The "Wakarusa" War and other Events in Late 1855 in KT

While the two forces, pro-slavery and free-staters, were at complete legal loggerheads with each other in Fall 1855 (though pro-slavery people no doubt outnumbered the free-staters at that point), a murder took place on Nov. 21 at Hickory Point, about ten miles South of Lawrence, which almost blew the lid off this tinder box. Charles Dow, a free-stater, was shot and killed by his neighbor, pro-slavery Franklin Coleman. The facts surrounding it are described in greater detail in Cutler's chapters on Kansas Territorial history. Free-state men met the next night to determine an appropriate response, but then on Nov. 26 the despised (by the free-staters) Sheriff Jones of Douglas County swooped in and arrested Jacob Branson, one of the participants in the Nov. 22 free-state meeting. A free-state show of force eventually made Jones release Branson, but now both sides had a pretext for escalation of the conflict. The free-staters wanted "justice" for the killing of Dow; the pro-slavers wanted "justice" for the escape of Branson from "legitimate" law enforcement efforts.

Things came to a head early in Dec. 1855 when the new, and apparently pliable (to pro-slavery interests) Governor Wilson Shannon, formerly a Democratic Congressman from Ohio, allowed Sheriff Jones to call up 3,000 men to begin a siege of Lawrence, where Branson was said to have hid after his Nov. 26 escape. These 3,000 would certainly come from Missouri pro-slavery men. The thought was to use the pretext of Branson's hiding in Lawrence as an excuse to destroy the town, scatter the free-staters and establish an unequivocal pro-slavery force throughout the Territory.

From Dec. 1-Dec. 8, then, Lawrence was surrounded by the pro-slavers, ready to pounce on it at the slightest provocation. This siege is popularly known as the "Wakarusa War," even though no one was actually killed during the "war." The only problem with this scenario, from the perspective of the pro-slavers, was that the Governor finally decided to "get religion" and intervene. That is, even though he may have been a pro-slavery sympathizer, he realized that he was Governor of the Territory, and he didn't want needless bloodshed to happen under his watch. Therefore, he decided to meet with the Lawrence leaders, who convinced him not only that they weren't harboring Jacob Branson but that they would certainly turn him over if he showed up in town. Shannon drew up a "Treaty of Peace" with the leaders of Lawrence on Dec. 8, part of which provided:

"We, the said citizens of said Territory [i.e., the leaders of the town of Lawrence], protest that the said rescue was made without our knowledge or consent, but that if any of our citizens were engaged in said rescue, we pledge ourselves to aid in the execution of any legal process against them; that we have no knowledge of the previous, present or prospective existence of any organization in the said Territory for the resistance of the laws; and we have not designed, and do not design, to resist the execution of any legal service of any criminal process therein, but pledge ourselves to aid in the execution of the laws when called upon by the proper authority in the town of Lawrence, and that we will use our influence in preserving order therein, and declare that we are now, as we have ever been, ready to aid the Governor in securing a posse in the execution of such a process.."

Shannon's cool action averted an attack on Lawrence, but it left the pro-slavers disappointed and still in a spirit of revenge.

1856 Dawns

For the first five months of 1856, Kansas activity moved on two separate fronts. First there was the continuation of legal process and pressure on free-staters in the Territory, but then there was also the activity in Washington DC related to the submission of the Topeka Constitution to Congress for its approval. So anarchic, however, were affairs with respect to slavery at the time that the Congress, rather than summarily throwing out the Topeka Constitution as the expression of a process not condoned by the Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854 actually took a vote on that Constitution.

On April 7, 1856 the House of Representatives was asked to receive KS as a state under the Topeka Constitution. This resolution was referred to a committee of the House, emerging late in May. On July 3, the House approved the Topeka Constitution and KS's desire for statehood under the constitution by 99-97. In the Senate, however, US Senator Stephen Douglas led the charge to disallow it, since it wasn't the expression of the popular will of the people. The Senate passed an alternative bill authorizing the people of Kansas to frame a new constitution, but the House didn't concur with the Senate. Thus, the national powers showed themselves as helpless as the local powers to deal with the issue of the two contrary philosophies on slavery. Though the nation had feinted and bobbed and weaved for three or more decades, ever since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, it seemed as if the hourglass was running out for both sides.

Then, there was the action back in Kansas, action which would act as the "shot heard round the world" leading to the Civil War of 1861-65. Kansas was, in those days, simply the United States "in a nutshell" because the two adamant and conflicting parties were living side by side with each other and were both determined that they should triumph over the other. Kansas Territory was microcosm, a little theater, if you will, for what would play out in the "big theater" of the nation five years later.

Conclusion

And if there was a place that was the mini-microcosm of the microcosm, where the fight in Kansas would come to a head, thus igniting a spark which would spread to a conflagration beyond anyone's ability to stop it, it was Lawrence, KS. If you go to Lawrence today, you find a beautiful university town with KU perched atop Mount Oread, a steep hill in the middle of the flattest state in the country. But in those days you had a small town clustered on both sides of Massachusetts street and going down to the river to the North. Events of April and May 1856 in that small town, coupled with an event so heinous in the Congress of the United States that it still is referred to today in hushed tones, rocked the nation. The next essay talks about these events.

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