Cole Younger advertisement for lecture of his life story at Steger Opera House, Bonham, Texas in 1913. Fannin County (Texas) Historical Commission.
For some of Quantrill’s and “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s gangs, their Civil War adventures were but a beginning. Cole Younger and Frank and Jesse James achieved more fame or notoriety—depending on one’s point of view—after the Civil War. In one of the most famous crimes in American history, Cole Younger, his brothers Jim and Bob Younger, Frank and Jesse James, and several others attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield on September 7, 1876. Cole later wrote that they targeted this bank because they understood it was owned by two former Union generals, Benjamin Butler and Adelbert Ames. Whatever the reason, the attempted robbery was a complete disaster for the Younger-James Gang. Not intimidated by the outlaws, the townspeople grabbed their guns and started firing at the robbers from nearly everywhere. Two townspeople and two outlaws were killed, and a posse trapped and caught the three Younger brothers not far from the scene of the crime. All three pled guilty to avoid the noose. Cole survived his brothers, was released from prison in 1901, and made a nice living on the lecture circuit telling his life story until he died in 1916 at the age of seventy-two.
The James brothers managed to escape and made their way to Nashville, Tennessee. When the James brothers arrived in Nashville, they assumed new names and lived peaceful lives for the next three years. Jesse grew restless, though. He moved back to Missouri and organized a new gang and started robbing banks again. Two of his gang members were Bob and Charley Ford. Unbeknownst to Jesse, Bob Ford had a secret arrangement with the governor of Missouri, Thomas T. Crittenden—that he would bring in Jesse James for a reward. On April 3, 1882, while Jesse James was standing on a chair in his living room to clean a dirty picture hanging on the wall, Bob Ford shot him in the back. Jesse was thirty-four when he was killed. Frank decided he did not want to meet the same end as his younger brother, and five months after Jesse was killed, he surrendered to Governor Crittenden. He was tried and acquitted of several of his crimes. Frank James did a number of odd jobs for the remainder of his life, but he eventually returned to his family farm and charged twenty-five cents for tours of the famous outlaws’ home. He died there in 1915 at age seventy-two.
Frank James at age fifty-five, 1897. Library of Congress.
When John Geary left Kansas, he went first to Washington, DC, where he did his best to bring the nation’s attention to the perils in Kansas. He returned to his farm in Pennsylvania, remarried (his first wife died before he went to Kansas), and intended to lead a quiet life as a farmer. All of that changed with the outbreak of the Civil War. Geary raised the 147th and 28th Pennsylvania Infantry regiments and became colonel of the latter. He was soon promoted to the rank of brigadier general and led his troops against Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign in the Battle of Chancellorsville, in May 1863, and in the Battle of Gettysburg, defending the far right flank of the Union Army on Culp’s Hill. Later in 1863, his division was transferred to Chattanooga. In the Battle of Wauhatchie, Geary’s son, Edward, was wounded in the battle and died in his father’s arms. He distinguished himself in the Battle of Lookout Mountain, the entire Atlanta Campaign, Sherman’s March to the Sea, and the Carolinas Campaign. In his military service in the Mexican War and the Civil War, Geary was wounded ten times.
After the war, Geary returned to Pennsylvania as a war hero. He served two terms as the Republican governor of Pennsylvania from 1867 to 1873, and had a solid reputation for attacking the political influence of the railroads and vetoing many special-interest bills. On February 8, 1873, less than three weeks after leaving the governor’s post, Geary died from a heart attack while preparing breakfast for his infant son. He was fifty-three years old.
Late in the Civil War, Dr. Charles Jennison commanded a Kansas militia brigade in the action against Sterling Price in the battles of the Little Blue, Independence, Westport, Marais des Cygnes, Mine Creek, and Newtonia. After Price was pushed out of Missouri, however, Jennison returned to his old “Jayhawking” ways. He was court-martialed, found guilty, and cashiered out of the militia on June 23, 1865. He and his men were charged with burning the homes of defenseless women and children and hanging three men who claimed to be Union supporters. Following the war, Jennison settled in Leavenworth, Kansas. During his guerrilla days, he developed a keen eye for superior horseflesh. He bought a ranch and raised what were considered some of the finest race and trotter horses in the state. He also entered the political arena. He was elected to the city council, served for a time as the ex-officio mayor, then ran and won a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives in 1865, in which he served two terms. In 1871, he was elected and served one term in the Kansas Senate. He remained in Leavenworth, where he died in 1884.327
James Montgomery resigned from his Union commission, but agreed to again serve to drive out Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition in October 1864. Montgomery took command of the 6th Kansas Militia Regiment and saw action at the Battles of Big Blue, Westport, Mine Creek, and Marais des Cygnes. After the war, Montgomery returned to his farm in Linn County and also returned to his earlier profession as a preacher. He led the First Day Adventist church congregation in Linn County until his death in December 1871.
George Washington Brown was one of the most influential persons in Lawrence during the territorial period. His Herald of Freedom newspaper was the town’s principal news source in the 1850s. After the Lawrence Republican drove his paper out of business in 1859, he moved to and helped found the city of Emporia. In 1860, after Brown learned of George Bissell’s and Edwin L. Drake’s success in drilling for oil on Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania, he decided to try his hand at drilling for oil. He dug three moderately successful oil wells in Miami County, Kansas. In 1865, he left for the more lucrative oil fields of Pennsylvania, but did not stay long. After several months, he settled in Rockford, Illinois, where he lived for the remainder of his life. His principal activity was writing a biography of John Brown and about territorial Kansas. The remainder of his life turned out to be quite long—he died in February 1915 at the age of ninety-four.
John Speer felt the full brunt and pain of Quantrill’s Raid of 1863. His eldest son John was killed, and his son Robert was presumed burned in the Lawrence Republican office. As did many of his contemporaries, Speer dabbled in politics. He was a delegate to the 1864 national Republican convention, and voted to renominate Lincoln for President. Speer also served in both the Kansas Senate and House of Representatives, and he was appointed as the Kansas State Printer and a United States revenue collector. He further was instrumental in the establishment of the University of Kansas and Baker University. His first love, though, was managing newspapers and writing, which consumed most of the remainder of his life. One of his greatest passions was venerating his dear friend, James Lane. Speer wanted to do all he could to ensure that future Kansans would hold Lane in as high esteem as did he. So in 1897, he wrote and published the Life of Gen. James H. Lane, The Liberator of Kansas. Late in life, Speer moved to Denver to live with his daughter. There must have been something about newspaper work in Kansas, because, as with George Brown, Speer lived to the ripe old age of eighty-eight.
The other member of the early Lawrence newspaper triumvirate, Josiah Miller, left the newspaper business after the Border Ruffians destroyed his printing office and press. His paper had struggled anyway, so there was little incentive to get back into the business. Miller campaigned for John C. Frémont for president in 1856, then returned to Lawrence, where he became the probate judge for Douglas County. Miller was elected to the first Kansas State legislature, but resigned when he was appointed as the first Lawrence postmaster, which was a financially lucrative position. He was selected to the three-member committee to select the site for the University of Kansas. In 1863, Miller was appointed as paymaster for the army, with the rank of major. After the Civil War, Miller was a principal mover and sh
aker to rebuild Lawrence after the raid. He invested in and promoted the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad, and was a partner in the Lawrence Bridge Company as well as the Lawrence Dam Water Power and Manufacturing Company.
One of Josiah Miller’s most valuable contributions was the collection of letters he left behind: to his parents in South Carolina during his early time in Lawrence, and to his brother and others later. He was articulate and inclusive, and often he did not hold back on his passions, capturing the events of the times. Unlike the other early editors, Miller died at the relatively young age of forty-two in 1870, following surgery in St. Louis to amputate his leg.328
Samuel Walker, one of the ablest free-state military leaders, carried his military prowess into the Civil War. He rose up through the officer ranks, receiving a brevet (temporary) promotion to brigadier general. Mid-1865, Walker led the 16th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry on the ill-fated (for the whites, successful for the Indians) Powder River Expedition. The venture, under the overall command of Major General Grenville Dodge, was intended as a punitive attack on the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians. When the expedition ended, Walker led his troops back to Fort Laramie, where he and his soldiers mustered out of service.329
Following his Civil War service, Walker remained with the Kansas militia and rose to the rank of major general. He was elected sheriff of Douglas County, Lawrence City Marshal, and as a Republican to the Kansas State Senate. He remained in Lawrence for the remainder of his life and died in 1893.
John G. Haskell continued designing buildings in Kansas as the state architect and in his private practice. The National Register of Historic Places lists twelve structures designed by Haskell in its inventory for Kansas—everything from modest schoolhouses to the state capitol.330 He continued working up until his death in 1907 at age seventy-five. One building Haskell designed toward the end of his career that brought great satisfaction was the Douglas County (Kansas) Courthouse. The county never had its own county building until Haskell was selected as the architect and designed a building, which was completed in 1904.
The Reverend Dr. Richard Cordley left Lawrence in 1875 to pastor a Congregational church in Flint, Michigan. He remained in Flint for three years. He then returned to Kansas as the minister of the Congregational Church in Emporia, where he remained until 1884. Rev. Cordley returned to Plymouth Congregational Church in 1884, where he remained until his death in 1904. From contemporary accounts, at the end of his life he was afflicted with what he called “a creeping paralysis,” likely something such as Parkinson’s disease. To deliver his last sermon, shortly before he died, he had to be assisted to the pulpit.
Several years after his death, Rev. Cordley’s congregation published a collection of his sermons. From this sample, Rev. Cordley’s sermons were theologically sound, not long, and each offered practical advice to his parishioners. His style was to feed his congregation from the scripture, not to condemn them, and from the friendly way in which he spoke to his audience, it was clear that his church members loved him. But his influence went well beyond his congregation. At his memorial service, the Reverend Samuel A. Riggs, a fellow Congregational minister, offered the eulogy, saying that “of the men, young, vigorous, and strong, who came then [in the 1850s] no one has made a deeper and more enduring impression upon Lawrence and the State than Richard Cordley.”331
Notes
1 The basic framework established with the Northwest Ordinance has been the basis for admitting new states since 1787. Alaska and Hawaii, the two most recently admitted states, met milestones similar to those established by this ordinance.
2 William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler, The Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LLD (Cincinnati: Robert Clark and Company, 1888), 203–334. Rev. Cutler recorded his trip and his experiences in his journal. His grandchildren published his papers in 1888, and it is now available online at: https://books.google.com/books/about/Life_Journals_and_Correspondence_of_Rev.html?id=HRAXAAAAYAAJ.
3 Letter in its entirety can be found at: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html.
4 Quoted in: http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/kansas-nebraska-act-1854-popular-sovereignty-and-political-polarization-over-slavery.
5 Quoted in: https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/peoriaspeech.htm.
6 George Hilliard to Francis Lieber, June 1, 1854, cited in: James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 120.
7 Article IV, Section 2, paragraph 2 read: “No Person held to Service or Labor in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due.” The text of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 can be found at: avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/fugitive.asp.
8 Some estimates were as high as $100,000.
9 In this oft quoted letter, Lawrence goes on to say that he hopes the people of Massachusetts will “stand by the laws until they are repealed,” but he also noted that “Massachusetts never can be made hunting ground for masters to pursue their runaways.” Amos Adams Lawrence to Giles Richards, 1 June 1854, Amos Adams Lawrence Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston (Hereafter cited as Lawrence MSS); also quoted in Jane H. and William H. Pease, The Fugitive Slave Law and Anthony Burns: A Problem in Law and Enforcement (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1975), 53.
10 Taken from the Biographical Sketch for the Lawrence MSS.
11 Ibid., Diary entry 7 January 1854. One of his charities was to pay for relocating former slaves to Liberia, Africa. On January 27, 1854, he noted in his diary that he gave $2,400 to Mr. and Mrs. Appleton to send eighty former slaves to Liberia.
12 Statutes at Large, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 59, 277ff. The Kansas-Nebraska Act can be found at: http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=28.
13 Franklin Pierce was the nephew of Lawrence’s stepmother, Lawrence MSS, Diary, 13 April 1854.
14 Lawrence MSS, Diary, 30 May, 3 June 1854.
15 Ibid., 18, 25 June 1854.
16 William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: with Extracts from his Diary and Correspondence (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888), 78.
17 Eli Thayer, A History of the Kansas Crusade: Its Friends and Its Foes (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1889), 24.
18 Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence, 80-81.
19 Lawrence MSS, Diary, 19 August, 3 September 1854.
20 In 2003, Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons appointed a Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice to investigate and issue a public report on the University’s historical relationship to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. The committee produced Slavery and Justice report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, detailing the role of the Brown family in the slave trade, and the university’s role over time in confronting historical injustice and slavery’s legacy. The report can be found at: brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/documents/SlaveryAndJustice.pdf.
21 Webb’s letter is included in www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=show_transcript&document_id=100368SCREEN=search&submit=search&search=Thomas%20H.%20(Hopkins),%201801–1866%20Webb&startsearchat=0&searchfor=authors&printerfriendly=&county_id=&topic_id=&document_id=100368&selected_keyword=
22 www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=show_document&document_id=101815&SCREEN_FROM=search&submit=search&search=Thomas%20H.%20(Hopkins),%201801–1866%20Webb&startsearchat=0&searchfor=authors
23 Quoted in Samuel A. Johnson, The Battle Cry of Freedom: New England Emigrant Aid Company in the Kansas Crusade, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1950),14.
24 Hale’s book and its influence are described by Cora Dolbee in her 1933 article in the Kansas Historical Review. Cora Dolbee, “The First Book on Kansas: The Story of Edward Everett Hale�
��s ‘Kanzas and Nebraska,’” Kansas Historical Review 2 (May 1933), 139–181. An electronic version can be found at: www.kancoll.org/khq/1933/33_2_dolbee.htm.
25 Lawrence MSS, Diary, 28 October 1855; www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=view_image&file_name=h000436&document_id=100126&FROM_PAGE=; and http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=show_document&document_id=100125&SCREEN_FROM=search&submit=search&search=Lyman%20,%201775–1863%20Beecher&startsearchat=0&searchfor=authors
26 www.plymouthchurch.org/our_history.php
27 Sam Houston’s Speech Opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act (February 15, 1854), quoted in:
www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/documents/before/sam-houston-feb15–1854–1.html. President John F. Kennedy featured Sam Houston’s speech as a chapter in his Profiles in Courage. (New York: Harper Brothers, 1956), 93–109. As the only southern Senator to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, his action temporarily derailed his political career in Texas.
28 The 1854 treaty with the Delaware Indians can be found at: digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/del0614.htm; the 1829 treaty can be found at: digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/del0304.htm.
29 The entire “Plan of Operation” can be found at: www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=show_document&document_id=101532&SCREEN_FROM=keyword&selected_keyword=Massachusetts%20Emigrant%20Aid%20Company&startsearchat=5
30 Quoted in Don W. Wilson, Governor Charles Robinson of Kansas (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1975), 5.
31 Nicole Etcheson, “Labouring for the Freedom of This Territory: Free-State Kansas Women in the 1850s,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Plains 21 (Summer 1998), 77.
32 Biographical information from Ibid., 1–11.
33 Charles Robinson, The Kansas Conflict (New York: Harpers and Brothers, 1892), 69; cited from http://books.google.com/books?id=AvZ5AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
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