History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri : written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources, including a history of their townships, towns, and villages, together with a condensed history of Missouri; a reliable and detailed history of Clay and Platte Counties --their pioneer record, resources, biographical sketches of prominent citizens., Part 18

Author:
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: St. Louis : National Historical Co.
Number of Pages: 1156

USA > Missouri > Platte County > History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri : written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources, including a history of their townships, towns, and villages, together with a condensed history of Missouri; a reliable and detailed history of Clay and Platte Counties --their pioneer record, resources, biographical sketches of prominent citizens. > Part 18
USA > Missouri > Clay County > History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri : written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources, including a history of their townships, towns, and villages, together with a condensed history of Missouri; a reliable and detailed history of Clay and Platte Counties --their pioneer record, resources, biographical sketches of prominent citizens. > Part 18

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On April 21 a large meeting of the citizens of Clay convened in Liberty, at the court-house, to consider the proceedings had and done

1 At Leavenworth the vote was Pro-Slavery, 899; Free State, 60; at Tecumseh, Pro- Slavery, 366; Free State, 4. The total vote in the Territory was, Pro-Slavery, 5,427; Free State, 791.

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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.

at Parkville. The following is the official report of the proceedings of this meeting, as published in the Liberty Tribune :-

KANSAS MEETING.

At a large and enthusiastic meeting of the citizens of Clay county, assembled at the court-house for the purpose of indorsing the action of the citizens of our neighboring county of Platte, in the destruction of the Parkville Industrial Luminary, Maj. John Dougherty was called to the chair, and Geo. W. Morris appointed secretary.

On motion, Henry L. Routt, Geo. W. Withers, Maj. Joel Turnham, Asa T. Foree, Wm. H. Kerr and Fountain Waller were appointed a committee to draft resolutions expressing the sense of the meeting. After a short absence the committee reported the following reso- tions : -

WHEREAS, We have seen the proceedings of a meeting of the citi- zens of Platte county, held in Parkville on the 14th inst., and feel that the time has come when it becomes the duty of every man in our State that there may no longer be any misapprehension on the part of any of the citizens of our sister States ; therefore,

Resolved, 1. That the action of the non-slaveholding States in set- ting at defiance the laws for the protection of our property, in not only countenancing but justifying and abetting by their legislation, its systematic and public highway robbery of Southerners, by the insults and outrages heaped upon them whenever compelled to pass through or over to land upon the borders of the non-slaveholding States ; the declared purpose of those who perpetrate these outrages, not only to plant their hosts of felons upon our borders but to invade our State, strip us and drive us from our homes, demand the adoption of the most efficient means for our protection.

2. We will begin at home, and rid ourselves of the traitors harbored in our midst.

3. To speak or publish in a slaveholding community sentiments calculated to render slaves discontented, to irritate them to escape or rebel, is not an exercise of the " liberty of speech," but is an act of positive crime of the highest grade, and should receive summary and exemplary punishment.

4. Those who in our State would give aid and encouragement to the Abolitionists by inducing or assisting them to settle in Kansas, or throw obstacles in the way of our friends by false and slanderous mis- representations of the acts of those who took part in and contributed to the gratifying results in the late election in that Territory, should be driven from among us as traitors to their country.

5. We fully approve the action of our friends in Platte in destroy- ing the press of the Industrial Luminary and their resolutions to expel the traitors, Park and Patterson.

6. That we regard the efforts of the Northern division of the Metho- dist Episcopal Church to establish itself in our State, as a violation of its plighted faith - and pledged as must be its ministers to the anti-

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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.

slavery principles of that church, we are forced to regard them as ene- mies to our institutions. We therefore fully concur with our friends in resolving to permit no person belonging to the Northern Methodist Church to preach in our county.

7. We urge the citizens of other counties, and pledge ourselves to act cordially and efficiently in executing the principles of the forego- ing resolutions.

8. To show our full approval of the proceedings of our friends in Platte, we will attend at Parkville on the 5th day of May next, and in person indorse their action.

The resolutions were unanimously adopted.

The meeting was then addressed by Gen. B. F. Stringfellow, Maj. John Dougherty, W. E. Price, Judge Thompson, Geo. W. Withers, Henry L. Routt and Maj. James H. Adams.

On motion of Geo. W. Withers, 100 delegates from each township were appointed to meet our fellow-citizens of Platte in council in Parkville on the 5th day of May next.

On motion of J. H. Adams, a committee of five from each township were appointed by the chair to wait on all persons in the least sus- pected of Free Soilism or Abolitionism, and notify them to leave the county immediately.

The chairman appointed the following persons under the last mo- tion : James T. V. Thompson, Joel Turnham, A. G. Reed, O. P. Moss, D. J. Adkins, J. H. Adams, G. H. Wallis, W. E. Price, S. Levi, Geo. W. Withers, David. Morris, Thos. M. Gosney, L. J. Wood, Thos. J. Young, Edmund Tilman, A. T. Foree, Wm. Austin, A. C. Courtney, Ryland Shackelford, Henry Estes, Maj. John Dougherty, Wyatt Wills, Willis Winn, Fountain Waller, A. Murray.

On motion of H. L. Routt, all persons of this county who are sub- scribers for papers in the least tinctured with Free Soil or Aboli- tionism, are requested to discontinue them immediately.

On motion, the Liberty Tribune, Richfield Enterprise and St. Louis Republican were requested to publish the proceedings of this meeting.

On motion, the meeting adjourned.

JOHN DOUGHERTY, Chairman.

GEO. W. MORRIS, Secretary.

There was such intense and long continued excitement in the county over the Kansas question that our people became intolerant to a de- gree that they have since regretted. It was not safe to disapprove the. measures adopted by the Pro-Slavery party to make Kansas a slave State. Even Editor Miller, of the Tribune, who mildly protested against the violent destruction of the Luminary, saying the better way to have suppressed it would have been " to let it die for want of patronage," had his orthodoxy on the slavery question openly doubted, and the Richfield Monitor assailed him savagely.

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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.

Clay county was not alone in (indorsing the proceedings at Park- ville. Other counties, by resolutions adopted at large meetings, ap- proved them. But in Johnson county, at an assemblage of the citi- zens at Warrensburg, in May, the people excepted to the proscription of the Northern Methodists, saying : -

The constitution and laws guaranteeing to us the right to wor- ship God according to the dictates of conscience we regard as sacred, and the course pursued at meetings held in our own and sister counties in proscribing ministers of the Gospel of certain denominations, is tyrannical, arbitrary, illegal, and unjust, and unworthy the intelli- gence of an enlightened community.

Throughout the war in Kansas during the year 1855 this county furnished men and means to aid the Pro-Slavery cause whenever called upon. At the time of the " Wakarusa War," in December, Mayor Payne, of Kansas City, came over to Liberty and raised 200 men and $1,000 for the purpose of aiding Sheriff Jones and the other officers under Gov. Wilson Shannon, in capturing the Free State town of Lawrence, whose inhabitants were in rebellion against the acknowl- edged authorities of the Territory. Lawrence at that time was virtu- ally in a state of siege, with men in arms and breastworks to resist a' process in the hands of the sheriff.

The Clay county volunteers, to the number of 100 or more, under the leadership of Maj. Ebenezer Price, moved upon the Liberty Ar- senal, then in charge of Maj. Luther Leonard, seized it, put Leonard and the employes under arrest, and took out three pieces of artillery, brass six-pounders, mounted ; 55 rifles, 67 cavalry sabers, 100 dragoon pistols, 20 Colt's revolvers, besides all the necessary equipments, ac- couterments, and a large amount of ammunition, including shot and shell for the cannon, thousands of cartridges for the small arms, etc., all of which belonged to the Government. The following report of this seizure was made by Maj. Leonard to the Department at Wash- ington : -

REPORT OF CAPT. LUTHER LEONARD OF THE ROBBERY OF LIBERTY ARSENAL, DECEMBER 4, 1855.

MISSOURI DEPOT, LIBERTY, Dec. 4, 1855, (5 p. m. ) Col. H. C. Craig, Ordnance Department, Washington City:

SIR-I improve the first moments of liberty to report that to-day, about 3 o'clock p. m., this depot was surprised by about 100 armed men, who placed me under an armed guard, as also the operatives at the post, and proceeded to take possession of public property to a large

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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.

amount, consisting in part of three six-pounder brass guns, mounted ; artillery harness, artillery implements, rifles, pistols, Colt's revolvers, sabers, fixed ammunition, accouterments, etc., etc. The exact amount can not be ascertained until an inventory is taken of the property re- maining. Resistance was useless, and I could only protest against this violent and unlawful seizure of the public property in my charge.

From the best information I can obtain, the parties to this robbery have taken the property to Kansas Territory, to engage in some dis- turbances said to exist among the inhabitants thereof. I have reported these facts to Col. E. V. Sumner, commanding Fort Leavenworth, asking his advice and assistance.

This unparalleled outrage leaves me in doubt how to proceed in the absence of special authority, and I shall, therefore, anxiously await your orders.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

L. LEONARD, Military Storekeeper.

Being well armed and well mounted the Clay county volunteers set out for the " seat of war." One party with five wagons and a cannon bore a large flag in the center of which was a large purple star. Upon their arrival at the Pro-Slavery camp on the Wakarusa they were re- ceived with hearty cheers, and their flag was hoisted on a tree in the center of the camp. The campaign was soon over and the men re- turned home.

Meantime, in May, the Free State men, claiming that the March election was a fraud, had held an election and chosen members of a Territorial convention, which met at Topeka in October and adopted a Free State constitution. The Pro-Slavery delegates chosen in March had assembled at first at Pawnee and then at the Shawnee mission, one mile from the Missouri line and four miles from Westport, where, sitting as a Territorial Legislature, a formidable Pro-Slavery code of laws, modeled upon, if not taken almost entirely from, the Missouri Statutes, was adopted. But these statutes were decided to be valid by two of the three judges of the Supreme Court of the Territory, S. D. Lecompt and Rush Elmore. The enactments were, however, uniformly disregarded and defied by the Free State men. It was to enforce these laws that the Clay county men marched to the Wakarusa.

On the 10th of December, Capt. Wm. N. R. Beall, of the First U. S. Cavalry, came over from Ft. Leavenworth with a company of cav- alry to guard the arsenal from another threatened raid, and to try to recover the property that had been taken. The same day he re- ported that " the robbery was on a large scale," and that he had

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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.

notified certain prominent citizens that the property must be returned. The next day he reported as follows : -

MISSOURI DEPOT, Dec. 11, 1855.

SIR - I have the honor to state that Judge Thompson, one of the leading men of Liberty, called on me to-day and informed me that the arms, stores, and ammunition taken from this place on the 4th inst. are in this vicinity, and that the parties who took them are an- xious to return them. I informed him that if they were brought to the arsenal gate, I would there receive them. They are now being delivered, and I presume that within two days from this time I will have possession of all that they have to return. I have an accurate inventory taken of them as they arrive.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. N. R. BEALL, Captain First Cavalry Commanding. Lieut. Adjt. R. RANSOM, First Regt. Cav., Ft. Leavenworth, K. T.

About $400 worth of arms and ammunition were never restored. Jefferson Davis was then Secretary of War, and no further efforts were made to obtain them, and no arrests were ever offered to be made of those who took them.

One rather humorous incident connected with this " free for all" balloting in Kansas occurred in October, 1855. An election was to be held October 8, in Leavenworth county, to select a county seat. Three towns were aspirants for the distinction - Leavenworth, Dela- ware and Kickapoo, all three on the Missouri. Leavenworth, in pop- ulation and number of resident voters, outnumbered both Delaware and Kickapoo two to one, and it was of course believed by the people of the first named town that it was sure to win. But the people of Delaware and Kickapoo had learned how elections might be carried, from seeing the Leavenworth men manage territorial contests. So on election day the ferry-boat ran free between Weston and Kickapoo and hundreds of Missourians. from Platte county crossed over and voted on the county seat question in favor of Kickapoo, and while Leavenworth cast 600 votes Kickapoo came smilingly to the fore with 800 !

But Delaware was yet to hear from. Situated eight miles below Leavenworth, it was near to both Platte and Clay counties, in Mis- souri. A few days before the election notices of the election were posted in different parts of this county and published in the Tribune. These notices closed as follows : " Pro-Slavery men will find it to their interest to make Delaware the county seat. The ferry at Del- aware will be free that day ; there will also be a big barbecue there

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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.

on that day, and a big ball at night." The Delawareans kept the polls open three days, until after they heard from both Kickapoo and Leavenworth, and then came up triumphantly bearing their poll- books which showed a vote of more than nine hundred for Delaware ! At that time there were not more than 60 actual resident voters in the place. To say that Leavenworth was disgusted is to very imper- fectly state the prevalent feeling. The first authority to which the case of the election was submitted decided in favor of Kickapoo, but the territorial court waived all " irregularities," and ruled on the side of Delaware.

In March, 1856, a large meeting was held at the court-house, and a considerable sum of money subscribed in aid of the cause. In June an organization, called the Pro-Slavery Aid Association, was formed, with Michael Arthur, president; David Roberts, secretary and treas- urer, and T. C. Gordon, D. J. Adkins, J. T. V. Thompson, A. W. Doniphan, and others, as directors. This association sent men and means into Kansas during the year from time to time as they were needed, and performed important work for the Pro-Slavery cause.

Some of the Clay county men took part in various skirmishes with the Free State men in Kansas in 1856, and were at Ossawattomie, Turkey Creek and elsewhere. One man, R. M. G. Price, was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun of a comrade, J. M. Sullivan.

In the spring and summer of 1856 numerous bodies of emigrants bound for Kansas from the Northern States were stopped in Western Missouri, not allowed to enter the Territory, and many of them forced back to their old homes. At Weston and Leavenworth one or two boat loads of Eastern emigrants were stopped and turned back, and similar action was taken with others at Lexington, Wellington and elsewhere. In May eight families, with 12 teams from Illinois, trav- eling overland, were stopped in Platte county, and brought to Liberty by a guard of eight men headed by Robert Pate. Here they were turned over to the citizens, and Judge Thompson took charge of them. They were permitted to camp near town for two days, and then sent 10 miles east where they rented houses and lived until the troubles in Kansas were over. These Illinoisans were John Veteto, his two sons and their families, and Benj. Draper, John Wooster, James Hancock, R. Roberts and M. Dibble, and their families.

In June, 1856, an attempt was made in Liberty to mob Darius Sessions, who was a prominent member of the Know Nothing party, but accused of holding anti-slavery sentiments. Ses- sions was rescued with some difficulty, and a public meeting indorsed

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him as a true friend of Southern institutions, and condemned the as- sault upon him as unmerited and unwarranted. Hon. L. W. Burris was prominent in the rescue of Sessions, who was killed by the bush- whackers at Missouri City during the Civil War.

After a time, along in the latter part of the year 1856, although the Government authorities virtually took sides with the Pro-Slavery men, and dispersed the Free State Legislature at Topeka with Col. Sumner's dragoons, it became apparent that the Northerners would win, and that Kansas would never become a Slave State. A congress- ional committee, composed of John Sherman, of Ohio ; Howard, of Michigan, Republicans, and Mordecai Oliver, the member of Congress from this district, a Pro-Slavery man - was sent out to investigate matters in Kansas, and the report of Sherman and Howard, one-sided though it was, stimulated the Northerners to renewed exertions, and they poured into the Territory in such numbers and made so many permanent settlements, that they soon controlled nearly every- thing.

A sort of treaty of peace was made between Senator Atchison and Gov. Charles Robinson, and though there were diver tragic episodes in 1857 and 1858, yet no serious difficulties occurred after the fall of 1856. The Free State men won as much by their generalship as by their numbers.

In explanation of the course taken by the Pro-Slavery people of this county during the troublous times of the settlement of Kansas it is, perhaps, but the simple truth to say that whatever was done generally in that period was deemed to be done in a spirit more of self-defense than in wantonness or recklessness. Situated as Clay county was, it was by no means desirable that Kansas should become a free State. Runaway slaves were common enough then when Iowa was the nearest goal of freedom to be reached. Let Kansas become free and filled with Northern and Eastern Abolitionists, who counted it God's ser- vice to encourage and assist runaway slaves, and there would be no security or safety for slave property in this county ; the 3,500 slaves belonging to our citizens would be held only as long as it pleased them to remain in a state of slavery.

Eternal vigilance was the price of slavery. The very nature of the institution made this so. Very many of the slaves were constantly on the watch for a chance to escape, and improve every opportunity to run away. Their masters owned them and they were and had been recognized as property. They represented so much money, which the masters could illy afford to lose, in many instances, and it be-

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hooved them to guard well their own at all times. There was a con- stant state of apprehension and uneasiness among most slave owners - a fear not alone of an exodus, but of an insurrection on the part of the negroes. The horrible scenes of St. Domingo and Jamaica it was feared might be repeated here some time. The negro could not be always under lock and key or in chains, or under watch, and yet he could not be trusted to go about the most ordinary avocation un- guarded. Hence there arose a proverb that a " white man is uncer- tain and a nigger will run away?"

The Abolitionists were continually meddling with the slaves and inciting them to mischief. They visited the Slave States in various guises and disguises. Sometimes as preachers, sometimes as peddlers, sometimes as travelers. A fair speaking, meek looking individual would visit a slave-holding community on a plausible errand, and a week after he left a dozen negroes would have absconded and struck out for the North Star ! To imprison them did no good ; to flog them did not discourage them; to hang one occasionally only multiplied them. There was law in plenty to protect slavery, but it seemed in- effective and was oftener inoperative and a dead letter.

Hence it was that our people were forced to adopt the most vigor- ous policy in dealing with Abolitionists, and to become distrustful, suspicious and afraid of all strangers, and Northerners especially. We grew even inhospitable toward those we did not know, for fre- quently when we received into our houses a man whom we thought a gentleman, it turned out that he was a " nigger thief," who had come among us to entice away what all the laws and courts in the land said was our property, and which we had acquired honestly, as we believed.

Of a truth eternal vigilance was the price of slavery. So long as slave labor was a recognized factor in our political and commercial economy, it had to be protected and watched over. This could have been done by our people quietly and without a resort to extraordinary measures, but for the exasperating conduct of the Abolitionists, who took delight in irritating the slave owners in every possible way. Not only did they steal or entice away the slaves, but after the fugitives were well on the road to Canada, the liberators would often send to the masters taunting and insulting letters, full of sarcasm, denuncia- tion and contempt. Pamphlets and circulars were distributed liber- ally, denouncing slavery and slaveholders in the vilest terms. The former was described as " the sum of human villainies ; " the latter were termed " traffickers in human flesh," " brutes who breed up

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their own children for the slave market, and sell their own daughters to become the concubines of other slave-breeders," etc., etc. It was but natural, therefore, that the slaveholding population of the South should have but small regard for Abolitionists, and should resort to severe means and methods in dealing with them. A few Abolitionists, zealous and earnest, were capable of an infinite deal of mischief. In the language of the Abolition song, old John Brown -

"Captured Harper's Ferry with but nineteen men so true,

And frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through."

And one fanatical, working " liberator " could set an entire county agog, and have whole neighborhoods up in arms ; and so the greatest care and extremest vigilance were required and exercised to keep that one Abolitionist out of the country, or to make his reception such that he would not care to return after being expelled.

Then the legislation of many of the Northern States against the in- stitution, especially in regard to the execution of the fugitive slave law, the speeches of Free Soil orators and the utterances of the Free Soil press, all excited and embittered the people, and led them to do certain things which it would have been better to have left undone.

In explanation of the severity with which Northern Methodists were dealt, it is to be said that upon the division of the Methodist Church, in 1844-45, an exciting controversy arose, and as the division resulted from a discussion of the slavery question, the Northern wing opposing the institution, animosities were engendered against that organization which required many years of time to extinguish. Abolitionists were not wanted in Missouri, and as every Northern Methodist was akin in sentiment to, if not altogether, an Abolitionist, his room here was pre- ferable to his company.

As to the dubious and really reprehensible policy of exporting voters to Kansas who were not and so far as they really knew did not intend to become actual residents of the Territory, who went over one day and returned the next, it is only the truth to state that the Free Soilers were pursuing practically the same tactics. In New England and New York the Abolitionists and their sympathizers organized " emigrant aid societies," regularly incorporated associations, with thousands of dollars of capital, and these societies sent hundreds and thousands of men into Kansas to be and remain there, so far as the societies expected or cared, only until after the election. True, these importations of the aid societies remained longer in Kansas than our Missouri voters, but the principle that governed them in coming to the

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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.

Territory was the same - they came " to help our side." The early elections in Kansas were nearly all farcical and fraudulent anyhow. Where the Pro-Slavery men had the upper hand they regulated mat- ters their own way ; where the Free State men were in the majority they did the same.

Coming to the circumstance of the raising of money and means to help along the slavery cause, to arm and equip men and sustain them in the field, did not even the Republicans the same? Collections were taken up throughout New England and in New York and Ohio, even in the churches, to buy arms for and generally assist the men who went to Kansas " to consecrate the soil to freedom." Powder and shot were bought with the receipts of mite societies to assist in this " con- secration ; " ministers of the gospel prayed God from their pulpits to assist the Free State army, and Henry Ward Beecher distributed among some of the " cohorts of freedom " Sharpe's rifles which had been purchased with the contents of the contribution boxes of Ply- mouth Church.

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Author: Publication date: 1885 Publisher: St. Louis : National Historical Co. Number of Pages: 1156

Author:
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: St. Louis : National Historical Co.
Number of Pages: 1156