As tempers rose, common people began to die uncommonly violent deaths. Near Lawrence, Kan., on November 21, 1855, Franklin Coleman, a pro-slavery claim-jumper from Missouri, gunned down Charles Dow, a neighboring Free Stater from Ohio, shooting him in the back. Pro-slavery Sheriff Samuel Jones of Westport cynically used the murder as a pretext to arrest Dow’s companion Jacob Branson and gather 1,500 pro-slavers from Missouri for an attack on Lawrence.

The ensuing ‘War of the Wakarusa’ consisted more of diplomatic maneuvering than bloodshed, but it did cement the polarization and inflame passions in the area. It also spurred the gathering of armed Free Staters in Lawrence under the command of Dr. Charles Robinson. Second in command was ‘Colonel’ James H. Lane.

Two weeks later, Thomas W. Barber, a Free Stater, was murdered near Lawrence by pro-slaver George Clark, and during election violence in January 1856, E.P. Brown of Leavenworth was killed in a skirmish as a member of a Free State company attempting to drive ruffians from Leavenworth County. Another unlucky Brown, R.P., was brutally hatcheted in the head the same year.

On April 23, Sheriff Jones, still harassing Free Staters under a tenuous guise of legality, was shot and severely wounded, as was Free Stater J.N. Mace five days later. Seeking vengeance, a posse led by Federal Marshal Israel B. Donaldson murdered a Free State boy named Jones and a friend of his near Lawrence on May 19. The youth had been returning home to care for his widowed mother. Free Staters were infuriated by the senseless killing.

Violence grew in scale three days later when a band of about 800 ruffians assaulted Lawrence. Among their leaders was fire-breathing Missouri Senator David Rice Atchison, dubbed ‘Staggering Davy’ by some for his alleged fondness for hard drink. The mob destroyed two local Free State newspaper offices, looted the town of more than $150,000 in merchandise, and burned the home of Governor Charles Robinson. A particular target was the Free State Hotel, a bastion for Free Staters. Its architecture included exceptionally thick walls and loopholes through which guns could be fired. A 12-pound howitzer was trundled to the hotel. The first shot at the three-story, 80-foot-wide building was reportedly aimed by Staggering Davy Atchison; it sailed over the hotel to a distant hill. The hotel withstood more than 50 rounds of more accurate fire and an attempt to blow it up with gunpowder placed within, but the structure was finally gutted by fire. Amazingly, the raid produced only two fatalities: a raider who accidentally shot himself, and another ruffian killed by a brick falling from the hotel.

Claiming revenge for the raid on Lawrence, fanatic abolitionist John Brown and seven followers shot and hacked five settlers to death near Dutch Henry’s Crossing of Pottawatomie Creek, west of Osawatomie. Brown’s motives may have extended beyond righteous fury at the ruffians’ actions; there is some evidence they included horse theft to redeem his failing financial fortunes.

On May 19, 1858, a pro-slavery band led by Charles Hamelton executed unarmed Free State men near Marais des Cygnes on the Kansas-Missouri border. A native Georgian who had been forced from Kansas into Missouri, Hamelton assembled about 30 followers and returned to the territory. Along the way, the band captured 11 Free Staters, some of whom were former neighbors of Hamelton’s and expected no harm from him. The captives were herded into a ravine and shot, first from horseback and then by the dismounted raiders. Five of the 11 victims died, and Hamelton and his men immediately returned to Missouri. The massacre was chronicled by abolitionist writer John Greenleaf Whittier in a poem that appeared in the the September 1858 issue of the Atlantic Monthly and further inflamed abolitionist sentiment, as Whittier had intended.

Such incidents were by no means isolated. Two hundred people died in the border dispute between November 1855 and December 1856 alone. The Civil War was not merely a seamless extension of the agony of ‘Bleeding Kansas,’ it was a direct result of it.

One of the most notorious individual units operating in Kansas was the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. Doc Jennison started it, although he was not around at the end. Ubiquitous Dan Anthony led it for a while. To both friends and foes, it was better known as ‘Jennison’s Jayhawkers’ and was proclaimed as the ‘Independent Kansas Jay-Hawkers’ on Jennison’s original recruiting poster of August 1861.

Political ambition fed Jennison’s military ardor, as it did Anthony’s and Lane’s. On October 28, 1861, the 7th Kansas was mustered into U.S. service with Jennison as colonel and Anthony as lieutenant colonel. The regiment, comprising volunteers from Kansas and nearby states, became part of Jim Lane’s Kansas brigade. Birds of a feather were now flying in formation. Or, more accurately, Jayhawking in cahoots. Jennison referred to his regiment as’self-sustaining,’ which meant simply that every foray into Missouri liberated more supplies than were carried into the state. Contraband seized from Southern sympathizers inevitably included horses, livestock and wagonloads of agricultural products–a minuscule fraction of which found their way to the Federal commissary. Slaves, too, gleefully trooped westward to freedom in Kansas. If other items found their way into the Jayhawkers’ possession–items such as civilian furniture, silverware and money–such was the bitter price of secession. And if a few Secesh homes caught fire along the way, that, too, was the price their owners paid for rebellion.

Perhaps the pinnacle of Jennison’s pointless depredation was achieved at Harrisonburg, Mo., where another outfit had looted the depository of the American Bible Society before Doc’s men arrived, leaving only the stock of Bibles. The 7th took the Bibles. Webster Moses, a member of the regiment, wrote to his Illinois sweetheart Nancy about a typical foray near Lone Jack: ‘About 10 of us went out jayhawking…before breakfast…caught their horses and took the best ones…found some silver ware…I got the cupps, two silver Ladles and two sets spoons….I gave Downing one ladle and the other to Capt Merriman…some of the boys got in some places about $100.00 worth of silver and…considerable money.’

Although such behavior continued for less than five months, it left an indelible mark on Missouri and the historical reputation of the 7th. Missouri was technically in the Union, and many of the citizens despoiled by the Jayhawkers were loyal Unionists. Wild with anxiety that the Jayhawkers would create more Rebels than they conquered, Federal authorities determined to put them where they could do no further harm. Originally they were to be transferred to New Mexico, but in May 1862 they were sent to Kentucky, then to Tennessee, and were seen no more in Kansas until their mustering out in September 1865.

Jennison, who was seldom with the regiment in the field, departed in April 1862, and Anthony resigned his commission four months later. Both pursued successful postwar commercial and political careers in Leavenworth, and the regiment, under new and more capable military leadership, performed well in subsequent campaigns, Jayhawking less but pursued to the end by a bad reputation richly earned in a short but boisterous period.

Jennison’s closest Southern counterpart, William Clarke Quantrill, was a puzzle, seemingly a study in contradictions. Assertive at times, at other times moody and reclusive, he was a leader who earned both loyalty and contempt. He was undeniably intelligent; he had once been a schoolteacher in Fort Wayne, Ind. That he was also a coldblooded killer was discernible in his heavy-ridded, pale-blue eyes and the almost effeminate lips that smiled wanly beneath his sweeping moustache. He was 26 years old when he destroyed Lawrence, Kan., and entered the history books alongside Tamerlane and Attila the Hun.

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