Free or Slave?
The question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state probably crossed everyone’s mind who came to the Territory in the 1850s. The future of the Territory was widely debated in the national press, Congressional halls, and in settlers’ personal correspondence. Although the slavery issue was not solved for the nation until the end of the Civil War in 1865, voters determined Kansas would enter the Union free of slavery in the highly-contested elections of 1857 and 1858. Through it all, Johnson County was right in the middle of the hot seat.
Bleeding Kansas
Proslavery groups from neighboring Missouri rode west through Johnson County without disturbing its mostly-sympathetic residents. These bushwhackers or “border ruffians” were usually enroute to Lawrence and other Free-State towns or settlements, where they pillaged stores and ransacked or burned homes. Vengeful free-staters, also known as Redlegs or Jayhawkers, as well as Abolitionists boldly traversed Johnson County to repay their Missouri neighbors. The border ruffians’ raid on Lawrence in 1856 and John Brown’s especially bloody retaliation at Pottawatomie Creek earned Kansas the nickname, “Bleeding Kansas.” These violent exchanges set off a two-year civil war to determine the destiny of Kansas Territory.
Geography and politics combined to place Johnson County in a precarious position during the 1850s and much of the 1860s. Its location along the Missouri border, where legal slaveholding ended, turned it into a battlefield. Free-State, Abolitionist, and Proslavery settlers fought to control the region.
As usual, politics complicated things even further. In the 1830s, Christian missionaries and United States government agents settled in the region, hoping to prepare the Shawnee and other Native Americans for life beyond the Indian reservation. In Johnson County alone, three sets of missionaries vied for Shawnee souls, while government agents and speculators devised new ways to take their land.
Popular Sovereignty
Amidst the turmoil over Indian lands came the slavery debate. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 brought it all to a head. This legislation established the region as a new territory open for settlement. The question was: would the new territories be free or slave? To gain support from the northern states, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois crafted the “popular sovereignty” rule, to allow voters of each territory to determine their own standing as a slave or free state. It was generally accepted that the Kansas Territory would be populated by slave-owning settlers, thus adding another slave state at the national level of government. (Nebraska was presumed to be a slave-free state.) Presented as a “democratic” way to preserve the balance of power in Congress, popular sovereignty essentially served as a loophole that produced a proslavery government in Kansas Territory.
Before the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, slaveholding was illegal in Kansas Territory. However, slaves were present in what became Johnson County by the 1830s. A Quaker missionary wrote this account of the “peculiar” situation in 1847:
…there are not more than twenty slaves in this region; but if there was only one, it would be a grievance calling for redress….one of the chiefs among the Shawnees owns a number of slaves….But it is whitemen in the service of the Government of the United States and missionaries, that have introduced slavery here.
Slavery in Kansas Territory was legalized in 1855 when proslavery residents, including the county’s namesake, fraudulently elected a government sympathetic to its views. Thomas Johnson was elected president of the Territorial Legislature and set up headquarters at the Methodist Mission in Johnson County. Free-State settlers countered this proslavery government with one of their own, and gathered in Topeka. Technically, this government was illegal, since President Pierce chose to recognize the proslavery regime, despite its shady origins.
Once the chaotic situation in Kansas was know, settlers quickly moved into the new territory and spent the next two to three years battling out popular sovereignty. Small-scale slaveholders came primarily from Missouri and other slave states such as Tennessee and Kentucky to stake their claims and their eligibility to vote. Abolitionist New Englanders sponsored settlement parties to save the region from slavery. Free-Staters came from the northern states of Indiana, Iowa, and Illinois. This group represented small-scale farmers who did not want slavery extended beyond the southern states, mainly for economic reasons.
Proslavery sympathizers settled in Johnson County, mainly at or near the Shawnee Methodist Mission and in the southern town of Oxford. Some Free-Staters were brave enough to establish a town in Gardner in the western portion of the county. (See sidebar article.) Traveling was extremely hazardous, as parties could be stopped and searched at any time by armed gangs from either side of the coin. The prevailing motto was, “shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Free” Kansas
In theory, under the newly “elected” Territorial government, Kansas residents were electing local governments and preparing for statehood. In fact, proslavers were being illegally elected to office throughout the Territory. This was especially prevalent in Johnson County, where Missouri voters could ride in to vote, celebrate the election, and return home the same day. After much bloodshed and lobbying, a new territorial governor — Robert J. Walker — was appointed in 1857 to clean up voter registration and polling. The proslavery constitution was to be put to a vote of all qualified voters (adult males who had lived in the territory for six months prior to the election). As is easily imagined, this was no simple task. Walker had to cajole the Free-Staters to participate in the proposed referendum, while convincing the territorial leaders to submit their proslavery constitution to the registered voters. He was also responsible for ensuring that only qualified voters were allowed to participate in the election. Finally, new elections were called for October of 1857. The election was critical. Governor Walker was under enormous pressure from Congress and President Buchanan to conduct a fair election.
Despite Walker’s efforts, fraudulent voting did occur. The proslavery constitution would have prevailed, had he not overturned several illegal elections and forced yet another election that brought out the true majority of voters in favor of the Free-State constitution. Local historian Norm Ledgin recounts Johnson County’s role in the voting frauds of 1857 in a forthcoming publication, How Johnson County Started the Civil War. Excerpts from his analysis follow.
The Oxford Fraud
A fraud occurred in the proslavery enclave of Oxford and is representative of voting practices in the rest of the Territory. It also set in motion a series of events that eventually led to the outbreak of the Civil War. Oxford refers to Oxford Township, originally known as Santa Fe Township, and Oxford Precinct.
The boundaries of the Township were the lines that are now 95th Street on the north, 167th Street on the south, Lackman Road to the west, and State Line Road on the east.
The most distinguishing characteristic of Oxford Township in 1857 was that its major population consisted of a tribe of Shawnee Indians that had broken away from other Shawnees. These residents were farmers and hunters who held their property in common. Their reservation stretched from east of Stanley to Olathe.
On the Missouri side of the line just north of 123rd Street there remain signs of a community known as Little Santa Fe or New Santa Fe. It was here that Missourians often headquartered to launch incursions into Kansas Territory, using the old Santa Fe Trail route. Some slave-owners and proslavers from Little Santa Fe built a few houses in Oxford by 1857—in time for the upcoming election.
Though the balloting attracted at least 100 or more Missourians, the votes seemed less than was needed to secure the election. The roll books were taken to the office of Colonel Boone in Westport, where about 1,500 names were copied from a Cincinnati, Ohio, city directory. Local names were included to give the list an air of authenticity. The total vote cast for proslavery candidates by Oxford Precinct was 1,628, more than all the votes available in the entire county! No Free-State votes were counted from this precinct. Colonel Alexander Johnson, son of the superintendent of the Shawnee Methodist Mission, and member of the Territorial House of Representatives reportedly witnessed this fraud. The Oxford votes were just enough to give pro-slavers continued control of the Legislature.
Free-state forces were incensed at the outcome and threatened to murder every public officer in the Territory. The victorious pro-slavers proceeded to draft their constitution at their new headquarters in Lecompton. Both sides reportedly threatened to kill Governor Walker if he did not favor their cause. Walker was eventually persuaded to investigate the situation at Oxford. His observance of the sparsely populated settlement and supposed eyewitness accounts revealed a fraud. Walker declared the votes invalid on October 19, 1857, giving the Free-State Party its first majority in both houses of the Kansas Territorial Legislature. The Governor called for the dismissal of the proslavery constitution, but President Buchanan (who appointed Walker) ignored his recommendation. Even though two more votes in 1858 overwhelmingly defeated the proslavery government, President Buchanan continued to push for Kansas statehood under the Lecompton Constitution. Tired of Buchanan’s mishandling of the Kansas issue, the Democratic Party split into North and South factions, thus securing a victory for the new Republican Party candidate, Abraham Lincoln. As promised, the southern states seceded from the Union and the nation’s Civil War began in the spring of 1861.
The Horrors of War
Johnson County experienced significant loss during the Civil War. Repeated raids forced residents to leave their homes for sanctuary elsewhere. Others abandoned their drought-ridden farms. Those who remained slept in their fields to avoid a raid and kept their firearms beside them at all times. Residents feared retaliation from Missouri residents for the border wars of the preceding decade and appealed for military protection. In May of 1861, the Olathe Mirror expressed the fear that evacuating “Secessionists” would not “hesitate to burn and loot our houses” and called for a committee to visit each house to extract an oath of allegiance to the “legal government.” Those who refused would be branded traitors and treated accordingly.
Indeed, the raiders did return — plundering the towns of Aubry, Shawneetown, Olathe, and Gardner. Olathe resident Mary Hisey described the terror of the raids:
There had been much talk of War and its horrors. Some had left their homes and loved ones and gone forward to battle, but few realized that War was so mean, until the Quantrill raid, then all awoke to the cry of arms. That night, Sep. 6 of 1862, will not soon be forgotten by those who lived there and never by those whose loved ones were murdered.
Free-Staters continued their forays into Missouri as well, hoping to eliminate proslavery settlements in the region once and for all. Although troops were stationed along the Kansas-Missouri border, their numbers were not sufficient to contain the raiders. Local residents formed their own committees to protect their town and property, particularly any livestock. Finally, in 1864 Olathe was made a regular military post.
The fall of 1864 brought reports that General Price’s Confederate troops were advancing and, “might be expected in Olathe at any moment.” In 1874, O.H. Gregg recalled the town’s hasty evacuation: “in less than an hour every available vehicle was brought into requisition, and the women, children and all portable articles of vale started westward to Gardner, Baldwin City and other less exposed points.” Perhaps their reports did not convey that Governor Carney had ordered the entire state militia into action. Price moved toward Westport on October 23. However, after six-hour battle, the Confederates abandoned their effort to move into Kansas and retreated. The Battle of Westport essentially ended the war in the Kansas City region, although military troops stayed in the area for the rest of the war.
The close of the war in 1865 brought much rejoicing in Johnson County, where residents had been “exposed for years to the fury of powerful, vindictive and bloodthirsty foes…its citizens heroically stood their ground and with sublime faith braved all perils and dangers and faltered not.” Although this account from the 1874 Atlas of Johnson County is somewhat exaggerated (many residents fled the area and ran from rumored raids) perhaps it captures the spirit of the residents who rebuilt their homes and war-ravaged towns in the years following the Civil War.
--ALBUM vol. 11, no. 4 (fall 1998)