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reached, the resolutions passed unanimously, and there followed cheers long and loud. Why these law-makers applauded it would be difficult to say. They had not read the voluminous report upon which the resolutions were alleged to be based. If it were true that the executive had brought disgrace upon the state and ought to be driven from office, that would be poor cause for any outbreak of jubilation. When at a later stage specific articles of impeachment against the governor came before the House the unanimity gave way, and seven representatives are on record as voting against them. So far as Robinson was concerned the prosecution broke down, and he was almost unanimously acquitted, though a majority of the Senate belonged to the Lane faction.
That a rank growth of general freebooting should have sprung up in Kansas during the war was no more than might have been expected. The border naturally attracts men adapted to shine in this calling, and the territorial period afforded admirable training for the wider field of spoliation opened by the war for the Union. Early in the struggle an organization appeared known as "Red-legs," from the fact that its members affected red morocco leggings. It was a loose-jointed association, with members shifting between twenty-five and fifty, dedicated originally to the vocation of horse-stealing, but flexible enough to include rascalities of every description.
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At intervals the gang would dash into Missouri, seize horses and cattle -- not omitting other and worse outrages on occasion -- then repair with their booty to Lawrence, where it was defiantly sold at auction. "Red-legs were accustomed to brag in Lawrence," says one who was familiar with their movements, "that nobody dared to interfere with them. They did not hesitate to shoot inquisitive and troublesome people. At Lawrence the livery stables were full of their stolen horses. One day I saw three or four Red-legs attack a Missourian who was in town searching for lost property. They gathered about him with drawn revolvers and drove him off very unceremoniously. I once saw Hoyt, the leader, without a word of explanation or warning, open fire upon a stranger quietly riding down Massachusetts Street. He was a Missourian whom Hoyt had recently robbed." The gang contained men of the most desperate and hardened character, and a full recital of their deeds would sound like the biography of devils. Either the people of Lawrence could not drive out the freebooters, or they thought it mattered little what might happen to Missouri disloyalists. Governor Robinson made a determined, but unsuccessful effort to break up the organization. The Red-legs repaid the interference by plots for his assassination, which barely miscarried.
In the destruction of Lawrence August 21st,
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1863, the irregular, predatory hostilities of the border reached a shocking climax. The causes which brought about that event were various, and have been in the main already indicated -- the campaign of Lane's brigade, the depredations of Red-legs, enmities and exasperations dating back to the settlement of Lawrence in 1854, as well as ordinary bushranging motives of plunder. "Jennison has laid waste our homes," was the declaration of more than one Missourian on the day of the massacre, "and the Red-legs have perpetrated unheard-of crimes. Houses have been plundered and burned, defenseless men shot down, and women outraged. We are here for revenge -- and we have got it!"
Quantrill, who led the raid, once lived in Lawrence -- a dullish, sullen, uninteresting knave, giving no promise of unusual bushranging genius. Just before the war opened he was driven from town in consequence of some misbehavior, and cast his lot among Missouri guerrillas. The stimulus of the great conflict developed in him unexpected capacities for marauding. He was eager to cross swords with Lane. "I should like to meet him," he said. "But then there would be no honor in whipping him. He is a coward. I believe I would cowhide him."
In 1862 and the earlier months of 1863 several of the smaller Kansas towns along the Missouri line -- Aubrey, Shawnee, and Olathe -- were
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sacked by ruffians under Quantrill's lead. Governor Thomas Carney, who succeeded Governor Robinson January 1st, 1863, was uneasy, and vainly importuned the War Department for more troops. In May he visited the Southern border, where he found everything in confusion, and the whole region defenseless. There was no money in the state treasury. April 6th, 1862, Lane and eight of his friends addressed a communication to the secretary of war and the secretary of the treasury, protesting "against the payment of the money due to the State of Kansas for expenses in organizing volunteer troops for the service of the United States," and were able to stop it. In the emergency Governor Carney raised one hundred and fifty mounted men for police duty, and paid expenses out of his own pocket.
That Quantrill meditated striking a blow at Lawrence some time was well known. There were alarms, citizens organized for defense, and kept a sharp lookout for the ruffian, but the bushrangers did not appear when they were expected, vigilance relaxed, and a fatal sense of security followed panic.
Quantrill's preliminary movements were not wholly enveloped in mystery. Intelligence that great activity prevailed among his forces, and that he was planning a dash into Kansas, reached federal headquarters at Kansas City, Mo., but no at. tension was paid to it. Had scouts been
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dispatched to exposed towns and warned them of danger the raid would have failed.
Late on the afternoon of August 20th Quantrill, with perhaps one hundred and seventy-five mounted men, crossed the Missouri line into Kansas. In Aubrey, five miles distant, there was a federal force of one hundred dragoons commanded by Captain J. A. Pike. It was not until half-past seven in the evening that the tardy scouts brought in news of the guerrillas' whereabouts. Captain Pike dispatched couriers to Kansas City, thirty-five miles distant, who arrived at half-past eleven o'clock. Couriers might have reached Lawrence, a ride of forty miles, about midnight, and in that case the bushrangers would have encountered a warm reception. Or had Captain Pike instantly started in pursuit, hanging upon their rear, dogging their movements with menace if not attack, Lawrence would have been saved.
It was nearly sunrise when Quantrill halted on a little swell of the plain about a mile eastward from the doomed town. Not a whisper of his approach had reached it. Yet though the surprise promised to be complete, the cowardly raiders hesitated -- declined to go farther. A discussion ensued, which was ended by Quantrill's avowal that he should go into Lawrence whatever his men might do. This declaration revived their fainting courage.
The bushrangers advanced within half a mile of
.
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the town, halted again, and called the roll. Two horsemen, dispatched on a reconnaissance, rode through the principal street, and returned with the report that the village was asleep. A strange fatality of success attended the movements of the guerrillas. They rode "leisurely from their hiding- place in Missouri through the federal lines, and almost within shooting distance of a federal camp in the day-time," says H. E. Lowman in his "Lawrence Raid"; "then just as leisurely made their way over forty miles of traveled road through Kansas settlements in the night, and halted -- called the roll in the early dawn within pistol-shot of the houses of residents of Lawrence, and yet no warning voice ... rang through her quiet streets -- 'Quantrill is coming.'"
There was a wild charge upon the village. The flying column of one hundred and seventy-five men riding with perfect horsemanship, yelling like demons, emitted one continuous, death-dealing volley as it dashed along. "I can still see the raiders," said an eye-witness of the scene years after the fatal morning, "as they stormed into town with their broad-brimmed hats -- much like those which cowboys wear on the plains -- with their unshaven beards and long hair, their dirty, greasy flannel shirts -- coatless, and carrying no weapons except side-arms."
While skirmishers instantly and completely enveloped the village, the main body pushed on to
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seize the Eldridge House, a substantial brick building four stories high, which could have been successfully defended by a dozen armed and resolute men against the attacks of horsemen whose heaviest ordnance was revolvers. But weapons for the citizens there were. none. A fussy, overconfident mayor had locked them up safely and inaccessibly in the arsenal. At the hotel resistance was apparently anticipated. The bushrangers drew up in front of it -- surveyed it curiously, doubtfully. Presently a window was flung up, a white sheet displayed, and Quantrill summoned. Surrender speedily followed upon condition that the inmates of the hotel, who were mostly strangers, should be protected. A gong was sounded through the halls to collect them for convoy to the Whitney House, where Quantrill had established his headquarters. Mistaking the clangor for a signal of attack the ruffians hastily fell back. But finding their fears without foundation, and all likelihood of concerted resistance at an end, they broke up into small companies, scoured the town in literal and hearty obedience to the order -- "Kill every man and burn every house."
Then began a scene that cannot be matched on the border, crimsoned as it is with blood -- a scene far surpassing Dutch Henry's Crossing and Marais des Cygnes in scope of death-dealing passion -- a scene which, like the massacre of
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Enniscorthy, "swallowed up all distinct or separate features in its frantic confluence of horrors." Then began a terrible exhibition of what is best and worst in human nature -- rapacious cupidities of successful pillage; cowering, palsied panic; courage that defied and cursed the villains to their faces; flight, aimless and headlong or watchful and stealthy; pitiless revenge stung by memory of wrongs still fresh and rankling; affection that freely and gladly braved death; pistol-shots , tho clatter of horsemen riding furiously; the groans of the dying, and the roar of conflagration. With few exceptions the bushrangers seemed to be dehumanized and transformed into the image of devils. The divine nature of love and mercy, if it ever existed, passed away, and the fiendish nature took its place. Stores, banks, hotels, and dwellings they rifled and then set them on fire. Citizens of the town were hunted like wild beasts and shot down indiscriminately. They pursued Red-legs with particular earnestness, and showed them no mercy when captured. Nor did they neglect to search attentively though vainly for Lane and the thrifty chaplain of his brigade. But the wrath of the raiders burned without nice distinction or qualification against all the male inhabitants of Lawrence, of whom one hundred and eighty-three fell victims in the butchery.
The heroism and fertility of resources shown by women of Lawrence on this day of blood are
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worthy of mention. At no other crisis of Kansas history does their service come into such bold and brilliant relief -- of which only an instance or two can be set down here. Four wretches, crazed with drink, rode to the Whitney House, swearing they would shoot some one -- it didn't matter much whom. A young woman offered herself, remarking, "They might as well kill me" -- an act of daring that temporarily arrested their murderous designs. Another woman fairly magnetized a brace of ruffians, and saved her husband's life by charm of manner and tact of conversation. A third, whose husband was particularly obnoxious to the bushrangers, and whom they were anxious to catch, gave him opportunity to escape by noticing that the leader of the gang detailed to shoot him and burn his house wore a flower in his hat. "Good morning," she said cheerfully; "you have come to see my flowers" -- the front yard was full of them. "They are fine," he said, looking about with evident admiration. "They are too d -- d pretty to be burnt. I 'll shoot the man that touches them. March on!"
When the work of butchery and destruction was finished Quantrill took a lunch at the Whitney House, and ordered the bushrangers to retire. "Ladies," said he, politely lifting his hat and bowing, "I now bid you good morning. I hope when we meet again it will be under more favorable circumstances!" .
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It was a sickening scene from which the guerrilla chief galloped away -- the town in flames, the principal street lined with corpses, many of them so charred and blackened that they were at first mistaken for negroes. "In handling the dead bodies," said one of the survivors, "pieces of roasted flesh would remain in our hands. Soon our strength failed us in this terrible and sickening work. Many could not help crying like children."
Early in the forenoon the bushrangers were retreating toward Missouri, freshly mounted on stolen horses, and heavily accoutred with spoils. Between nine and ten o'clock citizens who survived the butchery began to rally, and a small company under the lead of Lane, who happened to be in town, gave chase. The pursuers, whose numbers were slenderly recruited as they advanced, overtook Quantrill about noon near Brooklyn, halted, got into line, were counted, and found to number thirty-five men. They were mounted on beasts of every sort -- mules, half-trained colts, and slow- paced draft-horses, as well as animals of higher grade. Nor were their weapons less various than their steeds. Lane put Lieutenant J. K. Rankin in command, who attempted to execute a Bank movement by way of Prairie City and cut off Quantrill's retreat into Missouri. The little company was only fairly in motion when a courier rode up with the message -- "Major Plumb is
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yonder with two hundred and fifty men and sent me to notify you." "Tell the major that Quantrill is just beyond us on the prairie, and that we shall attack him at once."
The enemy were less than a mile away, and Lieutenant Rankin ordered a charge upon the rear- guard. Possibly half of the intervening space had been traversed, when the lieutenant found himself almost alone. As each trooper had a gait and speed of his own, the company was scattered at irregular intervals along the line of advance, and from a military point of view did not present a very formidable appearance.
Major Plumb's force divided, one company moving upon Quantrill's rear, and the other upon his flank. Lieutenant Rankin, seeing that little could be expected from his thirty-five stragglers, joined the former company, which had ridden within striking distance of the bushrangers, and ordered a charge, but the valiant troopers declined to make it. Soon Lane came up and repeated the command, -- with no better result. Major Plumb shortly arrived with his division, and there was still opportunity to ride down the marauders. The federal commander hesitated and missed his opportunity. Pursuit continued into Missouri, reprisals were made, and three or four border count ties, in obedience to General Thomas Ewing Jr.'s famous order No. 11, largely depopulated -- but the desperadoes escaped.!
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When the full extent of the massacre dawned upon the survivors, there rose a frantic reaction toward revenge. Woe to the man within reach upon whom suspicion of confederacy with the marauders might fall. Had the troops who brought them to bay on the prairies fully appreciated the enormity of their crimes, possibly the hideous knowledge might have strung their courage up to the fighting point. However that may have been, the spectacle of sons, brothers, fathers, neighbors, slaughtered with every aggravation of cowardly brutality -- of a town completely wrecked and given over to the torch -- kindled the dead coals of desperation and revenge. There was a luckless wight -- Jake Callew by name -- against whom lay suspicions of playing the spy in the interest of Quantrill -- suspicions vague, indirect, unevidenced, but sufficient to rouse a mob that would listen to no appeals deprecating violence, or pleading for delay.
"The sea enraged is not half so deaf."
The mob seized Callew and arraigned him before an extemporized court. A verdict was rendered that the evidence did not prove his guilt. "You have heard the verdict," said the judge, addressing the frenzied rout. "Now, gentlemen, what will you do with the prisoner?" "Hang him," was the quick response. Preparations for the gibe bet went on apace. It occurred to somebody that
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the doomed man might need the consolations of religion. Among the spectators a clergyman was discovered. 'c You had better make your peace with God for you don't stand much chance with this crowd," said the clergyman. "You need n't trouble yourself about my soul," the unappreciative sinner replied. "How do you like that, old fellow," broke in the hangman as he gave a tug at the rope and swung the poor wretch into eternity!
The destruction of Lawrence did not allay the feuds among Kansas officials. Lane's relations with Governor Carney ran through the entire gamut of variation from friendship to hostility, from hostility to confidential intimacy. He still struggled for absolute control of the military patronage of the state, and generally carried his point. Carney determined to make an end of this discreditable business -- a senator of Kansas usurping the functions of the governor of Kansas. "No governor with a proper self-respect," he wrote President Lincoln ... could or would tolerate such interference. What other loyal state has been thus humiliated? ... Kansas stands alone. I claim for her that she shall be the equal of the proudest of them.... I ask the revocation of the power conferred on J. H. Lane as recruiting commissioner." This letter Governor Carney followed up by an interview with President Lincoln, at the conclusion of which he addressed the following note to Secretary Stanton, dated Washington,
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May 28th, 1864: "Please see and hear the governor of Kansas with Judge Williams and Mr. Vaughn. Will we not, at last, be compelled to treat the governor of Kansas as we do other governors about raising and commissioning troops? I think it will have to be so." Governor Carney delivered this note in person to Secretary Stanton who read it, tore it in two, and said angrily -- "Tell the president that I am secretary of war." Carney turned on his heel. "Wait," said Stanton, in a milder tone. "What do you want?" An understanding was reached, and henceforth the governor of Kansas was to be treated like other governors.
After the Lawrence raid Kansas experienced no general upheaval until the attempted invasion of General Sterling Price, who led a daring expedition, in the autumn of 1864, from Arkansas across the State of Missouri, living upon the country through which he passed, remounting his cavalry with fresh horses, threatening St. Louis, then deflecting toward Jefferson City, and pushing on to the Kansas line before his advance was successfully arrested. Great alarm prevailed. October 8th Governor Carney called out the entire militia. Ten thousand six hundred men responded, and were mostly concentrated in the neighborhood of Kansas City -- a gallant, but undisciplined force. The battles at Lexington, along the Little Blue and the Big Blue, demonstrated
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their inability to cope with Price. The arrival of General Pleasanton on the 22d with seven thousand cavalry and eight pieces of artillery put a new face upon the campaign. On the next day the battle of Westport was fought, and the bold raiders turned southward in confusion. Their retreat scurried along the border, bending into Linn County, zigzagging toward Fort Scott, then turning eastward and southward until it crossed the Arkansas.
The expedition of Price was the last Confederate foray into Kansas. A long series of Missouri invasions closed with his retreat across the Arkansas. Bushrangers, jayhawkers, Red-legs, who played so prominent and so protracted a part on the stage of local history, now make a leisurely exit.
The first five years of Kansas history after admission to the Union were years of intrigue, confusion, alarm, and guerrillaism. With the wounds of the territorial struggle unhealed, with a heavy percentage of the population under arms, with the streams of immigration almost completely dried up, it was not possible that Kansas should make material or social progress while the war for the Union continued. The forces of repair and development were unequal to the waste.
The man who figured so largely in Kansas affairs during the rebellion did not long survive its close. When the Republican party broke with President Johnson, Lane declined to join in the
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attack upon him. This step gave offense to former friends. "So far as I am concerned," he said in the Senate April 6th, 1866, "I propose to-day and hereafter to take my position alongside the president." His course disposed Republican senators to investigate discreditable rumors about him that filled the air. Charges of corruption in connection with Indian contracts had been made vaguely in the public prints against some unnamed senator. "I propose to fill up the hiatus," wrote the Washington correspondent of the Boston "Commonwealth," "and let the public know . that the charge refers to Senator James H. Lane." Governor Carney, whose relations with Lane were now on a confidential footing, happened to be at his lodgings when the mail arrived containing a copy of the "Commonwealth" -- which he read and then handed to Carney. "Oh, that 's nothing," said Carney, cheerfully. "You have been charged with about everything on the face of the earth. That doesn't amount to much." "Does n't amount to much!" Lane repeated in a very excited and tragic manner. The next morning Carney returned and found Lane in a pitiable plight -- half-clad, his hair erect and bristling, his small, sunken, snaky eyes burning like live coals, his "sinister face, plain to ugliness," figured over with desperation, and raving that two sunshine friends whom he suspected of treachery must be sent for at once, the
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one to receive a challenge, the other a cowhiding. The gentlemen present -- Perry Fuller, the Indian trader in whose government contracts Lane was accused of having pecuniary interest, Major Heath, and Governor Carney -- bestirred themselves to refute the newspaper charges. Major Heath wrote an elaborate oath denying that Lane ever had financial transactions with Fuller of greater magnitude than house-renting, and Fuller signed it. Then something must be done about the Senate. Lane felt that he could not take his seat again without a personal explanation. As he was incapable of doing the work himself in his distraught condition, Carney and Heath, who did not then know all the facts, wrote out a short speech, pronouncing the "imputation conveyed by innuendo and indirection in the Boston 'Commonwealth' ... a baseless calumny.'' On the following day -- May 29th -- Lane read this speech from manuscript in the Senate, and shortly afterward returned to his lodgings. "The speech," he said, "was just the thing. It was one of the happiest little efforts of my life."
June 11th Lane obtained leave of absence for ten days, subsequently prolonged until the close of the session, to visit Kansas, where such was the hostility which grew out of his alliance with President Johnson, he met a cold and hostile reception. Old acquaintances passed him on the street without recognition, and political conventions
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denounced him. It was a reception far different from what had awaited him in other days. "When Lane," said the "Leavenworth Daily Conservative" January 28th, 1862, "touches this soil, which his own courage, his own strategy, his own unconquerable perseverance saved for freedom, a glorious halo surrounds his head, a sub lime inspiration fills his eye, a splendid glow lights up his countenance!"
After Lane's personal explanation in the Senate Carney made a visit of some days to New York. Upon his return to Washington he met Senator Trumbull, chairman of the Senate committee on Indian affairs, who showed him the copartnership papers of the Indian traders, Fuller & Co., in which Lane's name appeared, and a canceled check on E. H. Gruber & Co., of Leavenworth, which proved that he had received twenty thousand dollars from the concern. Spending a few unhappy days in Kansas -- doubly unhappy in the case of one so eager for the applause of men, so ambitious
" To live on their tongues and be their talk," --
Lane set out for Washington. He reached St. Louis on the 19th of June. There he met Governor Carney, and the whole situation was discussed -- the fatal papers in Senator Trumbull's possession, and the exasperation of Republican congressmen. "Do you think," he asked, "that I had better resign? Do you suppose Johnson
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would give me a foreign mission? Could I be confirmed?" No light of hope appeared, "freaking gloom with glow." Lane returned to Leavenworth, where on the 1st of July he placed a pistol in his mouth and discharged it. Though the bullet passed through the brain, such was his vitality, he survived ten days.
No more unscrupulous soldier of fortune ever posed before the public than James H. Lane. He possessed in large measure the qualities that find a congenial and successful field in border turmoils. Of a slight and wiry figure, he had remarkable physical endurance. When removed from leadership of the overland ``Northern army" in 1856, he set off immediately from Nebraska for Lawrence. Riding night and day, he arrived at his destination alone, and without apparent fatigue. His half-dozen companions, including Captain Samuel Walker and Old John Brown, all gave out by the way.
Lane was a confusion of passions grossly but not wholly ignoble. "Nobody can study his face," says Mrs. Ropes in her vivacious "Six Months in Kansas," "without a sensation very much like that with which one stands at the edge of a slimy, sedgy, uncertain morass." Conscienceless and with little confidence in the truth; selfish, grasping to the last degree, though at times and by spasms alive with seeming generosity and public spirit; watching the vanes of popular sentiment
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and veering with them, though occasionally showing unexpected boldness and obstinacy of opinion; attracting men and managing them con. summately; able to pay heaviest obligations in the cheap coin of promises; indomitably persistent; cowardly and courageous by turn; a merciless enemy, but faithful to friends where personal interest did not require their sacrifice, Lane belonged to the basest, most mischievous class of politicians.
As a stump speaker he had no equal on the border. `'I heard him at Nebraska City in 1856, before a hostile audience," says T. W. Higginson, "and if eloquence consists in moving and swaying men at pleasure I never saw a more striking exhibition of it." Lane's oratory faithfully reflected the character of the man, in which elements of chaos and lunacy were bound up with extraordinary astuteness and knowledge of human nature. It owed little to elocutionary grace. His manner was strained, angular, and dramatic, while his voice vibrated between shouts and blood-curdling whispers. Neither weight of thought, nor subtlety of logic, nor elevation of sentiment, nor exceptional range of vocabulary, appeared in his oratory. Lane was an unlettered man. In his hands rules of grammar fared badly. His knowledge came from observation rather than from books. Types can do only scant justice to oratory that is essentially personal, and hence his speeches lose in
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print. Skillful adaptation to time and place; sure tact in humoring the prejudices and firing the passions of an audience; unmeasured invective; an intensity of utterance that sometimes reached the verge of frenzy; grotesque, extravagant, ringing turns of phrase, and what, in the absence of a better word, is called magnetism, seem to be the capital elements of Lane's singularly effective speech.
That the harm which such a man does to a commonwealth must largely exceed the service is only too evident. Lane's energy, enthusiasm, and eloquence were conspicuous in the territorial struggle, but even then these admirable qualities had a serious offset in his restless jealousy, intrigue, and rashness. The free-state cause would not have been safe in his hands an hour at any critical juncture. But if the evil was checked and mitigated at first by the necessities of the situation, when Lane reached the United States Senate and gained the ear of the administration, then his wretched policies and ambitions had ample sea-room -- policies and ambitions that debauched the political morals of the commonwealth and drew upon it a grievous train of calamities.
Note to page 289. Capt. El. E. Palmer at Weston, Mo., with 130 men, received notice of Quantrill's movements at 11 o'clock P. M., started for Lawrence, but was ordererd to proceed to Little Santa Fe. -- Kansas Historical Collections, vol. vi. p. 313.
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