This category is just a start of the story of the Border Wars of the mid-1850’s. Your comments and input are appreciated and welcomed!
Border wars- Pre Civil War *
Invading Missouri in 1856?- In August, 1856, a little over 84 years ago, handbills were printed in Lexington, Mo., our neighbor town across the bridge, warning of a probable “invasion of Missouri,” telling of the “War in Kansas,” and calling upon citizens to prepare themselves against the “Free Soilers,” and “Abolitionists”.
The bill called upon the people to meet in Lexington on August 10, 1856, to prepare to “fight the invaders, announcing that Captain Hi Bledsoe’s battery division would meet at the time and place.
The handbill was signed by D.R. Atchison, W.H. Russell, Joseph C. Anderson and A.G. Boone.
Among the names appearing on the handbill, as members of Bledsoe’s division, reminders of the Mexican War of a few years before, were S.B. Sawyer, Street Hale, T.Ewing, W.A.Trigg, Hi Bledsoe,jr., Edward Winsor, W.P. Walton, Martin Slaughter, William Limerick, Nathan Corder and Oliver Anderson.
A copy of this handbill of 1856 is now in the possession of J.W. Douglass of Huntsville, Mo., who, with Mrs. Douglas, recently visited friends and relatives in Lexington and Higginsville.
Mr. Douglass was reared, south of Higginsville, but has not lived in Lafayette County for forty years. His grandfather, whose name was Mock, had saved the handbill and handed it down to him.
* Chapter 497, by Jewell Mayes, edition of the Richmond Missourian of September 16, 1940. September 16, 1940.
US History Encyclopedia Border War (1854–1859). The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed local voters to decide whether Kansas would be a slave state or a free state, prompted emigration from the Northeast of antislavery groups, the arrival of squatters and speculators, and the presence of an adventurous element recruited from both North and South. Ideological differences over slavery and recurring personal altercations led proslavery and free-state groups to organize regulating associations and guerrilla bands. Lynching, horse stealing, pillaging, and pitched battles marked the years from 1854 to 1859 and inspired the name “Bleeding Kansas” for the territory.
The first eighteen months of settlement witnessed sporadic shootings, killings, and robberies, including the Wakarusa War (December 1855), which brought over one thousand Border Ruffians into the territory. The sack of Lawrence (21 May 1856) by a posse of border ruffians and John Brown’s massacre of five proslavery men at Pottawatomie three days later started a four-month reign of terror. Free-state men won victories at Black Jack, Franklin, Fort Saunders, Fort Titus, Slough Creek, and Hickory Point; their opponents pillaged and later burned Osawatomie (30 August 1856), but official intervention prevented them from further destroying Lawrence. A semblance of order restored by Governor John W. Geary in the fall was of brief duration. The Marais des Cygnes massacre of nine free-state men on 19 May 1858 was the last wholesale slaughter. Major conflict terminated in 1859, albeit sporadic disorders continued until the Civil War. Anticipating a congressional appropriation that did not materialize, territorial commissioners approved claims for losses resulting from border trouble totaling over $400,000, which, though exaggerated, give some notion of the extent of property damage.
Bibliography Johannsen, Robert W. The Frontier, the Union, and Stephen A. Douglas. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Rawley, James A. Race & Politics: “Bleeding Kansas” and the Coming of the Civil War. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969.
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Tags: abolitionists, BLEDSOE, border war, Border Wars, civil war, Kansas, kansas nebraska act of 1854, Lafayette, lafayette county, Lawrence, nebraska act, ray county
