Kansas Territorial
Sesquicentennial Commission

Week of October 31 - November 6, 1854 (2004)

By Barbara Brackman

William Hutter, editor of the Easton, Pennsylvania, Argus, was visiting Weston, Missouri, in early November, where the Kickapoo tribe had gathered to receive their annual stipend. Hutter estimated that 1,000 Native Americans were in town to spend their money on November 6th. He described them to his readers home in Easton, as "dressed in all their showy, fantastic blankets, and covered with jewelry, feathers and ornaments." The Independence Dispatch estimated that $350,000 in annuities would be paid to the Kansas tribes that fall.

Senator David Atchison was also in Weston that week, continuing his series of incendiary speeches designed to keep his name in the papers, defeat Congressman Thomas Hart Benton who was up for re-election, and advance the Southern cause. Atchison described himself as "entirely devoted to the interests of the South.he would sacrifice everything but his hope of heaven to advance her welfare."

After months of his threats to hang anti-slavery emigrants failed to deter Kansas settlers, Atchison formulated a new plan to counter the emigration sponsored by "a set of fanatics and demagogues a thousand miles off." Each Missouri county should organize to send a group of 500 young men to Kansas to vote in the November 29th election that would choose the territory's Congressional representative. "Should each county in the State of Missouri only do its duty, the question will be decided quietly and peaceably at the ballot-box."

In Cincinnati, two 26-year-old men, Josiah Miller and Robert Elliott, bought a printing press to ship to the territory. Friends as students at Indiana University, both were sons of South Carolina families opposed to slavery. The Elliotts had relocated to Indiana; the Millers remained in South Carolina, where they continued to court violence for their vocal antislavery opinions. Miller and Elliott decided that an anti-slavery newspaper in the new territory could be profitable and politically rightminded. Their projected Kansas Free State was the fifth Kansas newspaper, two of which were named the Pioneer. After hearing of the established Kickapoo Pioneer, which was pro-slavery, the Speer brothers changed the name of their Kansas Pioneer to the Kansas Tribune. George Brown, newly arrived in Lawrence from Pennsylvania, had yet to publish a second issue of the Herald of Freedom. The major functioning paper was the Kansas Herald, which maintained its impressive weekly schedule from under a tree in the town of Leavenworth.

As the weather turned colder in Kansas (on the morning of the 5th the low was 30 degrees), emigrants camped in new settlements along the western reaches of the Kansas River, establishing towns that would benefit, they believed, from steamboat traffic to the junction of the Republican River. Former Kentuckian Horace McMeekin had organized a town named Indianola on the north side of the Kaw across from Papin's Ferry. A group that included Governor Andrew Reeder had formed a company establishing the town of Pawnee City, one hundred miles into Kansas on 400 acres of the Army's Fort Riley reserve, where Reeder intended to establish the territorial capitol. Pawnee was only one of Reeder's land speculation schemes. In others, he bypassed the Indian Agencies' land distribution system by dealing directly with the tribal landholders, especially white men who had married women of Native American heritage. Reeder maintained that his investment strategies were both legal and ethical, but Delaware Indian Agent B. F. Robinson and others complained in early November to President Pierce that the Governor's schemes were neither.

The attachment this week is a photograph of the building at Fort Leavenworth where Governor Reeder conducted business in October and November of 1854. It's unclear when the photograph, downloaded from the Territorial Kansas Online site, was taken.

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"Atchison City---Speech of A Senator" Leavenworth Kansas Weekly Herald, September 29, 1854, Independence Dispatch quoted in Kansas Weekly Herald Oct 6, 1854, Atchison's speech in Weston reported in the Platte City Argus quoted in Charles Robinson, The Kansas Conflict (New York: Harper & Bros., 1892) Pp. 93-4.

Louise Barry (editor), "Scenes In (And En Route To) Kansas Territory, Autumn, 1854: Five Letters by William H. Hutter," Kansas Historical Quarterly, XXV, 3, Autumn, 1969, Pg. 320.

Roy Franklin Nichols, Franklin Pierce, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958) Pp. 409, 418.

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Week of November 7- 13, 1854 (2004)

By Barbara Brackman

Mid-year election results surprised no one who'd predicted the Democrats' ruin. Franklin Pierce's party, which had carried every free state but two in the 1852 Presidential election, lost every free state but two in November, 1854. In Massachusetts, however, a Know-Nothing sweep shocked the country. Whigs and Democrats each won only a single seat in the state legislature, while the third-party Know Nothings sent 377 candidates to run the state. Know Nothings also elected the Congressional delegation and Governor Henry Gardner.

More lodge than political party, the Know Nothing or American Party was based on a network of secret cells that identified each other by signs and passwords. With over a million members by late 1854, their signs did not remain secret long. Opposition newspaper editors delighted in revealing the rituals. "In New Hampshire when a Know Nothing meets one he suspects of belong to the order, he puts the forefinger of his right hand into his bosom, resting it upon the angle of the vest, his others being outside and his thumb sticking out. The other one, if he knows, rest his right thumb in the angle of the vest and the rest of the hand outside. The first then asks, 'What is the time?' Answer: 'Time for Work.'"

Another password "Have you see Sam?" resulted in another nickname for the party, Sam or Uncle Sam, reflected in the Chelsea Telegraph's election comments. "Massachusetts has given herself an all-fired thrashing! This K.N. business is the greatest avalanche we ever knew. Monday night we went to bed in Massachusetts, but Tuesday morning we waked up in Sam machusetts. Awful fellow, that Sam!"

The Know Nothings vilified immigration, Roman Catholics and alcohol. Many were also anti-slavery, one reason the party succeeded in a Massachusetts infuriated by the Anthony Burns affair and the Fugitive Slave Act. Surely, many Kansas emigrants cheered Know Nothing victories that November. The idea, however, is pure speculation. Historical evidence of Kansans meeting in American Party enclaves is lacking---we know nothing.

As November weather descended upon the western landscape, disappointment was a theme in travelers' observations. "I will never forget the depression I felt when I first had a view of [Kansas City] then containing about 500 inhabitants," recalled James McClure, years later. "All the business was done on the river front, and the buildings were old and dilapidated, the sidewalks unpaved, and the streets muddy and cut up with ruts by the heavy [Santa Fe] freight wagons." An investor offered McClure a fifteenth of the town, but he thought $300 an extravagant price and turned him down.

William Hutter continued to report on Kansas for his Pennsylvania newspaper. On the 13th he was in Lawrence. "I must confess I was disappointed in the appearance of the place." The settlers hadn't erected any frame houses, despite the Aid Company's steam mill that could be sawing boards from what Hutter viewed as abundant timber along the river. "They reside in dwellings with thatched roofs of prairie hay. Their buildings look like great hay stacks with stove-pipes through their tops."

Further west, at a camp on Rock Creek, north of today's Wamego, a group affiliated with the Aid Company wrote to the Boston Journal, complaining about their situation. Land near Lawrence, the Aid Company's principal settlement, had been claimed, but "no more efforts have been put forth to select locations for [later] parties arriving." The settlers, who'd arrived at October's end, set out on their own to find a town site and chose badly. Rock Creek, about ten miles north of the Kaw, was on a waterway too small to provide the two basic necessities, water and wood. Within the year the group abandoned the site. Boston publisher Charles Stearns, considered a Garrisonian abolitionist by less radical free-state settlers, was Secretary of the town's company. Expressing dissatisfaction to some Lawrence residents, Stearns was warned that sending complaints east would earn him, "a coat of tar and feathers."

Unaware of dissension between early and later immigrant parties, 55 people left Boston for Kansas on November 7th, among them Amasa Soule and son William Lloyd Garrison Soule. Five days later they boarded a boat in St. Louis. "We began to think we were near the end of our journey," but the eight-day trip up the Missouri River was "the most tedious business that I ever engaged in.. The water being very low, we were subjected, some days, almost hourly, to being grounded upon the sand bars." (745 words)

There are two attachments this week, both sheet music covers from the Library of Congress collection. The portrait of Uncle Sam as a Know Nothing young man is particularly interesting. His loud print coat seems to be described as patchwork. His broad-brimmed hat and tall boots are the costume of the rebel, something that would be seen among the opposing forces in the Kansas border wars and the post-war cowboys.

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Fitchburg Sentinel, November 24, 1854.

Worcester National Aegis, February 7, 1855, pg. 4, December, 19, 1855, pg. 3.

Letter from George O. Willard published in the [Boston?] Journal January 7, 1855. Quoted in Louise Barry, "The Emigrant Aid Company Parties of 1854," Kansas Historical Quarterly, Volume XII, Number 2, May, 1943.

Letter from Amasa Soule, November 25, 1854, published in the Chelsea Telegraph and Pioneer, quoted in Barry, pg. 151.

James R. McClure, "Taking the Census in 1855," Kansas Historical Collections, Volume 8, pg. 228.

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Week of November 14 - 20, 1854 (2004)

By Barbara Brackman

The Boston Liberator published a clipping about recaptured fugitive slave Anthony Burns from the Richmond (Virginia) Enquirer: "It may be some gratification to Anthony's Boston friends to learn, that Anthony left here on Friday, the 3rd instant [the current month], in possession of David McDaniel, Esq. of Nash county N.C., who purchased him for the purpose of putting him to work in a cotton field, or where duty calls."

In Massachusetts, 28-year-old teacher Lucy Larcom composed a Kansas song to enter in the contest sponsored by the New England Emigrant Aid Company. She was one of eighty-nine poets who sent their rhymes to Secretary Thomas Webb, hoping to win the $50 prize, although she later denied any ambition in a letter to her mentor John Greenleaf Whittier. "I wrote it with the simple wish to write something that would do to be sung in so good a cause; not expecting to hear from it again, as it was announced that all the compositions sent in would be retained."

Poetry was, in mid-19th-century America, an important form of self-expression and an opportunity to begin a literary career. Newspapers often published the work of amateurs next to that of professionals like Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, members of the New England literati well known for their reformist writings. Events such as the Kansas Nebraska Act and Anthony Burns's capture inspired metaphor, imagery and rhyme that illuminated events in the same way a graphic photo can shape public opinion today. The Liberator included several relevant poems in every issue and in the fall advertised for sale "Anthony Burns's Farewell to Boston, A Poem Set to Music by J.W." The publisher was John P. Jewett who specialized in abolitionist literature, advertising that fall a series of "Anti-Slavery Picture Books," with the advice: "Indoctrinate the Children And when they grow to be Men and Women, their Principles will be Correct!"

On the 18th, Pennsylvanian Cyrus Holliday wrote to wife Mary from Lawrence, K.T., giving her an idea of the "suffering" among some recent arrivals, which were "very ill-prepared for the journey. There was a good deal of disaffection among them. Where they have gone I can't find out." Holliday, 28 years old, had already made a fortune building a railroad in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He planned to re-invest in Kansas, but was unsure of his course. "It may be that I will be home in a week or ten days after [you receive this letter or] I may not come until near spring."

Holliday dispatched the letter with a friend returning to Meadville. Mail service, like many other federal programs, had not yet effectively reached the territory. Letters and newspapers were picked up in Westport or Weston, where the postmasters, Pierce appointees, might destroy mail viewed as abolitionist propaganda.

In 1854, a half-ounce letter cost 3 cents to mail, the same price as in 1954. Congress had recently reduced the cost from 25 cents, but Americans still practiced frugality, filling a sheet of stationery completely rather than mailing any part of a blank page, and sometimes cross writing by inscribing the first part of a letter horizontally, then turning the paper 90 degrees to write the second page atop the first.

Newspapers cost only a penny to mail, a federal subsidy of the press encouraging national periodicals like Horace Greeley's New York Tribune and the Southern DeBow's Review. Some penny-wise correspondents might save two cents by mailing a coded newspaper rather than a letter, dotting letters in a sequence to send a message home, as Lucy Stone did when she passed her school examinations in the 1840s. (621 words)

The attachments this week are two remarkable photographs. One is an abolitionist meeting from the Getty's collection; the other a branded hand, punishment for an abolitionist, a photo in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society collection. I'd imagine the "N" stands for "Negro Stealer" or something similar.

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Letter from Cyrus Holliday to Mary Holliday, dated November 18, 1854, Manuscript Collection, Kansas State Historical Society.

Letter from Lucy Larcom, dated February 22, 1855, published in Grace F. Shepard, "Letters of Lucy Larcom to the Whittiers," The New England Quarterly, Volume 3, July, 1930, Pg 501-502.

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Week of November 21 - 27, 1854 (2004)

By Barbara Brackman

The Fitchburg, Massaschusetts, Sentinel published a letter from Kanzas Territory describing the cost of living as "somewhat cheaper than in Boston," and giving prices for foodstuffs available. "The best sirloin steak only 7 ½ cents by the single pound." Settlers also could buy western hams, flour and dried corn, apples and peaches, which seemed the extent of their fare. Northerners complained about the diet of ham and hominy, the pork and corn staples of the Southern table. Southerners, on the other hand, found New England's diet of beef, beans and wheat bread unpalatable. Travelers on the riverboats eyed each other's breakfasts to determine whether their fellow passengers might be pro-slavery or freestate in politics. No one had fresh vegetables or butter. Thanksgiving dinners on the 30th promised to be more of the same.

The unnamed correspondent, probably from Lawrence, asked that his family send "a good-sized American flag," which he intended to fly from a "liberty pole of 100 feet.on top of the hill." A Liberty Pole topped with a flag and a striped stocking cap still marked the center of American towns with Revolutionary War symbols of rebellion. The hand knit cap symbolized the average man fighting the aristocracy; the pole, as tall a tree trunk as could be found, recalled revolutionary pride in declaring independence.

New towns continued to be named by potential voters hunkered in to wait for the November 29th election. Douglas, named for the Senator from Illinois, was a single log cabin ten miles west of Lawrence on the Kansas River, where George W. Clarke had set up the Potawatomi Indian Agency. Juniata, at the site of a ferry on the Big Blue River north of the Kaw, attracted New Englanders who'd arrived in Lawrence too late to find land. The territorial government of Kansas, which Governor Andrew Reeder had been administering from Fort Leavenworth, moved to the brick buildings at the Shawnee Methodist Mission near Westport. There, Reeder divided the territory into seventeen election districts reflecting the fast-growing population centers.

Three men were running for the office of Territorial Representative to the U. S. Congress. Reeder promoted Democrat Robert Flenniken, who'd accompanied him from Pennsylvania, with circulars passed out with the election proclamation. Flenniken, who'd served as a diplomat in Denmark during the Polk administration, advocated Reeder's moderate policy. Both men supported the Kansas Nebraska Act and its provision allowing voters to determine the territorial position on slavery. Both were optimistic those voters would reject slavery.

Flenniken's opponents, despite similar names, reflected opposite, more radical positions. John Whitfield advocated slavery; John Wakefield a free state. Honorary titles helped voters differentiate them. "General" John Wilkins Whitfield, born in Tennessee, was a Pierce appointee who'd been working in the Indian Territory for several years as Agent to the Potawatomi and then the Upper Platte tribes. "Judge" John Allen Wakefield, a recent emigrant to Bloomington, just west of Lawrence, was born in South Carolina, but had spent most of his life in the upper midwest. An independent, he was "a Free-soiler up to the hub---hub and all," and the only legitimate Kansas resident in the race.

In Missouri, the Self-Defense organizations headed by David Atchison and the Stringfellow brothers were also preparing for the Kansas election, planning forays into the Territory to vote for General Whitfield. Sam Ralston of Independence described the events in a letter to a friend. "A meeting of our [Secret Society] was held at Westport, soon after the nomination of Whitfield, and arrangements made to send men to every election precinct in the Territory. I, with 590 others, were ordered to One Hundred & Ten, a point 90 miles beyond the line of our State. We went prepared for any emergency.."

The settlement of "110" bordered 110 Mile Creek, an old camping spot on the Santa Fe Trail, one hundred and ten miles southwest of Missouri's Fort Osage (near Scranton and the intersection of today's U.S. Highways 56 and 75.) Fry McGee, one of the 16 children of early Kansas City settlers James and Eleanor Fry McGee, built a stage station and a bridge on the creek in 1854, charging 25 cents to cross the toll bridge. Like many of his brothers who remained in Missouri, Fry McGee advocated a slave-holding Kansas. His town of 110 became a proslavery outpost. (684 words)

The attachment is a painting found on the web googling for images "Liberty Cap." There's no attribution but it looks to be mid-19th century American. The female figure of liberty is identified by her liberty pole topped with a liberty cap. She takes the form of a school teacher reading to a group of African Americans, possibly symbolizing education as the path out of slavery.I also noticed that this picture is on the cover of David Hackett Fischer's new book on Liberty.

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William. J. Osborn, testimony before the United States Congress. Report of the Special Committee, (Howard Report) 1856. Pg. 1131.

Fitchburg Sentinel, November 24, 1854.

Letter from Samuel Ralston, December 9, 1854 in W. Darrell Overdyke, editor, "A Southern Family on the Missouri Frontier: Letters From Independence, 1843-1855", The Journal of Southern History, Volume XVII, Number 2, May, 1951. 216-237.

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