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.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in America's Civil War magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

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.

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.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to