was conceded, it was expected that this Convention would incorporate into the Constitution an article excluding the immigration of negroes into the State.”

McDowell – and other delegates, as well — chose the highest ideals of his political party to explain his “free white state” position, warning that without it Kansas would become the “receptacle of free negroes and runaway slaves.” McDowell argued that “God Almighty, for some high purpose, has established this inferiority of the black race, and stamped an indelible mark upon them.”

McDowell’s speech, only a tiny part of which is quoted here, brought an explicit Republican response from delegate Solon O. Thacher, a Douglas County Republican. Thacher, like McDowell, focused on people of African descent, recounting the violent struggles of Bleeding Kansas and railing against the inhumanity of the nation’s slave power and, now, free-white-staters.

Thacher deployed a nuclear argument to blast at the hypocrisy of Democrats who said Republicans were promoting caucasian/black equality. His speech raised the issue of white men raping and sexually assaulting enslaved black women, the result of which was lighter-skinned, mixed-race children.

“And this charge [against equality between black and white people] comes from a party sustaining and propagating a system whose basis rests upon prostitution and concubinage more loathsome and degrading than any that can be found in the wide world,” Thacher told the convention.[10]

“Mark the universal bleaching out of the colored race in the South, and remember that in that region the Democracy hold undisputed sway. There are there ten slaves to-day with Anglo-Saxon blood coursing their veins, to one pure African.”

“… There are men among you who shriek this cry, who first saw the light in the arms of a negro nurse, and from her breast drew the milk of infancy,” Thacher charged. “Let such men never raise a babble so insane and so reflective of their own history!”

McClellan store SE corner of square 1871 — An 1871 picture of Clark B. McClellan’s store on the southeast corner of Oskaloosa’s public square. McClellan was Jefferson County’s delegate to the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention in Jul 1859. Picture courtesy of the Jefferson County Historical Society.

No direct response answered Thacher’s attack, but near the end of the convention, John P. Slough, another Democrat from Leavenworth County, again expressed his displeasure that the constitution would not block people of African descent from living in Kansas.

“Believing that principle to be right, when I became a candidate for this position, I became pledged to myself as well as to my constituents, to do everything in my power to provide in future for the exclusion of free negroes by a clause in the Constitution of the State of Kansas,” Slough told his fellow delegates. He suggested a future Kansas Legislature should put the question to a vote of the (white male only voters) public.

Slough’s effort failed, but delegates kept up a flow of suggested add-ins and exceptions including free white state provisions, all rejected nearly as quickly as they were proposed. Those clauses would go something like this: Public schools will educate Kansas children, except black or mulatto children; and “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”[11] except for people of African descent (the quoted portion is the first section in the constitution’s Bill of Rights). The edits would switch something like, Kansans have a natural right to control of their own persons, their own bodies, all except for except enslaved people. Other delegates fought to write the constitution in a simpler way to give broad freedoms to Kansans. Legislatures could write laws outside of the constitution to address specific needs of the state. [Read the convention’s final Bill of Rights and Constitution here.]

That last right, having control of one’s person, was pounced upon by Democrats who feared giving escaping slaves that right would threaten the enforcement of the federal Fugitive Slave Law. in Kansas. [ The law allowed slave owners to hunt for and capture runaway enslaved people, even if the slaves took refuge in a free state where slavery was illegal. Under the U.S. Fugitive Slave Law, residents of free states could be penalized if they failed to help capture fugitives and return them to their owners. Enslaved people did not possess control of their persons or bodies.

Samuel A. Stinson, another Leavenworth County Democrat, warned that a Kansas constitution flouting the Fugitive Slave Law would never win acceptance by Kansas voters. He accused the Republicans of grandstanding their abolitionist and fanatical ideas against slavery.

Benjamin Wrigley, Doniphan County, opposed anything that gave enslaved people “control of one’s person” or body. Such a provision went against U.S. law and was a mischievous and hostile slap at the Fugitive Slave Law, Wrigley said. He correctly recognized the dislike of the fugitive law in many quarters.

James G. Blunt, a Republican from Anderson County and later a Civil War major general commanding Kansas troops, said nothing would make him support language in the constitution that would permit enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law in Kansas. He shamed the Democrats for being eager to obey the commands of their “Southern masters” [the nation’s proslavery power] to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, which Blunt labeled a crime against the laws of God and humanity.

“…And I am equally anxious that the broad prairies of Kansas, that have been so nobly won to freedom, after a long and bloody struggle, shall never be prostituted as the hunting ground for human prey,”[12] Blunt said.

The constitution’s liberty language was defining for Kansas, and that language still govern today. The very words and debates from the 1859 Wyandotte convention were recounted in the April 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights.. The court’s interpretation of the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights as it applied to an abortion-restricting law included study of the debates and deliberations at the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention, and it peered into the reasons delegates shaped the document’s language the way they did, and didn’t. {read

In a portion of its 2019 conclusion, the Kansas justices’ 6-1 opinion said, “We hold today that section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights protects all Kansans’ natural right of personal autonomy, which includes the right to control one’s own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination. This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life—decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.”[13]

More caustic than the Wyandotte convention’s deliberations over free white state-ism or allowing black men to vote in Kansas (rejected) was who should or should not be entitled to public school education in Kansas (public schools were called common schools at the time).

William C. McDowell, the Leavenworth County Democrat, returned to his feeling that black and white men were not equal, and that people of African descent could not be legislated “up to our standard.”

“… It is proper for us to have a clause preventing the negroes having the benefit of our common schools,” McDowell said.[14]

Josiah Lamb, a Linn County Republican, challenged McDowell’s and others “inferiority” argument, asserting that withholding education made people inferior.

“If they come into Kansas at all, let us give them an education,” Lamb said. “The very doctrine of trying to prevent them from having the advantages of common schools makes them an inferior race. Let the Leavenworth delegation petition the Legislature if they don’t want their children to go to school with the blacks, and they can have different schools.”[15]

John Taylor Burris, Johnson County, asked how one class of men could rightly claim Kansas’s public benefits while denying them to other classes of men.

“We must proceed upon the supposition that the blacks are to live in common with the white,” Burris said. “It is supposed that they are to mingle and live together with us.”

“I ask if it is desirable to see that class of citizens growing up in entire ignorance? If they are to live in the Territory they should be made as intelligent and as moral as education can make them.”

William Riley Griffith, of Bourbon County, and who was later elected the state’s first schools superintendent, looked to the horizon and suggested future Kansas legislatures could deal with specifics like the ones the Democrats proposed: “If we incorporate provisions that shall exclude any class, the time may not be far distant when we may wish we had not done so.”^[16]

But the Democrats – who like the Republicans offered many proposals they knew would not succeed but wanted their votes on the record– stuck to their constituents’ assumed wishes. John P. Slough, of Leavenworth County, said he could support public education for black pupils, but they should be separated from white children. Anything that implied forced mixing of the races in public schools would be rejected by Kansas Territory voters, and another proposed Kansas Constitution would fail, he said.

“I shall never consent, by my vote, or by any actions of mine, that those upon whom Nature’s God has stamped inferiority, shall ever associate with my children in our common schools, which I hope to assist in supporting,”[17] Slough said.

Delegates ended up straddling the issue, in a way. Their public schools section did not address the race of children in determining who should receive an education and whether it should be received separately from children of another race. Article VI, Sec. 2 instructed future Kansas Legislatures to “… encourage the promotion of intellectual, moral, scientific and agricultural improvement, by establishing a uniform system of common schools…”

That left the door open for legalized racial segregation, and six years later the Kansas Legislature had passed a law that allowed for racially segregated Kansas public chools.

Still, on July 29, the final day of the convention, Solon O. Thacher of Douglas County was pleased with the constitution the delegates had created. He recounted how the document had gone through fiery debate, “ Every line almost has been subjected to the scorch of high-wrought argument.”

The majority party (the Republicans) had aimed to make the Kansas Constitution the outline of “great civil truths and rights, leaving out, as far as possible, special legislation,” Thacher said.

“But, sir, the feature which most endears this Constitution to my heart, and which will commend it most to the true and good everywhere, is that through every line and syllable there glows the generous sunshine of liberty,” Thacher said. “ No repulsive allusion, no wicked prejudice, no ignorant and heathenish distinction mars its beauty of disfigures its fair symmetry.”[18]

Later that day, the document was adopted by the convention and signed.

Except it was not signed by the Democrats, all 17 of whom refused to put their names on the constitution.

And so began the campaign for the white men of Kansas Territory to embrace or reject the Wyandotte Constitution. The electioneering was described as both lively and bitter, but voters made themselves clear Oct. 4, 1859m when they adopted the constitution 10,421 to 5,530 votes, nearly a 2-1 margin.

[1] The Kansas Historical Society’s Kansapedia content explains all four constitutions and includes transcriptions of their contents in its article “Kansas Constitutions” https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/kansas-constitutions/16532

The historical society’s Kansas Memory website carries the handwritten Kansas Constitution (Wyandotte) here, along with a text version: https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/90272

[2]From Kansas Constitutional Convention: A Reprint of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention which Framed the Constitution of Kansas at Wyandotte in July, 1859 (Kansas State Printing Plant, Topeka 1920), 286-287. The final version was in Section 6 of the constitution’s Bill of Rights and read “There shall be no slavery in this State; and no involuntary servitude, except for the punishment of a crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” You may read the book from the 25 days of the convention, including the constitution and other material at the Hathi Trust Digital Library, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006570997

[3] Mulatto, an offensive word today, meant a person of mixed race; having one black parent and one white parent.

[4] Delegate Benjamin Wrigley of Doniphan County failed in his effort to work the following into the state’s constitution: nothing in the constitution will be taken to mean “…that the people will be taxed to support schools for negro or mulatto children, or that an enumeration of negro and mulatto children must be made in making a distribution of the schools funds… .“ Kansas Constitutional Convention: A Reprint of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention which Framed the Constitution of Kansas at Wyandotte in July, 1859 (Kansas State Printing Plant, Topeka 1920), 465.

[5] The Kansas Nebraska-Act in 1854 booted earlier law that allowed slavery in incoming southern states but banned it in incoming northern states. Instead, Congress, bowing to southern pressure, determined that settlers in Kansas Territory would vote on whether to be a slave state or a free state, setting off fierce competition between proslavers and freestaters. Read more about the Act on the Kansas Historical Society’s Kansapedia website: https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/kansas-territory/14701

[6] The segregation article from the link was published in the spring 2010 edition of Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 33 by Brent M.S. Campney, pages 22-41.

[7] Four of Jefferson County’s six townships (Oskaloosa, Grasshopper Falls, Osawkee and Rock Creek) favored Republican Henry Buckmaster. But one of the two townships going to the Democrat, C.B. McClellan, did so in such large numbers (Kentucky Township, where most of the enslaved people in Jefferson County lived, went 93-2 for McClellan)that it put McClellan over the top. The other township favoring McClellan was Jefferson.

[8] These ideas were repeatedly proposed at the convention, even though they repeatedly lost. Democrats – and the Republicans. too – wanted to be on the record with their votes, both for their constituents back home and for upcoming campaigns, including the upcoming public campaign over the constitution’s adoption.

[9] Mr. McDowell’s speech quoted here can be found in Kansas Constitutional Convention: A Reprint of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention which Framed the Constitution of Kansas at Wyandotte in July, 1859 (Kansas State Printing Plant, Topeka 1920), 178-179.

^[10]From Kansas Constitutional Convention: A Reprint of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention which Framed the Constitution of Kansas at Wyandotte in July, 1859 (Kansas State Printing Plant, Topeka 1920), 179-180.

[11] Section 1 of the Bill of Rights in Kansas Constitution reads, in total: “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That result is considerably pared down from the convention’s starting point for proposed language.

[12] From Kansas Constitutional Convention: A Reprint of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention which Framed the Constitution of Kansas at Wyandotte in July, 1859 (Kansas State Printing Plant, Topeka 1920), 277.

[13] Opinion of the Supreme Court of the State of Kansas, No. 114,153 ,page 86.

[14] From Kansas Constitutional Convention: A Reprint of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention which Framed the Constitution of Kansas at Wyandotte in July, 1859 (Kansas State Printing Plant, Topeka 1920), 178.

[15] Ibid, 183.

[16]Ibid, 175.

[17] Ibid, 177.

[18] Ibid. 569

Updated: J.B. Hazen’s “Lawrence Avengers” after the 1863 Quantrill Raid (Capt. Jesse Newell and His Rifle Company, Continued)

August 20, 2018May 22, 2020 jeffcojayhawkers1 Comment

Dearest reader,

This post isn’t about Quantrill’s Civil War raid on Lawrence, Kansas.

This post won’t filibuster whether it was the poorly prepared abolitionist town’s own fault it was attacked on Aug. 21, 1863, or whether brokenhearted confederate Missouri brush dwellers slaughtered 150 to 180 Lawrence people at their homes and businesses because four to 10 of their female loved ones died or were injured in a Union prison collapse.

We won’t analyze whether it was the indiscriminately thieving, vandalizing, slavery-opposing Kansas Jayhawkers or the drunken, fiendish, proslavery Missouri Bushwhackers who were on the side of right.

Neither the rebel Lost-Causers’ defense of treason and revenge nor the injustice, horror or meritorious necessity of Kansas’s retaliatory General Order No. 11 interests us here. All of that and more await you in books, articles, papers, websites, speeches, podcasts, bits of it here, here, here and beyond.

Capt Hazen Lawrence Av milit roll crop aug 29 1863 p1 (2) — This image is part of a page showing J.B. Hazen’s quickly assembled Oskaloosa militia three days after Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence. Named the **“Lawrence Avengers,**” the militiamen elected Hazen their captain. The rest of the document is at the bottom of this post. It is from the Kansas miscellaneous county militia papers on this page. of the Jefferson County section on kansasmemory.org Kansas State Historical Society, page 31. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

Instead, we look north from Lawrence to Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte Hazen in Oskaloosa, Jefferson County, Kansas, to observe an illustration of the young state’s response to the guerilla Quantrill’s massacre at Lawrence.

Within three days of the massacre, J.B. Hazen had organized an Oskaloosa militia company called the “Lawrence Avengers” under the state’s call for militias. A good share of the men populating this early roster, including Hazen, had been radical freestaters who had fought, scouted and voted to make Kansas a state free of slavery during the turbulent Kansas territorial years, primarily 1856 and 1857. Oskaloosa women sewed a silk flag for the 1863 militia company, surrounding the gold-lettered “Lawrence Avengers” with gold stars.

early oskaloosa report quantrill p3 The_Oskaloosa_Independent_Sat__Aug_22__1863_ — This article appeared on page 3 of the Aug. 22, 1863, *Oskaloosa Independent* newspaper, one day after the Lawrence massacre. The image is from the newspapers.com website.

News of William C. Quantrill’s early morning assault on Lawrence had tumbled across the prairie to incredulous neighbors in Oskaloosa and nearby Kansas towns. Some could see the smoke over Lawrence. Unthinkable rumors fluttered in.

But they didn’t yet have the whole story of Quantrill’s confederate guerrilla slaughter of about 180[1] men, boys and some soldiers. The next day, a few newspapers carried haunting snippets about the massacre at Lawrence, the state’s center for anti-slavery partisans since Kansas was opened to settlement in 1854.

The day after was too late for anyone to ride 20 miles from Oskaloosa down to Lawrence to prevent or stop the assault. John W. Roberts[2] , the publisher of The Independent in Oskaloosa, decided to go with the little information he had for his weekly newspaper the next day, Saturday, Aug.22. (See newspaper clipping, “Lawrence Burnt.”)

After another day, other towns’ daily newspaper columns poured out details of atrocities, street by street, house by house, corpse by corpse, in Lawrence. Outraged calls for punitive violence against Quantrill and his Bushwhackers screamed through Kansas, whose Union soldiers fighting near and far in the Civil War.

Chicago_Tribune_Mon__Aug_24__1863_ — *The Chicago Tribune* put this headline on its page 1 story on Aug. 24, 1863. The image is from the newspapers.com website.

The state of Kansas responded. Kansas Gov. Thomas Carney quickly fired off General Order No. 1 calling the state’s home militia into active service to protect Kansas from what citizens feared would be future Quantrill-like invasions and murders.

In the regular army, Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing doomed key Missouri counties on the Kansas border with General Order No. 11 warning the nation that his troops would be wiping out shelter for Bushwhackers and guerrillas in Missouri counties along the Kansas border. Residents in four Missouri counties had 15 days to leave. The Union Army burned homes and farms, leaving little or nothing for Missourians to return to. It was an action loudly applauded in Kansas but is said to have turned more Missourians, including Union-supporting Missourians, against the Union. Go to Missouri today and you will find General Order No. 11 well remembered on the border.

Besides the order to eliminate the boltholes feeding and sheltering the confederate guerillas, army recruiters took to the road to fill the Kansas ranks with more soldiers. Charles R. “Doc” Jennison, leader of “Jennison’s Jayhawkers”(the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry) campaigned to rid the earth of confederate guerrillas and their attacks on Kansas civilians and troops.

(One of Jesse Newell’s sons, Mitchell “Doc” Newell, had joined up a couple of months before Quantrills massacre and was sent off with other Oskaloosa recruits (5th Kansas Cavalry) to fight the Bushwhackers on the Missouri/Kansas border. An account of Mitch Newell and a few comrades killing a group of Quantrill’s men in Missouri can be found near the end of this post.)

J.B. Hazen, Oskaloosa, had already served in the Civil War, joining one of U.S. Sen. James H. Lane‘s own brigades, the Fifth Reg., Kansas Cavalry,^[3] from July 1861 until March 23, 1862.^[4] He was discharged for disease or disability. Hazen also was in Jesse Newell’s Rifle Company in 1859, helping escort Underground Railroad conductor John Doy’s rescue squad back into Kansas. (You also might recognize Mr. Hazen from his 1867 wagon train journal about his overland move to California, detailed in this blog.)

After Quantrill’s raid, Hazen was early to put together an Oskaloosa cavalry for the state militia, responding to Kansas Gov. Thomas Carney’s militia call for men aged 21-45 not in regular military service to enroll to protect their towns and homes “… from murder and rapine.”[5]

In fact, The Leavenworth Times reported that Hazen’s “Lawrence Avengers was the second company in Kansas to report his roll after the governor called upon the militia after the Lawrence attack. Calling Hazen one of the ’56 boys (1856) for his fighting for the freestate cause during the Bleeding Kansas struggles over slavery, the Times described Hazen’s acceptance of a “Lawrence Avengers” flag with its gold stars. (Read the newspaper clipping here.)

Carrie Macomber, who had two brothers in Kansas regiments, gave the townswomen’s flag to Hazen with a short speech. Hazen likewise addressed onlookers.

clip hazen lawrence avengers flag The_Leavenworth_Times_Fri__Sep_18__1863_ (2) — This is a portion of an article published in The Leavenworth Times on Sept. 18, 1863, page 2. Image from newspapers.com. The article may be found here.

“Union,” the Times correspondent for Oskaloosa, wrote several anonymous Oskaloosa regiment articles during the war. Oddly, the article appears in a Leavenworth newspaper and nothing of the article’s jaunty description and background appears in the hometown Oskaloosa paper, The Independent. The full roster of the original “Lawrence Avengers” is at the bottom of this post.

Throughout Jefferson County and the state, militia groups coalesced precinct by precinct. Gov. Carney’s order activated Civil War militia organizations that already existed. Men 21 to 45 years old who were not yet enrolled were ordered to enroll, if they were not in the regular army. These smaller precinct-level militias were combined and combined again to form larger county and multi-county state militia regiments. As Hazen’s crew was combined with other Jefferson County militia organizations, it lost its “Lawrence Avengers” name. The regiments, including some Jackson County sections, were under command of Col. Azel W. Spalding.

In Osawkee, Jefferson County’s proslavery headquarters during pre-statehood days, old freestater Ephraim Bainter organized “Bainter’s Rangers” on Aug. 31, 1861. Included on its roster was Valentine F. Newell, Jesse Newell’s oldest son. The “Jefferson Rangers” formed in Sautrell/Sautrelle Falls [6] on Sept. 5, 1863.

The militia regiments, once filled and their officers elected, were required to conduct weekly drills and be ready to defend Kansas, within Kansas. I haven’t yet found whether Jefferson County’s militia was called to action in 1863, compared to the massive militia participation in 1864 to protect the state’s border.

Meanwhile, militias readied to defend their town squares, and incandescent Kansas newspaper editors called for retaliation against Quantrill, his raiders and all Bushwhackers intent on invading Kansas.

Sen. James H. Lane addressed a crowd in Leavenworth six days after the massacre in Lawrence, charging that the confederate guerrillas hiding in the Missouri border counties could be stopped only one way.

“I will tell you what I want to see,” Lane was quoted as saying, Aug. 28 Leavenworth Times, and outlining the policy of General Order No. 11. “I want to see every foot of ground in Jackson, Cass and Bates counties burned over — everything laid waste. Then we shall have no further trouble. The bushwhackers cannot then remain in the country, for they will have nobody to feed them — nobody to harbor them — nobody to provide them with transportation — no place to sleep in, and will have thirty-five miles further to march before they reach Kansas.”

Regiments like Jennison’s had used 1850s Kansas-Missouri border war tactics in Missouri, scouting and harassing enemies, stealing horses, liberating enslaved people. And while these “Jayhawker” methods were criticized and shamed before and again after the war, the methods were exactly what people called for for at the time.

John W. Roberts of The Oskaloosa Independent lauded Ewing’s General Order No. 11 and suggested that if he had issued it before the Lawrence massacre and if Jennison had already had his new regiment in place, the tragedy might have been prevented.

Hoyt and Jennison dates The_Leavenworth_Times_Sat__Sep_5__1863_ — This notice ran in The Leavenworth Times Saturday, Sept. 5, 1863. The image is from the newspapers.com website.

Jennison and George H. Hoyt, later a lieutenant colonel for this unit, barnstormed the state recruiting the Fifteenth Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, as broadcast by this advertisement, left. Other Jennison notices shouted: “No compromise with Rebels! — No quarter to Bushwhackers! Desolation Shall Follow Treason Wherever this Regiment Marches!” The ad promised rifles, revolvers and sabres for the regiment.

Jennison and Hoyt, or at least Hoyt, brought their post-Quantrill’s Raid “Death to Traitors” campaign to Oskaloosa. The Oskaloosa newspaper’s observation about the speech in its Sept. 15, 1863, edition, said that Captain Hoyt had said many good things in his speech. But.

“… we protest against the useless amount of profanity which characterizes too much of the public speaking of politicians in Kansas,” the brief article said. “The English language is strong enough to give expression to any idea proper to be uttered without the use of profanity or vulgarity. We hope there will be a reform in this particular.”

And of Mitchell “Doc” Newell, Jesse Newell’s son who enlisted as a corporal in the Fifth Kansas Cavalry at age 18? He managed to survive the war. We don’t know much about his service beyond the state’s military records, except for the tale written by an anonymous “Jayhawker” in 1889.

In one of the many war-time reminiscence stories published after the war, a writer described going on a mission in the Missouri woods with members of the young Newell’s Fifteen Kansas Cavalry and Capt. Charles F. Coleman of Kansas Ninth Cavalry Regiment. The writer admired the stealthy skill of Coleman, who like a deer hunter hid like the Bushwhackers did in the thickets in the woods, waiting for his chance.

Coleman had designed a the plan through which the Kansas soldiers would trap and kill the bushwhackers in their hidden camp on Dry Creek, and six of Quantrill’s raiders died that night, “Jayhawker” wrote.

mitch newell by jayhawker The_American_Nonconformist_and_Kansas_Industrial_Liberator_Thu__Apr_11__1889_ — This clip is from an article written anonymously by “Jayhawker” in the American Nonconformist newspaper, Thursday, April 11, 1889. Image from newspapers.com. The article, entitled “War on the Border By “Jayhawker.” Chapter III” may be read on the newspapers.com website here.

[1] The number of dead has been reported variously from 150 to 200, but many accounts put the number in the 180 range.

[2] John W. Roberts was editor and publisher of his weekly, The Independent (renamed The Oskaloosa Independent), from July 1860 into 1892, although Roberts did not move from Ohio to Kansas until 1862.

[3] The 5^th Kansas Cavalry was a unit set up by U.S. Sen. James H. Lane when President Abraham Lincoln gave him the extraordinary designation of brigadier general in 1861, meaning Lane could vault over normal procedure and raise troops himself. Lane’s 3^rd and 4^th regiments, along with the 5th Kansas Cavalry, were called Lane’s Brigade. Lane’s securing such power caused consternation for Kansas Gov. Charles Robinson, who held the duty of organizing the state’s military units, and his supporters. Washington powers were well aware of Lane’s strong ties to his Kansas men, many from territorial days, and the recruiting power he would have. More: http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/lane-james-henry

[4] From the Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas, 1861-’65. Vol. I Volume 1, pt. 1-2 – Primary Source Edition, p. 138.

[5] Quoted text is taken from General Order No. 1 as it was published in Kansas newspapers. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22868830/gov_carneys_general_order_no_1/

[6] Sautrell or Sautrelle Falls had replaced Grasshopper Falls as the the name of this Jefferson County town. “Sauterelle” is the French word for grasshopper so the town apparently didn’t go far enough with its image makeover, and the town is now Valley Falls.

The Kansas State Historical Society has digitized the handwritten county militia records from the Civil War on its Kansas Memory website. This link takes readers to the beginning of the Jefferson County portion of page, Kansas Memory Item 227858, page 910.

The pages below show a post-Quantrill’s raid state militia organization in Oskaloosa, Kansas, the Lawrence Avengers, organized Aug. 24, 1863, by J.B. Hazen. The page may be viewed on the Kansas State Historical Society’s Kansas Memory images, Item 227858, page 940, here.