A history of Kansas, Part 7

Author: Prentis, Noble L. (Noble Lovely), 1839-1900
Publication date: 1899
Publisher: Topeka, Kan. : C. Prentis
Number of Pages: 394


USA > Kansas > A history of Kansas > Part 7


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24


176. Retreat of General Price .- The movement of General Price's army southward had begun before this last collision, and by sunrise on the 24th the rear had moved eight or ten miles to the south of Westport, and that day a column of 10,000 men was moving in pursuit through the border of Missouri. While this movement was effected, Colonel Moonlight, with another division, moved southward along the Kansas border, interposing, as far as possible, between the enemy and the State, through a country abso- lutely desolated by war. For fifty miles not an inhabitant was to be seen.


177. Battle of Mine Creek .- The retreating army, how- ever, crowded into Kansas near West Point, still moving southward. The pursuit became closer, there were combats at the Trading Post ford and at the Mounds, and on the 25th of October the decisive battle of Mine Creek was fought on Kansas soil, where 800 prisoners and nine guns were captured, and many officers of high rank, including Generals Marmaduke and Cabell, fell into our hands, while General Graham was killed and General Slemmons was mortally wounded.


178. Defeat of Price at Newtonia .- From the fields of Mine Creek and the Little Osage, the enemy was pressed with such vigor as to force him to abandon the intention of attacking Fort Scott, which was instead occupied by our rescuing force, and he was followed back into Missouri and finally defeated at Newtonia, where the prisoners of the Second Kansas Militia, taken by the enemy at the Little Blue,- were paroled and rejoined their friends.


118


HISTORY OF KANSAS.


179. Farewell of General Curtis .- From the head- quarters of the Army of the Border, Camp Arkansas, on the 8th of November, 1864, General Curtis issued his con- gratulatory order, saying: "In parting, the General tenders his thanks to the officers and soldiers for their generous support and prompt obedience to orders, and to his staff for their unceasing efforts to share the toil incident to the campaign. The pursuit of Price in 1864, and the battles of Lexington, Little Blue, Big Blue, Westport, Marais des Cygnes, Osage, Charlot, and Newtonia, will be borne on the banners of the regiments who shared in them; and the States of Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Arkansas, may glory in the achievement of their sons in this short but eventful campaign.'


On the 9th of November, 1864, the day following the issuance of this order, General Curtis moved toward Fort Scott by way of Fort Gibson, and General Blunt moved to Fort Smith and thence to Fort Leavenworth. The official and authentic history of the part taken by Governor Samuel J. Crawford. the Kansas volunteers and militia in this campaign is contained in the report of Adjutant-General C. K. Holliday, published in December, 1864.


180. Election 1864 .- November 8, 1864, occurred the general election in Kansas, resulting in the choice of Samuel J. Crawford, Governor; James McGrew, Lieutenant-Gover- nor; R. A. Barker, Secretary of State; J. R. Swallow, Auditor of State; William Spriggs, State Treasurer; JJ. D. Brumbaugh, Attorney-General; Jacob Safford, Associate


119


THE CLOSING SCENE.


Justice. Sidney Clark was elected Representative in Con- gress. Abraham Lincoln received the first vote of Kansas for President of the United States.


$


SUMMARY.


1. Outlook dark for Kansas and Missouri defence.


2. General Price, advancing northward with 18,000 men, gathers recruits.


3. General Gano captures Major Hopkins' train at Cabin creek.


4. General Ewing falls back, disputing the way with the enemy, and saves St. Louis.


5. The men of Kansas respond to the call of Governor Carney, and 16,000 take the field.


6. Stubborn fighting at Lexington, Little Blue, Big Blue, and Westport, ends in victory.


7. A long pursuit of Price's army, and battles at Mine Creek, Osage, and Newtonia.


8. General Curtis congratulates the Kansas soldiers.


9. Second State election; Samuel J. Crawford elected Governor.


CHAPTER XIX.


PEACE AND HONOR.


181. Advent of Peace. - With the closing of the "Price raid" campaign, ended, generally, the fighting days of the Kansas regiments, although the Eighth Infantry fought at Nashville, in December, and the Eleventh Cavalry had an encounter with the Indians at Red Buttes, Dak., as late as the 26th of March, 1865.


Then came the home-coming of the Kansas regiments and batteries, and on the 8th of April, 1865, at Leavenworth, was held a great jubilee over the Union victories and the end of the war.


182. Kansas Officers Commissioned .- The following general officers from Kansas were commissioned by Presi- dent Lincoln during the war:


Major-General James G. Blunt, Brigadier-Generals Rob- ert B. Mitchell, Albert L. Lee, George W. Deitzler, Thomas Ewing, Jr., Powell Clayton.


The Kansas officers made Brigadier-Generals by brevet were: Wm. R. Judson, Thomas Moonlight, Charles W. Blair, James Ketner, John Ritchie, John A. Martin, Edward F. Schneider, Charles W. Adams and Thomas M. Bowen.


183. Colonel Cloud Honored. - When, in 1865, it came to the choice, by Governor Crawford, of officers of the State militia, there was an abundance of military talent and experience to choose from. Colonel William F. Cloud was


120


121


PEACE AND HONOR.


commissioned as Major-General. He had seen service as Major and Colonel of the Second Kansas Cavalry, and then as Colonel of the Tenth Kansas Infantry, and last had gone through the "Price raid" campaign, on the staff. His civil and military record is remembered in the name of a Kansas county.


184. State Historical Society .- The record of the two wars in which Kansas was so early in her history engaged, the warfare forced on her people to make the State free, and the war for the preservation of the Union, has been well kept. Through the exertions of the State Historical Society, which has known through nearly all its history but one secretary, Judge Franklin G. Adams, there has been gath- ered a great store of public reports and private letters; the annals of the war; journals written up by soldiers by the camp-fire's light, and amid the echoes of Franklin G. Adams. battle; here may be seen gathered the "bruised arms" used in many a savage fray. In these collections is illustrated all the story of Kansas from the earliest time; here are the rude implements and weapons of the Indians; the stained and worn manuscript journal of the missionary, who strove to save the Indian from his fate; the maps and charts of the early explorers; the account books of the fur traders; the evidences of the first hard life of the pioneers, the advanced guard; and so on, showing in outward and visible signs the road followed to a finished and intense civilization.


185. State Treasures .- In the care of the State itself are preserved the flags of the Kansas regiments and


122


HISTORY OF KANSAS.


batteries; in the care of the Historical Society is kept their written and printed story, and the mute evidences of its truth.


The battle flags of the Kansas regiments and batteries were formally presented to Governor Crawford, at a Soldier's celebration, held at Topeka, on the 4th of July, 1866, and since have remained in the careful care of the State.


On the map of the State are preserved, in the names of counties, the names of Kansas soldiers-Mitchell, Cloud, Trego, Norton, Clark, Harper, Rooks, Rush, Russell, Stafford, Cowley, Graham, Jewell, Osborne, Ellis, Gove, Pratt, Ness and Hodgeman. Governors Crawford and Harvey, whose names are borne by counties, were officers in Kansas regiments. Alfred Gray and Dudley Haskell saw service with Kansas troops.


SUMMARY.


1. Peace is within thy walls and prosperity in thy palaces.


2. President Lincoln commissions many Kansas Generals.


3. The State Historical Society has faithfully preserved the annals of the war, and records of the progress of Kansas.


4. The map of Kansas is covered with brave names,


CHAPTER XX.


BUILDING THE STATE.


186. State Officials During Civil War .- During the years of the Civil War, Kansas made but slow progress in the accumulation of population and material wealth. The machinery of the civil State moved with regularity. Gover- nor Robinson was succeeded, in 1863, by Governor Carney, and Martin F. Conway by A. Carter Wilder as Representa- tive in Congress. In 1865 Governor Carney was succeeded by Governor Samuel J. Crawford, and James H. Lane succeeded himself as United States Senator.


187. Educational Advancement .- Preliminary steps were taken, in 1863, for the establishment of the State University at Lawrence, the State Agricultural College at Manhattan, and the State Normal School at Emporia. It was, in spite of war's alarms, a period of foundations and beginnings. The State, even in the midst of war, contin- ued the first works of the troubled Territorial period, when Baker University, an institution still enjoying a prosperous growth, was established as early as 1857.


188. Homestead Law .- An event having a most important bearing on the life and prosperity of Kansas, was the passage of the Homestead Law, on the 20th of May, 1862. The bill had been introduced in the House by Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania. It had once been vetoed by President Buchanan. It was signed by President Lincoln,


123


124


HISTORY OF KANSAS.


and took effect on the 1st of January, 1863. Within ten years thereafter twenty-six millions of acres of the public lands were entered by homestead settlers.


The law, in substance, gave a title from the United States to the actual settler who held the 160 aeres for five years. The Homestead Law was an answer to those who demanded "land for the landless," and who sang: "Unele Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm." At the close of the Civil War, a great many men who had served in the Union army were left with lands and homes to seek, and the law was so amended that the homesteader might deduet from the five years' residence required by the law, the time passed by him in the military or naval service of his country. With the close of the war, a great ex-soldier immigration poured into Kansas.


189. First Railroad .- The system of land grant rail- roads was also a great element in the settlement of the country. Kansas went in early for railroads. The Terri- torial Legislatures granted charters for extensive lines. The first railroad iron ever laid in Kansas was put down at Elwood, opposite St. Joseph, Mo., on the Marysville & Elwood Railroad, on the 20th of March, 1860, bui drought and war intervened to prevent extensive railroad building in Kansas at that time.


190. Grant to A. T. & S. F. Railroad .- The policy of subsidizing the railroads in lands and bonds by the general Government was diligently labored for by Kansas men at Washington. In 1863, Congress made to the State of Kansas a grant of land, giving alternate sections, one mile square, ten miles in width, amounting to 6,400 acres, a mile on either side of a proposed line running from Atehi-


125


BUILDING THE STATE.


son via Topeka, to some point on the southern or western boundary of the State in the direction of Santa Fe, with a branch from some point on the southern line of Kansas to the City of Mexico. This grant the State of Kansas trans- ferred to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Com- pany, February, 1864. This grant amounted, as it turned out, to some 3,000,000 acres of land.


191. Grant to the Union Pacific Railroad .- The Eastern Division of the Union Pacific, on which work was begun on the State line of Kansas and Missouri in Novem- ber, 1863, it being the first road started from the Missouri to the Pacific-eventually received a grant of alternate sections, twenty miles in width, and amounting to 12,800 acres to the mile. The grant extended 394 miles west from the Missouri river, and amounted to some 6,000,000 acres. Other lines extending through Kansas received subsidies, but these two, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and the Union Pacific Eastern Division, later called the Kansas Pacific, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, were the lar- gest grantees of land. Besides these grants the railroads acquired large tracts of Indian lands.


192. Other Grants .- In February, 1866, the Legis- lature gave to four different railroad companies, 500,000 acres granted to Kansas under the Act of September, 1841, the lands to be sold for the benefit of the railroad com- panies, by an agent appointed by the Governor. The objection, however, being made, that Article VII, of the Ordinance to the Constitution of Kansas, states, "that the 500,000 acres of land to which the State is entitled under the Act of Congress, entitled 'an act to appropriate the proceeds of the sale of public lands, and grant pre-emption


126


HISTORY OF KANSAS.


rights,' approved September 4, 1841, shall be granted to the State for the support of common schools." The land grant policy was in after years the subject of severe criti-


Stone Dugout, Osborne, Kan.


cism, and caused extensive litigation between the settlers and the railroad companies, but at the time of its adoption was popular in Kansas. The organized counties voted large amounts of bonds to the roads, and the progress of the roads for a time was the progress of the State. The grants of land facilitated the building of the roads, and in Kansas the railroads preceded instead of following the settlement, greatly accelerating the old process of filling a country with a wagon immigration. The land grant com- panies sold their lands at low rates, and on long time, and the alternate sections reserved by the Government were


127


BUILDING THE STATE.


sold at $2.50 an acre, while beyond the "railroad limit," the homesteader pushed in everywhere.


193. The Pioneer .- The United States land offices which, in the Territorial days, were located along the line of the Missouri river, were moved westward from time to time to accommodate the host of claim seekers, who, in some instances, remained about the offices the entire night to await their opening in the morning. In the Concordia land district alone, in the year 1871, 932,715 acres of land were entered under the Homestead Act.


The homesteader has been styled the "Pilgrim Father" 1 of Kansas. He left the great highways of travel and .


Sod Schoolhouse, Osborne County, Kan.


sought the vast, open country. From the thin line of tim- ber skirting the stream, he might gather a few logs to build his cabin, but more often he shaped his habitation in or of


128


HISTORY OF KANSAS.


the earth itself, a dugout or a sodhouse, the walls built up of strips of prairie sod turned over by the plow, the roof often covered with marl, or natural lime, as it was ealled, from the bottom of the prairie draw. Here, with his wife and children, lived in the first hard years the homesteader, under the vast sky, girt about by an immense and remote horizon. And not alone did the homesteader use the sod wherewith to rear his residence and out-buildings; the "prairie lumber yard" had public uses also. The first schoolhouse for the settlers' children was built of sod, and in the settlement of Jewell county, a fort of sod fifty yards square, with walls seven feet high and four feet thick, was built; and within the enclosure was dug the first well in the county.


At first the buffalo in their migrations came near, wander- ing up to the settler's door, but as the vast herds which had furnished the Indians with food and clothing for untold centuries, without apparent diminution, retreated westward, he followed them, making an annual campaign against them in his wagon, which he loaded with meat. When there was nothing left of them save their bleaching bones, he gathered these up and hauled them to the distant rail- road station, where they accumulated in great white piles. Thus he added to his slender store of ready money. From Hays City, in May, 1875, the shipments of bones amounted to twenty tons a day.


194. Election of Senators .- The Legislature of 1867 re-elected Samuel C. Pomeroy to the United States Senate, for the long term, and for the short term elected Edmund G. Ross, who had been appointed by Governor Crawford to fill the unexpired term of James H. Lane.


129


BUILDING THE STATE.


195. James H. Lane .- On the evening of Sunday July 1, 1866, General James H. Lane, while riding in a carriage with Mr. McCall and Captain Adams, on the Government farm at Fort Leavenworth, sprang from the vehicle as it stopped at a gate, uttered the words, "Good-bye, Mac," placed the muzzle of a pistol to his mouth and fired. The ball passed directly through the brain and emerged from the upper center of the cranium. With this terrible wound he survived for ten days, at times appar- ently conscious, dying at 11.55 A. M. of Wednesday, July 11, 1866. At the time of his death, General Lane was serving James H. Lane. his second term as a United States Senator from Kansas, and was in the prime of his years.


In his lifetime, the year and place of his birth was a matter of controversy. In a list of the members of the Topeka Constitutional Convention he is enrolled as a native of Kentucky, thirty-three years of age, and a lawyer by profession. He was born at Lawrenceburg, Ind., on the 22d of June, 1814. He was the son of Amos Lane, first Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives, and a judge and member of Congress from that State. His mother was of an old and honorable New England family. At thirty years of age, he enlisted as a private in the Third Indiana Volunteers, to serve in the Mexican War. He was promoted to the colonelcy of the regiment, displayed con- spicuous gallantry at Buena Vista, and later commanded the Fifth Indiana Volunteers. After the war he was elected Lieutenant-Governor of Indiana, Presidential Elector-at-


130


HISTORY OF KANSAS.


Large, and a member of the Congress which passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, for which he voted.


In 1855, the year after the passage of that Act, he came to Kansas and to Lawrence. His latest biographer, and devoted and intimate friend, Hon. John Speer, speaks thus of the event:


"One bright morning in April, 1855, as Lane was pass- ing with his team over the hill where the State University now stands, he halted and walked into the little hamlet now called Lawrence, named but without a charter, carrying a jug to fill with water to pursue his journey westward, but meeting a man named Elwood Chapman, who offered to sell him a 'claim,' he purchased and ended his journey." He entered the town which was to be his home and the field of an eventful and distinguished career, a Demoerat from Southern Indiana, who had voted in Congress for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. On the 14th of August, 1855, he participated in what is spoken of by the annalist as "the first convention in Lawrence of Free State men of all parties," and from that time forward he was what he later avowed himself, "a crusader of freedom." Tireless, inde- fatigable, alert, full of audacity, endless in plans and resources, he was everywhere, in war, in peace, in combat, in diplomacy, in battle and treaty. He was early an advo- cate of the "Topeka Government," the first organized effort for the admission of Kansas as a Free State. He was a member of the Free State Executive Committee, of which Charles Robinson was chairman. He reported the platform of the Big Springs Convention; he was President of the Topeka Constitutional Convention. When Kansas appealed to the North he became a national character; he


131


BUILDING THE STATE.


was called "Jim Lane, of Kansas." In April, he addressed the Legislature of Pennsylvania at Harrisburg; in May, he spoke to a great meeting in Chicago, where $15,000 was raised for Kansas.


When Kansas became a State of the Union, he was elected, after a memorable struggle, one of the first United States Senators; and then came the great Civil War, in which he exhibited that strange blending of qualities, capacities and dispositions, which belonged to him alone. He raised whole brigades, and commanded one of them in the field, even without a commission. He retained all through the period of storm the confidence of the com- mander-in-chief of our armies, as well of the head of the State. He saw the last of the fighting on the Kansas border.


In 1865, he was re-elected United States Senator almost without opposition.


A year later, as a Senator, he advocated the policy of President Johnson, and broke with Kansas. He made a bold fight for his long supremacy. It seemed, at times, that he would win it back, but he knew at last that there was nothing to hope. Those who knew him best said that the thought drove him to madness and to death.


He was a remarkable man. In the strange power of his speech there has been no other like him in Kansas. He made many enemies, but attached friends to himself as with hooks of steel, who remember him. only as the "Crusader of Freedom."


The vacancy in the United States Senate, occasioned by the death of General Lane, was filled temporarily by the appointment, on the 20th of July, 1866, by Governor


132


HISTORY OF KANSAS.


Samuel J. Crawford, of Hon. Edmund G. Ross, who was subsequently elected by the Legislature to fill the unexpired term of Senator Lane. Senator Ross had served the State, in the field, in the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, attaining the rank of Major and brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, and was one of the framers of the Wyandotte Constitution. He remained in the Senate until 1871.


SUMMARY.


1. The Homestead law giving bona fide settlers 160 acres of land, passed May 20, 1862.


2. Large grants of land were given to the A., T. &S. F., the Union Pacific, and other railroad companies.


3. The railroads gave wonderful impetus to immigration, proving one of the greatest factors in the development of Kansas.


4. The Pioneers, the Pilgrim Fathers of Kansas.


5. Samuel C. Pomeroy re-elected, and Edmund G. Ross elected to the United States Senate.


6. The death of General James H. Lane removes from Kansas a remarkable and distinguished personality.


CHAPTER XXI.


THE INDIAN WARS.


196. The Early Peril .- While the Kansas frontiersman was thus holding the picket line of civilization, he was exposed for years to the incursions of a ruthless enemy, who came and went with the uncertainty of the wind-the Indian. The Civil War had not ended before the State was endangered by the incursions of the savages. The Indians, in 1864, had become so formidable that Generals Curtis and Blunt had planned a campaign against them, but were recalled from it to meet the advancing Confederates of General Price.


197. Indian Raids .- In 1865 and 1866 the Indians came into the northwestern valleys and murdered settlers on White Rock creek in Republic county, and at Lake Sibley in Cloud county, and these ontrages were followed by an Indian raid in the Solomon valley. Troops were ordered from Fort Ellsworth to the Solomon valley by General Hancock, and a company of State militia took the field and held off the Indians for a time. The building of the - Union Pacific through Kansas, in 1867, excited the savages, and the entire plains country seemed full of their war parties. They attacked settlers in the Republican, Smoky Hill and Solomon valleys, and raided in Marion, Butler, and Greenwood counties. In June of 1867, the Cheyennes, Arapahoes and Kiowas seemed to have nnited


133


134


HISTORY OF KANSAS.


to drive back the frontier line of settlement and close com- munications across the plains.


198. Relief Comes. - Lieutenant - General Sherman called on Governor Crawford for a battalion of volunteer cavalry, and in obedience to the Governor's proclamation, the Eighteenth Kansas Battalion of 358 men, commanded by Colonel H. L. Moore, took the field. Colonel Moore met and whipped the Indians, and in connection with a force under Major Elliott, of the Seventh United States Cavalry, drove them toward the headwaters of the Republi- can. While the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, Sioux and Comanches were operating in the northwest, bands of Osages, Wichitas and others were raiding in the southern and western portions of the State, necessitating the station- ing of troops at Fort Larned and other points.


199. Treaty of 1867 .- On the 28th of October, 1867, Generals Sherman, Harney and Terry made a treaty with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, at Medicine Lodge ereek, which provided that these Indians should remove to a reser- vation in the Indian Territory, and also provided that the Indians should have the privilege of hunting in Kansas, the Government furnishing them with arms.


200. Treaty Broken .- As soon as they were ready in the spring, the Indians broke the treaty, a body of 500 Cheyennes penetrating the State nearly to Council Grove, Morris county, murdering and robbing as they went. At the very time, in August, when the Indians were drawing arms at Fort Larned, a party of Cheyennes was murdering men, women and children in Ottawa, Mitchell and Republic counties.


135


THE INDIAN WARS.


201. Governor Crawford to the Rescue .- On hear- ing of the raid, Governor Crawford went by special train to Salina, placed himself at the head of a company of volunteers, and followed the trail of the Indians. It was found that forty persons had been killed, numberless out- rages committed, and for sixty miles the settlements destroyed and the country laid waste. On his return to Topeka he sent a dispatch to the President: "The savage devils have become intolerable, and must and shall be driven out of the State," and offered to furnish all the volunteers necessary to "insure a permanent and lasting peace." In reply, General Sheridan, at Fort Harker, gave assurances that the line of settlement should be protected and garrisoned with infantry, while a regular cavalry force should scout the exposed country. Governor Crawford, however, called for a force of five companies of cavalry from the militia 'of the State, each man to furnish arms and accoutrements, and be furnished with rations by Gen- eral Sheridan. The companies were stationed at exposed points from the Nebraska line to Wichita, relieving a regu- lar force to operate against the Indians. General Sully went south of the Arkansas with nine companies of cavalry, and taught the Cheyennes and Arapahoes some useful lessons.




Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.