 Following the Potawatomi Massacre, Kansas saw what one settler described as a three-cornered war between the Free Staters, Southerners, and the federal troops. H.C. Pate, one of the captains in the Territorial Militia, captured John Brown Jr. and Jason Brown, the two older sons who did not take part in the Potawatomi Massacre. And the militia burned down John Jr.'s cabin as well as the store owned by Theodore Weiner, who was a suspect in the Potawatomi killings. On June 4th, the senior Brown retaliated. Two companies of Free State men, one company of 10 men led by John Brown, and the other 25-man company led by Captain Shore, attacked Pate's camp while they were eating breakfast. Brown and Shore were hopelessly outnumbered, as they engaged in a shootout for two or three hours. Then Frederick Brown mounted his horse and started riding around Pate's camp, yelling about how many Free State settlers were surrounding them. This was a bluff, but it worked. And Pate surrendered, along with 28 men. He had more, but the rest fled. When he later recalled the Battle of Blackjack, as it became known, Pate said, quote, I went to take Brown, and he took me. After Brown's massacre at Potawatomi, the Kansas Territorial War would reach its apogee through the summer of 1856. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the previous episodes, we talked about the early period of the Kansas Territorial dispute and the political consequences that came out of it, such as the creation of the Republican Party. Today, I want to finish the story of Kansas prior to the National War. Seeing that the Free State settlers were clearly not going to recognize the authority of the Territorial Militia as the Battle of Blackjack helped demonstrate, Governor Shannon decided to use federal troops to disband guerrilla companies. The federal military was able to disband the illegal companies, but they would only reform soon after. John Brown's men, for instance, were dispersed twice in the first week of June. Colonel Edwin Sumner, a cousin of Charles Sumner, was sent to Kansas with orders from President Pierce to answer to Shannon and uphold the laws of the pro-slavery government. John Brown even released the captured Pate into Sumner's company, who ordered him and his men to return to Missouri before setting them free, but neither side of the guerrilla war was willing to obey these orders. Governor Shannon at this point had zero control over the Free State settlers in the territory. Whatever gains he had made during the Waka-Rusa War peace negotiations were completely gone, and Free State newspapers were propagandizing against him, claiming that the governor was a drunk who had threatened the wife of a Free Stater named Samuel Walker and led his own band of South Carolina Bushwackers, which was an absurd claim. So in late June, Governor Shannon left the territory to conduct some business in St. Louis, and many people were by this time viewing Colonel Sumner as the true territorial governor. But the acting governor in Shannon's absence was actually a man named Daniel Woodson, who would govern the territory while Shannon was gone during the summer violence in what Free State settlers would come to refer to as Woodson's Reign of Terror. So Shannon was absent, Woodson was left in charge, but Sumner was the real authority figure during all this time acting on behalf of President Pierce himself. The Free State faction was planning another convention in Tabika to be held on July 4th, and before he left, Shannon instructed Sumner to see the convention dispersed. Sumner wasn't thrilled about this, but he followed orders. On July 4th, he took to the Speaker's platform inside the building where the convention was being held and said that it was the most painful duty of my whole life to command the people there to disperse. When an attendee asked him if they were being dispersed at the point of a bayonet, Sumner said, I shall use the whole force under my command to carry out my orders. The Tabika convention disbanded without any violent incident, but the people there made clear that they viewed this action as tyrannical. One spectator said to him, Colonel, you have robbed Oliver Cromwell of his laurels. Cromwell, by the way, helped overthrow British monarchy for a time during the English Civil War that ousted Charles I, and many people saw him as a tyrant and a dictator, which is of course the insult being levied at Sumner by this Kansan. Another Tabika resident wrote that Sumner willed around Tabika, quote, more like a lordly slaveholder through a gang of slaves on his own plantation than a gentleman among free citizens on a highway equally free for all, end quote. So Sumner was being associated with the slave power that Northerners were becoming increasingly afraid of politically. It's also worth mentioning that President Pierce, when facing criticisms for Sumner's actions in Tabika, claimed that the colonel had exceeded his authority, which is patently false. Pierce instructed Sumner to obey Governor Shannon and support the Lacompton pro-slavery constitution, which is exactly what Sumner was doing. So Pierce was using him as a scapegoat, even though Sumner was only reluctantly carrying out the president's orders. So after throwing him to the wolves, the Pierce administration replaced Sumner with a Mexican war veteran and personal friend of the president, Percifort Smith. All that was accomplished in all this was to demonstrate to the free status, at least from their perspective, that the federal government was using the army as a weapon of tyranny. Because the Tabika convention disbanded peacefully, Northern Press was able to depict the free state settlers as having the moral high ground and the federal government was acting as a puppet of the slave power, essentially. So both factions in the territorial dispute were on edge. One pro-slavery settler said of the mid-1856 period, quote, I never lie down without taking the precaution to fasten my door and fix it in such a way that if it is forced open, it can be opened only wide enough for one person to come in at a time. I have my rifle, revolver, and old home-stocked pistol where I can lay my hand on them in an instance. Besides a hatchet and axe, I take this precaution to guard against the midnight attacks of the abolitionists. End quote. I mentioned in the episode on the Potawatomi massacre that John Brown, by some historians, has been described as a terrorist and this is good evidence that he had such an effect. Very few anti-slavery activists actually supported the actions of John Brown and his men, but he had essentially single-handedly created the image of the violent abolitionists that kept Southerners up at night. So the pro-slavery settlers continued to make settlement in Kansas difficult. Missourians inspected mail and took prisoners coming into the country. When a traveler came into the territory, Missourians would commonly make them say the word cow to quote, see if he would give the Yankee pronunciation and thus decide if he was right on the goose. End quote. In response to this, New England travelers would practice saying cow, right, not kiaow. I'm reading this as the quote is written phonetically where the wrong pronunciation is spelled C-E-O-W. So immigration to the territory slowed during this month but it didn't stop completely and the military had to try to tell the difference between genuine immigrants who just wanted to claim Western land and those who were coming into the territory to take part in the guerrilla war. And the army was dispersing immigrants suspected of being on either side of the controversy but Northern immigrants saw the federal troops as working under the thumb of the Southern slave power regardless. The governors of Iowa and Wisconsin even formally objected to the military blockade of immigration to Kansas because of their belief that it was a one-sided blockade. Part of the reason that Northerners believed the army to be acting on the side of the Southerners even though this was inaccurate is because traveling to Kansas did usually require people to go through Missouri where Southerners were able to make life difficult for Northern travelers. North of Kansas was the Nebraska territory which was facing its own turmoil with the Indians in the territory. So if you were coming into Kansas, it probably meant coming in through the east through Missouri. So it was far easier for the pro-slavery activists to make trouble for the New England settlers. So while the army was treating both sides equally, New England settlers were not wrong in their perception of disproportionate discrimination against Northerners. This was enough that some people did start coming to Kansas from Iowa and to avoid Missouri that meant passing through the southeast corner of the Nebraska territory. Jim Lane estimated that between 250 and 500 men came into Kansas this way to help reinforce the free-staters bringing a cannon with them. Jim Lane, if you remember from a few episodes ago, was the major militia leader for the free state government and he continued this role even though the man who appointed him, Charles Robinson, was actually still being held prisoner in Leavenworth, Kansas after being captured on the Missouri River. In August, Lane led a group to attack a band of Missourians near Bull Creek. Lane was outgunned, the Missourians had more men and were armed with cannons. But the attack was a surprise and it leveled the playing field enough that both armies had to fall back. Lane's men were exhausted and the Missouri company was disorganized. Lane was a notoriously tireless militia leader and his men respected him a great deal. Once when trying to disguise Lane from US troops who were trying to disband illegal militias, his men tried clothing him in rag and a tire so he would look like a poor farmer. One of his men said, quote, the worst clothes we put on, the more like Jim Lane he looked. But Lane's motivations in fighting the free state side were political and this is worth remembering as well. There were some free state settlers like John Brown and his family who were truly abolitionists but most of the settlers on the free state side were not. In September of 1856, when Jim Lane was returning to Lawrence, a runaway slave tried to join his company. Instead of accepting the new recruit, Lane ordered the slave to return to his owner saying that he was, quote, not fighting to free black men but to free white men. End quote. In another example, John Brown Jr. was originally the leader of the Potawatomi Rifles of Free State Militia but he was removed from command after he tried to free a pair of slaves and his men returned the slaves to their owners and removed John Jr. from command. In the last episode, I pointed out that when I used the term anti-slavery, I'm doing so in the 19th century since and this is what it means. To be anti-slavery politically did not mean you took any moral stance against slavery necessarily and it certainly did not mean that you supported the rights of free blacks which was a particularly radical view to hold but it was slave imagery that was used by Northern press and propagandists to motivate Northerners to the free state cause. One woman, the wife of a minister, described to the free state prisoners as, quote, chained like galley slaves and she said that the pro-slavery men who held them hostage had actually made slaves out of them which was also not true but the Southerners of course did continue to view all the free state men as abolitionists. One Southerner named Exala Hool, I have no idea if I'm pronouncing this right it's one of those very unusual 19th century names we don't see anymore but he said, quote, one of our neighbors has missed a Negro fellow and supposes he has been carried off by the abolitionists, end quote. This not only illustrates the common Southern perception that all Northern settlers were abolitionists but also that slaves did not run away of their own volition and the same quote Hool said that his neighbor, quote, does not think the Negro would go off willingly. So both sides as was the case throughout the 1850s in the entire country had an inaccurate view of their opponents and in the case of the Southerners of the slaves as well. The events in Kansas were particularly important to Southerners. James Mason, a Virginian believed that Kansas controlled the destiny, his word, of the South. The argument made by the Southern population was the popular sovereignty argument. They did not care whether Kansas was a slave state or not as long as the territory was left open to decide for itself. This was probably true for many Southerners but it was less true for the Missourians who shared a border with the new territory but the Southern rights perspective was alive and well in Kansas. When a free state band of guerrillas captured a pro-slavery ban in August, the flag the pro-slavery ban waved had the motto our constitutional rights or death. Because even today people argue how much slavery was the real issue, this flag is a good point to ponder the complexity of the question. For many Southerners, the constitutional right they were concerned about was specifically slavery. For others, slavery was seen as a constitutional right and by threatening slavery the North threatened constitutional rights in general. As people point out that most Southerners did not own slaves, the second perspective is important to remember. Most Southerners did not have a direct interest in slavery but because they believed slavery to be protected by the Constitution, an attack on slavery was an attack on their rights in general. I feel like when people are arguing about this history, they're arguing around each other on this matter. John Brown was still participating as a guerrilla leader, all while keeping contacts with the Northern press to try to capitalize off his growing reputation. Some opponents of Brown point out many of his particularly self-serving or Machiavellian actions. And these people are not wrong. One prime example was Brown's attack on the Kansas colony of Georgia, which was very close to Ossawotomy, which took place on August 7th. This colony was predominantly populated by women, children and slaves but Brown and his men burned houses to the ground, destroyed farming equipment and probably most to Brown's discredit stole children's clothing. Only five days after Brown's attack at Georgia, another free state company attacked settlers in Franklin, Kansas. They were outnumbered but they attacked during a cloudy night where the moon was hidden. So they were covered by darkness while they moved a wagon of hay in front of the building that the terrified pro-slavery settlers had run to hide in. Then they set fire to the hay and the free state men guarded both the front and rear of the building to fire at anybody trying to escape the flames. Most of the refugees were able to escape through the windows but six men were killed and several more were left wounded. The men there captured a cannon called Old Sacramento that was in the possession of the Franklin settlers. It's not actually clear if John Brown was part of this raid or not but the cannon did come into his possession and he used it in another raid that took place on August 15th. So all three of these battles occurred over an eight day period. This time Brown and his men attacked a settlement in Douglas County and he used to the cannon during the assault. The next day Samuel Walker led about 40 free state men nine miles west of Lawrence to attack Titus Fort. Some of his men loaded their weapons with balls made from the type of the herald of freedom, the press that had been destroyed during the sack of Lawrence as they fired they yelled quote this is the second edition of the herald of freedom. How do you like it? The pro-slavery men in Titus Fort surrendered and Walker took 34 prisoners including Titus the leader for whom the fort was named. One free state militia member was wounded in the battle and before he died the next day he said quote tell them I freely offer my life in behalf of the freedom of Kansas. Two weeks after Titus Fort John Brown would witness retaliation for his acts of terror. Pro-slavery guerrillas brought the fight to Ocewotomy where the Browns had settled. 400 men led by John Reed had been hunting for Brown who was now infamous for his deeds. When Reed's men swarmed upon Ocewotomy Brown's men were exhausted. They'd only arrived the night before and the night had recovered from their own raids. Brown was actually expecting an attack but he was anticipating it coming from the east from Missouri but Reed attacked from the opposite side. Charles Adair who I assume is Brown's 12 year old nephew since his brother-in-law Samuel Adair was the first of the clan to settle in Kansas but there's no verification of this in the sources I've seen but the Brown family tree is incredibly confusing but Charles Adair came into the camp to warn of the attack and he informed John Brown that his son Frederick Brown had been shot in the chest and killed when the pro-slavery men found him traveling on the road to Ocewotomy. Brown wanted to buy time to let the women and children escape so he ordered his men to intercept the pro-slavery raiders but they were vastly outmanned and outgunned so when the attacks came the Free State guerrillas hid in a log cabin on the river. The pro-slavery men had possession of a cannon but they didn't actually know how to use it. Out of ammunition the Free State men planned to regroup on the other side of the river but for some reason the pro-slavery guerrillas did not pursue them. Brown was surprised by this but he soon found out why. Reed and his guerrillas took the opportunity to set fire to Ocewotomy. Three Free State men were buried after the settlers returned to their destroyed camp and according to the testimony by his son Jason John Brown watched to the flames envelop his settlement and said quote, God sees it, I will die fighting for this cause. I will carry the war into Africa. If true this is the point at which John Brown resolved to wage his guerrilla war against all of the South rather than just Missouri settlers in the Kansas Territory. The victims of the raid on Ocewotomy were held as quote, martyrs to the liberty of Kansas. For his son Frederick Brown arranged to have the tombstone of his revolutionary war grandfather and namesake Captain John Brown shipped in North Elbow where his wife was still residing. He instructed his wife in a letter to have it quote, inscribed in memory of our poor Frederick who sleeps in Kansas. John Brown was also issuing orders to companies he was not directly leading. One character who came to John Brown's company shortly after the Potawatomi massacre was a young man named John Cook. Cook was a lady's man. He was handsome and charming and some of Brown's son seemed jealous at his ability to convince women to sleep with him including one Quaker girl who he impregnated and tried to marry but after the miscarriage which may have been induced by Tanzi oil which was the most common form of abortion for out of wedlock pregnancies in the 19th century though it's impossible to know whether this was a natural miscarriage or not but in any case the girl's family would not allow the marriage. John Cook came to Kansas looking for adventure and he taught himself to shoot while he was there. Sam and Brown said quote, Cook was the best pistol shot I ever saw. When the ducks and geese flew over us on the road he would always bring one down with the pistol. Cook would eventually serve as John Brown's spy at Harper's Ferry and later the trader who would try to leverage a confession to save himself from being hanged. But in Kansas he was ordered by Brown to continue terrorizing pro-slavery settlers along the Neosha River. The Free State Marauders as they were called often terrorized Missouri travelers threatening to hang them if they didn't leave Kansas. This was pretty much the same tactics the Missourians had employed. The Marauders claimed that they had no intention of actually murdering anybody but whether this was true or not there was at least one murder committed by them which I briefly mentioned in a previous episode. On September 16th, Cook led his men to the home of a pro-slavery settler named Christian Carver. In the typical guerrilla fashion employed by the Free State guerrillas, Cook led his men at night. When they called for Carver to come out of his home he could see about a dozen men in the moonlight each holding a sharps rifle supplied by New Englanders like Henry Ward Beecher. Carver tried to light a lantern so he could load his own rifle. The sharps rifles were breech loading rifles but Carver most likely had an old muzzle loader that took time to load. In fact the reason that rifles were not very common early into the Civil Wars because the earliest rifles were so difficult to load because they used large bullets before the mini-ball was introduced and sometimes you actually had to use a mallet to hammer the ammunition into the muzzle so they were very, very difficult to load so they weren't very good for combat. But I don't actually know what type of rifle Carver had I'm just assuming based on the context that it was a muzzle loader because that's most likely the case. So the breech loading rifle was a pretty new technology and it was only due to the wealthy New England supporters that Free State Kansans were able to arm themselves with such superior weaponry. So as Carver was struggling to light the lantern and load his own rifle he could hear Cook's men trying to break down his door. His wife Sarah was in bed only 16 or 17 years old and pregnant and her parents and 10 year old younger brother were living in their own cabin a little ways down the river. Here's how her brother John Van Gundy described the events. Ms. Carver had raised up and was sitting on the bed close by an opening between the logs used as a window. A man outside poked a gun through the opening nearly against her and fired. She cried out at once, I'm shocked, I'm killed. With a loud profanity several men crowded into the house. One man dipped his hand into a pan of honey that sat on the table and exclaimed, boys, here is some honey, let's eat it. At this instant one raised a gun at Carver and said, damn him and his honey too but another stopped him and said, let him alone now. We will be back in three days and if he is not out of the country then, we will hang him, end quote. He wasn't witness to the event so he was giving the second hand story based on what he learned from his sister before she died and his brother-in-law who was not killed. When Cook and his men left they knew Sarah had been shot and it is possible that this is why he chose not to kill her husband as some historians have speculated but it's equally possible that his goal was never to kill anyone only to terrorize them. Regardless of his intentions though, Sarah Carver died four days later in her mother's arms. The Marauders continued their spree of terror against the pro-slavery settlers along the river before disbanding a month later to prepare for the coming winter. So the Missourians were not being delusional when they described the fear that gripped them even if they were inaccurate in painting the Free State settlers all as abolitionists. The acts of terror by Brown and Cook were driven more out of abolitionist motives and these acts of violence were terrifying enough that their stories spread far beyond their immediate victims. One Missourian wrote of quote, the habit made by the abolitionists how they have killed the settlers or have driven them from their possessions burned down their dwellings and plundered or stolen everything they could carry off and that not one pro-slavery man is left south of the Kansas River in peaceable possession of his property. End quote. Another pro-slavery settler said that quote, the next breath from Kansas may bring to our ears the death shrieks of our fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, neighbors and friends who went there to find a home but have been butchered by the abolitionist. He then appealed to Southerners to come to Kansas to help fight warning that if his calls for action were not heated, quote, Kansas is lost to the South forever and our slaves in Upper Missouri will be useless to us and our homes must be given up to the abolition enemy. End quote. The Northern propagandists were even more hyperbolic. In July, one of Robinson's visitors in prison reported that he was going to be executed which seems to have been a baseless claim. Continuing to peddle the slave imagery for white settlers, free state newspapers wrote about prisoners being forced to wear chains as they were marched under the hot sun without food or water. John Brown Jr., for example, suffered severe mental distress after learning about the Potawatomi massacre and he eventually even had himself temporarily committed but the free state presses said that his mental illness was the product of being chained like a slave and that his chains were distinct from the others because of how shiny they were, the product of his maniacal struggle to free himself from them and inadvertently polishing them. Of course, there wasn't an ounce of truth to any of these stories except for John Jr.'s mental breakdown itself which did actually occur. In reality, the prisoners were treated surprisingly well. Sarah Robinson and other wives of prisoners were allowed to come and go as they pleased regularly visiting their captive husbands. They weren't held in cells and were actually provided with comfortable quarters basically only being held prisoner inside the settlement but the imagery of mistreated political prisoners was very powerful in New England. After the summer of violence, acting Governor Woodson declared that Kansas was in a state of open rebellion. He called for patriots to defend the law and once again, Missourians crossed the border to offer their support. Hundreds of new volunteers bringing with them arms and money donated by Southern supporters convened at New Santa Fe. Woodson worried that these men would be unable to distinguish between peaceful citizens and guerrillas. He ordered the new recruits not to burn any more settlements but the army was rightfully worried that Woodson's actions were going to worsen the conflict so the military's relationship with the acting governor broke down. The military referred a free state immigrant to Woodson as a peaceful and legitimate settler and Woodson simply arrested him so when Woodson asked the army to disarm the residents of Topeka and level their forts, he was refused. While all this was going on in Kansas, Congress met in DC and on June 23rd, Georgia Senator Robert Toomes introduced a bill to admit Kansas as a state under the pro-slavery Lacompton Constitution but by this time there was too much political opposition and the bill stood no chance of being passed. The Senate passed it but the House blocked it. The House countered the Toomes bill by passing its own bill to admit Kansas under the free state Topeka Constitution which was of course shot down by the Senate. President Pierce for his part was lobbying for the House to pass the Toomes bill but his efforts were predictably futile. There was no way Congress was going to get a bill passed that would appease both factions and some members of Congress were getting fed up with how much the Kansas issue was dominating the proceedings. Lewis Wigfall, a pro-slavery Senator from Texas voiced his frustration saying quote, let Kansas bleed if she has a fancy for it. Pierce expressed his own frustration with Kansas by removing Wilson Shannon as governor and replacing him with John Geary in early September. Geary was a popular sovereignty Democrat but he was honest in his approach to governing Kansas. He wanted honest elections and an end to the violence and all evidence on the matter gives weight to Geary's sincere impartiality as the governor. But Geary was inheriting a mess. As he entered the territory, he witnessed immigrant wagons circling defensively outside of Leavenworth. Wagon trains commonly formed circles when they had to defend against attacks. This was common on the Oregon Trail. If they were attacked by Indians, they would form a wagon circle. So this is what he was witnessing outside of Leavenworth. When he arrived at Alexandria, Geary inspected a store that had recently been ransacked. The day he arrived at LaCompton, the treason prisoners were being released on bail and in response to the release of the prisoners, Missouri border ruffians surrounded Lawrence, ready to sack it again. So Geary took his post as territorial governor in the middle of all of this turmoil. He went to Lawrence to respond to the Southerners surrounding the city on September 15th. If they wanted to attack Lawrence, he told them, they'd have to go through the United States Army first. Geary was successful in getting the Missourians to disband but before they left, some border ruffians murdered one Massachusetts settler named David Buffum as he was tending to his fields. The murder weighed heavily on the new governor, casting a dark cloud over what was otherwise a success at suppressing more violence in Lawrence. Jim Lane continued to wage his guerrilla war against the pro-slavery forces. He pillaged and robbed pro-slavery settlements and some people even claim that he turned his tactics on free state settlers who spoke out against his violent methods. I don't know if this is true or not, but these accusations did occur. In response to a pro-slavery attack at Grasshopper Falls, Lane promised to quote unquote, blot out the settlers at Hickory Point. He waged this attack two days before Geary's arrival at Lawrence on September 13th. Hickory Point held a double log house, a blacksmith shop and a handful of sheds and outbuildings. But there were also reports of 50 Kikapu Rangers at the small settlement. So Lane sent one of his men on horseback to demand the surrender of the Kikapus, who of course refused. Lane responded by having his men who were stationed on a hill to the west of the settlement open fire on the log house. The rifles were useless against the walls and Lane didn't have a cannon, so he withdrew. But as he and his men were retreating, Missourians came out of the house and counterattacked. This was a mistake on their part as Lane's men were armed with sharps rifles, which may not have been much use against a log cabin, but were very effective against the exposed men. Six Missourians were killed and the rest of the men retreated back to the cabin. The night of the 15th, Lane learned about Geary's order to disband the Southerner surrounding Lawrence, which made him scrap his plan to wage a follow-up attack the next day. But Colonel James Harvey took up arms in Lane's place, leading men to fight with the Missourians. He led an attack on the Missourians that lasted six hours, but the U.S. Army, willing to work with the new governor, now that Woodson was out of the picture, arrested more than 100 free state men who took part in the fighting. Geary was genuinely acting impartially. Harvey led his attack after the new governor had prevented an attack on Lawrence, but the men he arrested after living through the so-called reign of terror saw themselves as political prisoners. When they stood trial, a jury acquitted them after an hour and a half, which helps illustrate how the territory was actually turning more in favor of the free state settlers is a year ago the courts were genuinely in the hands of pro-slavery activists. The violence in Kansas never reached the levels that we saw between May and October of 1856 again, but the damage done was enormous. All in all, there were only about 38 deaths that can be tied to the political conflict that took place in these months. I think there was about 56 deaths total over the entire Kansas territorial war, but this was a relatively small number considering the political significance of the territorial dispute. But the property damage has been estimated to be about $2 million, that number not being adjusted for modern times, of course. And because of the fighting, farmland was neglected even where crops were not destroyed. So as settlers entered the winter of 56 to 57, things were looking grim for both sides. When free state settlers asked for help, they did not ask for charity, but rather argued that the Kansas relief was quote, a contribution of the North toward the support of her free state settlers, who have been bravely battling for the cause of freedom and in the defense of our common rights against the slave oligarchy, end quote. I added the word settler in that quote for cohesion, but I'm adding it from context as whatever word was used there was lost when the original document was torn, but the meaning is clear enough. Coming into 1857, Gary's efforts went unappreciated by both sides. The pro-slavery settlers accustomed to governors who actually shared their political biases saw him as outright opposition due to his impartiality. The free state or simply refused to trust any Pierce appointee. And even though Gary was a trustworthy governor, their suspicions were hardly unfounded, but both sides believed Gary was essentially the puppet of the opposite side. Because the pro-slavery government had enjoyed the favor of the president, Gary's actions and attempting to create a fair territory seemed treasonous from their perspective. He was willing to appoint free state people to militias, he blocked the appointment of a new pro-slavery sheriff, and he requested the repeal of pro-slavery laws that were explicitly aimed at attacking free state settlers, such as one law that demanded any citizen swear an oath to support the Fugitive Slave Act before being allowed to vote. Gary also opposed taking direct action against the illegal Topeka government, believing that it would fizzle out on its own if the official territorial government stopped provoking it. But Gary was simply trying to achieve honest democracy, whereas the pro-slavery legislators were more directly seeking the protection of slavery in Kansas. And this is exactly what Gary told the president-elect James Buchanan, warning him that the official government did not have the best interest of the Democratic Party at heart. By March of 1857, frustrated with his lack of support in trying to run Kansas fairly, Gary resigned. In only six months as governor of Kansas, Gary wrote, quote, I have learned more of the depravity of my fellow man than I ever before knew. Then referring to his experience during the California Gold Rush, he continued saying, quote, I have thought my California experience was strong, but I believe my Kansas experience cannot be beaten, end quote. The new president, James Buchanan, appointed Robert Walker as his replacement, and Walker took the governorship after the Dred Scott decision had been announced. Before he arrived, the new territorial secretary of state, Frederick Stanton, appointed delegates to a constitutional convention to see Kansas admitted into the union. He promised that he would not force slavery on an unwilling population, but these words were empty as he refused to take a new census, blaming the inaccuracy of the old census on the freestaders who refused to participate in it. This accusation wasn't entirely fair, as the old census also included Missourians who had no actual intention of settling in Kansas. So the bogus census, as the freestaders called it, reignited their opposition to the pro-slavery legislature, and again, they offered their Topeka constitution as an alternative to the Lekompton Constitution. So this is the context of Kansas when Walker made it to the territory in May of 1857. Walker was received enthusiastically, but he put his foot in his mouth during his inaugural address. He encouraged the end of the agitation over slavery, saying, quote, what is Kansas, whether without slavery, if she should destroy the rights and union of the states? Then he referred to, quote, the treason and fanaticism of abolition. Going further, he called the Topeka government hypocritical for not allowing free blacks to immigrate. This obviously upset the freestaders. Then to make sure he destroyed the support by both sides, he said that Kansas wasn't suitable for slavery. It was too cold and slavery there was impractical. So now on day one as governor, Walker had ruined any chance of receiving support from either side. The Topeka government held another convention on June 9th, but Walker had recently encouraged them to abandon the Topeka constitution. In the upcoming official elections, which would elect delegates to the constitutional convention, only about 10% of the population bothered to vote at all, mostly pro-slavery settlers, since the freestaders were still largely boycotting the elections. But the tide turned in the election held in October. This election was for seats on the territorial legislature. And freestaders ended the boycott. Since the June Topeka convention, support for the illegal government was already eroding. Even though freestate settlers largely boycotted the June elections, most of them also didn't bother with the Topeka convention. Lawrence was swelling in population and many of the new settlers were willing to accept the territorial legislature's authority. So in the October elections, freestate settlers took to the polls. Additionally, Governor Walker tossed out any ballots that he thought were fraudulent. A handful of the settlers who had been early settlers still chose to boycott, but it wouldn't matter. The freestaders won control of the official legislature. Southerners who were concerned about the territory were worried. One Missouri lawyer wrote in his personal diary, quote, "'Will the South acquiesce in a virtual exclusion "'of her slaves from all new territory? "'Aught she to do so? "'Can she do so with safety?' "'Kansas, it is now said, "'will be a free state. "'If we cannot carry slavery into Kansas, "'it is quite obvious that we cannot succeed anywhere else. "'The result will be that no more slave states "'will be created. "'The majority of the North over the South "'will in a few years become overwhelming "'in both houses of Congress. "'This majority can mold the Constitution "'to their own purposes. "'What will constitutional guarantees be worth "'under such circumstances?''," end quote. So the delegates for the Constitutional Convention were pro-slavery men, and they created a pro-slavery constitution, but the now free state legislature simply voted it down in January of 1858. Walker resigned and Buchanan replaced him with the fifth territorial governor in four years. The new governor, James Denver, is the man for whom Denver, Colorado is named. Denver immediately argued that Kansas should be admitted as a state under the Compton Constitution, but even Northern Democrats were unwilling to allow this, and with Stephen Douglas leading the anti-Lacompton Democrats, Congress shot it down for not being submitted to popular vote, a violation of his cherished popular sovereignty that Douglas continued to cling to even after the Dred Scott decision. So Congress proposed a compromise in April known as the English Bill. This bill would return the Lacompton Constitution to voters in Kansas. In the territory, slavery was still quite explicitly the issue of controversy, but in the English Bill, the resubmission was justified over a change in the public land that Kansas would receive. Kansas had asked for 23 million acres of land, which was pretty large, and the English Bill offered four million acres. So the English Bill was to accept statehood with the Lacompton Constitution and four million acres or wait until the population reached 93,000. It was a compromise in that pretty much guaranteed that Kansas would remain a territory for the foreseeable future. Once again, the can was kicked down the road. Obviously, the free-staters who now controlled the territorial government would not accept these terms, which everybody knew would be the case when the English Bill was offered. But at this point, it was clear to nearly everybody that when Kansas was admitted as a state, it would be a free state. If Dred Scott was a victory for the Southern slave owners, Kansas was a victory, at least a small victory for the anti-slavery people. Border violence between Kansas and Missouri would continue, but I'll return to that topic in the next season when I cover the Civil War itself. Now, in most histories of the antebellum period, the logical next step would be to talk about Harper's Ferry, but based on some questions I've seen about filibustering, being in nongovernmental invasions of other countries and the desire to annex Cuba, I think it might be worth exploring some events that are rarely included in the histories of the buildup to the Civil War. So I'm going to talk about the attempted conquest of Cuba by Narcisa Lopez and the brief conquest of Nicaragua by William Walker, neither of which were directly motivated by slavery or any other sectional controversy, but do end up tying into it anyway. The filibustering Cuba will be the topic of the next episode. 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