The Secret Civil War by John Reynolds Sawyer

Author:John Reynolds Sawyer [John Reynolds Sawyer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Military/United States/Civil War - HIS027110
ISBN: 9781612309606
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2016-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

The war in the shadows clearly was being played out in the usual venues with players like Crazy Bet, Mrs. Greenhow, and Mr. Dodge. But out west, another shadow conflict was taking place between armies that played by few rules and with no sense of loyalty.

That shadow war had been raging for at least seven years before the Civil War formally began. This was the bloody conflict on the border between Missouri and the Kansas territory to determine whether Kansas would join the Union as a slave-holding or an abolitionist state. And while this conflict lacked the scale and drama of the war’s pitched battles, no part of the Civil War was more ruthless. It’s fair to say that both sides behaved abominably.

But first, some background.

The issue of slavery in the new states, carved out of Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, had nominally been settled by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It established Missouri as a slave-holding exception to a new law barring slavery in any new states north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes of latitude.

But as pioneer settlements spread across the Great Plains, the federal government wanted nothing to get in the way of signing treaties with Native Americans, building a transcontinental railroad, and forming state governments. Settling the issue of slavery could wait. After a prolonged battle between northern abolitionists and southern slave interests, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, repealing the compromise of 1820 and opening both prospective states to slavery if their citizens voted for it.

The new law did little to settle old scores.

The mostly abolitionist settlers of Kansas opposed the spread of slavery, but across their eastern border, the residents of Missouri were just as determined to keep the system in place. Quickly, both sides acted to swell the ranks of potential voters in Kansas.

Missourians in favor of slavery galloped into Kansas, leaving any scruples behind. “We will be compelled to shoot, burn, and hang,” said Missouri Senator David Atchison, “but the thing will soon be over.” The Free Staters responded by importing resolute abolitionists from New England, who were grimly determined to defend their sacred cause by any means necessary. We “must fight fire with fire,” said John Brown, and “strike terror into the hearts of the proslavery people.”

The Missourians won the first round, trooping into Kansas by the hundreds in the fall of 1854 to intimidate election officials and cast votes to elect a proslavery delegate to Congress. (A Congressional committee found later that more than 1,700 ballots had been fraudulent.)

Soon after, competing gangs roamed the border, creating a cycle of violence against people and property. In 1855, more than 200 people were murdered. That included five farmers slain at Pottawatomie Creek by abolitionists led by John Brown. Initially, the gangs were called simply “border ruffians,” but by the time the war broke out, they had earned different names: the Kansans were jayhawkers, and the Missourians were bushwhackers.

At first, the nicknames were meant as insults. Jayhawker, whose origins are obscure, was sometimes used as a verb, as in this letter: “We jayhawked.

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