Who's fault was the Kansas- Missouri border war?

leftyhunter

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The bleeding Kansas confluct predated the Civil War but it definitely continued during the Civil War. Kansas troops were harsh towards Missouri civiluans . Confederate guerrillas murdered unarmed men and boys at Lawrence, Kansas and elsewhere.
Who started the conflict?
A good place to start is "Jesse James last rebel of the Civil War" T.J. Stiles Vintage Civil War Library p.50-53.
The conflict was precipitated bt the end of the Missouri Compromise and replacing it with popular sovereignty. The pro slavery " Border Ruffians were the first to agitate and organize. The anti slavery emigrants somewhat slowly had to organize themselves and fight back. Per Wiki they both suffered about the same amount of causalties.
Eventually the third Kansas territorial govenor was able to get just enough federal troops that by 1861 the fighting more or less stopped.
The anti slavery forces won and Kansas became a free state. One source I forgot but it is more or less confirmed by Dyers Compendium states that Kansas sent more troops per capita then any American state to the Union Army.
Lots of detail inT..J. Stiles book.
 
I am going to throw this little summary out for the much more knowledgeable to fill in the blanks on the "before" and "after" of what I have posted @Patrick H @Borderruffian @Booner @Lusty Murfax @archieclement @Boonslick @mofederal (Lefty started the thread, so already alerted). This is not about 'taking sides', etc., rather, I believe that it would be most useful to build somewhat of a timeline of events. Here is where I start, but it is by no means the beginning.

Initially his work was peaceful [Brown]. He helped slaves to escape via the Underground Railroad and ran an experimental community in upstate New York where whites and blacks could live as "brothers and equals". But gradually he came to believe that force would have to be used to lead blacks out of bondage. Brown became "wild and frenzied" after proslavery militants rampaged through the antislavery town of Lawrence on May 21, 1856...On May 24, he and seven followers, including four of his sons and a son-in-law, set out for the proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek, where they committed the five murders that quickly became a nationwide sensation.

A week later Brown rounded up twenty-six impoverished, bedraggled volunteers ("we had come to wearing ideas, suspicion, and memories of what had once been coats, pants, and hats" one of his men wrote) and led them against a camp of proslavery militiamen. Four of the militiamen were killed, and the other twenty-four surrendered in the grandly named Battle of Black Jack. The Border Ruffians got their revenge in August 1856 when they razed the Free State settlement at Osawatomie, killing one of John Brown's sons and four other defenders. Brown and the rest of his small band were badly outnumbered and forced to retreat. Nevertheless, "Old Brown of Osawatomie" became even more celebrated for his willingness to fight in accordance with the instructions he gave his men: "Take more care to end life well than to live long" Max Boot, Invisible Armies, [pg214]
And excellent reference thread (of which this post first appeared) is here: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/what-made-a-civil-war-guerrilla.131617/page-7

A lot of crucial events are discussed in this rich thread, but unfortunately, they are out of order, so one does not get a sense of the "Tit For Tat" timeline.
 
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The governor of Missouri at the time was Sterling Price. He was elected in 1852 as a proslavery Democrat. He served from 1853 to 1857. Price was mostly elected through his war service in Mexico. He was a slave owner and mostly raised tobacco. Price like many southerners believed in popular sovereignty. Price saw that it could be used as a front or blind, to introduce slavery where it was not legal before in a territory. Taking advantage of this opening in the Kansas Territory, proslavery Missourians organized military expeditions into Kansas and attacked opponents of slavery. Some also illegally participated in territorial elections. As the governor, Price did nothing to prevent Missourians from committing these actions. This is how the political leadership in Jefferson City turned a blind eye to the K.T. Why it was allowed to happen, loosing a flood into Kansas.
 
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For anyone seriously interested in researching this conflict, in 1856 the US House of Representatives held hearings on the 'Troubles in Kansas' and their 1,358 report with recorded testimony is online to read (here).

It is worth noting that John Brown's name does not appear in this report as he lost his mind later on. John Brown was merely the person who took the Border War back east and reminded America this issue was much bigger than Kansas vs Missouri.

My answer to the question the OP puts out is the US government is to blame for the Border War. Washington could not solve the slavery question and abandoned an agreement to keep the pro and and slavery forces in State/Senatorial balance and left it to the 'people' to decide the fate of the country. They did.

But everyone had to get their hands dirty first.
 
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Popular Sovereignty, the attractive idea that the local settlers would decide the issue, proved to be divorced from reality. The reality was the extension of slavery wasn't a local issue, it was a national one, and pretending it was led to bad results.

On the ground, there were far more free soil settlers than pro slavery settlers. The doughfaces and fireeaters in Washington and Missouri conspired to commit fraud and intimidate the free soilers.
 
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The bleeding Kansas confluct predated the Civil War but it definitely continued during the Civil War. Kansas troops were harsh towards Missouri civiluans . Confederate guerrillas murdered unarmed men and boys at Lawrence, Kansas and elsewhere.
Who started the conflict?
A good place to start is "Jesse James last rebel of the Civil War" T.J. Stiles Vintage Civil War Library p.50-53.
The conflict was precipitated bt the end of the Missouri Compromise and replacing it with popular sovereignty. The pro slavery " Border Ruffians were the first to agitate and organize. The anti slavery emigrants somewhat slowly had to organize themselves and fight back. Per Wiki they both suffered about the same amount of causalties.
Eventually the third Kansas territorial govenor was able to get just enough federal troops that by 1861 the fighting more or less stopped.
The anti slavery forces won and Kansas became a free state. One source I forgot but it is more or less confirmed by Dyers Compendium states that Kansas sent more troops per capita then any American state to the Union Army.
Lots of detail inT..J. Stiles book.
What is he considering organizing and agitating? we know the first murder was committed by a free stater. I would imagine Missourians would be the first to organize land companies and stake out claims, after all it was right there by them, however how is that "agitation" there was no one to "agitate" against then. It was later that settlers who had been "agitated" specifically to move across the country to try to influence events arrived.

I would have to agree, if going by fault it wouldn't be either Missourians or Freestaters, but the politicians who created and enacted popular sovereignty which created the situation for a fre e for all in the first place

I would also recommend Nicole Etchisons book as its actually focused on bleeding KS and not Jesse James as the Stiles book. Monaghans is also decent but not as focused on the bleeding Kansas pre war as he devotes much time to the CW.

Also if wanting to look for an excuse to throw killing unarmed men and boys around, Lyons German home guard was doing that in 1861 and killing women too, 2 years before Lawrence, and before CW guerrillas even existed...…...odd you somehow forgot the St Louis massacre where they fired indriscimately into crowd of civilians. Also you seem to forgot Brown hacking unarmed men to death with swords even before that, I assume it was an oversight or faulty memory and not some attempt at blatant bias. But if we are going by a timeline...as in who was first, seems odd to throw out a 63 incident that clearly wasn't the first at all
 
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The governor of Missouri at the time was Sterling Price. He was elected in 1852 as a proslavery Democrat. He served from 1853 to 1857. Price was mostly elected through his war service in Mexico. He was a slave owner and mostly raised tobacco. , Price, like many southerners believed in popular sovereignty. Price saw that it could be used as a front or blind, to introduce slavery where it was not legal before in a territory. Taking advantage of this opening in the Kansas Territory, proslavery Missourians organized military expeditions into Kansas and attacked opponents of slavery. Some also illegally participated in territorial elections. As the governor, Price did nothing to prevent Missourians from committing these actions. This is how the political leadership in Jefferson City turned a blind eye to the K.T. Why it was allowed to happen, loosing a flood into Kansas.
Wasn't Kansas territory (KT) open for settlement to whoever entered and established a homestead? I suspect the Missourians reacted just as the early Virginians had in establishing settlements first in Tennessee and Kentucky, and at least in part Ohio and Indiana. I believe Missourians had as much right to enter and settle in kT as those New Englanders who came a bit later did.
 
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What is he considering organizing and agitating? we know the first murder was committed by a free stater.

Archie - I would be curious to see the documentation on this 'first' statement. This is the second thread and second time you have mentioned it in the last few days so I am curious to see your primary source behind the claim.

And if you are quoting a current book, please include the primary source they use as their documentation, unless like most books on Missouri history, they just use another book written years after the fact as their source.

Thanks in advance
 
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We've seen this map (Library of Congress) in other threads, but consider what it is telling us. This is what terrified the abolitionists who wanted to bring Kansas in as a free state.

Look at Missouri, with considerable slave population density in the counties bordering the Missouri River. That area is locally known as "Little Dixie" and it points like an arrow directly at the heart of Kansas Territory. Missourians saw Kansas as their natural path of westward expansion. Freestaters were determined to stop them.
slave density map.jpg
 
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Archie - I would be curious to see the documentation on this 'first' statement. This is the second thread and second time you have mentioned it in the last few days so I am curious to see your primary source behind the claim.

And if you are quoting a current book, please include the primary source they use as their documentation, unless like most books on Missouri history, they just use another book written years after the fact as their source.

Thanks in advance
Nicole Etchisons book which is probably the most complete and recent on the subject has it. Its titled Bleeding Kansas. Was thinking Monaghan acknowledges same, but been long time since I reread his.

Though I've always questioned it a bit, as it would seem rather subjective to me and debatable anyway, as to out of a list of murders which is going to described as "political" when there frontier disputes regularly

I'm getting like Booner, have so many books on Mo-KS, border and guerrilla war, that its hard at times to remember which has what, I had an account in mind of a Union officer describing how disloyal the members of his militia were I was going to post awhile back.....at the time I had read it in the last month researching something as I do some genealogy , but then couldn't remember which or where in the book it was... I have around 50 books concerning Mo-KS, Missouri CW or related topics such as slavery in MO, I tend to focus locally on local, state and regional history.
 
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What is he considering organizing and agitating? we know the first murder was committed by a free stater. I would imagine Missourians would be the first to organize land companies and stake out claims, after all it was right there by them, however how is that "agitation" there was no one to "agitate" against then. It was later that settlers who had been "agitated" specifically to move across the country to try to influence events arrived.

I would have to agree, if going by fault it wouldn't be either Missourians or Freestaters, but the politicians who created and enacted popular sovereignty which created the situation for a fre e for all in the first place

I would also recommend Nicole Etchisons book as its actually focused on bleeding KS and not Jesse James as the Stiles book. Monaghans is also decent but not as focused on the bleeding Kansas pre war as he devotes much time to the CW.

Also if wanting to look for an excuse to throw killing unarmed men and boys around, Lyons German home guard was doing that in 1861 and killing women too, 2 years before Lawrence, and before CW guerrillas even existed...…...odd you somehow forgot the St Louis massacre where they fired indriscimately into crowd of civilians. Also you seem to forgot Brown hacking unarmed men to death with swords even before that, I assume it was an oversight or faulty memory and not some attempt at blatant bias. But if we are going by a timeline...as in who was first, seems odd to throw out a 63 incident that clearly wasn't the first at all
Stiles goes into detail about a man who named David Atchison who started organizing the Border Ruffians.
If we can rationalize the Lawrence Massacre they we can do the same for Brown. The Potanime (sp) massacre has been extensively covered on several of @gem threads on the gentle parson.
Sure we could go over it.
I didn't feel like pasting three dense pages of info. Folks can use google books and read up to three pages. Per forum rules I can maybe only paste two paragraphs.
Lyon didn't have a "German" home guard. Lyon enlisted loyal Missourians in the U.S. Army.
U.S. troops under Lyon were attacked by a mob with stones and handgun fire. Lyons men had no choice but to shoot at the mob. Unfortunately some shots missed and civilians were hit. That's not a massacre. They didn't hunt down young boys for sport they fired on a mib in sel defense. No member of Lyon's command was court martialed. No tevord of any successful law suit.
Leftyhunter
 
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Stiles goes into detail about a man who nam Achiston (sp?) who started organizing the Border Ruffians.
I believe you're thinking of David Atchison. Yes, he was apparently a firebrand. I don't know that he can be credited with starting all the troubles, but it's fair to say he contributed. Atchison County is named for him.
 
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Who started the conflict?

Stephen Douglas. Popular Sovereignty turned Kansas into a battleground where both sides were willing to come armed against each other, to use intimidation and force.

By the time people like Lane and Quantrill were on the scene the violence had been spiraling for years. Nobody really knew how to diffuse a situation like that in the mid-19th century. I'm not sure we know how to reliably diffuse it in the 21st century.

Much of the violence might have been avoided if pro-slavery forces had committed flagrant election fraud. I recall reading that during the first vote for Kansas government the pro-slavery faction legitimately outnumbered the anti-slavery faction. However, the fraud made the subsequent proposed state constitution invalid and resulted in a rival government forming and the two sides boycotting each other's elections. The South wouldn't back down on the subject and it helped doom Stephen Douglas because he rightly opposed the fraudulent constitution.
 
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This broadside from 1856 is pretty interesting. It shows that the border troubles were well underway by then, and that Kansans had been making incursions into Missouri by then. It doesn't lend any evidence to who started the troubles, but it does show that our war out here was already well underway five years before the official start of the Civil War.

I don't know who "The Gallant Reid" was, but I'm pretty sure one of the signers, Bob. McCulloch, was Black Bob McCulloch, who organized the Cooper County Rifles and later led the "Butternut Boys" as part of Gen. Forrest's cavalry.

Sidebar question: When did it become common to abbreviate the name John as "Jno."?

Come to the rescue.jpg
 
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Stiles goes into detail about a man who named David Atchison who started organizing the Border Ruffians.
If we can rationalize the Lawrence Massacre they we can do the same for Brown. The Potanime (sp) massacre has been extensively covered on several of @gem threads on the gentle parson.
Sure we could go over it.
I didn't feel like pasting three dense pages of info. Folks can use google books and read up to three pages. Per forum rules I can maybe only paste two paragraphs.
Lyon didn't have a "German" home guard. Lyon enlisted loyal Missourians in the U.S. Army.
U.S. troops under Lyon were attacked by a mib with stones and handgun fire. Lyons men had no choice but to shoot at the mob. Unfortunately some shots missed and civilians were hit. That's not a massacre. They didn't hunt down young boys for sport they fired on a mib in sel defense. No member of Lyon's command was court martialed. No tevord of any successful law suit.
Leftyhunter


Ahhh so your back to there was no massacre at Lawrence simply because no one was ever charged and convicted for it, what twisted logic you have.....though you need to least work on applying it equally

Think most everyone knows the troops I referred to were in fact organised as German home guard......and most would consider mass firing into a unarmed crowd a massacre, whether someone else threw a rock, a brick, or even one pistol shot. Or I suppose you somehow now find killing women, children, and even babies acceptable.

Your bias and excuses have no bounds, some shots missed? 90 civilians were hit of whom 28 died.....the evidence and accounts is they weren't shooting at the one guy who fired on them, but indiscriminately. ...........Come on now, at least try to be credible in your "version of accounts"...….

If we want to have a honest discussion, constantly overstating some actions, while vastly understating others, some shots missed?....LOL.....isn't lending to honesty at all, but just a Lefty comedy hour.

Edited-added- Personally I find your standard of something is only a massacre or crime if someone is tried and convicted rather absurd....I will note its YOUR standard if you choose...but if so please refrain from referring to Lawrence, Fort Pillow or any other incidents as a crime or massacre when you know no one was charged and convicted in those incidents either...….if its actually YOUR standard.
 
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