Bloody Dawn (5 page)

From the earliest days bondsmen looked upon Lawrence as the “city of freedom.” Unlike other states where runaways were forced to flee—Illinois, for instance, considered a bill to punish any black crossing its border with a fine, imprisonment, and thirty-nine lashes—Negroes here were greeted with open arms. In ten days during the winter over one hundred entered the town; on another day twenty-seven more followed; and on another day still jayhawkers escorted an additional throng of dancing and banjo-playing contrabands through the streets. Later, they came “thicker and faster until they were coming by scores”; so many, in truth, that some people “almost regretted” the city's reputation.
¹²
And yet, when the ledger was tallied, many would have it no other way. Even though the financial burden on the town was great, even though the reality of the black was not always what most imagined, there were the rewards as well. But more than any one factor, just the former slaves' presence in Lawrence was itself a reward, for here was undeniable proof that the war was indeed being won. And in essence each bondsman who successfully reached Lawrence was a walking, talking, laughing nay vote to rebellion and another scoop of sod on the grave of the South. This to the old-time New England stock was comfort and reward enough.

Although certainly the most valuable, chattel was not the only Missouri property to make its way to the town. Since the start of war and the first jayhawking sweeps across the border, Lawrence had been one of the prime recipients of Missouri loot. Early in the war returning raiders brought back carriages, pianos, furniture, silverware, linens, and anything else that was portable. Homes were suddenly and lavishly furnished; ladies appeared on the streets in new silk finery; farms were outfitted; even churches were adorned with the booty. Later, however, most of the plunder came on the hoof—horses and mules, cattle and sheep—brought out by men like George Hoyt and his Red Legs, or arriving with fugitive slaves, or as was often the case, herded along by common thieves. To “save their bacon,” most free-booters chose not to tarry in Lawrence but with a sly wink passed further west, beyond the law. Still, the city received more than its share of jayhawked contraband. Missouri owners had long ago ceased efforts to recover their livestock that had “strayed” the fifty miles to Lawrence—the few who did were run from town at gunpoint.

Certainly, some upright citizens recoiled at the thought of the thieving contagion spreading over their homes. But livestock nevertheless continued to find its way into local stables and barns, and for the great majority their sentiments were expressed thusly: “Horse hunters, from Missouri, must learn to talk less when they visit Lawrence; or the halter with which they hope to capture their stray horse, may be used to suspend an ass.”
¹³

Ever since the territorial days and the sack of 1856 there had been no question of the special hatred felt by Missourians for Lawrence. Life and progress would not permit the people to brood on the matter, yet the possibility of an attack never ventured far from their minds.

Unlike the harmless excitements of 1861, which stirred more thrill than alarm, the year 1862 gave rise to a host of terrifying rumors, threats, and panics. And the disheartening mire of Federal defeats in the East only compounded the gloom and made not only Kansas but all the Union seem agonizingly weak. Hardly had the new year begun when in March a band of men crossed the border and captured the village of Aubrey. Property was stolen and several men killed. In August Independence, Missouri, was taken by a small army of Rebels. Although the town was soon retaken and the secessionists scattered, Kansans increasingly began to regard the border with greater concern. And as fear grew so too did the demand for protection. But if speeches were long and promising, they were after all only speeches, and no military commander could seem to match his words with deeds. In September the heaviest blow to hit the state thus far came when a large party of guerrillas surrounded and sacked Olathe. Once again men were killed and a vast amount of property was stolen or destroyed; once again the raiders managed to escape unharmed. The sheer boldness of the attack—the capture of a small city ten miles inside the state line—spread panic up and down the border and started a frenzy of local defense measures.

“It is a very strange thing,” grumbled John Speer of the
Lawrence Republican
, “that … a few companies cannot be stationed along the border, to defend the wives and children of our soldiers from such raids.”
¹⁴

“Place that force there and then we can retire to rest at night,” echoed a correspondent from Olathe, a witness to the raid. “Men of Lawrence,” he warned, “your turn may come next.… Join with us in getting a protection for our common border. Ask for that protection from the commander of the department.”
¹⁵

Then during the next month Shawnee, a dozen miles southwest of Kansas City, was looted and burned. As Kansans once more ran for cover, James Blunt, the man most accountable, was cudgeled as an incompetent, a fool, a “knave,” an officer whose “dabbling in politics” had allowed the cities in his district to go up in flames while at the same time his troops were “rusting out with inaction.”
¹⁶

The pulse quickened at Lawrence, where the drills and watching of hundreds of militiamen had never really ceased.
¹⁷
Shops closed, meals were missed, sleep was lost, and although it was unnecessary for Speer to remind his readers yet again, he did anyway: “Unless we are
well prepared
, these fellows may make a desperate push some night, and pay us a visit of a most disastrous nature.”
¹⁸

Throughout the last weeks of October 1862 and into November each sundown in Lawrence kindled fear and fresh rumors of attack—some tales were as nebulous as the minds that inspired them, yet all were sufficient to keep the town in a habitual, weary state of alarm. It was in this climate, when every ominous report and every destroyed town seemed yet another signpost on the road to Lawrence, that an “extra stirring up” came and flung the city into the wildest panic ever.

At 10:00
P.M.
on November 2, the mayor received information from a “most reliable source” stating that for some time now spies had been nosing about the town looking for weaknesses in the city's defense; supposedly upon finding them, they quickly relayed the word to Missouri bushwhackers. At that very moment, the informant added, the Rebels were on the move. A general alarm was sounded, and instantly the darkened town sprang to life. Within an hour thirteen militia companies replete with cannon, bayonets, and Sharp's carbines, plus every other excited man or boy who could wield a weapon, were in their places. For early warning three cordons of pickets were looped around the city, the farthest fifteen miles out. On into the night and following day the people waited anxiously for the first shot that would signal the attack—but it never came. And although later in the week George Hoyt and his boys rode into town and agreed that the report was true, it proved in the end, like all the others, just another false alarm.
¹⁹

Finally, the harsh Western winter, as it had the year before, shut the door on the border war, easing tensions throughout the state. Although the holiday season carried on much as it always had and the war seemed at times far removed from Lawrence, the failure of Federal arms had an awful way of breaking through even the most tranquil surroundings. After Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville—national disasters both—a gloom blanketed the North, and hopes of peace and a restored Union appeared more elusive than ever. And Kansans looked upon the coming summer with a dread unequalled at any time in the past. For after the fury of 1862, an adage had been coined along the border:
As the grass commences growing the guerrillas will be raising
. It was a phrase truer than most would care to admit.

“There are mysterious movements all about us,” whispered Hovey Lowman's
Journal
in early May 1863, as around the state spring burst to maturity. For several days residents along the route had noticed small knots of tough-looking, well-armed strangers
drifting down the Santa Fe Road, less than a dozen miles south of Lawrence. Concern mounted and citizens stood nightly guard at the towns along the trail.

“Are they guerrillas?” asked the uneasy editor.
²⁰
A few days later Lowman's answer was in the headlines:

GUERRILLAS!

THE BOLDEST RAID YET!!
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As Dick Yager and his gang worked their destructive way back to Missouri from Diamond Springs, news spread outward like cracks from a fissure. And suddenly it was 1862 all over again. Once more Lawrence men sprang from homes and businesses to patrol the outskirts of town, to march and drill and target practice. An independent company of pursuit scouts was urged, two score daring horsemen to strike as lightning when the next Rebel force neared Lawrence.
²²
But although attention might be riveted momentarily on immediate threats, no one really lost sight of the big picture, and through all the fear and rage the same old complaint surfaced again and again: Why was Kansas allowed to suffer from raids such as this when the remedy was simple? A border guard!

“A small force permanently located along the border … will be all sufficient to make inhabitants safe in their property and persons,” pleaded the
Journal
. And once the military realized this and acted upon it, said Lowman, “no band of Missouri cut-throats … will risk their skins on the Kansas side of the line.”
²³

Some hope was raised when Gov. Thomas Carney received permission to organize a body of militia to watch the state line. Although well intentioned, the inadequacies of the gesture quickly became evident: without state or federal aid the governor was forced to dig into his own pocket. How long one man could support the guard was questionable. Then, to the dismay of Kansans, the unit itself was grossly undermanned—not the regiment asked for but a mere one hundred and fifty men strung out to cover an area requiring a force ten times that number.
²⁴

In early June 1863, when word reached Lawrence that Shawnee had once more been sacked and four men killed, the alarm was again sounded. And with this grim news came the even grimmer understanding that only the people themselves could ensure their own safety, and to rely on the military would prove the greatest of follies. At this moment, not only did the summer of 1863 appear a reflection of the previous year, but all signs pointed to an even more disastrous time ahead as well. By June the wearied town had become so accustomed to rumors and alarms as to be “almost unaffected” by them.
²⁵
The pickets simply kept the same monotonous watch on the same roads and horizons they had watched for the past two years, and the tired militia marched and drilled and performed their same old duty, a duty which seemed to have no end.

Then, just when the clouds were darkest and most forbidding, the skies began to clear and the first faint glimmers of light shone through. To the applause of all, the “amiable imbecile,” James Blunt, was removed, and in his place came one of the brightest young stars of Kansas, Tom Ewing. Hope soared just as it always had when a change was made, but in this instance the feeling was naturally more pronounced. As he seemed able to do almost everywhere, Ewing hailed Lawrence on a positive note, for when appeals were made for troops to relieve the citizens of their nightly watch, a squad under Lt. T. J. Hadley was promptly sent over.
²⁶
Into the last weeks of June anxious citizens watched intently while Ewing's rugged soldiers smoothly and swiftly went about their jobs. Old doubters began to take heart and smile once again.

“In justice to General Ewing,” commented Lowman's
Journal
, “we must say that the bushwhackers are now unusually quiet on the border.”
²⁷

It remained to be seen how his policies would affect the future of Kansas, but as they had with his predecessor, Lowman and all Lawrence men were quick to remind the general that even if Missouri Rebels were killed by the wagon load, Kansas would never be completely safe until Federal troops held the line. “It is by far the best way to protect our borders,” argued the editor. “We must have troops continually there.… Kansas soldiers can be trusted there.”
²⁸

Most Kansans, although optimistic, held a wait-and-see attitude. In the meanwhile, Lawrence militiamen continued to march, drill, and keep their powder dry.

Even in Kansas, however, no amount of local news could shade the fateful drama being acted out in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. Although the stranglehold applied by U. S. Grant was tightening, the Rebel defenders of Vicksburg yet bid defiance from their river fortress. Even more ominous, Robert E. Lee was taking the sting of war to the untouched North, driving for the heartland of Pennsylvania. Anxiously, the people awaited the results and prayed for the sounds of victory.

Those sounds came on July 4, 1863, when with a mighty roar the tide turned against the South. Lee, beaten and lame, retreated south from Gettysburg never to return. And when Vicksburg fell not only
had Grant split the Confederacy in twain but he had once and for all secured the vital Mississippi Valley. Where token triumphs would have been most welcome and brought a shout to a troubled North, real, sweeping victories now came in a rush. After a grinding, futile two years of conflict, men were stunned that the course of war could change so swiftly and with such portentious results. From that day forward nevermore did thinking men doubt the outcome.

Throughout the North the summer war news brought one cheer after another. And news less earthshaking but fully as joyous, at least in Kansas, was confirmation that the border guard, so long desired, so long denied, had finally been established. With that, Kansans knew they at last had a man who saw the situation exactly as they did, the “live” man all had prayed for. As the days passed and no new calamity rippled the calm, it soon became obvious that all the earlier predictions were correct—the border guard was the answer and Ewing the general to put it through.