Keep the Flag to the Front

Bleeding Kansas

Proslavery and antislavery forces would battle each other until Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861.

Before the Civil War, on May 21, 1856, proslavery forces entered Lawrence and destroyed the newspaper offices of the Herald of Freedom and the Kansas Free Press, as well as the Free State Hotel. Among those who took part in this attack were a group of South Carolinians known as the Palmetto Guards. Their red flag proclaiming "Southern Rights" (above, left) is supposed to have flown briefly over the Herald of Freedom building and the Free State Hotel before their destruction.

Four months later, along Slough Creek near Oskaloosa, free-state men surprised the Palmetto Guards and captured their flag as a trophy.

Another proslavery group, the South Carolina Minute Men, carried a dark green flag during the sack of Lawrence. The flag features a snake and the mottoes "Sic Semper Tiranis" (death ever to tyrants) and "Don't Tread on Me," all Revolutionary War symbols that had remained popular in the South.

Flags and banners often become part of political campaigns.

In the presidential elections of 1856 and 1860, the issue of Kansas statehood was prominent. Flags stating "Admit Me Free" were used by the Republican candidates, John C. Fremont and Abraham Lincoln, indicating their support for a free-state (or anti-slavery) Kansas.

This "Admit Me Free" flag (bottom right) originally was used in a Republican campaign rally for Fremont in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1856. Four years later it was used at a rally for Lincoln.

Students of Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois, also presented a banner to Abraham Lincoln when he debated Stephen Douglas there during the 1858 legislative campaign.

Free-state men led by James Montgomery entered Fort Scott on December 16, 1858, seeking to free two comrades who had been arrested on murder and robbery charges. Deputy Sheriff John Little, a Southern sympathizer, was killed during the raid. Shortly afterward his fiancee, Sene Campbell, wrote a letter to Montgomery.

For more on Bleeding Kansas, see Willing to Die for Freedom.

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