Osawkee Ozawkie – Jefferson County Jayhawkers and Forgotten Freestaters

Constitution Writing: The Zombie Lecompton Constitution; A Young Abolitionist Watches the Proslavers at Work

May 2, 2020May 28, 2020 jeffcojayhawkersLeave a comment

I’m stepping back from the constitution-writing convention in Wyandotte, Kansas Territory — the one that made Kansas a free state — to take a look at the Lecompton Constitution. That was the one that would have allowed human enslavement in Kansas.

The Lecompton Constitution wore a lot of unflattering tags during its difficult and unnaturally prolonged life: The Lecompton Swindle, the Bogus Baby, the Lecompton Humbug, the Felon Constitution. Begun in early 1857, it was voted up and voted down. It was sustained by conspiracy, micro-targeted voters, procedural twistiness, by extraordinary congressional measures and then crash-carted with a fake incentive for the acceptance of slavery.[1]

Here is what the Lecompton Constitution specified. “The right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever.” That, the key clause of the Lecompton Constitution, ordained that people could own other people and those people’s children, same as they could own a horse or a saddle.

Its year-and-a-half trudge from Kansas Territory to Washington and back to Kansas Territory ended when voters (white males only) finally administered the guillotine to the Lecompton Constitution in August 1858.

One of the voters dispatching the constitution was Thomas Gay, a young Wisconsin slavery opponent who had moved himself down to Jefferson County, Kansas Territory, in 1856 to make Kansas a free state.

Because he has told his story so well, Thomas Gay (1837-1908) will fill you in on the Lecompton Constitution. Gay had an interesting perspective on the slavery constitution because he, a young and idealistic abolitionist, attended a bit of the constitution-writing convention as a guest. Gay was a guest of one of Jefferson County’s three slavery-supporting delegates (William H. Swift) at this convention, the climactic proslavery gala ball to make Kansas a slave state like its neighbor Missouri.

Swift smiled faintly when I told him I should think it would be easy enough for Missourians to make a constitution for Kansas, especially when it was not intended to consult the people of Kansas as to whether they approved it or not. Oh! He said, “What was good enough for Missouri was good enough for Kansas, and the Kansas constitution was to be the Missouri instrument made to fit the more modern idea of how things should be done.” – Thomas Gay

Lecompton Constitutional Convention stories like Thomas Gay’s are rare, as far as I can tell. His is all the more rare because Gay was a Jefferson County narrator, and the county’s recorded territorial narrative is skimpy. Gay wrote a dozen droll articles about his short time in Kansas Territory for the Chariton (Iowa) Herald newspaper in the 1890s.

Gay’s stories, published in the 1890s, don’t appear to have seen a lot of light. They turned up as cut-out newspaper columns from the Chariton Herald pasted onto paper and put in scrapbooks archived at the Kansas State Historical Society and the Lucas County, Iowa, Genealogical Society. About seven years ago I read part of column written by Thomas Gay in an old Jefferson County booklet. Gay offered a fantastically dramatic description of a political speech given at Osawkee from when he lived there, and it looked like he had written about other Kansas Territory experiences.

I set out to find his newspaper articles (Gay’s Iowa hometown was incorrect in the version I read, which slowed me down.) and was rewarded with copies of a dozen of his clipped and pasted Kansas Territory stories, thanks again to archivists in Iowa and Kansas.

A newspaper clip from the “Daily Free Democrat” of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, March 20, 1856, page 2. You may see the clip here. Image from newspapers.com.

The 18-year-old Thomas Gay, who worked for a gunsmith in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, read sensational newspaper accounts about Missouri border ruffian proslavers and their outrages against Kansas freestaters (anti-slavery) in 1856. The newspapers he had access to probably didn’t apply much ink to report any misdeeds committed by freestaters and abolitionists. Free-state partisans held rallies and meetings across the north, often offering aid to those who would settle in Kansas, rich in agricultural – and cheap – land. Gay told his parents he wanted to go.

Gay’s first Kansas article said that he “…burned with a desire to leave my quiet home in Wisconsin and follow Jim Lane in what I believed to be his cyclonic march through the hordes of border-ruffianism.”^[2] Then, he determined, when he was old enough, he would cast a vote for freedom in Kansas.

Nothing was as divisive in Kansas Territory as just about anything related to elections related to making Kansas a slavery or free state. An agitated nation watched this defining crisis for its own future, too. Stories of Bleeding Kansas election strife, civil disobedience and violence headlined in northern and southern newspapers, particularly in 1856.

In May of that year, Gay landed in Kansas Territory armed with a double-barreled rifle he had crafted in Wisconsin. He attached an engraved brass plate to it that read: “Anti-slavery rifle. Always loaded for border ruffians. – T.G.”

Immediately upon Gay’s arrival at Osawkee (renamed Ozawkie), Jefferson County’s county seat and proslavery beehive, his new host spotted the inscription on Gay’s rifle. This man was a New Englander, a family friend with whom Gay would live the new few years. He insisted Gay remove the inflammatory plate from his rifle. The two freestaters needed to keep a low profile at Osawkee.

Gay did survive a scrape or two before freestaters increased their numbers enough in 1857 to begin steering Kansas off of its proslavery course. But somehow, Gay and his family’s New England friend managed to stay friendly with some of the Osawkee proslavery leaders.

One of them, William H. Swift — although he apparently was not actually an Osawkee or Jefferson County resident — was one of three Jefferson County proslavery delegates elected to write the Lecompton Constitution. As Gay tells it, Swift invited him to come along for an educational visit to Constitution Hall in Lecompton[3] to watch the constitution writing.

Gay tells the story in his April 10, 1894, Chariton (Iowa) Herald article, transcribed here. The memoir, Part 11 of his Kansas series, was published nearly 40 years after the convention, a length of time that will furrow historians’ brows. It does give one pause. Gay may have taken some of his material from letters he wrote home while he was in Kansas Territory, or maybe he kept a journal, and he probably consulted the history books for some of the more exacting political details and sequences. I have altered some punctuation and paragraph blocks to make his story easier to read, and have rearranged some of his material. Endnotes and copy in brackets are mine. Thomas Gay’s words are italicized.

Personal Recollections of Life in Territorial Kansas in Border Ruffian Days, By Thomas Gay

Part XI. March 10, 1857, Robert J. Walker of Mississippi,[4] was appointed governor of Kansas. Before his appointment, which he only accepted at the earnest solicitation of President [James] Buchanan, he stipulated as a condition of his acceptance that the constitution then provided for, and which was passed in the fall of the same year should be submitted to the people for their endorsement or rejection. President Buchanan is on record as having expressly promised his power for such submission, and with this promise, Walker accepted the undesirable position and arrived in Lecompton May 27, 1857.[5]

Early in 1857 I made the acquaintance of a man by the name of Swift. For some reason quite a strong friendship had grown up between us, although he was Simon pure pro-slavery, and I was equally untainted “visa-versa.”

He was elected one of the delegates from Jefferson County to the Lecompton constitutional convention, notwithstanding he was not a bona fide resident of the territory. The well-known fact that he had his residence in Missouri did not operate as a practical bar to shut him off from assisting to make a constitution for Kansas.

[Jefferson County sent three proslavery delegates to the convention: Alexander Bayne, a 46-year-old Virginian who lived in Jefferson County’s southern border slavery stronghold; Thomas D. Chiles, a 43-year-old Kentuckian living in the north part of the county, a proslavery-leaning district;[6] and William H. Swift, address unknown.[7]]

He was frequently in Osawkee looking after his fences, and as often as he came he would drop in on Abner[8] and I, and we would get an intellectual treat from him.

When his duties commenced at Lecompton, he would generally come up Saturday and stop with us and visit the Dyers^{^[9]} till Monday. One Saturday he proposed to me that I go down to Lecompton with him the following Monday and witness the process of constitution-making and study the characters of the builders.

So I went with him, with the understanding that he was to protect me and explain to the solons that I was on a voyage of discovery as to what kind of a document they would be likely to turn out with such a dreadful lot of raw material to build with.

Swift smiled faintly when I told him I should think it would be easy enough for Missourians to make a constitution for Kansas, especially when it was not intended to consult the people of Kansas as to whether they approved it or not. Oh! He said, “What was good enough for Missouri was good enough for Kansas, and the Kansas constitution was to be the Missouri instrument made to fit the more modern idea of how things should be done.”

Swift was honest enough to say to me “that Kansas must be made a slave state, and that the convention received its instructions from Washington as to the best methods of procedure to secure that result.”

The central idea of the delegates from Missouri was that with free Iowa on the north and free Illinois on the east and a free state to the west [Kansas], her peculiar institution would be subject to such adverse influences as to render slave property insecure, and as a consequence materially reduce the value of her slaves.

So this convention, entirely pro-slavery and largely interested in slave property in Missouri, backed up and advised by the pro-slavery administration [President Buchanan and the slavery strong U.S. Senate], built this instrument to perpetuate their financial and political interests. What a majority of the residents of the territory desired had no influence in this body or in the White House.

[By the time the Lecompton convention delegates were writing their slavery enabling constitution (Oct. 19 – Nov. 8, 1857), Kansas Territory had had another election for the new territorial legislature (Oct. 5, 1857). This time, freestaters won the majority of seats for the new legislature and, importantly, showed that Kansas Territory’s majority was free-state and against slavery in Kansas. The Lecompton Constitution was still alive, however, and not ready to die.]

John Calhoun,^{^[10]} afterwards known as “Candle Box John,” presided over their deliberations, and as they were mostly of one mind in regard to the central idea, there was not sufficient antagonism developed among the delegates to spice up the proceedings beyond a kind of monotonous perfunctory state.

Before the call to order, Swift introduced me to Calhoun and others, as a hot-blooded young abolitionist from Wisconsin – a protégé of his – who had come down to study the modus operandi of things in the capital; and he, with mock solemnity, suggested that it would be wise to behave themselves, as I had carried arms successfully at Hickory Point,^{^[11]} and also treat me respectfully.

With that, Tom Childs [Chiles], another delegate from our county, reached to his rear and pulled out a flask from his coat tail pocket, and a half dozen others followed suit, till I was in danger of being swamped by the excess of their well-meant hospitality.

Swift then told them that I was studying for the ministry and he had heard it reported that abolition preachers didn’t indulge in anything stronger than aqua pura.

Then Calhoun blurted out, “Bub, take a little for your stomach’s sake anyhow. See what a good round one Sam Kookagee ^{^[12]} has, and he built it up on old rye and pure bourbon. Come, young man, it will make a bishop of you.

“And say, Swift, get your friend to act as chaplain, for I’m sure there is a lot of these unregenerate that need praying for.”

So they joked and badgered the innocent boy till the gavel fell, when they went on lazily building, building the famous organic structure on a foundation of sand, destined to soon come tumbling down upon them, burying them fathoms deep in infamy and disgrace.

Let me here, as briefly as is possible for a proper understanding of the objections to the notorious instrument, recite the conditions under which it was formed, and the means used to fasten it on the territory.

First. The legislature providing for the convention to formulate the [Lecompton proslavery] constitution was a “bogus legislature,” [unfairly elected, earlier] to which three-fourths of the adult residents gave only a forced allegiance.
Second. The census by which the delegates were elected was taken in only fifteen counties. In nineteen counties strongly free state there was no census and could be no vote for delegates.

[Most of the Lecompton Constitution Convention delegates were from southern slave states. Of 59 delegates on the roster in this newspaper clip, 18 had reported coming to Kansas Territory from Missouri. William H. Swift was listed as having come to Kansas Territory from Alabama.]

Third. The registry of voters was exclusively in pro slavery hands.
Fourth. A constitution was formed exclusively by delegates from a proslavery constituency, the free state party abstaining from voting. [Explained below.]
Fifth. The convention only provided its submission in this form: “Constitution with slavery; or, constitution without slavery.” In either event, slavery already existing, could not be interfered with.

[This was the worst of the Lecompton Constitution’s proslavery handling. Under popular sovereignty, Kansas Territory voters were supposed to vote on a complete constitution setting out not only the question of slavery, but all sorts of ruling principles like who gets to vote, how the militia will work, what kind of banking laws to enact. But instead, the Lecompton slavery leadership dismembered the document and offered a couple of slavery questions to voters. Both choices allowed slavery. There was no option through which voters could reject slavery there was no intact constitution document to vote on.]

What was called an election on these two propositions was held December 21, 1857, and resulted in 6226 votes for constitution with slavery, and 569 votes for constitution without slavery. [“Without slavery” somehow meant enslaved people already in Kansas, and their future children, would remain slaves.]

Of this larger vote, 3000 were rejected as fraudulent.

On the 2^nd day of February, 1858, President Buchanan, false to all his solemn pledges to Governor Walker, sent this constitution to the Senate of the United States, with a message asking its acceptance. He had also previous to this endorsed it in his annual message to Congress.

Stephen A. Douglas took issue with the president, on the ground that a failure to submit the constitution to the people of Kansas was in direct conflict with the doctrine of squatter sovereignty, the leading feature of the Kansas-Nebraska bill.^{^[13]} The ruptures in the democratic party by this action of Douglas was not healed. The breach constantly widened till a complete separation took place by which, in 1860, two candidates for president, representing the extreme and moderate view, in regard to slavery, went before the country, and by that action, Lincoln was elected to the presidency.

April 30, 1858, the “English compromise bill” was proposed by congress. By this bill the “Lecompton swindle” was sent back to the people for submission, with a promise that if they would accept it the government would be very liberal to them in the way of public lands, etc.^{^[14]}

On the 2^nd day of August I cast my first vote, and it was one out of 11,300 “nays” recorded against the constitution, while the lonely number of 1,786 said “yea” to the proposition.[15] That vote settled the slavery question in Kansas, and there was hallelujahs among the “Sunflowers.”

Thomas Gay is voter No. 37 on this poll list from his very first election. The voting was conducted at Judge Joseph L. Speer’s office in Osawkee, Jefferson County, Kansas Territory. Image from the Kansas State Historical Society’s archives, territorial executive records, Topeka. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

[Reflecting on life’s journeys – from Wisconsin to Osawkee, or from Lecompton to Lincoln – Gay ended his account with this parting thought:]

When the conscience of a people is thoroughly awakened, how easily are the laborious and systematic efforts of villains brought to naught.

[A follow-up post will examine the tangled course of the Lecompton Constitution and the shifting political winds that brought it down.]

[1] I’ve relied heavily on several excellent articles, papers and books for my brief outline of the Lecompton Constitution’s history. I urge you to read some of them. One that summarizes state and national effects of the Lecompton Constitution may be found on Historic Lecompton’s website

The Lecompton Constitutional Convention

An excellent history explaining the Lecompton Constitution’s profound effect on national questions of democracy, politics, constitutional rights and moral issues like slavery. “The Great Principle of Self-Government: Popular Sovereignty and Bleeding Kansas” by Nicole Etcheson. It ran in Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 27 (Spring–Summer 2004): 14–29.

Another is a 1957 article by Robert W. Johannsen, “The Lecompton Constitutional Convention: An Analysis of Its Membership.” The Kansas Historical Quarterly, Volume XXIII, Autumn 1957, No. 3: 225-243.

The Kansas State Historical Society’s Kansapedia entry on Kansas Constitutions explains fully the four constitutions pitched during Kansas Territory’s struggle to decide the slavery issue. The 1859 Wyandotte Constitution is the one that made Kansas a free state in 1861.

Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (New York, Oxford University Press, 1990).

[2] Thomas Gay wrote 12 newspaper recollections about his years as a Kansas Territory freestater. They appeared in his hometown newspaper, the Chariton (Iowa) Herald in 1894. This quotation is from his first article, which appeared Feb. 8, 1894. Gay refers to free-state leader James H. Lane, a former U.S. congressman from Indiana and later a Kansas U.S. senator and Civil War general, who had been in northern states rallying and recruiting new free-state partisans for Kansas Territory.

[3] Constitution Hall is a Kansas State Historic Site and is listed as a National Historic Landmark. It is a museum of Kansas history. https://www.kshs.org/p/constitution-hall/19562

[4] Territorial governors were appointed by the president of the United States. Kansas Territory had already gone through three governors appointed by U.S. President Franklin Pierce starting in 1855 and before President James Buchanan appointed Robert J. Walker to the job in March 1857 and he arrived for work May 27, 1857; unpopular with proslavery partisans, Walker resigned Dec. 15, 1857. Walker drew proslavery ire for urging freestaters to participate in elections. Kansas Territory governors had a difficult position, and none of the six total territorial governors kept the job for long. Those six governors don’t include the nearly 20 “acting” territorial gubernatorial appointments who filled in between other governors who were fired or resigned and fled Kansas Territory.

[5] What’s important about the agreement between Robert J. Walker and President Buchanan was that Kansas Territory voters were to vote on a constitution in a free and fair election and to send that constitution, backed by the vote of the people, to Washington for approval by Congress and the president.

[6] Thomas D. Chiles came to Kansas Territory in 1856 and lived in Atchison and Leavenworth counties after he left Jefferson County in 1860. The Kansas State Census for 1859 shows one “colored person” living in his household in Jefferson County. A U.S. slave schedule (census) for 1850 for a Thomas D. Chiles in Estill County, Kentucky, lists a 14-year-old enslaved girl. In Kansas, he was a merchant and operated a hotel or boarding house.

[7] I have not found census data indicating William H. Swift lived in Kansas Territory. However, Swift does appear in voter polling lists for the Dec. 21, 1857 and Jan. 4, 1858 elections related to the Lecompton Constitution. Swift also served as an election official for those elections. The New York Tribune article offering details about each Lecompton Constitution delegate (linked in Thomas Gay’s narrative above) says Swift was from Pennsylvania and came to Kansas Territory from Alabama.

[8] Throughout his 12 memoirs, Thomas Gay refers to the man he lived with (the Wisconsin family friend) as “Abner Lowell.” Gay described him as a Massachusetts man connected to the fiercest free-state partisans but who had been injured in an earlier skirmish between the antislavery- and proslavery factions. I believe Gay assigned a pseudonym to this man, as I have been unable so far to find “Abner Lowell” on voter rolls, census rolls, territorial militia listings, other reminiscences or emigrant rosters.

[9] Brothers William and George Dyer ran a store in Osawkee (Ozawkie), were town leaders and were among Jefferson County’s slavery advocates.

[10] John Calhoun, surveyor general for Kansas and Nebraska territories and proslavery leader, was twice accused of tampering with election results. The second time involved the hiding of ballots in a box that had been used to ship candles. The box contained fraudulent voter returns from Johnson County, a long list of fake voter names, hundreds for the proslavery cause. Election officials had submitted the election tally numbers, but hidden the physical ballot returns themselves.

[11] Gay was in the Battle of Hickory Point Sept. 13-14, 1856, in Jefferson County, a skirmish between proslavery partisans and freestaters led by James H. Lane and J.A. Harvey. An abbreviated account of Hickory Point and related events may be found here: https://jeffersonjayhawkers.com/2016/10/10/north-of-the-kansas-river/

[12] Samuel J. Kookagey, a Leavenworth County delegate. Click on the link in the copy above in the sentence containing this endnote reference to find a compelling story of written by Antonio Rafael de la Cova: Samuel J. Kookogey in Bleeding Kansas: A “Fearless vindicator of the rights of the South.” It was published in Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 35 (Autumn 2012): 146–63.

[13] The Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 handed the decision of whether to allow slavery in Kansas Territory (and Nebraska Territory) to voters. The principle was “popular sovereignty,” which was to allow voters to decide their own governance. Before the act, the 1820 Missouri Compromise had determined that new states south of the Mason-Dixon line would be slave states and those north of it free states. Kansas was north of the old dividing point. Stephen A. Douglas is considered the father of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its principle of popular sovereignty.

[14] When territories became states, the federal government provided designated lands to be used for the public benefit, like land for schools or railroads. The English Bill offer made it appear Kansas would get more than the usual amount of free land. But as it turned out, the offer was for only the usual amount of land a state would get.

[15] Kansas State Historical Society information indicates slightly different returns — 11,812 to 1,926 – but still a decisive defeat.

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.

Capt Hazen Lawrence Av milit roll p1 — Roster names, with name information added by the author: J.B. Hazen, W.D. McCain, William L. Deming, James Covert, George Layton, Joseph Woodhead, Elvin G. Bell, E.G. Seachrest, Joseph E. Clark, A.J. James, Walter Norman Allen, M.J. Bundy, Simon C. Gephart, J.C. Smith, F. Smith, William D. Trapp, Benjamin Hoskinson, Ezra Schlosser Conwell, Lemuel Evans, Dwight Gillmore, Boughton H. Ball, **John Newell** [Jesse Newell’s son], A.B. Casebier, Levi Shrader. This image is from kansasmemory.org Kansas State Historical Society. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

Capt Hazen Lawrence Av milit roll p2 — N.W. Taylor, John Guthrie, R. Lyman, Henry Alderman, B.N. White, Joseph Fitsimons [Fitzsimmons], **Abraham Newell** [Jesse Newell’s son], Joseph Downing, James C. Smith, R.R. Larson, Horace Gibbs, D. H. Leaverton, T.H. Dick, F.T. Leavell, H.O. Finch, B.F. Finch, C.E. Smith, G.A. Brown, Whitfield Casebier, Chris E. Norton, L. [?] F. Cowan, E. Evans, Matthew R. Dutton, Loren Willits, Joseph Gill Rowling, Terry Critchfield. This image is from kansasmemory.org Kansas State Historical Society. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

Capt Hazen Lawrence av p3 John Newell, w d trapp , r lyman m r dutton p 3 (2) — This image is from kansasmemory.org Kansas State Historical Society. Copy and reuse retrictions apply.

The Battle of Grasshopper Falls

January 26, 2018September 11, 2018 jeffcojayhawkers2 Comments

I had not known that the 1856 Border War attack on Grasshopper Falls carried a name.

Yes, we knew that the Crosby brothers’ general store and Dr. Lorenzo Northrup’s books, medicines and surgical instruments were torched in a September 12 raid by proslavery rangers. That arson and the weak resistance by Grasshopper Falls freestaters was part of a lickety-split succession of clashes over slavery in Jefferson County, Kansas Territory, in a week’s time.

But accounts of the raid have hung in dimness and contradiction, probably because a). The freestaters were utterly routed, b). No one died and c). Nobody has seemed to know much about it. Well.

“During the Fall of ’56, when the Blood Hounds of the South were making such desperate efforts to crush out the Free State men of Kansas, the citizens of Grasshopper Falls and vicinity being almost unanimously of the latter class, united in a company...”

Joseph A. Cody,[i] editor and proprietor of The Grasshopper newspaper, as it turns out, ran a story, [ii] “The Battle of Grasshopper Falls,” in his June 12, 1858, here. His stirring account of Bleeding Kansas in Jefferson County and Grasshopper Falls (now Valley Falls) brought a new bit of information, at least to me, along with its glorious hyperbole. It explains why the Grasshopper Falls freestaters bumbled their defense, and it was written about two years after the event. That’s closer than the decade and decades-old remembrances written later.

The war over slavery for Kansas had raged south of the Kansas River. Flashpoints included four-square abolitionist Lawrence in Douglas County, John Brown’s terrorizing of Franklin County, and back-and-forth between bands of freestaters and proslavers in Miami and Linn counties. Bands of Missourians, who wanted their neighbor state to embrace slavery, were joined by young men sent up from South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia.

Now, the violence was picking up north of the Kansas River. The South Carolinians and friends, imported by Jefferson Buford of Alabama, kept a base at Atchison and they were aligned with the “Kickapoo Rangers,” Missourians for the most part.

In mid-September 1856 these groups had had already succeeded in clearing Leavenworth, Jefferson County’s neighbor to the east, of its free-state men. By all appearances, they were set to procure a nice homebase at Hickory Point in Jefferson County, which sat between slavery capital Lecompton to the south and proslavery Atchison to the north. These proslavery bands had suffered a few defeats south of the Kansas River in recent weeks, and now regrouped for yet another attack on Lawrence, the Douglas County center of Kansas anti-slavery immigrants.

Below is the transcribed article from The Grasshopper, the text broken into shorter paragraphs than printed in the original. The footnotes are my addition.

Grasshopper Falls, Kansas Territory

The Grasshopper, June 12, 1858,

J.A. Cody, Editor and Proprietor

“The Battle of Grasshopper Falls

This, though but a bloodless skirmish, deserves a brief and truthful history – for here where now the evidences of Free State progress are to be seen on”… [Several words are illegible.]… “powerful engine of Freedom now echoes the joyful tiding of our deliverance, the myrmidons of Slavery once supposed they had entirely obliterated the last vestige of freedom. During the Fall of ’56, when the Blood Hounds of the South[iii] were making such desperate efforts to crush out the Free State men of Kansas, the citizens of Grasshopper Falls and vicinity being almost unanimously of the latter class, united in a company of some twenty-five or thirty for the mutual defense of their homes.

A slight fortification was established on the bank of the Grasshopper[iv], where the main body would remain at night, while a strict watch was kept by means of scouts. For several months threats of destruction had been frequently brought to us from the border, and now a violent pro-slavery resident, who was in knowledge of the secret places of the Ruffians, had joined them for purposes well known to us. Our scouts brought intelligence of an encampment of some 150 of Shannon’s militia[v] at Hickory Point, distant some eight miles from the Falls. For several nights we slept on our arms, and … [One line of copy illegible] …during the day time.

On the morning of September 12^th, our company being fairly worn down , and no fresh demonstrations being made at Hickory Point, that part of our company who resided out of town were allowed to pay a short visit to their respective homes.

At about 10 o’clock an alarm was given that the enemy was upon us. When first seen, they were but a few rods distant on the opposite bank of the Grasshopper. All that were in town able to bear arms, amounting to the number of 8 or 10, rallied to man and proceeded in haste to gain if possible, the fortification on the bank of the river, for the purposes of cutting them down as they crossed.

But we came too late; for as we gained the open bottom, the enemy, to the number of 30 well-mounted men, dashed up over the bank and with a savage yell, galloped upon us. A few shots were exchanged, without effect, when we were compelled to beat a hasty retreat.

The ruffians then entered town, and forced open the Store of Crosby & Brother,[vi] then supposed by them to be the head outfitting quarters of Gen. Lane[vii] and the Abolitionists. After plundering to their satisfaction, they applied the match and the building was soon enveloped in flames. They then beat a hasty retreat to their headquarters at Hickory point.

That night we received the joyful news that Gen. Lane had come to our rescue, and was advancing upon Hickory Point. We immediately joined him and the next day attacked them. They were so well fortified in their several block houses; and having no cannon we could make but little impression upon them. Word was dispatched to Col. Harvey,[viii] at Lawrence, to come with all haste with a cannon to our aid.

Soon after, a message was received from Gov. Geary,[ix] to the effect that all armed bodies must be disbanded and he would pledge safety to the settlers. Upon this, General Lane thought proper to countermand the order just sent to Col. Harvey, and immediately retired from the field. The countermand, however, did not reach Col. Harvey, and that night we heard the cannon booming at Hickory Point. We soon learned of the capitulation of the enemy, with the understanding that they should leave after giving [us?] all their stolen horses. Col. Harvey then proceeded on his return to Lawrence but was intercepted by the U.S. troops, and his whole company taken prisoners[x], while the Ruffians still encamped at Hickory Point and fresh from [their?] pillage and burning of Grasshopper Falls, were with full … [One line of text illegible.] … and return to their dens on the border. Thus closed the drama of that eventful campaign of Slavery against Freedom.”

~~~~

gunn map 1862 — The yellow arrows point to Jefferson County-related hot spots in 1856. Starting at the bottom and proceeding clockwise: Lawrence, Lecompton, Osawkee, Grasshopper Falls, Atchison, Hardtville (Hickory Point), Oskaloosa (Slough Creek). This map, from Gunn & Mitchell’s New Map of Kansas and the Gold Mines, was published in 1862, six years after those events.

By way of background, nearly all of Jefferson County’s outright Bleeding Kansas conflicts occurred between Sept. 8 and Sept. 15, 1856. Led by James H. Lane, freestaters around Sept. 8 plundered Osawkee (now Ozawkie), the Jefferson County county seat and proslavery stronghold. On Sept. 11, Jesse Newell, a radical freestater, led J.A. Harvey and his free-state militants to a camp of South Carolinians on Slough Creek north of Oskaloosa. They ambushed the South Carolinians, took their weapons and horses, victorious in the Battle of Slough Creek. The Grasshopper Falls raid was the next day, Sept. 12, apparently. After that, the two sides collided for two days at Hickory Point, Sept. 13 and 14.

Other, hugely varied accounts of the Grasshopper Falls attack will follow in the next post.

The June 5 and June 12, 1858, editions of The Grasshopper are on microfilm reel V 25 in the archives of the Kansas State Historical Society. [Update: These two editions of the newspaper have been added to the online collection of newspapers.com. This link is for the Battle of Grasshopper Falls clip in the June 12 edition. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23322139/battle_of_grasshopper_falls_harvey/ ]

[i] Joseph A. Cody and his brother, Isaac Cody, were freestaters. Isaac Cody, father of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, was one of the builders of a mill in Grasshopper Falls and was elected to the freestate legislature in 1856.He died in 1857 at least partly from complications from a stab wound inflicted by a proslavery man in Leavenworth County in earlier years. Joseph A. Cody was in James H. Lane’s Frontier Guard that set up in the White House and scouted Washington to protect the nation’s new president Abraham Lincoln in April 1861 (The 116: The True Story of Abraham Lincoln’s Lost Guard by James P. Muehlberger).

[ii] There is no byline attached to the article. It is my supposition, possibly incorrect, that Joseph A. Cody wrote the article.

[iii] Refers to proslavery militants/Border Ruffians from slave state Missouri and southern states who came to Kansas to make it a slave state and who also might claim the inexpensive land on offer with the opening of the Territory to settlement. They sometimes called themselves “law and order” men who feigned keeping the peace by attacking and retaliating against freestaters from the east and “west” (Ohio, for example, was a western state at that time). These freestaters wanted Kansas to enter the Union without slavery and they were claiming land, building towns in advance of elections and legislation that would erase the codes pushing Kansas to slavery. Freestaters, too, had formed their own military units.

[iv] The Grasshopper River, now the Delaware River.

[v] Gov. Wilson Shannon, one of 10 Kansas Territory governors and “acting” governors appointed by the U.S. president to govern the territory between mid-1854 and early 1861, when Kansas entered the Union as a free state. Cody’s newspaper’s “militia” reference here is a sort of swipe at the South Carolinians and other southern state men brought to Kansas in the spring of 1856 by Major Jefferson Buford of Alabama to secure Kansas for slavery. These southerners had been active on both the north and south sides of the Kansas River. The “militia” label also referred to Border Ruffians from Missouri (some were Kickapoo Rangers based in Atchison County) who were camping at Jefferson County’s little proslavery town near the military road, Hickory Point, also called Hardtville.

[vi] Rufus H. and William Crosby, free-staters from Hampden, Maine. They operated a general store.

[vii] James H. Lane, Kansas Territory political and military leader and U.S. senator. He was loved and hated perhaps nearly equally but was an extremely skilled recruiter leader to the free-state cause. Right after Sept. 13, 1856, after the first day’s battle at Hickory Point, Lane left Kansas Territory for the north to organize more freestate support. In Kansas Territory, he was on the proslavers’ and government most-wanted list.

[viii] J.A. Harvey, leader of free-state units, had just arrived in Kansas Territory Aug. 13. He came to Kansas with the “Chicago Company,” a group of settlers, freestaters aided by the Kansas National Committee led by wealthy New Yorker Thaddeus Hyatt.

[ix] Territorial Gov. John W. Geary had just started his new post as Kansas Territory’s latest governor on Sept. 9, 1856.

[x] Harvey himself was not captured by the U.S. troops who arrested the free-state fighters resting near what is now Oskaloosa. Harvey had been at the nearby home of Jesse Newell and had escaped out the back. (Thaddeus Hyatt Collection, Kansas State Historical Society, microfilm reel MS 87.) U.S. troops had been sent into Jefferson County because of complaints from Jefferson County proslavers.