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Kansas Weekly Herald.
University Daily Kansan
PRO-SLAVERY JOURNALISM—This is Page 1, Volume 1, Number 1 of the Weekly Herald, first newspaper in the Kansas territory—a pro-slavery journal published in Leavenworth.
K.C. Horsemen To Re-create Pony Express
Kansas City, Kan-Shades of Wild Bill Hickok. The Pony Express will ride again.
Bv CLARKE KEYS
For next June 14, at 10 am., a mounted rider from the Wyandotte County Sheriff's patrol will leave the Kansas City, Kan., postoffice on the first leg of a 611-mile journey to Colorado Springs, Colo., in one half of a race celebrating the National Junior Chamber of Commerce convention there.
With Kansas in its 100th year celebration as a territory, the Kansas group accepted a challenge from the Weber County Sheriff's group in Ogden, Utah, to race to the convention. The two groups will not only be racing each other, but will be out to better the average speed of 10.6 miles an hour set by the real Pony Express 63 years ago on its run from St. Joseph, Mo., to Sacramento, Calif.
It's expected it will take the Kansas group 55 hours to reach Colorado Springs. If they do it that fast, they will be averaging nearly 11 miles an hour and setting a new record. The Utah riders are being given two hours head start since they must climb 3,000 feet out of a valley in the first 100 miles of their trip. It will be 604 miles from Ogden to Colorado Springs, seven miles shorter than the Kansas trip.
The race will be as authentic as possible. The Kansas group will be using an old saddle bag that was used by the Express years ago. It will be continuous with relays taking place every 10 to 15 miles.
The Wyandotte Sheriff's posse will follow U.S. Highway 40 to Limon, Colo., and will take Highway 24 on into Colorado Springs. The riders will be escorted by a highway patrol car and a truck carrying emergency horses and riders.
Other trucks will be ahead of the rider dropping off the relay horses and riders about two hours before the expected transfer. The distances of the relays will vary, depending on the terrain. After the relays are over, the horses and riders will be picked up and taken on to Colorado Springs where the group will give a drill demonstration.
Leavenworth Was Site Of First Kansas Paper
By ELIZABETH WOHLGEMUTH
Kansas had been a territory only 108 days when the first newspaper was printed and distributed. Soon after many others followed to tell the news and proclaim the issues of the day to the citizens of the Kansas territory.
With the race coming at a time when several Kansas Cities will be celebrating the centennial, it is expected that the towns will have short ceremonies as the riders pass through.
The first paper was printed on a printing press set up under an elm tree in Leavenworth county on Sept. 15, 1854, by William J. Osborne and William Adams. It was the Kansas Weekly Herald.
Kansas has advanced with great strides in the technical fields in the past 100 years, but it looks as though it will be the horse that once again will be out to bring fame to the state.
were pro-slavery and would not print the paper. The Herald of Freedam was written in the East but was published in Lawrence.
Best sellers of 1852 were Harriet Beecher Stone's "Uncle Tom" Cabin" and Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth's "The Curse of Clifton."
The paper was Democratic and pro-slavery. The men publishing it lived out-of-doors and wrote their editorials on shingles. For two months it was the only paper in the territory. The paper, started under these conditions, survived for seven years.
The next two papers to appear were distributed in Lawrence. Both papers, The Kansas Pioneer and the Kansas Herald of Freedom, were free state papers. The Kansas Pioneer was written and distributed in Lawrence but was printed in Medina, Ohio, because all other printing establishments in the vicinity
The horses will be run without shoes, since most of the going will be on surfaced pavement.
The Kansas Pioneer was first distributed in October 1854 and the Kansas Herald of Freedom in January 1855.
Capt. Henry King, one-time editor of the State Record, Commonwealth, and Capital, said in an address to an editors' convention on June 18, 1877, "the first Kansas newspaper fluttered out from among the scrub oaks and hazel brush of what was to be a future metropolis of the state. How a printing press chanced to be in such a place at such a time we have never been told. I suppose that human nature needed it and so it was sent as a sort of special providence."
The most rabid pro-slavery paper in the territory was the Squatter Sovereign, printed in Atchison on Feb. 3, 1855. It was a town company paper edited and published by Robert S. Kelley and Dr. John H. Stringfellow, prominent pro-slavery men.
It was said of the Sovereign that it was the real red-blooded, murder-seeking, abolitionist-hanging, murder-condoning, blood thirsty proslavery paper of all Kansas journalism. It made its voice heard even above the noise of all other proslavery papers in the territory combined.
The first issue of the Kansas Freeman in Shawnee county was written on the open prairie. The Herald of Freedom in Lawrence had to print the paper because the press had fallen into the hands of pro-slavery forces who dumped it into the Missouri river. The first issue was printed July 4, 1855, but was not printed regularly after that.
The Kansas Constitutionalist, printed sometime during 1856 in Doniphan county, is almost buried in the dust of a turbulent past. Everything about the paper is obscure, but it is known that it was pro-slavery.
The Squatter Sovereign wrote once. "If we for a moment thought that a drop of Yankee blood ran through our veins, we should let it out, even though our lives were sacrificed in doing so."
By mid-1857, a large number of newspapers began to appear in Kansas towns and the press began to favor more and more the Free State feeling rather than the pro-slavery.
The first paper in Wyandotte county was published May 2, 1857, in a tent, but only two or three issues were published and the paper went out of business. The Quinardro Chindowan, the third paper in the territory acquired by the Emigrant Aid company to further its plans, was printed shortly afterwards in Wyandotte county on May 13, 1857.
The office was located in a little building of cottonwood logs situated on a river bank overlooking a ferry landing on the Missouri river.
Friday, March 26, 1954
Pierce Administration Forgotten by History
By STAN HAMILTON
The U.S. President 100 years ago when Kansas was first recognized as a part of the Union was Gen. Franklin Pierce, who held the office from 1853 to 1857.
Declared by most historians to be almost a nonentity, President Pierce was the son of an ex-office man. Revolutionary war and a farmer.
A darkhorse candidate, he wa
Edwin Booth Top Matinee Idol of 1800s
By JERRY KNUDSON
The year 1854 was a transition one for a young man who was to become the greatest American actor of the 19th century—Eedwin Booth, brother of the historically infamous John Wilkes Booth, son of actor Julius Brutus Booth, and the symbol of a great era of the American theatre.
Until this time Edwin was just another of "the mad Booths of Maryland." At first Father Booth never wanted Edwin, the youngest of four sons, to go on the stage. But the shattering thrill of being applauded, the unreal reality of make-believe, the challenge of the theater were part of the young Booth's heritage.
The young man is whisked to the theatre, jammed into his father's costume, and pushed onto the stage.
The year is 1851, the National Theater in New York where Junius Brutus Booth is playing Richard III. The elder Booth suddenly becomes "ill." He orders Edwin to play Richard for him that evening.
In that year Edwin Booth left gold-crazed California-penniless but with some acting experience under his belt—for the East where he was soon to take the American stage by storm.
The audience, expecting the renowned elder Booth, applauds heartily, then stops upon realizing its mistake. But soon they are applauding again—and this time for the younger Booth as the rich emotion of the soliloquy rolls out over the footlights.
The next year Booth went with his father to California and after a tour of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands on his own returned to the East. Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Charleston, New Orleans, the South. All successes
The world begins to notice the younger Booth: small of stature but with a finely controlled voice and stage grace that made him an impressive figure on the "boards."
The years go by. 1801—great success in London as Richelieu. 1863—Booth takes over the management of the fabulous Winter Garden Theater in New York where he produces "Julius Caesar" and other classics, and chalks up a 100-night run in "Hamlet."
But comes April 14, 1865, when Lincole is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. The family is stricken. Edwin retires from the stage for a year.
In 1866 the great tragedian reappears at the Winter Garden where his portrayal of "Othello" and "Macbeth" are legendary. The next year the skyline of New York is lift up as the great Winter Garden goes down in flames.
More touring. Another year passes. Edwin has the funds to lay the cornerstone of Booth's Theater in New York. Success again!
But—comes the Panic of 1873, and Edwin Booth retires from management of the theater and goes into bankruptcy.
However, the young man who in 1854 was crossing a continent to unexpected and unprecedented fame is not through. Later, more triumphant comebacks were to win acclaim for him in England, Germany, and Austria.
Edwin Booth: from benefits in bawdy San Francisco to reaping praise from the crowned heads of Europe and the applause of an entire nation—the story of an American actor during the years Kansas became a state.
The 14th president had been in politics before that time. He had served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and had been both a U.S. senator and representative. In the Mexican war he was a brigadier general.
chosen by the Democratic nominating convention on the 49th ballot after a three-way deadlock among Cass, Douglas, and Buchanan made him a good substitute choice. To gain the high office he defeated the Whig candidate, Gen. Winfield Scott, 254 electoral college votes to 42, and carried all but four states.
Of course, the main thing accomplished during his administration as far as Kansans are concerned was passage of the controversial Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854. This act, which was just one of many pro-slavery indications of his administration, left the slavery question to popular vote and also led to the formation of the Republican party in July of that year.
His four years as Chief Executive, aside from being markedly pro-slavery, also were very non-isolationist.
Another old trade barrier was broken down that same year when Commodore Matthew Perry opened Japan to Western trade.
The Marcy-Elgin treaty of 1854 provided for a trade reciprocity with Canada, opened some northeastern fishing grounds to Americans, and granted mutual freedom of navigation on Lake Michigan and the St. Lawrence river.
One of the most debated and sensational occurrences of President Pierce's administration was the Ostend Manifesto, a radical proposal made by three U. S. foreign amateurs. The James Buchanan, English ambassador, Mr. Mason, minister to France, and Mr. Soule, minister to Spain.
These three recommended that the U. S. purchase Cuba for $120 million from Spain. They asked that if Spain refused to sell the island, the U. S. should consider the use of force to obtain it. President Pierce, however failed to act on either of the recommendations.
President Pierce, who had Jefferson Davis as his secretary of war, always had strong respect for states rights. He also believed, to a large extent, that what he thought right for the country was sometimes better than what his party thought.
So, in 1856 when the territorial governor of Kansas pressed him for support, the President issued a proclamation against "attempted insurrection" or "aggressive intrusion" in the newly created territory
But, throughout his four years in the White House, President Pierce seemed to be in constant hot water with members of his own party. It was almost a foregone conclusion that he would not get the Democratic nomination in 1856. James Buchanan, the former British ambassador, got the nomination and subsequently was elected.
EDWIN BOOTH .as Richelieu.