A Kansas Memory Podcast

John James Ingalls: "Fast Track...from Law to Politics"

The documents used in the John Ingalls podcast are available on Earlier Kansas Memory podcasts used documents from Territorial Kansas Online: A Virtual Repository for Territorial Kansas History, 1854-1861.

• Letter, J.J.I.[John James Ingalls] to Dear Father [Elias T. Ingalls]
  November 21, 1858
  Much of this interesting letter, dated November 21, 1858, from Sumner, describes the Ingalls law practice and the nature of a "frontier" court proceedings that often attracted "nearly all the population." According to Ingalls, "the chief difficulty arising [in the courts came] from the conflict of the two Codes, adopted by two hostile legislatures, each of which had adherents who call the other 'bogus.'" Ingalls also discussed the business of land sales, as something many successfully combine with the practice of law.
• Letter, J.J.I.[John James Ingalls to Dear Father [Elias T. Ingalls
  March 15, 1859
  Although Ingalls began this relatively brief letter from Sumner with comments on the local election (he won the race for city attorney), he devoted most of it to the Pike's Peak Gold Rush--"the amount and character of the emigration to Pike's Peak is truly astonishing. . . . [T] military roads are already thronged with anxious hundreds, on foot, dragging hand carts, on mules, and with ox teams."
• Letter, J.J.I.[John James Ingalls] to to Dear Father
  June 10, 1859
  From Sumner on June 10, 1859, just days after the election for delegates to the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention, Ingalls wrote his father about the "well fought" contest in a county (Atchison) that was "an old stronghold of pro-slavery democracy." Ingalls won, of course, even though he at first "regarded the contest as a hopeless one," but still feared that the Democrats could control the convention; if so, "Kansas may be a Slave State after all. . . . It is Estimated that there are five hundred slaves in the territory today by virtue of the Dred Scott decision. A family recently came to this place from Kentucky with five."
• Letter, J.J.I.[John James Ingalls] to to Dear Father
  October 7, 1860
  In this rather lengthy letter from his home in Sumner, Ingalls commented on many different facets of his personal and professional life to date in Kansas Territory and about his prospects for the future; these included his law practice (now mostly in Atchison), his interest in journalism and politics, and his interest in a variety of speculative opportunities. The future of Kansas looked good to Ingalls, despite continued problems with drought that was forcing many to sell out.