USA > Kansas > A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume I > Part 47
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WHEREAS, We the citizens of Kansas Territory, and many other citi- zens of the adjoining State of Missouri, contemplating a squatter's home on the plains of said Territory, are assembled at Salt Creek Valley for the purpose of taking such steps as will secure safety and fairness in the location and preservation of claims; therefore be it
Resolved (I) That we are in favor of a bona fide Squatter Sov- ereignty, and acknowledge the right of any citizens of the United States to make a elaim in Kansas Territory, ultimately with the view of occu- pying it.
(2) That such claim, when made, shall be held inviolate so long as a bona fide intention of ocenpying is apparent, and for the purpose of defending and protecting sueh claim, we agree to act in concert, if nee- essary, to expel intruders.
(3) That every person of lawful age who may be at the head of a family, who shall mark out his claim of 160 acres, so that it may be apparent how the same lies, and proceed with reasonable diligence to erect thereon a cabin or tent, shall be deemed to have made a proper elaim.
(4) That any person marking out his claim shall be deemed to have forfeited it unless he commenees his cabin, or pitches his tent within two weeks thereafter, unless the same be on lands which prohibit it by military or Indian reservations.
(5) That all persons now holding elaims shall have two weeks from this day, in which to make the improvements contemplated by the fore- going resolutions.
(6) No person shall be protected by the Squatter's Association who shall hold in his own right more than one claim.
(7) That a citizen of the Territory be appointed as register of claims, who shall keep a book in which he shall register the name and description of all squatters, and their claims, and the dates of making the same, for which registration he shall be allowed the sum of fifty cents, to be paid by the elaimant.
(8) That we recognize the institution of slavery as always existing in this Territory, and recommend slaveholders to introduce their prop- erty as early as possible.
(9) That we will afford protection to no Abolitionists as settlers of Kansas Territory.
(10) That a "Vigilance Committee" of thirteen be appointed by the Chairman to decide upon all disputes in relation to claims, and to protect the rightful party; and for that purpose shall have power to call together the entire "Squatter's Association."
(11) That all persons who wish to become members of the Squatter's Association shall subscribe to the foregoing preamble and resolutions.
(12) That the Secretary of this meeting be instructed to hand these
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proceedings to E. S. Wilkinson and S. J. Finch, or either of them, for immediate publication and reference.
LEWIS BURNES, President. J. H. R. CUNDIFF, Secretary.
At Weston, in Platt County, a meeting adopted the following resolu- tion :
Resolved, That this association will, whenever called upon by any of the eitizens of Kansas Territory, hold itself in readiness together to assist and remove any and all emigrants who go there under the auspiees of the Emigrant Aid Societies.
At Liberty, the county seat of Clay County, there was held a large meeting. The following declaration and resolution were passed :
Therefore, we, the citizens of Clay County, believing self-preservation to be the first law of nature, and learning that organizations have been effected in the Northern States for the purpose of colonizing the Terri- tory of Kansas with such fanatical persons as composed the recent dis- graceful mob in the city of Boston, where a United States officer, for simply attempting to obtain justice for a Southern citizen, was shot down in the streets; and learning, too, that these organizations have for their object the colonization of said Territory with "eastern and foreign paupers," with a view of excluding citizens of slave-holding States, and especially citizens of Missouri, from settling there with their property : and, further, to establish a trunk of the under-ground railroad, conneet- ing with the same line, where thousands of our slaves shall be stolen from us in thwarting their attempts upon our rights, we do
Resolved. That Kansas ought of right to be a slave State, and we pledge ourselves to co-operate with the citizens of Jackson County, and the South generally, in any MEASURE to accomplish such ENDS.
On the 28th of June, 1854, the correspondent of the Baltimore Sun, sent his paper an abstract of the above resolutions :
According to these resolutions abolitionists or free-soilers would do well not to stop in Kansas Territory, but to keep on up the Missouri River until they reach Nebraska Territory, where they ean peacefully make elaims and establish their abolition and free-soil notions for if they do, they will be respectfully notified that but one day's graee will be allowed for them to take up their bed and baggage and walk.
It is estimated that some two thousand claims have already been made within fifteen miles of the military reserve, and, in another week's time, double that number will be made.
As showing the state of feeling of the citizens of the State of Mis- souri, the following extracts from publie prints of that day are set out.
Democratic Platform, Liberty, Mo., June 8, 1854:
We learn from a gentleman lately from the Territory of Kansas that a great many Missourians have already set their meg in that country, and are making arrangements to "darken the atmosphere" with their negroes. This is right. Let every man that owns a negro go there and settle, and our northern brethren will be compelled to hunt further north for a location.
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June 27, it said :
We are in favor of making Kansas a "Slave State" if it should require half the citizens of Missouri musket in haud, to emigrate there, and even sacrifice their lives in accomplishing so desirable an end.
The Liberty Platform expressed itself in these words :
Shall we allow such eut-throats and murderers, as the people of Massachusetts are, to settle in the territory adjoining our own State? No! If popular opinion will not keep them back, we should see what virtue there is in the force of arms.
The Platte City Argus :
We are advised that the abolition societies of New England are shipping their tools, at the public expense as Mormons, ostensibly for Salt Lake, but that it is the real design of these worthies to stop in Kansas Territory for the purpose of voting to establish a free State and an underground railroad. We say, let the Mormons go their way in peace to Utah, but if they remain in Kansas to infliet the blighting curse of their principles upon the future poliey of the country - let a Mormon war be declared forthwith.
Citizens of the West, of the South and Illinois! Stake out your elaims, and woe be to the abolitionist or Mormon who shall intrude upon it, or come within reach of your long and true rifles, or within point blank shot of your revolvers. Keep a sharp lookout, lest some dark night you shall see the flames curling from your houses or the midnight philan- thropist hurrying off your faithful servant.
Later it said :
The abolitionists will probably not be interrupted if they settle north of the fortieth parallel of north latitude, but south of that line, and within Kansas Territory they need not set foot. It is decreed by the people who live adjacent that their institutions are to be established, and eandor compels us to advise accordingly.
A meeting held at Westport passed the following resolutions :
Resolved, That we will carry with us into the new Territory of Kansas every species of property, including slaves, and that we will hold and enjoy the same. That we desire to do so peacefully, and depreeate the necessity for resorting to violence in support of our just and lawful rights. Yet, (in no spirit of bravado and with the strongest wish for peace), apprehensive of interference with our private and domestic eoneerns by certain organized bands, who are to be precipitated upon us, we notify all sueh that our purpose is firm to enjoy all our rights, and to meet with the last argument all who shall in any way infringe upon them.
" In the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the South had secured what she termed Southern constitutional rights. She had triumphed.
9 The first mistake made in connection with the settlement of Kansas after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, was the organization of
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Her national victory was won. It is probable that she would have made an effort to dissolve the Union had she failed to secure the equal rights for slavery gained in the Repeal. But having obtained all she contended for, that crisis was passed.
What had the South done in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ?
She had voluntarily surrendered the national phase of slavery and accepted in lieu thereof the local phase of slavery-Squatter Sovereignty. The nation should not say-the people of the state interested should say whether slavery should exist in its bounds.
The extension of slavery, after the Repeal, was a local question-not a national question.
While the South had seemingly triumphed, she had in faet insured her own defeat. For the repeal of the Missouri Compromise would have destroyed slavery peaceably in another generation. The foundation for its destruction had been laid in the development of a national sentiment against it by the Repeal.
But for sectional emigration the South would have lost Kansas peace- ably-and would have accepted that result without war-there would have been no solidified Southern sentiment to sustain an appeal to the sword. The Union sentiment in the South would have been able to assert itself. It would have pointed out that the South had lost through follow- ing her own plans. The slavery propagandists would thereafter have
the societies for the promotion of emigration into the territory on political and sectional lines. The contest was by that aet revived as a national issue and at onee precipitated. This contest developed into a Civil War. Without the baneful influence of these societies and the actions they promoted, Kansas would have become a free state without outrage, and the Union would have been saved without bloodshed.
The views expressed here are not new. These principles were recog- nized by many in Kansas Territory from the coming of Reeder to the admission of the State into the Union. In a report to the Legislature of Kansas Territory, Special Session, 1860, the Chairman of the com- mittee appointed to investigate the losses in the Territory during the border wars, had this to say :
"It had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of all, that most of the outrages complained of had been perpetrated and property taken and destroyed by a class of irresponsible and reckless desperadoes, drawn hither through the excitement and appliances of a political campaign and the intervention of parties and partizans outside of the Territory ; that many of these desperadoes who came here were governed by self- interest instead of political principles and that they, to a great extent, participated in the warfare, some on one side and some on the other in fact, that outside intervention in Territorial affairs, contrary to the wishes and interests of the real settlers of Kansas, caused and continued the prolonged strife. But for such intervention on either side, the real settlers would soon have settled their political differences in a legal and peaecable manner, provided the General Government had afforded them the protection and 'fair play' guaranteed them by the Constitution. Time and the ballot-box were all that were necessary to demonstrate and establish whatever the people of Kansas might deem for their best interests."
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been a radieal faction devoted to a losing eause, and would have dis- appeared, as have radical factions standing for the agitation of a settled issue in all ages.
Flaring maps in many histories show the vast extent of the Great Northwest thrown open to slavery by the Repeal. The South could not have gone there. Slave labor was profitable in the production of eotton. To have made it profitable in other industries would have required more time than the South could have given. For all that country was unsettled-a virgin wilderness. Slavery could not have seated itself in that country, even if unopposed, in one generation. The elimatic theory of Webster would not have materialized. It has long been proven that the negro can live in comfort in any elimate a white man ean stand.
So, in summarization we find this:
The South demanded the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise as an aet of justice.
She would have dissolved the Union if she had not secured the Repeal.
The Repeal was the end of the struggle as a national matter. The crisis was passed. The cause for seeession no longer existed.
The extension of slavery was made a loeal issue. It became such when the South voluntarily accepted Squatter Sovereignty.
Slavery, instead of gaining by the Repeal. really destroyed itself by enaeting that measure.
For it shocked and aroused the moral sense of the Union, which would have swept away slavery by peaceful means.
Slavery was revived as a national issue by the organization of see- tional emigration to Kansas.
This organization was as great a crime as was the Repeal.
It changed the form of the extinction of slavery from a moral to a politieal contest-from a battle of moral principle to one of arms-foree.
The Civil War did not result from the aggressions of slavery after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but
It was the result of the new issue raised in Kansas-seetional emigra . tion-followed to its logieal conclusion.
Once the issue came up for final settlement-once the issue came to be freedom or slavery, bondage or liberty-there was but one course. Then, it did not matter how the issue had been raised. Loyalty and patriotism, moral sense and justice, demanded that slavery be destroyed and liberty enthroned. And that made Kansas the battle-ground and her people immortal.
For Kansas won, and her vietory saved the Union.
Thus, were sown the dragon-teeth which were sure to germinate and bear bountiful harvests of malice. intolerance, suspicion, strife, blood-
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shed, and civil war. In Kansas the South lost, and the history of the Territory and the State has been written by the victors-those founding a Free State through mueh tribulation. No dispassionate account of the aetions of Northern emigration organizations has been written. But the time has come to set down the truth, even if it should prove that ardent friends of liberty and of free Kansas were carried beyond the bounds of right by their devotion to freedom. If the spirit of freedom was commer- eialized-sold for gain-the man base enough to do it should be singled out. For war and death followed his act, and innocent blood lay at his door. And if a historian has not the courage to record the facts, even though these facts are sometimes to the disparagement of those laboring on the side of right, then he should lay down the pen. For, man is, after all, but man laboring under the weaknesses common to mankind. There is no perfection. Zeal even for the right may earry the best beyond due bounds. When the passions are moved to the depths, human nature does not always see the signal marking good from evil. So, were set here in this primal land the final lines between Freedom and Slavery. Far flung were the battle-lines. Whether by right or by wrong-there they stood. Would that they had been set in good will-as they might have been. Henceforth the murky night would be lighted up by the red glare, and blood was to ery to heaven for vengeance in the earth.
CHAPTER XVIII
FIRST SETTLEMENTS
Some settlers began to arrive in Kansas as early as April, 1854. They increased in numbers constantly from that date. We have already noted the staking out of elaims in the Salt Creek Valley by settlers frem Platte County, Missouri. While some of these squatters did not make a home in Kansas Territory, and had no intention of doing so, a good many of them, in fact, were acting in good faith; they erected dwellings on the claims they had taken.
Two of the early settlements of Kansas became most noted in the history of the Territory and the State. These were Lawrence and Atchi- son. Lawrence was founded in what was later made Douglas County, and Atchison was laid out in what became Atchison County. When the first settlements were made, however, no counties had been formed, and these tewns had not been located.
Douglas County, containing the city of Lawrenee, which was the head- quarters of the Free-State men in Kansas, had the leading part in Kansas Territorial history. The capital of Kansas Territory, Lecompton, was also in Douglas County. The old Santa Fe trail passed through the south part of the county, and a number of ambitious towns were formed along that famous highway. Among them were Palmyra, Louisiana, and Brooklyn. Prairie City was only two miles south of it, and Baldwin City about one mile south. The post-office of Hickory Point had been fixed en the site of Louisiana before the town had been laid out. Hickory Point came to notice later as the place where some of the events leading to the Wakarusa War transpired.
The first arrivals, in what became Douglas County, were probably pro slavery men, although Free-State men began to arrive early in June. The Oregon Trail, locally known as the California Road, passed through the northern part of the county. This trail crossed the Wakarusa at the house of Charles Blue-Jaeket, a chief of the Shawnees. The pro-slavery settlers etablished the town of Franklin, on the California Road, about two miles west of the eressing. The trail passed up Mount Oread and followed the "baek bone ridge" which divided the waters of the Kansas from those of the Wakarusa. Six miles west of Mount Oread, on a fine « levation, there was a noted spring. At that point Judge John A. Wake- field, who arrived in the Territory on the 8th of June, 1854, made his home. Another noted place on the trail was Big Springs, within a mile of the west line of the county. A settlement was made there.
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Some of the names of those arriving in 1854 are set out: J. W. Lunkins, a South Carolinian, April 13th. A. R. Hopper, May 9th. Clark Sternes and William H. R. Lykins settled on the land upon which Law- rence was afterwards founded, May 26th. A. B. and N. E. Wade came on the 5th of June. Brice W. Miller, June 6th. Martin and Calvin Adams arrived June 10th. H. II. Eberhart, June 12th. J. H. Harrison arrived June 14th. H. S. and Paul Eberhart came on the 15th of Junc. S. N. Wood, later to become prominent in many of the affairs of the Territory and State, arrived on the 24th of June. James F. Legate came on the 5th of July. Joel K. Goodin, from Ohio, settled south of the California Road in May. Thomas W. Barber, later to become a martyr in the cause of freedom, settled on the Wakarusa, southwest of Lawrence, early in 1855.
There were no laws, no eourts, and it was necessary for the settlers to make such regulations as would preserve order until a government could be set up. Two associations were formed in what is now Douglas County. One was the Wakarusa Association, the other the Actual Settlers' Asso- ciation. The latter was composed of men who had actually staked out their claims and were then living on them. On the 12th of August a meeting of the Actual Settlers' Association was held at the house of Brice W. Miller. John A. Wakefield was its President, and S. N. Wood was the Recorder. The residence of Mr. Miller was known as Miller's Spring, or Millersburg, and was one mile from the site of the future Lawrence. The constitution of the Association provided that none but the actual settlers should vote, but there appeared at the meeting the members of the Wakarusa Association. They had not yet become resi- dents in the Territory, but had staked out their claims. They desired to take part in the proceedings of the meeting. A Mr. Dunham was put forward to make the plea for the Wakarusa Association. A controversy arose and it seemed that bad feelings would be engendered. Mr. H. D. Woodworth, from New Orleans, of the Wakarusa Association, made a conciliatory speech and proposed the appointment of a committee of conference, to be composed of members of each association. The com- mittee was to agree upon a plan of united action. The Wakarusa Asso- ciation appointed Dunham, Lykins and Hayes. On the part of the aetnal settlers, John Doy, William Lyon and A. H. Mallory were the members. The meeting then adjourned to give the committee time to formulate a report. Within an hour the following report was brought in :
WHEREAS, The laws of the United States confer upon citizens the privilege of settling and holding lands by preemption rights; and, whereas, the Kansas Valley, in part, is now open for the location of such claims; and, whereas, we, the people of this convention, have. and are about to select homes in this valley, and in order to protect the public good, and to seeure equal justice to all, we solemnly agree and bind ourselves to be governed by the following ordinances:
1. We recognize the right of every citizen of the United States, of lawful age, or who may be the head of a family, to select, mark and claim, 200 acres of land, viz .: 160 acres of prairie, and forty acres of timber land, and who shall within sixty days after the treaty is ratified,
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proceed to erect thereon a cabin, or such other improvements as he may deem best, and shall, within sixty days after the ratification of the treaties, enter thereon as a resident.
2. A claim thus marked and registered, shall be good sixty days from the ratification of the treaty, at which time the claimant, if the head of a family, shall move upon and make his home on either the prairie or timber claim, which shall make them both good, and shall be regarded so hy the settlers. Single persons or females making claims shall be entitled to hold them by becoming residents of the Territory, whether upon their claims or otherwise. Any person making a claim as above shall be entitled to a day additional for every five miles they have to travel to reach their families.
3. No person shall hold more than one claim, directly or indirectly.
4. No one shall be allowed to enter upon any previously made or marked claim.
5. All persons failing to commence improving or entering thereupon within the time specified, shall forfeit the same and it shall be lawful for any other citizen to enter thereon.
6. Each elaimant shall, at all reasonable times, hold himself in readiness to point out the extent of his claim to any person who may wish to ascertain the fact.
7. It shall be the duty of the register to put every applicant upon proof, oath, or affirmation, that the claim offered for registry is free from the claim of any other person.
8. Every application for registry shall be made in the following form, viz .: "I apply for certificate of registry for claim seleeted and
marked, on this day of 1854, lying and being in
., containing 160 aeres of prairie and forty acres of timber land, and declare upon honor that said claim was selected and marked on the day of
.. . , and that I am elaiming but the one in my own right, and that it was not elaimed or selected by any other person." To be signed by the applicant. Any person failing to make this eertificate shall not be entitled to register.
9. We agree, upou the survey of the Territory, to mutually deed and re-deed to each other, so as to leave as near as possible as claimed.
10. The officers of this association shall be, one Chief Justice, one Register, one Marshal and one Treasurer.
11. The duty of the Chief Justice shall be to try and decide all disputes between settlers in reference to claims or otherwise, and to try all criminals or persons guilty of the violation of the laws of the Terri- tory. The said Chief Justice shall always take justiee between man and man as his guide; and upon the demand of either party shall summon a jnry of six persons to try all disputes or violations of law, the jury to be selected as follows, viz. : The Chief Justice to write down the names of eighteen persons, and each party to mark alternately until six names only are left, the defendant marking first. The Chief Justice shall also act as President of all meetings of the association, and in his absence a President pro tem shall be appointed.
12. The duty of the Register shall be to register all claims and other necessary matter, act as Secretary of all meetings of the associa- tion, and to act as Chief Justice in his absenee, or where he may be a party interested.
13. The Marshal shall execute all decisions of the Chief Justice or Juries, and shall see that the laws of the association are executed. and shall have power, if necessary, to call upon all members of this asso- ciation to assist in executing the same.
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