America’s Civil War: Missouri and Kansas

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The Civil War came early to Missouri and Kansas, stayed late, and was characterized at all times by unremitting and unparalleled brutality. More than anywhere else, it was truly a civil war.

The first formal military action in Missouri took place less than a month after the April 1861 Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, S.C. On May 10, Federal troops led by hotheaded Captain Nathaniel Lyon took over at gunpoint the arsenal at Camp Jackson, near St. Louis. Lyon’s soldiers brutally fired into a riotous mob of Southern sympathizers, leaving 20 people dead. It was an ominous beginning to official hostilities.

Three years later, Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling ‘Pap’ Price led a last-gasp raid across the state. Forced to bypass St. Louis because of overwhelming Federal strength there, Price’s troops struggled past Hermann, Boonville, Glasgow, Lexington and Independence before losing an engagement at Westport, now part of Kansas City, and retiring, exhausted, into Arkansas. Westport was the last major Civil War battle west of the Mississippi River, yet it was but one of the 1,162 battles and skirmishes fought in Missouri during the conflict.

Usually subordinated to events east of the Mississippi, these and other western battles became slender chapters in the history of the war. But it is in the footnotes, so to speak, that the true character of the war in Missouri and Kansas is revealed. This dark soul is epitomized by two words: Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers.

As a bird, the Jayhawk does not exist; it is as fabulous as the mythological roc. But Jayhawkers were very real, indeed, in the days leading up to the Civil War. A Jayhawker was one of a band of anti-slavery, pro-Union guerrillas coursing about Kansas and Missouri, impelled by substantially more malice than charity. Jayhawkers were undisciplined, unprincipled, occasionally murderous, and always thieving. Indeed, Jayhawking became a widely used synonym for stealing.

For all this, Jayhawking carried no social stigma. Some prominent, influential and highly respected leaders were associated with Jayhawking. Among them was James Henry Lane, the self-styled ‘Grim Chieftain,’ a lanky Hoosier demagogue whose biography included terms in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, a penchant for fiery oratory, and a tendency not to repay his debts. Another was New England-born Dan Anthony, an ardent abolitionist and the brother of suffragette Susan B. Anthony, who was commemorated a century later by a poorly planned and short lived dollar coin.

Probably the most overt Jayhawker of all was Charles R. ‘Doc’ Jennison. In truth, Jennison was unique. A runty, consumptive dandy, originally from New York, he practiced medicine briefly in Wisconsin before coming to Kansas to practice the more lucrative trade of horse stealing. For years, the lineage of many good horses in Iowa and Illinois was said to be ‘out of Missouri by Jennison.’

While Jennison’s skill at stealing horses was apocryphal, his abolitionist sympathies were clear. He demonstrated this in 1860 by heading a posse that hanged two unfortunate Missourians caught trying to return fugitive slaves to their masters.

Bushwhackers were cut from much the same cloth, but that cloth was butternut instead of blue. Bushwhackers favored the Confederacy. Some Bushwhackers were semi-legitimate soldiers, even grudgingly acknowledged as such by the Confederate Army. Such men as William Quantrill, ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson, John Thrailkill, David Pool, Jo Shelby and Jeff Thompson were in this category. Others were simply banditti with a quasi-military excuse for vengeful ambush, robbery, murder, arson and plunder.

It was excellent training, as well, for the postwar careers of some survivors. Was there a shortage of money to live on, or to buy horses or food? Horses and food could always be stolen. But cash was in banks, stagecoaches and railroad trains. It did not take the guerrillas long to figure out how it could be liberated for their use. Frank James and his kid brother Jesse, tagging along with Quantrill’s men, turned the knowledge to good account after 1865. So did their cousins, Coleman and Jim Younger. It was a fertile training ground for bandits of all stripes.

Price and Lyon, Lane and Jennison, Quantrill and Shelby are among the best-remembered names of the conflict. Myriad others, however–slaughtered men, women and children–were the forgotten victims of the undeclared Kansas-Missouri border war that raged in the 1850s. The perpetrators on both sides were labeled ‘border ruffians’ by a young newspaper correspondent named James Redpath, and New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley publicized the epithet widely. But ruffians was too kind a term–murderers would have been more accurate.

Kansas was the catalyst for the spiraling violence. In 1854, Kansas was a territory, sparsely settled but a strong candidate for statehood under provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which left the decision of slavery up to the residents of the territory. At polar political extremes were the abolitionists and pro-slavery Southerners. The former, very strong in New England, detested slavery and wanted Kansas admitted to the Union as a Free State. The Southerners, for their part, feared Yankee domination of Kansas; if its settlers voted it in as a non-slave state, their grip on congressional power would be eroded. They saw a free Kansas as a dire threat to their political, economic and cultural existence. Representatives of both viewpoints rushed to stake property claims and establish voting rights in the contested territory.

From slaveholding Missouri came scores, then hundreds of’settlers’ to vote on the vital statehood issue. Slave or Free? Votes were taken and tallied. The answer: Slave. And the voters? Gone, most of them, back to their homes in Missouri. ‘Foul!’ screamed the Free Staters.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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