Friday. March 26,1954
RUNS UP OF THE FREE NAME IDENTIFIED LAWRENCE 2
Forgotten Imaginary Apparatus #1 WWW.LEGACY.NEWS.COM
AFTER THE "SACK"—This photograph shows the ruins of the Free State Hotel following the "Sack of Lawrence," described on Page 4 of this section. The photograph is from a daguerrotype by Mrs. Sara T. D. Robinson and is from the collection of Dr. Robert Taft.
Capital City Is Far Cry From Topeka of 1854
By RON GRANDON
The Kansas state capital has increased its population by about 90,000 the past century, but it started with only nine Free State sympathizers in 1854.
Foster Songs Familiar in U. S. of 1854
By COURT ERNST
Stephen Foster was a familiar name on everyone's lips with his famous American folk songs in the period when Kansas first became a territory.
Stephen Collins Foster was born July 4, 1826, at Lawrenceville, Pa. now a part of Pittsburgh. Although he never received any musical training, he showed great talent at a very early age.
He attended schools in Athens and Towanda, Pa., and for a short time in 1841 was at Jefferson college. From 1841 to 1846 he lived with his parents, and it was during this time that he composed the first song he was published. He wrote the music "Open Thy Lattice, Love," by George P. Morris.
In 1846 he went to Cincinnati to take a job as bookkeeper with his brother Dunning. One of his most famous songs, "O Susanna," was written during this time in 1848. It became extremely popular with 49'ers on their way to California during the gold rush days.
"O Susanna" never made him much money, and he later sold it for cash, but by 1850 his reputation was such that he gave up his book-keeping job and, on the strength of royalty contracts with New York and Baltimore publishers, decided to devote all his time to song-writing.
He married Jane McDowall of Pittsburgh that year, and except for short residences in New York and Hoboken, N.J., lived in Allegheny, Pa., until 1860.
It was during this period of his life that most of his best-known songs were written: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Old Folks at Home" (1851), "Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground" (1852), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1854), "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming" (1855), and "Old Black Joe" (1860).
In 1860 he was on the rocks financially and moved to New York so he could be near his publishers, but his inspiration was beginning to wane and very few of the many songs he wrote in the next few years had the spark and the originality that he showed in his prime. One notable exception, however, was "Beautiful Dreamer," written in 1864.
But then, it was a natural. Away back a little over a century ago when the 'shiny yellow metal' was discovered in California, a group of people thought it would be a good idea to come through Kansas on their way towards the new gold fields.
The Oregon trail crossed the Kaw river at about where this third-largest Kansas city is now.
Some authorities say that as many as 90,000 people passed through here during the '49 gold rush, but they didn't stay.
When the territory was opened for settlement on May 30, 1854, only nine men laid claim to the ground which the capital now covers. They elected a president for the "Topeka association" that same day. His name was C. K. Holliday, but the settler who nominated him knew him only as "that fellow with the white hat." Holliday later became one of the builders of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad.
The other members of the group were F. W. Giles, Daniel H. Horne, George Davis, Enoch Chase, J. B. Chase, M. C. Dickey, Charles Robinson, and L. G. Cleveland. They were all Free State sympathizers from New England and Lawrence.
They called the locality Topeka, an Indian word meaning a good place to dig potatoes or roots. Charles Robinson of the group became the first Kansas governor in 1861.
Three years after the town became the permanent capital of the state, the towns people erected a stockade for protection from Missouri border raiders who had burned Lawrence in 1863.
By the end of 1854, there were about 130 families living close enough to be called towns people, but by 1860 the town boasted a population of 759. Most of these people had been just passing through.
In 1857 the town received a city charter, and in 1859 it became the temporary capital of the Kansas territory under the Wyandotte constitution.
When the Santa Fe railroad began its westward construction from Topeka in 1869, the city was a growing concern, with almost 6,000 people swelling its population. And is has never stopped growing.
In 1950, census-taking counted 78,791 persons in Topeka. Some later estimates put the population figure at a little over 90,000.
Today the town has only two fewer insurance companies than it had first settlers, and it has more different kinds of industries than it had families in 1854.
'Uncle Tom' Led Books of 1850s
By SAM TEAFORD
The book was "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and it was just gaining wide attention by the time Kansas was made a territory in 1854.
One of the most controversial books ever written was published just over 100 years ago, in March 1952.
How much effect "Uncle Tom's Cabin," telling the woes of Negro slaves in the southern states, had in bringing about the Civil War is questionable. Probably there would have been a war without the book, but it certainly had more influence on the events leading up to the war than any other writing of the time.
Few novels have ever aroused so much enthusiasm on one side and so much criticism on the other as "Uncle Tom's Cabin." To explain her book more fully, Mrs. Stowe wrote two other books, "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "A Peep Into Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Mrs. Stowe lived in Cincinnati, just across the Ohio river from the slave state of Kentucky, where she was continually aware of the problem of slavery. Slaves were always trying to escape across the river, attempting to go on to gain freedom in Canada.
Mrs. Stowe and her husband—a professor at Bowdoin college moved to Brunswick, Me., at about the time the storm broke over the Fugitive Slave bill.
First passed in 1793, the first Fugitive Slave law was not particularly effective, although it was amended in 1818. The law required any magistrate to give up a runaway slave upon oral testimony of the owner.
In the years before the Civil war a sort of underground railway was organized in the North to assist runaway slaves. The Negroes traveled from one anti-slavery contact to another until they reached safety, much to the dismay of southern planters.
The new law was much more severe in providing punishment for violators. U.S. marshals were liable to a fine of $1,000 if a slave escaped them. Bystanders were prosecuted for treason if they refused to assist capture of runaways. Obstructing capture, rescuing slaves, or concealing runaways was punishable by a prison term of six months and a fine of $2,000.
When the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1850, a more stringent Fugitive Slave law was attached to pacify the South.
There was great resentment in the North over the new law, and many riots and much bloodshed resulted. The Fugitive Slave law was not repealed until 1864, however.
University Daily Kansan
Page 8.
Pro-Slavery Party Had Atchison Headquarters
By ELJIZABETH WOHLGEMUTH
The Law and Order party was established as a counter-force to the activities of the Free State men soon after Kansas was made a territory in 1854 by the Kansas-Nebraska act. The party was pledged to the establishment of slavery in Kansas.
Atchison, located in northeast Kansas on the banks of the Missouri river, was the stronghold of the Law and Order party and Lawrence was the stronghold of the Free State party.
Where the inhabitants were mostly Free State men the conditions were reasonably satisfactory, but in localities like Atchison and Leavenworth, where the Law and Order party dominated affairs, the Free State inhabitants were forced to suffer many injuries and insults.
From then on it was open warfare between the two forces contending for territorial supremacy.
A Negro woman was found drowned in the Missouri river. A rabid anti-slavery lawyer from Cincinnati expressed the opinion that if the Negro woman had been treated better by her master she would not have committed suicide. Pros slavery forces drew up a resolution requiring the anti-slavery man to leave Atchison and declared their intention to rid the area of abolitionists. The resolution was circulated among the citizens and anyone who refused to sign was called an abolitionist and treated as such.
The Rev, Pardee Butler, a Christian church minister and an antislavery man, came into Atchison to do some trading and during the course of a conversation made his opinions known. On the next morning a mob arrived at the hotel where he was staying and dragged him toward the river with the intention of drowning him. Instead they sent him down the river on a raft of three cottonwoog logs fastened together with a one-inch plank nailed to the logs.
The raft was towed to the middle of the river and released without a rudder or an oar.
Above the raft a flag flew bearing the inscription:
Eastern Emigrant Aid Express The way they are served in Kansas; shipped for Boston; Cargo insured; Unavoidable danger of the Missouri ruffians and the Missouri river excepted. Let future emissaries from the North, Beware. Our hemp crop is sufficient to reward all such scoundrels.
Reut. Butler ran ashore six miles
behind his car, returned home
bxy. an oxyded raft.
A year later Butler returned to Atchison and this time was stripped to his waist and covered with tar and cotton wool. The Law and Order party appointed a committee of three to hang him the next time he appeared in Atchison. They then tossed him and his clothes in a buggy and sent him across the prairies.
This was the sentiment prevailing in Alchison county during the period from 1854 to 1857. There was a strong tendency for people to avoiding trouble except by silence.
Pro-slavery organizations were organized in Missouri to come to Kansas through Atchison to heckle the Free Soilers. They called themselves the Blue Lodges, Sons of the South and the Social Bands. But Awake was known to the Free Soilers in Atchison county as "bushwhackers."
Murders were committed, but no attempts were made by the appoint-ed peace officers to bring the guilty parties to justice.
Atchison played a conspicuous part in the war along the border, and the activities were largely in the interest of the pro-slavery forces, which wanted Kansas to become a slave state.
Slavery was the major issue. Men came to Kansas for political rather than for business or agricultural reasons. There was little room for neutrals and those who were too proud to fight went elsewhere.
John Brown never reached Atchison county. The nearest he came was in 1857 when he passed through Jackson county, just west of Atchison, with a party of slaves he was taking from Missouri to Nebraska
for the purpose of setting them free. A group of pro-slavery men heard of the trip and went out to capture Brown but were captured themselves.
The activities of the Law and Order party increased under the leadership of Sen. David Atchison of Missouri, after whom Atchison was named, and Dr. J. H. Stringfellow, publisher of the Squatters Sovereign.
Sen. Atchison brought South Carolina emigrants, armed and equipped, to Atchison for the purpose of enforcing Southern rights in Kansas. They arrived on all incoming steamboats and were the first to start the assault on Lawrence, the stronghold of the Free Soilers
The Squatter's Sovereign, a weekly newspaper published in Atchison, was one of the most bitter and uncompromising pro - slavery organs in the territory. The editorial policy of the paper was summed up in its motto, "Death to all Yankees and traitors in Kansas."
The attack on Lawrence marked he collapse of the Atchison-Stringellow military campaign.
In spite of the constant warfare the town grew. In 1857, three years after it was founded, the town had a population of 500 persons, and had 12 dry goods stores, 8 wholesale groceries, 19 retail groceries, 26 law firms, 4 hotels, and one of the first banks to be organized in the territory.
Things were peaceful in Atchison from 1857 until the beginning of the Civil war as Kansas attempted to set up a state constitution. During this period wagon trains went through Atchison on their way to California and Colorado. Figures showed that during one year 775 wagons, 1,114 men, 7,963 oxen, 142 horses, and 1,286 mules went through Atchison on the wav west.
Atchison was the eastern terminus of many of the leading overland mail and freighting routes. River steamers came up the Missouri from St. Louis. It was the outfitting point for the Salt Lake freighters. One of the stations on the overland stage-coach route was located in Atchison.
In 1863 the acts of the Missouri Jayhawks became so annoying that a vigilance committee was organized in Atchison and citizens were called upon to band themselves together for the protection of their lives, homes, and property.
But from the beginning of the Civil war until peace was declared the Kansas borcer was again the scene of lawlessness and disorder. The Jayhawkers from Missouri crossed over to plunder and steal.
Atchison was the first western point east of the Rocky mountains to be reached by the railroad.
Some of the gangs formed in retaliation to the Missouri gangs simply took advantage of the situation to steal and plunder in Missouri, rather than to protect the citizens of Kansas. Atchison was the headquarters of the Cleveland gang, one of the most active and boldest. The gang crossed to Missouri and stole horses and returned to Atchison to sell their loot in broad daylight.
Following the end of the Civil war politics died out in Atchison and the area become predominantly an agricultural community.
A man, George Mellion was the first man to settle on the present townsite of Atchison in June 1854. Later in the year Dr. J. H. Stringfellow, publisher of the Squatter's Sovereign and an emigrant from Iatan, Mo., chose the site of the town for some emigrants from Missouri.
Hutchinson, fourth largest city in Kansas, is the nation's largest salt mining and processing center. It is known as "Salt City" for its mine and evaporating plants. It is also important as a wheat storage and shipping center. Named for its founder, C. C. Hutchinson, it was founded in 1871.