USA > Kansas > Kansas : the prelude to the war for the union > Part 14
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Arguments in defense of the Lecompton meas- ure - the debate filled more than nine hundred pages of the " Congressional Globe " - made the most of technicalities. Samuel A. Smith, repre-
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sentative from Tennessee, stood almost alone in advocacy of its claims to popular approval. " The whole people of Kansas," he said, "are in favor of the admission of the State under the Lecomp- ton constitution," except "Lane with his ma- rauders, his murderers, and his house-burners " - an insignificant gang that did not "number more than eight hundred." Foolish talk of this sort found little favor. For the constitution there was a single tenable line of defense - that it was the work of a legitimate convention which had observed all indispensable formalities. The suc- cessive stages of its history were elaborately re- hearsed. The constitution dates back to the first territorial legislature which submitted to the peo- ple the question of calling a constitutional conven- tion. Fifteen months afterwards - a period ample for mature consideration - they respond favora- bly at the polls. After a lapse of three months the question reaches the second territorial legisla- ture, which "bows to the will of the people and provides for the election of delegates." Then between the legislative sanction and the election of delegates four months intervene. Before the delegates meet and enter upon their duties a fur- ther delay of three months occurs. They submit a single but vital article of the constitution to the people for acceptance or rejection, Decem- ber 21st, and they ratify it almost unanimously. "When we view these proceedings of the peo-
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ple of Kansas," said Senator Polk, of Missouri, "in forming for themselves a state constitution, in the successive stages of their development, not from the low arena of partisan strife and pas- sion, but from the elevated standpoint of a pa- triot, ... what a majestic spectacle is presented - the people marching forward in stately pace to the accomplishment of their purposes with a movement as grand as the lapse of the tide or the travel of a planet ! "
Though there could be no real question that the Lecompton constitution was not " the act and deed " of the people of Kansas ; though Douglas and other Northern Democrats fought it, yet it passed the Senate March 23d by a vote of thirty- three to twenty-five. In the House the Lecomp- ton constitution failed. There a substitute was carried, known as the "Crittenden-Montgomery bill," which referred it back to the people. Should they ratify it, then Kansas would be proclaimed a state within the Union without further ado. If they voted it down, they were to call a new con- vention and make a constitution that pleased them better. The sharp-eyed " Democratic Review " did not fail to call attention to the fact that in espousing the Crittenden-Montgomery bill Re- publican congressmen accepted the doctrine of popular sovereignty. It was the same doctrine which they stigmatized in 1854-56 " as an outrage upon public honor, ... as a departure from justice
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and from the original policy of the national gov- ernment."
The Senate rejected the substitute, and there was resort to a committee of conference : J. S. Green, R. M. T. Hunter, and W. H. Seward rep- resenting the Senate ; W. H. English, A. H. Stephens, and W. A. Howard the House. This committee - Seward and Howard dissenting - elaborated a novel measure called the "English bill." An ordinance accompanied the Lecomp- ton constitution which asked the cession of land- grants which were much larger than any other state had ever received on its entrance into the Union. In these land-grants the committee sug- gested a change. They proposed to reduce the twenty-three million acres of land claimed to about one sixth of that amount. The fate of the constitution they linked with that of the land- grants. To accept the modified ordinance was accounted by some curious doctrine of imputation as approval of the constitution, and at once clothed Kansas with the functions of a state. Rejection of it, on the other hand, involved not only rejec- tion of the constitution, but continuance of terri- torial conditions until a population of ninety-four thousand should be reached. The majority re- port, which stoutly denied that any such thing as submission of the Lecompton constitution to the people lurked in this unhackneyed device, was a very excellent piece of quibbling. The constitu-
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tion we accept, its validity we acknowledge, it was urged, but we do not like the ordinance. We are willing to waive the population rule, provided the vexatious business can be concluded. If Kansas should reject our overture, it may remain a ter- ritory until better manners are learned and a larger and more stable population is obtained.
Though objections were plenty - charges of un- warrantable discrimination, of intervention with inducements to control results, of violence to the principle of popular sovereignty - yet the English bill gave the people of Kansas opportunity to put their heel on the odious Lecompton instrument, and that consideration carried it through Congress. The vote of the Senate stood, ayes, thirty-one ; nays, twenty-two- of the House, ayes, one hun- dred and twelve; nays, one hundred and three. Pro-slavery partisans espoused it ; not all of them heartily. "I confess my opinion was," said Sen- ator Hammond, of South Carolina, in a speech October 29th, 1858, at Barnwell Court House, " that the South herself should kick that [Le- compton ] constitution out of Congress. But the South thought otherwise." In Kansas the ques- tion came to a decision August 2d. Thirteen thou- sand and eighty-eight votes were cast - eleven thousand three hundred of them against the Eng- lish proposition.
CHAPTER XI.
JAYHAWKING.
GEOGRAPHICALLY the capital events of Kansas history in the territorial days covered a narrow space. With Lawrence for a centre, the revolu- tion of a radius thirty miles in length would in- clude them all. Yet the Southeast, embracing Bourbon, Linn, and Miami counties, though con- tributing little to the ultimate results of the strug- gle, is not destitute of picturesque and sanguinary exhibitions of border lawlessness.
At the outset, and for a considerable period, pro- slavery settlers had a comparatively clear field in the Southeast, as it lay off the line of Northern immigration. "It has occurred to our friends," a correspondent of the Kansas Association of South Carolina wrote from Platte City, Missouri, "that it would be better, as a matter of policy, and as being more Southern - more agreeable to the Southern emigrants - that a good portion of them would settle south of the Kansas River. By this means we will secure the southern half of the ter- ritory before it is filled by abolitionists ; the north- ern half will be saved by Missourians. . . I
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would suggest that you should seek, as far as pos- sible, to induce all who have a small number of slaves to come out. To such, this is a peculiarly desirable country, and they need have no fear of slaves escaping.' Fort Scott - a federal military post from 1842 to 1854 - was the principal town of the Southeast, and began to have some reputa- tion as a border-ruffian stronghold in 1856. The arrival of armed " settlers " from the South laid the foundation of that reputation which was largely increased afterwards by accessions from Lecomp- ton.
As abolitionists were not plenty in the South- east, the Southerners at first found their opportu- nities for usefulness rather limited. But in Au- gust, 1856, the monotony was broken by news of General Reid's intended attack upon Osawato- mie. Ambitious to share in the glory of destroy- ing that town, a hundred and fifty men collected at Fort Scott and marched northward. When en- camped in Liberty township, eight or ten miles south of Osawatomie, they were surprised by a hundred free-state guerrillas just as they thought of dining. So rude and uncivil an invitation to fight could not be accepted, and the company fled in the greatest confusion, " leaving," as an eye- witness says, "their baggage and most of their horses, boots, coats, vests, hats, and a dinner ready cooked," not to mention a black flag on which was inscribed in red letters " Victory or Death." The
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fugitives mostly fled toward Fort Scott, where they arrived in the middle of the night, fully persuaded that the abolitionists were at their heels. The town was roused. Panic-stricken men and women, believing it would be given over to fire and sword, wildly escaped anywhere chance or instinct might lead. Quite a large company took refuge in a cabin at considerable distance from the village. Soon rumors came that the work of slaughter and pillage had actually begun, and a scene of indescribable confusion followed. Englishmen, harried by Northern pirates, found consolation in the petition, " Good Lord, deliver us from the Danes ; " and why should not the aid of Heaven be invoked against Northern abolition- ists ? A season of prayer was suggested, and the ensuing devotions had no lack of fervor or unanim- ity. The alarm proved groundless. When day dawned the town was found to be safe, and no abolitionists could be seen.
During the autumn of 1856 Indian Agent G. W. Clarke, with a picked-up gang of Missouri- ans, overran portions of Linn and Miami counties into which considerable Northern population had sifted. He threw down fences, destroyed crops, seized horses and cattle, burnt a few cabins, and occasionally drove an obnoxious settler out of the country. "Clarke's company," said one of the victims, "took everything they wanted, and I think they took what they did not want, to keep
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their hands in - had ribbons on their hats, side combs in their hair, and other things they did not need." An old soldier gave his impressions of the raid before the Strickler Commission : "I was in the Black Hawk war, and have fought in the wars of the United States, and have received two land-warrants from Washington City for my ser- vices, but I never saw anything so bad and mean in my life as I saw under General Clarke."
Free-state men in the Southeast, comparatively isolated, having little communication with Law- rence, and consequently almost wholly without check, developed a successful if not very praise- worthy system of retaliation. Confederated at first for defense against pro-slavery outrages, but ultimately falling more or less completely into the vocation of robbers and assassins, they have re- ceived the name - whatever its origin may be - of jayhawkers.1
1 In Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms jayhawker is said to be a corruption of "Gay Yorker," a phrase applied to an eminent exemplar of the business, Colonel Jennison. A more plausible derivation traces the word to a dare-devil Irishman, by the name of Pat Devlin. One morning in the summer of 1856, a neighbor is said to have met him returning from a foraging expedition, laden with spoils. " Where have you been, Pat ?" " Jayhawking," was the reply. " Jayhawking ? What's that ?" " Well," continned the philological bush-ranger, " in the old coun- try we have a bird called the jayhawk, which kind o' worries its prey. It seemed to me as I was riding home that this was what I had been doing." As the evidence now stands, whatever lin- guistic honors accrue from the word "jayhawking " belong to Pat.
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JAYHAWKING.
The best known leader in the jayhawking ep- isode is James Montgomery. Born in Ohio, a resident of Kentucky and Missouri for seventeen years, he reached Linn County in August, 1854, and thenceforth was a prominent figure in the affairs of the Southeast. He was courageous, an effective talker - a qualification that served him to good purpose - not devoid of craft and strat- agem, but without large mental or executive force.
Montgomery's tactics after Clarke's raid were characteristic. To obtain a list of the men con- cerned in it he visited Missouri in the disguise of a teacher searching for a school, which he suc- ceeded in obtaining and actually taught for two weeks - long enough to get the information he wished. That secured, the school suddenly closed, and the school-master soon reappeared transformed into a guerrilla chief. Twenty of the ex-raiders were captured and pretty thoroughly spoiled of money, weapons, and horses.
Though months of disorder followed, yet, with the exception of the Marais des Cygnes massacre, Clarke's raid was the last considerable dash from Missouri into the territory until the outbreak of the war for the Union. In these aggressions jay- hawkers seem to have taken the lead, and they established a freebooting reputation that fairly in- timidated pro-slavery adherents. The accounts of marauding incursions from Missouri, which ap- peared in contemporary prints, were mostly ca-
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nards circulated by jayhawkers as an excuse for their own depredations. They occasionally dis- patched a messenger to Lawrence with a budget of exaggerated or manufactured pro-slavery out- rages, to keep alive their reputation as struggling, self-denying, afflicted patriots.
Disturbances continued intermittently until December, 1857, when claim difficulties of more than ordinary consequence occurred. A delega- tion representing the jayhawking interest had been in Lawrence to enlist Lane in their cause, but he was absorbed with agitations against the Le- compton constitution, and could give them no per- sonal assistance. However, a small company from the vicinity of Lawrence, led by Captain J. B. Abbott, returned with the messengers, for the pur- pose of investigating affairs and of lending any assistance to free-state men that might be possible or advisable. Soon after their arrival in the vi- cinity of Fort Scott some land dispute came to a crisis. A Missourian was charged with “ jump- ing " the claim of a free-state settler. Whether that was actually the case, or whether an enter- prising jayhawker wished to drive him out of the territory as a step preparatory to seizing his prop- erty, is not wholly clear. At all events, the Mis- sourian was arrested and arraigned before an im- promptu squatters' court, the officers of which were mostly drawn from the Lawrence party. None of the usual judicial appurtenances - judge, counsel, sheriff, jury - were omitted.
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Intelligence of the proceedings of this uncon- ventional court came to the ears of Federal Mar- shal Little at Fort Scott, and he sallied forth with a small armed escort on a reconnaissance. The court, hearing of his approach, suddenly aban- doned its judicial functions and prepared to fight. When the marshal appeared and asked for expla- nations he was assured, with all the gravity of truth-telling, that the legislature then in session had repealed the entire code framed at Shawnee Mission, that a provisional committee had been appointed to conduct the government of the terri- tory until a new code could be framed, and that there was, consequently, nothing for him to en- force.
The court successfully threw dust in the mar- shal's eyes, and he returned to Fort Scott. Soon discovering that he had been duped, Little gath- ered a second and larger expedition, and set out again, determined effectually to disbar the insolent attorneys. On his return there was a suitable preamble of parley. "Gentlemen," he said in a very black mood, "you will understand that you are dealing with the United States, and not with border ruffians. You will learn that there is a difference between them. I order you to surren- der and prepare to accompany me to Fort Scott." The court scouted the idea. Half an hour was allowed for reflection, with an intimation from Little that if the period of grace brought forth
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no works meet for repentance he should " blow them all to hell." At the expiration of thirty minutes - no signs of surrender appearing - the marshal ordered a charge upon the recent judi- ciary, members of which were partly intrenched in a log-cabin, and partly posted behind neigh- boring trees. A dozen Sharpe's rifles responded to the charge, and that spoiled all the fun in a twinkling. Numerous loungers and roughs, who accompanied the expedition as a fine lark, dis- liked the appearance of things, and the road to- ward Fort Scott smoked with the precipitation of their return. Rumors of the encounter blew about the territory with various exaggerations. Reinforcements hurried down from Lawrence. Marshal Little's force was considerably increased, but belligerents finally drew off, and there was no more fighting.
In the spring of 1858 Captain Charles A. Ham- ilton surpassed all preceding guerrilla exploits by a deed "which the ibis and crocodile trembled at." Hamilton was a Georgian, of excellent fam- ily and reared in wealth. Restless and fond of adventure, his ear was caught by the Kansas cru- sade proclaimed in Georgia in 1856. He set- tled in Linn County and built a substantial log- house, which served as political headquarters for the vicinity. But Hamilton hardly maintained himself against the superior prowess of the jay- hawkers, and with the decline of the pro-slavery
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cause in the territory soured into desperation. He resolved that the victors should pay heavily for their success, and compiled a list of obnoxious men in his neighborhood whom he planned to seize and execute. This death catalogue in some way fell into Montgomery's hands, who immediately took measures to kill the compiler. He caught him in his log-house, to which he laid siege, but was driven off by federal troops before he could effect his purpose.
Then a lull followed, the opinion became gen- eral that Hamilton would not push his schemes of assassination, precautions were relaxed, and vig- ilance grew weary ; but it was a fatal calm, -
" Like the dread stillness of condensing storms."
Hamilton suddenly appeared in the neighbor- hood of Trading Post May 19th, 1858, with a gang of Missourians, and began to scour the region for his enemies, political and personal. He was particularly anxious to capture a certain resolute, saucy, belligerent blacksmith - Captain Eli Sny- der - with whom he had an altercation not long before. Snyder, armed with a shot-gun " loaded with sixteen buckshot," encountered Hamilton and one or two companions near Trading Post. A spirited colloquy followed. "Where are you going? " Hamilton demanded. "You are going to Trading Post." " If you know better than I do why do you ask ?" " If you don't look out,
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I'll blow you through," growled the Georgian. Snyder leveled his shot-gun - " If you don't leave I'll tumble you from your horse." The interview concluded abruptly. " I afterwards mentioned the affair to Old John Brown," said Snyder, " and he remarked -' If you had killed Hamilton what a mangling up it would have saved ! The Dutch Henry business was at the right time !'"
Hamilton, with a small detachment of his gang, gave personal attention to the capture of Black- smith Snyder whom he found at work in his shop. One of the visitors entered and made the colorless announcement-" A man wants to see you." Sny- der appeared - " Good morning, Mr. Hamilton." "I've got you," hissed the cut-throat. "Yes - what do you want ?" retorted the blacksmith, striking one of the horses which were crowding around him a smart blow that threw all the pistols out of range, and enabled him to regain the shop, and secure his gun. Though severely wounded, Snyder managed to reach his cabin a few rods distant. His young son covered his retreat with a double-barreled shot-gun. "Burn the devils," he shouted, as the boy opened fire; "cut away at them with the other barrel." The party re- tired in discomfiture.
Elsewhere the desperadoes met with better suc- cess. Out of a considerable number of prisoners eleven were selected, marched off to a neighboring gulch, and drawn up in line before their captors.
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"Gentlemen," said one of the eleven, among whom there was no flinching or parleying, "if you are going to shoot, take good aim." " Ready," Ham- ilton shouted, but before he could speak the word " Fire," a repenting ruffian turned away, and said, with an oath - " I'll have nothing to do with such a piece of business as this." Hamilton discharged his own pistol, and a general volley followed. The entire line of prisoners went down -five of them killed outright, five wounded, and one unharmed.
The shocking affair produced a tremendous ex- citement far and wide. There was a hot, clatter- ing, idle pursuit of the assassins. Justice overtook but one of them, and that after a delay of five years.
The authorities at Lecompton did not lay the responsibility for a state of things that culminated in the Marais des Cygnes assassinations wholly or chiefly at the door of pro-slavery men. At all events, soon after receiving intelligence of them, Governor Denver placed warrants in the hands of Deputy Marshal, Captain Samuel Walker for the arrest of Montgomery. When Walker reached Raysville, ten or fifteen miles northwest of Fort Scott, he found a large convention in session. " What are you after ?" asked an acquaintance under his breath. "I've come down to take Montgomery." "You can't do it. That thing 's out of the question." The marshal concluded that it would be wise to keep his writs out of sight.
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"I don't know Montgomery," he said, "and I don't wish to have him pointed out. If he is, I shall have to make an effort to take him."
The speaking, inflamed by the recent massacre, proceeded with furious energy. Nothing less than the extinction of Fort Scott-an infamous nest of border ruffianism which was at that moment shel- tering some of the Marais des Cygnes murderers - would pacify the convention. The authorities sent down sheriffs to arrest free-state men, but they shunned that vile robbers' den. The sneer brought Walker to his feet. He volunteered to serve any warrants in Fort Scott with which he might be furnished, and the proposal touched a popular chord. An unexpected difficulty threat- ened to frustrate the whole enterprise. Nobody could be found authorized to issue the necessary papers. "Get a common justice's writ," said Walker, " and I'll go, though as a federal officer I have no business to serve it."
Walker, escorted by Montgomery incognito, reached Fort Scott on the 30th, and proceeded at once to the house of G. W. Clarke, who, as leader of the Linn County raid in 1856 as well as for other reasons, had incurred great unpopular- ity in free - state quarters. The marshal vainly pounded upon the door with his fist, and then tried the butt of his pistol without eliciting any response. But the town was astir. The street swarmed with Clarke's friends armed to the teeth, while
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Montgomery and his band were fully prepared for anything that might happen. Walker, having procured some heavy iron implement from a gov- ernment wagon standing near, was about to renew his attack on the door when Clarke thrust his head from a window, and offered to surrender. In a few moments the door swung open, and he appeared curiously accoutred. His wife clung to one arm, and his daughter to the other, while in his hands there was an old-fashioned cavalry carbine. Very properly Clarke wished to examine the marshal's papers, which that gentleman declined to ex- hibit, since legally they were of no more account than a handful of pages plucked from the life of Jack the Giant Killer. "I'll give you two minutes to surrender," thundered the marshal, drawing his pistol. "I heard the click of rifles about me," Walker relates, " as I covered Clarke with my revolver. There was a silence like death. Nobody said a word. Major Williams held his watch to count the time. I saw nothing except the ruffian before me. I was told that pro-slavery rifles were pointed at me while my escort aimed at Clarke. It was a mighty solemn state of affairs. The two minutes, I think, must have almost ex- pired when Clarke, white as a sheet, handed me his carbine." Walker afterwards arrested Mont- gomery himself, but all the prisoners managed to escape, and he returned to Lecompton empty- handed.
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The escort retired in a soured, disappointed frame of mind. A dramatic tableau which dis- solved and left no rack of vengeance behind - whatever may be said of it from a scenical point of view - failed to satisfy the matter-of-fact jay- hawkers. They projected a second expedition, hoping to retrieve thereby the inconsequence of the first. On the night of June 6th, Montgomery made a descent upon the town. Quietly securing the sentinels before they could raise an alarm, he applied the torch to some of the public buildings and retreated to a neighboring ravine. An alarm was shortly raised, and citizens hurriedly collected to extinguish the conflagration, when the maraud- ers skulking in the ravine opened fire. Never was a crowd taken more completely by surprise or dis- persed more precipitately, though replying to the attack, when some covert had been reached, witlı an irregular, spluttering fusillade. The attempted incendiarism did not prosper. It accomplished nothing beyond a little blackening and charring. A lively scare, houses fire - stained and bullet- marked, an interesting exhibition of helter-skel- tering - such is the summary of results.
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