USA > Kansas > Kansas : the prelude to the war for the union > Part 11
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"On the 14th of August, 1856," he said, "or there- abouts, I was delegated to ascertain the quantity of sup-
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plies in the town. . . . The soldiers and citizens . assembled in Lawrence were reduced to the lowest point of sustenance : many of them for weeks together had nothing to subsist on but green corn, squashes, water- melons, and other vegetables ; hundreds had no flour, meal, or meat of any kind for days and days together. Sickness prevailed among those subjected to such a diet. In Lawrence a large proportion of all here assembled were reduced to straits, and as a matter of necessity and self-preservation . .. the surrounding country as well as the city itself had to furnish such means of sustenance as the wants of the hungry and the neces- sities of the sick demanded. On the day mentioned I went to every store in town and every supposed depot to ascertain what amount of flour or meal was on hand, exclusive of such limited supplies as might be in dwell- ing-houses for temporary family use; after a thorough search and examination made for the purpose of ascer- taining the condition of the town and to calculate how long it could sustain the existing pressure, I found there were but fourteen sacks of flour- I repeat it, only four- teen sacks of flour in town that could have been bought for public or private use ; could find no meal, bacon, or beef of any consequence ; stocks were exhausted."
Offensive operations were first directed against Franklin. On the night of June 4th a handful of men from Lawrence crept into that village with the stealth of Indians, began a brisk rifle-prac- tice in the darkness, which accomplished nothing beyond killing one of the defenders and wounding several. With the approach of day the raiders
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beat a successful retreat. But there was a second, a more elaborate and effectual attack. Eighty-one men, accompanied by Lane, fresh from Nebraska, to a point sufficiently near Franklin for agreeable spectatorship, sallied forth, August 13th, after dark, to the attack. The block-house was flanked on either side by a log-cabin ; one serving as a post-office, the other as a hotel. Under cover of night the slender army of investment got into po- sition, and summoned the entire compound struc- ture to surrender. The proposition was indig- nantly declined. Thereupon followed three hours of musketry - to no purpose beyond the hurting of a few men. Tiring of the waste of ammuni- tion, the assailants hit upon the expedient of ig- niting a load of hay and wheeling it against the house of the Franklin postmaster, " with whom," as pro-slavery writers put it, " a party of Southern men were boarding." The fiery battering-ram succeeded far better than Sharpe's rifles. " When the flames burst forth," an eyewitness relates, " the poltroons cried lustily for quarter." Loop- holes became silent, and on an entrance being effected a brass field-piece and a few muskets were found, but no " boarders." Some of the assailants thought that a postmaster who kept the sort of " boarders " found in Franklin should be made an example of. "Oh, don't shoot my husband-don't shoot him," pleaded his wife. "He deserves to die ; he's a great villain," somebody blurted out.
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"I know it," was the quick retort, "and that's just the reason why I don't want him shot."
Two days afterwards there was a reconnais- sance upon Fort Saunders, the intrenched " den of thieves " on Washington Creek. The murder of Major D. S. Hoyt by members of the gang was the immediate occasion of the expedition. Four hundred men, with the cannon captured at Frank- lin, marched against the post, but the garrison fled on their approach. The block-house stood near a wooded gulch. Finding it deserted, Lane, who was nominally in command, shouted, " The devils are in the ravine - charge." Into the ravine some of the troopers dashed, but found nobody there.
After this easy success the expedition went into camp on Rock Creek. For reasons which he did not take the trouble to explain, Lane, with half a dozen companions, set out at once for Nebraska, though less than a week had elapsed since his ar- rival from the North. On his departure the com- mand devolved upon Captain Samuel Walker. There was considerable discussion as to what more, if anything, should be done. Captain Walker ad- vised the expedition to disband. A part of the men followed his suggestion and started for Law- rence, while he himself went to the cabin of a friend some miles in the direction of Lecompton. In the evening rumors came to the men who re- mained on Rock Creek - in the mood of further campaigning - that free - state prisoners at Le-
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compton were in peril of the gibbet. They re- solved to attempt a rescue, and sent a runner to notify the men who were returning to Lawrence. Nothing of importance occurred until the expedi- tion reached a point within six or eight miles of Lecompton, when the advanced guard encountered Colonel Titus and his band, who were given to the habit of night-raids. A skirmish took place, which frustrated the plan for surprising Lecompton. Captain Walker, who had been summoned, per- suaded the expedition out of attempting anything more, and went to his own cabin, which was in the neighborhood, for what little of the night re- mained. The Topeka, Lecompton, and Lawrence stage line passed his door. In the morning the coach stopped, and the driver, taking Walker aside, said, " I've got Titus' wife and two children in the stage. If you want to get the d-d scoun- drel, now is your time." Colonel Titus, who had distinguished himself by great activity in harrying free-state people, was probably the most obnox- ious border ruffian in the territory. Walker was personally anxious to catch him, and the halted expedition quickly broke camp. Fifty horsemen dashed on in three divisions to surround the stout log-cabin which went by the name of Fort Titus, and cut off communications with Lecompton, while the infantry made what speed they might. Fed- eral troops were plainly in sight, but Major John Sedgwick privately hinted to Walker a few days
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before that if he wished to nab Titus, and would make quick work of it, his dragoons might not be able to reach the block-house in time to interfere. Walker's horsemen got in position and opened fire with Sharpe's carbines. Titus replied spiritedly, killed one of the assailants, and wounded others. Rifle-balls buried themselves harmlessly in the walls of the cabin, but the arrival of footmen with a six-pound gun put a new face upon affairs. The cannonade was plainly audible in the federal camp scarcely a mile distant. Mrs. Robinson says in her " Kansas " that a stray shot whizzed past the tent where the free-state prisoners were con- fined. After a brief bombardment a white flag appeared, and the whole garrison of seventeen men capitulated. Colonel Titus presented a sorry sight as he emerged from his battered domicile - coatless, covered with blood, wounded in the hand, face, and shoulder. The assailants fully purposed to kill Titus if they caught him - to such an in- tensity had the bitterness against him mounted.
" But the cuss," said Captain Walker to the writer, "got me in the right place when he surrendered. He saw the devil was to pay, and made a personal appeal to me. 'You have children,' he pleaded, 'and so have I. For God's sake save my life.' Somehow I could n't re- sist. We had n't been on good terms at all. Not long before the rascal had sent handbills all about offering a reward of five hundred dollars for my head 'off or on my shoulders.' I noticed one of them plastered upon
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the side of his cabin while he was talking to me. The boys swore they would kill him. One of them was so obstreperous that I had to knock him down before he would be quiet. At last I got mad and said, 'There Titus sits. If any one of you is brute enough to shoot him, shoot.' Not a man raised his gun."
Two inmates of Fort Titus were killed, and two wounded. Among the free-state men the casual- ties were one killed and six wounded. Titus was taken to Lawrence, where a fresh rage to dispatch him broke out, but wiser counsels prevailed, and the mob was baffled.
Sunday, August 17th, Governor Shannon, ac- companied by Major Sedgwick and Dr. Aristides Rodrigue, postmaster at Lecompton, rode to Law- rence in the interest of peace-making. Then oc- curred an unwonted spectacle. After negotia- tions consuming almost the entire day a treaty of peace was consummated, involving an exchange of prisoners and other acts customary only among recognized belligerents standing upon an equal footing; the high contracting parties being on the one hand the federal government in the person of Governor Shannon, and on the other a minority of the sub-committee chosen out of the larger committee appointed at the miscellaneous Topeka convention July 4th - Colonel James Blood and William Hutchinson, correspondent of the "New York Times." In this transaction free-state au- dacity reached the high-water mark of the Waka-
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rusa war treaty. The United States stipulated to return the cannon captured by Sheriff Jones at Lawrence May 21st, to liberate five or six men arrested for participation in the attack on Frank- lin, while the minority of the sub-committee agreed to release Titus and his men.
When the treaty had been arranged, Governor Shannon attempted to address a street-mob, com- posed of recent immigrants from Chicago and else- where rather than of residents of Lawrence. There was still another outbreak of furor for shooting Titus. Major Sedgwick, who was not given to alarms nor exaggerations, described the excite- ment as " almost uncontrollable." When Gover- nor Shannon began to speak a tremendous yell went up from the spectators, and revolvers were pulled out to shoot him. Walker leaped upon a horse, and, drawing his pistols, dashed into the street, shouting, "The first man who insults the governor does it over my dead body ! He shan't be insulted. Boys, I'm with you, but he shan't be insulted !" Instant silence followed. Finally some one said, " We'll hear him as Shannon, but not as governor !" The speech then went on.
When Governor Shannon returned to Lecomp- ton he assuredly had occasion for writing the ner- vous letter which he sent off at once to the de- partment commander : "This place is in a most dangerous and critical situation. . . . We are threatened with utter extermination by a large
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body of free-state men. . . . I have just returned from Lawrence, where I have been this day with the view of procuring the release of nineteen pris- oners that were taken. I saw in that place at least eight hundred men who manifested a fixed purpose to destroy this town. . .. The women and children have been mostly sent across the river, and there is a general panic among the people."
With the treaty at Lawrence, Governor Shan- non's official career substantially closed. "I am unwilling to perform the duties of governor of this territory any longer," he wrote President Pierce August 18th. "You will therefore consider my official connection with this territory at an end." He gave mortal offense to the pro-slavery leaders in the latter days of his administration by declin- ing to be a mere sounding-board for their policies. Like Reeder he left the territory in fear for his life. His success had scarcely been greater than that of his predecessor. "Govern the Kansas of 1855 and '56," he once exclaimed in later years, when he had become a resident of Lawrence and territorial unpopularity had modulated into uni- versal respect, -" you might as well have at- tempted to govern the devil in hell!"
It must not be supposed that pro-slavery people were idle during this interval of freshened free- state activity. Though scarcely taking the lead, they accomplished considerable marauding, which,
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as usual, consisted in highway robbery and the pillage of cabins interspaced with an occasional murder. In the practical conduct of such matters there is wearisome sameness of method and detail, like
" A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame."
At Leavenworth there belched forth a perfect chaos of pro-slavery outrages, which held on into the early days of September - a Missouri ruffian making and winning a bet of six dollars against a pair of boots that he would scalp an abolitionist within two hours; William Phillips, the lawyer who fared roughly at the hands of a mob some months before, assassinated,
" With twenty trenched gashes on his head, The least a death to nature,"
one hundred and fifty men, women, and children driven upon river-steamers, leaving all their ef- fects behind as spoils for Captain Emory's eight hundred pro-slavery regulators, who swore they would expel every abolitionist from the region.
But the larger Missouri activities awoke once more. August 16th, the day when Fort Titus was destroyed, Atchison and the pro-slavery junta, in an address to the public, announced the opening of civil war, and urged all friends of law and order " who are not prepared to see their friends butch- ered, to be themselves driven from their homes, to rally instantly to the rescue." The border roused by this call, which pro-slavery newspapers caught
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up with various and inflammatory exaggerations, again flew to arms. But the swelling hordes of armed men paused on the Missouri side of the line. Governor Shannon, who had not forgotten his ex- periences with the militia in the Wakarusa war, declined to give them any legal pretext for cross- ing it. On the 21st of August Secretary Woodson succeeded him as acting governor, and the halted but now jubilant Missourians prepared to advance. For a third time their ideal executive was in power. " If Mr. Atchison and his party had had the direction of affairs," reported General P. F. Smith, who succeeded Colonel Sumner in com- mand of the department, "they could not have ordered them more to suit his purpose." Wood-
son bestirred himself to issue a proclamation, which appeared on the 25th, declaring the terri- tory "in a state of open insurrection and rebel- lion," and calling upon all patriotic citizens to rally for the defense of law and for the punishment of traitors. The pamphleteering cabal of Missouri managers reinforced Woodson's proclamation by a new manifesto. Now an irreparable blow can be delivered. The noble Woodson occupies the exec- utive chair, and there is a clear field. What the character and policy of the next governor may be is a matter of uncertainty. He may prove "a second edition of corruption or imbecility." Such was the energy and dispatch with which prepara- tions were pushed, that Atchison moved into Kan-
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sas August 29th and encamped on Bull Creek, fif- teen miles north of Osawatomie.
To Dutch Henry's Crossing must be charged much of the havoc and anarchy in which the Kan- sas of 1856 weltered. That affair was a fester- ing, rankling, envenomed memory among pro-slav- ery men. It set afoot retaliatory violences, which for a while were successfully matched, and more than matched, by their opponents, but finally is- sued in a total military collapse of the free-state cause. Now Osawatomie, "the headquarters of Old Brown," lay within easy reach of Atchison's camp. General John W. Reid, with two hundred and fifty men, took in hand the business of de- stroying it. He approached the town about dawn, August 30th, under pilotage of the Rev. Martin White, whose experiences two weeks before had not served to promote the passive virtues. On the outskirts of the village, the expedition met Frederick Brown, a son of John Brown, whom the divine shot dead -" the ball passing clean through the body."
The entire force available for the defense of Osawatomie was only forty-one men, seventeen belonging to John Brown's band, and the remain- ing twenty-four divided between the companies of Dr. W. W. Updegraff and Captain Cline. These twoscore men, equal to nothing more than a resolute show of fight, took post near the town and the line of Reid's approach, among trees and
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underbrush that skirted the Marais des Cygnes. When the enemy came within range, they opened fire and caused some temporary confusion. The Missourians unlimbered a field-piece and belched grape-shot at the thicket, which crashed harm- lessly above the heads of the concealed rifle- men. Tiring of the inconsequent bombardment, they charged and brought the skirmish to an abrupt conclusion. Only one practicable course then remained for the handful of men in the thicket, and that was to get out of the way with all possible dispatch. This they did without standing upon the order of their going, and scat- tered here and there after an every-man-for-him- self fashion. Six free-state men were killed, in- cluding assassinations before and after the fight, and three wounded. Reid's loss was probably not more than five killed - in his own account of the affair the number is put at two - and a few wounded. Only four cabins escaped the torch, so completely did the raiders accomplish their mission.
There was a retaliatory stir among the free- state clans. Lane, after two weeks' absence in Nebraska or elsewhere, suddenly reappeared. He gathered up the available fighting material about Lawrence and Topeka, amounting to three hun- dred men, and marched against the camp on Bull Creek. Nothing came of the expedition. The hostile parties approached, surveyed each other,
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exchanged a few scattering shots, and retired - Atchison toward Missouri, and Lane toward Law- rence.
A strong counter-irritant activity burst forth from Lecompton while Lane was campaigning against Bull Creek. In two days seven cabins belonging to free-state men of the neighborhood were given to the flames. Sheriffs drove a lively traffic in arrests and confiscations. Acting-gov- ernor Woodson, eager to make the most of his brief sunshine, ordered Colonel Cooke " to invest the town of Topeka, and disarm all the insurrec- tionists or aggressive invaders against the organ- ized government of the territory, to be found at or near that point, retaining them as prisoners, sub- ject to the order of the marshal of the territory. All their breastworks, forts, or fortifications should be leveled to the ground." Though the sins of Topeka were just then at their worst, as the maraudings heretofore mentioned were in prog- ress, yet Colonel Cooke flatly declined to execute the order, and was fully sustained by General Smith in his disobedience.
Pro-slavery enterprise at Lecompton led to a formidable expedition against that town. The attacking force was divided into two columns. One column of a hundred and fifty men, led by Colonel J. A Harvey, marched up the north bank of the Kansas River September 4th, and reached its assigned position opposite Lecompton in the
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evening, to cut off retreat in that direction. Har- vey waited anxiously but vainly through a cold, rainy night, listening for the guns of the other column which was to assail the town. Then he concluded the expedition had been abandoned, and returned to Lawrence.
But the main body - three hundred men with two pieces of artillery, commanded by Lane in person, and assigned to the southern route -de- layed moving twenty-four hours, and did not reach Lecompton until the afternoon of September 5th. The advent of the belated column threw that town into a spasm of terror. Acting-governor Wood- son, territorial officials, and private citizens all appealed to Colonel Cooke for protection. The federal troops encountered the advanced guard of Lane's column, under command of Captain Samuel Walker, about a mile from the village. " What have you come for ?" Colonel Cooke demanded. Walker replied that they " came to release pris- oners " - men seized for offenses at Franklin and elsewhere - " and to have their rights." Collect- ing the officers - twenty or thirty responded to his request for audience - Colonel Cooke ad- dressed them at some length on the condition of affairs. He deprecated the demonstration against Lecompton, since the Missourians were dispers- ing, the prisoners about to be set at liberty, and things generally going in their favor. The conference issued peacefully, and the expedition
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returned to Lawrence without firing a shot. Lane took no part in the negotiations. When federal dragoons appeared he seized a musket, and stepped into the ranks as a common soldier. Rumors of his presence reached Sheriff Jones, who clamored for his arrest. Woodson proposed to write out a requisition, but on second thought it was con- cluded to let him alone. Colonel Cooke in his official account lapsed into a forgivable rhetoric of congratulation. " Lecompton and its defend- ers," he said, " were outnumbered, and evidently in the power of a determined attack. Americans thus stood face to face in hostile array and most earnest of purpose. As I marched back over these beautiful hills, all crowned with moving troops and armed men, . . . I rejoiced that I had stayed the madness of the hour, and prevented, on almost any terms, the fratricidal onslaught of country- men and fellow-citizens."
Woodson's lease of power ran only three weeks, but in that brief period he drew over the territory the sorrowfulest night that had settled upon it. Free-state men, who appealed to him, received very cavalier treatment. Even that distinguished minority of a sub-committee, which captured Gov- ernor Shannon, could not tame him. " Your troubles," Woodson wrote September 7th, in reply to a remonstrant communication, are " the natural and inevitable result of the present lawless and revolutionary position in which you have, of your
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own accord, placed yourselves." The minority of a sub-committee retorted with spirit : "You have left us no alternative but to perish or fight. .. You have called into the field under the name of militia a set of thieves, robbers, house-burners, and murderers to prey upon the people you have sworn to protect. This is the position you occupy be- fore the country and a just God, and on you, not on us, must rest the responsibility."
The only cheerful event that illuminates Wood- son's inhospitable three weeks' incumbency, and for that no credit accrues to him, was the release on bail, September 10th, of Governor Robinson, after an imprisonment of four months. This con- summation was reached principally through the unremitting efforts of A. A. Lawrence, who had connections of family affiliation as well as of per- sonal friendship with President Pierce. “ Hav- ing been the means of sending Dr. Robinson to Kansas," Lawrence wrote August 13th, 1856, " I feel bound to take every measure to secure his release. ... Mr. Pomeroy, of Kansas, is now in Washington, and has taken from me a letter to Mr. Pierce, with whom he has had several inter- views; but in regard to the prisoners he has accomplished nothing." Pomeroy, in his report of negotiations, represents the president as discours- ing copiously "about 'disobedience to law, and punishment as the necessary consequence.' I told him there was no treason . . . in Kansas. He
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was very severe on the 'unauthorized ' free-state movement in Kansas. Both of us got hot and showed some passion. I content myself by feel- ing that I did not show more than he did. . On the whole, the interview about the prisoners was very unsatisfactory." The untoward state of negotiations reported by Pomeroy only stimulated Lawrence to more vigorous mediatory efforts, which shortly brought about a hopeful change in the aspect of affairs. "Some action was to have been taken yesterday at their [the cabinet's] meeting," he writes early in September, "and a favorable result may be looked for at once. It is said that a letter was received from a lady - the wife of one of the prisoners, and probably Mrs. Robinson-which put the case in a favorable light, and being read aloud by Mrs. Pierce to her husband it took hold of the feelings of both." These expectations were not disappointed. "I have given, such orders concerning Dr. Robinson as will please you," President Pierce informed the Boston friends, and the " Bastile-on-the-prairies " was broken up. Mr. Lawrence's knowledge of the letter, a not inconsiderable factor in effecting the modification of federal policy toward Kansas, which now took place, and in hastening the arrival of Woodson's successor in the territory, was not so slender as his language might seem to imply. He drafted the letter himself, and sent it to Mrs. Rob- inson, who copied and forwarded it to Mrs. Pierce.
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The administration, after much careful search, pitched upon John W. Geary, of Pennsylvania, for the vacant gubernatorial post in Kansas, and he reached Lecompton September 10th, just as the storm raised by Woodson was culminating. He owed his selection to a reputation for great exec- utive ability. The administration perceived that, for political reasons, the disorders in Kansas must be composed, and he was expected to accomplish that feat.
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