Page 6 University Daily Kansan Monday. April 17. 1961
Courtesy The Kansas Historical Society
WAGON TRAIN—Conestoga wagons wind their way past Lecompton as it was in 1858. Note the Indians standing on the hill to the right. The Kaw flows in the background.
Rival Townships Had Bitter Feud
By Barbara Howell
The two men were standing on the corner, having a heated argument.
"The only way to get rid of them is to take up our guns and run them out of town," one of the men declared emphatically.
"No," the other replied, "we don't want to set a bad example by breaking the law. The legislature will declare the vote void."
The year was 1855 The scene of this controversy was Lawrence, a small town which had become the center of the free state movement and had assumed the leadership of the entire territory of eastern Kansas.
THE ISSUE these men were discussing was a grave one for the Kansas Free Staters. It was the day before elections, and on the roads leading into Lawrence hundreds of Missourians could be seen streaming toward the town. These "border ruffians" resented the anti-slavery movement in Kansas and so they decided to try to vote in the Kansas elections and prevent the election of anti-slavery men to the legislature.
Just as the people of Lawrence feared, the Missourians were allowed to vote and a pro-slavery man was elected. The territorial governor allowed the man to hold office along with others elected in the same manner.
Shortly after this time, the headquarters for the territorial government, which was pro-slavery, were moved from Shawnee Mission to Lecompton, a few miles northwest of Lawrence. Friction arose between
the two factions as the Free Staters proceeded to ignore the territorial government's edicts and to set up their own laws.
THE LAWS most deeply resented by the Free Staters were the "Black Laws." These called for the death penalty for anyone who aided a runaway slave or in other ways supported the anti-slavery movement. The Free Staters felt these laws were unjust demands passed by the "bogus" legislature, as the pro-slavery group was called, to hasten the downfall of the anti-slavery movement. The Missouri constitution was adopted word for word by the "bogus" legislature, causing deep resentment among many Kansans.
The pro-slavery government charged the Free Staters with treason. Lawrence was under constant fear of attack from the Missourians who would cross the border to support the pro-slavery government Day and night a guard was kept posted on Mount Oread.
The issue became so heated that whenever a Kansan began to speak on the evils of slavery, he usually ended up with a tirade against the Missourians who were constantly crossing the border to burn or steal from the Kansans.
These were the early years for "Bleeding Kansas." Lawrence sat in the middle, receiving a good deal of the damage. The Sack of Lawrence by pro-slavery men, Quantrill's raid, and the burning of Lawrence's Free State Hotel by a United States official are examples of the hardships the Free State supporters in Lawrence had to endure.
Watson's Lawrence Room Houses Town's History
By Jane Boyd
The history of Lawrence, in all its color, violence and progress, waits to be unfurled to any interested student in the Lawrence Room of Watson Library.
When the door is opened the early history of Lawrence is quickly recalled by a portrait of Amos A. Lawrence, for whom the town was named, and a picture of the notorious Sheriff Samuel J. Jones, the man who conducted the first sacking of Lawrence when he burned the Free State Hotel in 1856.
THERE ARE memories of Sen.
James H. Lane, the first senator
from Kansas, and Sen. E. G. Ross,
who filled Sen. Lane's unexpired
There is a picture of John Brown which bears this inscription: "A likeness of old John Brown which was taken at my request in 1846 when he went to Kansas: Signed—Amos A. Lawrence, Boston."
term, and then cast the vote which kept President Johnson from im peachment.
"This photograph was on our table many years then it disappeared. A while ago it turned up among some papers. My father's interest in Lawrence, Kansas and John Brown, of whose methods, however, he did not
Mr. Lawrence's son sent this picture to the library in 1932 with this explanation:
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Local Historical Markers Recall Lawrence Sacking, Quantrill Raid
By Dennis Farney
Nearly 100 years have passed since William C. Quantrill's "raid on Lawrence," but historical monuments and markers throughout the city still recall the event.
In contrast to the peaceful college campus of today, Mount Oread in 1863 was a scene of an ominous-looking network of trenches and breastworks, preparations for an anticipated Confederate attack. The fortifications, which were manned by unarmed federal recruits, were located east and south of the present Fraser Hall. Army barracks occupied the southern slope of the hill, which was then a barren slope almost devoid of trees and shrubs.
A small granite block, located near the statue of "The Pioneer," marks the site of the trenches today.
Striking savagely and with almost total surprise in the early morning hours of Aug. 21, 1863, Quantrill reduced the once-thriving business district of Lawrence to a mass of smoking ruins, leaving 150 citizens and 12 federal soldiers dead or dying.
Today two monuments, one in Oak Hill Cemetery, and the other at 935 New Hampshire St., commemorate the victims of the Quantrill raid. The monument in Oak Hill Cemetery is dedicated to the "one hundred and fifty citizens who, defenseless, fell victims to the inhuman ferocity of border guerrillas led by the infamous Quantrill in his raid upon Lawrence." The New Hampshire Street monument reads simply: "Near here a score of unarmed recruits were shot August 21, 1863."
History is recalled by other markers, too. A plaque on the front of the Eldridge Hotel recalls the history of the Free State Hotel and the Eldridge House, two hotels previously occupying the site. Both had more colorful, if shorter lived, histories than the present-day Eldridge.
Lesser men than S. W. Eldridge, owner of the Free State Hotel, might have been dismayed when a band of 800 pro-slavery men burned it to the
ground in 1856, within six months after its construction. Colonel Eldridge, however, roared his defiance at the band.
"You may burn it" he told them,
"but every time you burn it down
I will erect another hotel in its place
and will add a story to it!"
True to his fiery words, Colonel Eldridge built a second hotel, the Eldridge House, on the same site. It cost $80,000, twice as much as the former Free State Hotel, and it stood an imposing four stories high.
By all standards of fair conduct, fate should have been through with Colonel Eldridge, but the Eldridge
House, which had risen phenix-like from the ashes of its predecessor, also was doomed to destruction by fire, this time by Quantrill and his raiders. When Quantrill and his band rode out of Lawrence, only one blackened wall of the Eldridge House remained standing.
At that point, Colonel Eldridge seemed to grow discouraged with the hotel business. He built a second Eldridge House, but the structure cost a mere $40,000 and stood only a modest three stories high. This hotel stood until 1926, when it was torn down and replaced by the present building.
Chisholm Led Indian Tribe To Present Wichita Townsite
Booming Wichita traces its history back to a strange migration—the movement of a refugee Indian tribe from the Cherokee strip in Oklahoma to the unsettled land that is now the townsite of Kansas' largest city.
The Wichita Indians, formerly residents of Indian Territory, were driven from their tribal lands at the close of the Civil War because they insisted on remaining loyal to the Union. At first they halted in Woodson County, hoping to settle there, but they were led on by an adopted member of the tribe whose name became a marker to the trail bosses who were to drive their great herds northward in the years to come. He was Jesse Chisholm.
Wichita began to grow rapidly. William Greffenstein, another trader,
AT THE CLOSE of the war, Chisholm led the weary tribe to Wichita. The following year he built a trading post. Another, that of Durfree and Ledrick, sprang up soon after. An infusion of new blood came from far away in 1869, when a detachment of the U.S. 5th Infantry, accompanied by 25 settlers, arrived in town.
gave up bartering to devote his best efforts to city planning. With the help of N. A. English, he laid out Douglas Avenue, where hotels and business offices soon began going up.
In 1869, the governor appointed a three-man commission to organize the county for voting. At that time, there were only 260 qualified voters to be found. The next year Wichita was incorporated as a village.
THE CITY GREW still faster. The greatest boost to its growth came in 1872, when the railway to Newton was completed. This made Wichita the principal railhead in that part of the country, and the city limits became the promised land for many a cowboy and trail boss who had driven thousands of head of cattle across the then trackless wastes of Texas and Oklahoma.
Under Mayor James G. Hope, the city boomed under the impetus of the great cattle drives. Old Wichita did its best to entertain its visitors, and soon became one of the wildest towns in the west. Saloons, gambling houses, "variety" theaters, and other
(Continued on page 8)
Windmill Once KU Landmark
By Dennis Farney
Only scattered building rocks, rusted harness rings and discarded medicine tins remain to mark the site of an 80-foot-tall windmill, once a striking campus landmark which played a colorful role in the lives of KU students.
The towering windmill, which supplied power for a once-thriving grist mill, formerly stood at the present location of the Theta Chi fraternity house, 9th and Emery Rd., until it was destroyed by an unexplained fire in 1905.
The mill's peak year came in 1880, when it was incorporated as a business. Within six years, however, competing steam mills forced Mr. Palm to close down.
After the mill's construction, which was interrupted by Quantrill and his raiders, Mr. Palm's link between the Kansas wind and Kansas grain proved to be a profitable one. Farmers sometimes traveled 100 miles to use the mill, the only one of its kind in the state.
THE STORY of the mill began in early summer, 1862, when Andrew Palm, a Swede, decided to utilize the ever-present Kansas wind and the growing production of wheat and corn in the area by building a wind-powered grist mill in Lawrence. He chose Mount Oread, then a barren slope nearly devoid of trees and shrubs, as his site because of its advantageous position for catching the gusty Kansas breezes.
ABANDONED, the old mill was put to good use—both by KU students, who enjoyed its romantic "atmosphere," and by passing vagrants, who often used it for temporary lodgings. One such boarder apparently became careless with his cigarette, for the decayed mill was destroyed by fire on the evening of April 30, 1905.
Sentimentally marking the passing of the old mill, a Daily Kansan editorial of May 4, 1905 said:
"Its disappearance leaves a blank in the traditions of Lawrence and of the University, which cherished an almost proprietary interest in it."
The mill's charred foundation survived until the summer of 1957.
when the area was cleared during the construction of the new Theta Chi house. The harness rings, medicine tins and other mementoes of the mill were collected at the time and are now displayed at the fraternity.
Several cellars in the area, which were probably used as storage rooms for grain still remain to mark the location of the mill.
—Courtesy The Kansas Historical Society