EMBATTLED U ·NCE Conflict & Community Edited by Dennis Domer & Barbara Watkins EMBATTLED LAWRENCE Conflict & Community Edited by Dennis Domer & Barbara Watkins The University of Kansas Continuing Education Copyright © 2001 by the University of Kansas ISBN 0-936352-19-1 Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Shala Stevenson Front Cover Painting: James Hess, USA, fl. 1870s, View of Old North College, 1875, Oil on canvas Spencer Museum of Art: Gift of Friends of the Art Muse~m Illustration: Harper's "Week&, September 19, 1863; Photographs: Haskell Indian Nations University, Bureau of Indian Affairs Museum Property Collection, Lawrence, Kansas; University of Kansas Archives Back Cover Photograph: Lawrence journal-World Credits The poems "Minstrel Man'' and "October 16: The Raid" are from the Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. For Shirley, and for Alison and Aaron The Life of the Mind Richard Holland so much depends upon a cold vodka martini up on Mass. Ave. at week's end: Paradise. v Contents The Life of the Mind Richard Holland Acknowledgments Introduction Dennis Domer and Barbara Watkins Past and Prologue: Struggles That Define Us "History from the Bottom Up": Local History and Empowerment v Xl Xlll William M. Tuttle Jr. 3 Yankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its Environs James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge 5 Ad Astra per Aspera: The Nineteenth Century Fight for Freedom John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-1859: A Militant Abolitionist's Relationship with the Free State Fortress Karl L. Gridley The Historic Jayhawkers and the Mythical Jayhawk Richard B. Sheridan William Qyantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, August 21, 1863 Richard B. Sheridan Elizabeth "Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 Katie H. Armitage Building the Early City The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 C. S. Griffin Charting a Course: Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1872 L E. Quast/er Workers' Housing, Workers' Neighborhood: Historic East Lawrence DaleE. Nimz 23 41 53 63 79 99 111 vii viii Contents Mastering the Kaw: The Bowersock Dam and the Development of Lawrence Industry Brian Black Mastering Mud on Main Street: Paving Technology in the Late Nineteenth Century Cathy Ambler The Past like a Flame before Us: The Twentieth Century Fight for Civil Rights Separate but Not Equal: African Americans and the 100-year Struggle for Equality in Lawrence and at the University of Kansas, 1850s-1960 William M. Tuttle Jr. "The New Carlisle of the West": Haskell Institute and Big-time Sports, 1920-1932 Keith A. Sculle / Dreams Deferred: Growing Up Black and Blue in Langston Hughes' Lawrence 121 131 139 153 Elizabeth Schultz 16 7 "The Forgotten Years" of America's Civil Rights Movement: Wartime Protests at the University of Kansas, 1939-1945 Kristine M. McCusker 183 Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas, 1960 Rusty L. Monhollon 193 Counter Culture vs. the Establishment Lawrence, Kansas, and the Making of the Sixties Rusty L. Monhollon Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland Beth Bailey Picking Hemp in Douglas County Louie Louis Lawrence in the 1970s: Recollections of a Mayor Barkley Clark William S. Burroughs: Did Lawrence Matter? James Grauerholz William S. Burroughs Jim McCrary Biography of a City Wayne Propst 209 221 243 249 253 259 261 Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community ix Building the Contemporary City Water in Willow Springs Township Dennis Domer 263 Building Community Power Structures, 1984-1998: The Rise of Grassroots Neighborhood Influence Steve Lopes . 277 Downtown Lawrence: Marketplace and Heart of a. Political Community Paul Schumaker 289 Considering Context in Urban Redevelopment: The Douglas County Bank and Its Legacies Noel Rasor 305 Alvamar: The City Within Dennis Domer 319 Building Old, Building New: New Architecture in Lawrence Dan Rockhill and David Sain 339 Conflict and Community: The Twenty-first Century Struggles ofTransition Haskell Indian Nations University: The Story of a Contested Terrain Daniel Wildcat The South Lawrence Trafficway Controversy Larry Kipp Big Business on a Small Stage: Columbia/HCA Comes to Lawrence Ray Davis Cornerstone of a Caring Community: The Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center Barbara Watkins Prospects for the New Century Lawrence Politics: Three Themes, Four Notions, and a Handful of Stories Burdett Loomis What a City! Ivo Ivanov Contributors Bibliography Internet Resources Index 351 361 383 393 409 417 419 423 429 431 x Credits Photographs, maps, and other illustrations on the pages noted below are used with permission of the following sources: James R. Shortridge, pp. 7 (Figures 1 and 2), 9 (Figures 3 and 4) University of Kansas Archives, Spencer Research Library, pp. 6, 47, 48, 144, 145 (2 photos), 184, 189, 199, 209, 210, 211, 212, 216, 232, 243 Richard Gwin, p. 8; and Paul Caviness, p. 281 Kansas Collection, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, pp. 16, 44, 53, 63, 64, 66, 81; Lawrence ]ournal- World Collection, pp. 148. 234, 389; George Caldwell Collection, p. 197 Kansas State Historical Society, pp. 30, 32, 33, 43, 58 (2 illustrations), 95, 143 Watkins Community Museum of History, pp. 60, 146; Duke D'Ambra Collection, p. 121; and Charles D. Stough, p. 128; and David Dary, p. 193 I. E. Quasder, pp. 102, 103, 106 Kent Spreckelmeyer and Shirley Domer, p. 116 Dennis Domer, pp. 114, 261, 263, 264, 296, 300, 316 ]. 0. Dorsey, p. 264 (map) Cathy Ambler, p. 131 Haskell Indian Nations University, Bureau of Indian Affairs Museum Property Collection, Lawrence, Kansas, pp. 158, 159, 355, 357 (2 photos) Harold Ober Associates Incorporated, pp. 168, 179 Norm Stuewe, Courtesy Landplan Engineering, pp. 323, 327, 415 Jon Blumb, pp. 253, 360 George McCleary, p. 270 (2 maps) A. D. Long, p. 278 Steve Lopes, p. 280 Lawrence journal-World, pp. 289, 415 Noel Rasor, pp. 306, 311 (map and photo) Landplan Engineering, p. 319 Bob Billings, p. 322 Dan Rockhill and David Sain, pp. 340-46 Barbara Watkins, p. 378 Michael Spillers, p. 405 Acknowledgments Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community evolved from the award-winning televised course The Biography of a City: Lawrence that we taught at the University of Kansas in the spring semester of 1998. For that course we as- sembled readings from disparate sources because there was no volume of collected articles about the history of Lawrence. Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community provides a core set of scholarly studies for the next genera- tion of students to read on some of the most important events and issues in the history of the city. We do not claim to address every important event or issue because a great deal of research on the city's history has never been done. Local histories of Lawrence that go beyond the anecdotal are difficult to find. For example, the first half of the twentieth century was critical to the creation of Lawrence's identity and particularly needs analysis and interpretation. Unfortunately, this volume does not fill that gap. The dearth of scholarship on Lawrence in general is suggested by the contents of this volume, in which two-thirds of the articles are new and have never appeared anywhere else, while one-third have been replicated with permission from various journals. Although not comprehensive, this book nevertheless represents a significant new contribution to the history of Lawrence in which research truly supports the teaching mission. By teaching the course and assembling this reader over a period of three years, we noted again and again that Lawrence is fundamentally a democratic city in which differences of opinion are fully expected and freely debated. Seldom have decisions in our history been made behind closed doors and out of the public light. While Lawrencians have no particular preference for conflict, they have never avoided it. Sometimes powerful individuals in our city have present~d a boosteristic mentality, arguing that it would be better to accept new initiatives with open arms in a backslapping process that smooches over our differences. This approach to our problems has seldom worked, and if it had, would have diminished Lawrence. One. of our most influential citizens, Bob Billings, remarked in an interview on Alvamar that controversy over development in Lawrence has probably made the city better because it has slowed things down and led to compromise. Indeed, much good has frequently followed even our worst conflicts. For example, as a young faculty member, Barkley Clark witnessed the burning of the University of Kansas Memorial Union, slept nights at Green Hall to protect it from a similar fate, heard guns fired at young protesters, and won- dered how the university and the city would survive the horrific events of 1970. As mayor in the 1970s, Clark was undaunted by the recent past and provided strong leadership that was needed to protect our historical downtown from cornfield malls and downtown malls. Malls destroyed thousands of downtowns in the United States during his tenure. However, owing largely to Clark's leadership and Plan '95, which he had an important hand in drafting, Lawrence is now the envy of many cities. Clark distinguished himself by the courage of his convictions, and this courage is partly what makes Lawrence special. It is impossible to acknowledge everyone who helped with The Biography of a City: Lawrence and Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community. Hundreds of people along the way made important contributions to these interre- lated projects but several at the university were pivotal. xi xii Acknowledgments In 1997, Professor Elizabeth Schultz suggested teaching an interdisciplinary course on Lawrence in the Humanities' Biography of a City course series that included Moscow, Los Angeles, London, and Rome. Why not Lawrence? William M. Tuttle Jr., professor of history and American studies, was a strong proponent of local history, had dozens of student papers about Lawrence, and had directed theses and dissertations on Lawrence topics. Professor David Katzman, who chaired the American Studies Program, supported the idea and immediately handed Dennis the teaching assignment. John Gaunt, dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Design, believed that Dennis's special knowledge of Lawrence's architecture and land- scape needed to become much more accessible to students and to the community at large. Barbara suggested that the community would be interested in a televised course on the history of Lawrence and sought funding to produce it through KU Continuing Education. We would also like to acknowledge those individuals who gave lectures in the televised course. They include Katie Armitage, Mark Buhler, Barkley Clark, Debra Dandridge, James Grauerholz, Ken Irby, Steven Jansen, David Katzman, Cheryl Lester, Burdett Loomis, Steve Lopes, Patricia Marvin, James McCrary, Dale Nimz, Rusty L. Monhollon, David Ohle, Wayne Propst, Dan Rockhill, Elizabeth Schultz, Barry Shank, Richard Sheridan, Paul Stuewe, Michael Swann, Katherine Tuttle, William M. Tuttle Jr., Dan Wildcat, Donald Worster, and Norman Yetman. Many of these people also made significant contributions to this text. Jim Jewell and his student production assistants Nick Bartkoski and Scott McMurray produced the widely viewed TV course that was broadcast on Sunflower Cablevision in spring 1998. This project was funded in part by a grant from the Kansas Humanities Council. For their assistance in publishing Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community, we are grateful to the following individuals. Malcolm Neelley and Shala Stevenson provided expert word-processing assistance, Mary Greb-Hall and Twila Schmidt assisted with the editing, and Shala Stevenson provided photo scans and the layout and cover design. Penny Hodge and Olha Datskiv helped prepare the bibliography and index. Kristin Eshelman at the Spencer Research Library's Kansas Collection, Barry Bunch and Ned Kehde at the KU Archives, Virgil Dean and Christie Stanley at the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka, Bobbi Rahder at Haskell Indian Nations University, and Judy Sweets of the Watkins Community Museum of History and C. J. Brune helped in obtaining photos and permissions. We must finally thank Lawrence, whose many biographies enable us to understand that disagreement is fundamental to the human equation and we should not fear it. Like typical Lawrencians of the past, we don't shy away from our political and social responsibilities. We are suspicious of the wily human being, and few issues escape our scrutiny. We turn out at hundreds of community meetings, and we are often taken aback, though seldom by surprise. We make our opinions known, even when they are unpopular. We offend each other from time to time. We make up, listen to each other, try to persuade each other again, don't give up easily, and eventually we come around to a compromise, grudgingly. We crave the democratic process, and nowhere in the United States can one find a better example of democracy in action than in Lawrence. We cannot always have our way but we always want our say. Our book should make this point perfectly clear! Dennis Domer Barbara Watkins Introduction Dennis Domer and Barbara Watkins Past and Prologue: Struggles That Define Us "Opposition brings men together, and out of discord comes the fairest harmony, and all things have their birth in strife. " - Heracleitus, circa 505 B. CE. If past is prologue, then Lawrence will be a contentious place in the twenty-first century. With abolitionists' fervor from the beginning, leaders of the New England Emigrant Aid Company conceived Lawrence, Kansas, as a line in the sand. Under no circumstance would they permit Kansas to be a slave state. To prevent that from happen- ing, they collected money and people and sent a party of ninety-six like-minded abolitionists to found Lawrence in 1854 as a spearhead for freedom in what would become Bloody Karisas. John Brown, meaning to draw a sword against the evil of slavery, soon followed this idealistic band of crusaders to Lawrence. There he found men such as James H. Lane, who like Brown, would spend the rest of his life wrestling with causes that preoccupied Lawrence. Both Brown and Lane led skirmishes between slavers and free-staters in Lawrence, helping to foment an intense hatred between the combatants that erupted on August 21, 1863. William Quantrill and 500 raiders, who sympathized with slavery and despised all that Lawrence symbolized, slipped into town from Missouri during the early morning hours, slaughtered 200 Lawrencians, and burned much of the town. His ostensible motive was to revenge the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, but Quantrill had also fought against the guerrillas from Kansas in the border wars of the early 1860s and wanted to kill Jayhawkers such as Lane who had plundered western Missouri to destroy slavery's westernmost strongholds. Much to Quantrill's dismay, Lane got away, but Lawrencians never forgave this massacre. They had to build a cemetery to bury all their dead, and they have been fighting the ghosts of Quantrill and his Missouri renegades ever since. Through frequent repetition in many forms, the Quantrill story has become deeply imbedded in the historic psyche of Lawrence. This story is part of Lawrence's city symbol, which portrays a phoenix rising from the ashes of Quantrill's raid to fight again. Rising to fight again was a reality of the past that feeds Lawrencians symbolically now and in the future. The bitter rivalry between the Kansas Jayhawks, mythical birds that "teased and worried their prey before killing it," 1 and the Missouri Tigers is fought with everlasting enmity on the muddy fields of November. This rivalry undoubtedly stems from the bad blood between Kansans and Missourians since the Bloody Kansas era. The pugnacious democratic process that Lawrence is known for has its roots in the mid-nineteenth century settlement period when the willingness of many citizens to stand up publicly established a tradition of frank exchange that has lasted for 150 years. Where would Lawrence be without it? Frank exchanges, disagreements, shouting matches; protests, civil disturbances, sit-down strikes, fights for civil rights, protests, culture wars, skirmishes, lynchings, struggles for power, wrestling matches over contested terrain, xiii xiv Acknowledgments political intrigues, environmental challenges, frustrations, and day-to-day problems and troubles form the theme for Embattled Lawrence. Many of the essays in this volume . were initially lectures that the authors gave in an award-winning, televised undergraduate course "Lawrence: A Biography of a City" that we organized at the University of Kansas in spring 1998. Some essays are reprinted from various journals, most notably from Kansas History. Other essays are responses to questions and issues that emerged from the interaction between students and faculty during the semester. We learned that the trials and tribulations of the past and present have piled up contentious stories about Lawrence a mile high. This book and its authors can provide reflections on only a few of the most important controversies. Some of these reflec- tions are controversial themselves and add flame to the fire. Collectively, they express a never- say-die attitude and possess the boundless spunk of Lawrence life that made William S. Burroughs feel right at home with his cats and guns. As William Tuttle points out in his lead essay, "Learning from Local History," the idea of local history is an affront itself, a recent revolution .in thinking about who and what is impor- tant in our past. While most American historians at mid-century concentrated on the political lives of kings and queens or presidents and senators who operated from elite, central places, many notable historians by the end of the twentieth century focused on the thick complex of human endeavors that forms the history of common experiences in smaller places far from the pinnacles of power. The father of local history was Lawrence resident James C. Malin, a feisty professor of history who taught at the University of Kansas for decades. His legacy of asking big questions locally to provide big answers nationally .pours over into the twenty-first century with this and thousands of other examples of "history from the bottom up." James and Barbara Shortridge explore the "deeper structures" of physical and human ge- ography to evaluate "how a particular collection of landscape elements and human attitudes has come together to create the Lawrence of today." Their essay turns over many anomalies. For example, the idea that Lawrence was and is a Yankee town persists even though it is contradicted in fact. More than 75 percent of the town's population in 1865 hailed from places other than New England, and even in 1854 it is doubtful that the Yankee population ever reached 50 percent. By the turn of the twentieth century, there were more African Ameri- cans in Lawrence than Yankees. Lawrence doesn't look like a New England town, either. No matter, history and historians have wanted it to be so and so it is, with consequences. Re- sounding from. the earliest days into our new millennium, the clash between the desired New England image and the decidedly multicultural reality helped set up and maintain the con- flicted social structure necessary for such a fractious city. ''All," explain the authors, "is re- corded, one way or another, in the landscape we see every day." Ad Astra Per Aspera: Conflicts of the Nineteenth Century Ad Astra Per .Aspera-to the stars through difficulties-signals the great struggles that Lawrencians faced during the nineteenth century. No one thought founding a frontier town in the 1850s was going to be easy, and it wasn't. The essays in this section focus on two issues of overriding importance: the battle for freedom and the difficulties of building the early city. Karl Gridley's contribution on John Brown gives us for the first time a richly detailed and thoroughly researched history of this giant's presence in Lawrence, where, like "a volcano un- der a mountain of snow," he arrived in 1855 as a "mysterious stranger." Brown was a mad man, mad at slavery and bound to die for· its elimination. He was Lawrence's most famous rabble-rouser, fearless, cunning, and deadly. In a speech he made across the street from the ruins of the Free State Hotel instructing his men on how to aim low at the enemy, Brown remarked that "if all the bullets that have ever been aimed at me had hit, I should have been as full of holes as a riddle." All this happened long before Harpers Ferry. Richard Sheridan, an economic historian who has published extensively on slavery in the Caribbean and written much about this evil in Kansas, brings related essays on guerrilla war- Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community xv fare in Lawrence. In his first article, he explains that historic Jayhawkers were "men of the most desperate and hardened character." They were free booting guerrillas or guerrillas "who combined freebooting with military operations." Their leaders-Montgomery, Jennison, An- thony, and Lane-were as renowned in the 1860s as Che Guevara i~ the 1960s. Pat Devlin, the first Jayhawker, purportedly remembered the Jayhawk as a bird in Ireland that worried and then devoured. his prey .. Decades after the Civil War, during the football-building era and the beginning of university athletics, KU students embellished the idea of the nasty Jayhawker as a sports symbol, and the college's cheerleaders adopted an uncanny chant from the Science Club- "Rock Chalk Jayhawk, K. U.!"-to rattle their opponents. The mythical bird appeared as KU's future· mascot for the first time in 1912 in the University Daily Kansan with shoes on in order "to better kick the Missouri hound dog." Teddy Roosevelt, the most hawkish of our presi- dents, called the KU yell "the greatest college cheer ever devised." More recently, KU has added the aggressive cheer, "Beak'em Hawks," a boisterous tune and beaking gesture made with outstretched arms that rabid fans in Allen Fieldhouse use during the winters to defy wildcats, tigers, longhorns, buffaloes, birds, and all other beasts of the earth who do not pre- tend to be Jayhawks. Sheridan's article about William Quantrill draws on both primary and secondary sources to bring this guerrilla rascal and his heinous deeds to light. Quantrill was deceptive in all his ways, and he first sneaked into Lawrence in 1859 under the alias Charley Hart. His goal then was to kidnap escaped slaves who fled to eastern Kansas and to return them to their owners. When he arrived stealthily again in Lawrence in 1863 with his gang of guerrillas, liquor was " the extra devil" that rode along to rob and kill. On that day many Lawrence women were heroines who bravely prevented the killing of their husbands and sons by refusing entry into their homes. In retaliation for the raid, General Ewing promulgated General Order No. 11, which moved everyone out of four western Missouri counties. Quantrill fled to southern Mis- souri and on to Kentucky, where he was bushwacked by federal guerrillas. Over the last cen- tury his bones were scattered from Kentucky to Ohio and Kansas, a fate that many Lawrencians would say is only right. Bettie Duncan, whose diaries Katie Armitage carefully analyzes in her essay, "lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary time." When Quantrill rode out of town, Bettie and others were left to tend the smoldering embers of Lawrence and to begin the rebuilding process. But that didn't mean that the war was over for them. Lawrence lay on the Civil War front that was moving back and forth and being penetrated by invading guerrillas and armies from both sides. In October 1864, a little more than a year after the devastating 1863 raid, "many fe- males" fled Lawrence again, according to Mrs. Duncan's diary entry, fearing another invasion from Quantrill, who was reported to be in Leavenworth. Confederate troops under the com- mand of General Stirling Price were on the move after General James Blunt's Union soldiers retreated from the front. What Bettie called "excitement," we might understand as high anxi- ety. She suffered from headaches, eyestrain, a distanced marriage, and depression. She left her home in Lawrence, endured the hardships of traveling by wagon train to California, returned to Lawrence within a year, and led a life as a pious "true woman'' for another decade before she died at forty-two after a long illness. It took a long time for people to get over the ravages of war. Bettie apparently never did and died of "the blues." It wasn't easy for anyone to live in Lawrence in Bettie Duncan's era. Other factors besides war, including the harsh climate, poor communication and transportation, plagues of grass- hoppers, economic depressions, illnesses, and a feeling of loneliness that early settlers had on a nearly treeless prairie, contributed to the challenge. Bettie was from Kentucky, and she had seen cities. Lawrence wasn't a city when she arrived in the late 1850s, and it wasn't a city when she died there in the late 1870s. Besides building a free democracy, one of the greatest struggles of her generation was building the early physical city of Lawrence. The site along the Kansas River was not the best, as later generations would find out in subsequent floods, but the settlers picked it anyway. Over the next several decades, they developed transportation systems, power infrastructure, housing, and institutions to encourage people to move to xvi Introduction Lawrence. They were capitalists, and in their economic view more people bring more money, more business, and more skills; they drive up real estate values and help create more urban surroundings and a higher civilization that creates growth and profits for everyone. Early Lawrencians invested a lot of money in building the early city and lost a lot of money, too. As far as engendering growth is concerned, none of their investments ever paid off because Lawrence grew only slowly until after World War II, long after the old settlers were all dead. The . biggest investment bust was the great railroad boondoggle that cost early Lawrence citizens $900,000 when the economy turned sour in the depression of 1873. I. E. Quastler explains that Lawrence, which was at a disadvantage geographically, had competed with Kansas City and Leavenworth to be the regional railroad center. By 1870, all was lost when Kansas City with a population of 32,000 left Leavenworth with 18,000 people and Lawrence with 8,000 in the dust. Lawrence was a ragtag town in a complex national network of railroads, but it had committed to railroad bonds. People who held those bonds lost fifty cents on the dollar. This fiasco created an environment of economic conservatism over the next twenty-five years that positioned Lawrence at the beginning of the twentieth century as a sleepy little university town. It was money down the drain, and it wouldn't be the last. Dale Nimz describes how Lawrencians let much of East Lawrence go down the drain because it was on the wrong side of Massachusetts Street. During the town-building period, as Lawrence struggled to build its transportation and manufacturing base, · workers erected their houses east of Massachusetts on the low side of town, often called the East Bottoms. Lawrence became fractured along class lines, and self-respecting New Englanders only went there for business. They may have slipped in and out of some areas in the East Bottoms unseen at night, where "illegal liquor sales, gambling, and prostitution" occurred. For the most ·part, though, the east side did not fit the negative image the upper classes had created, but it didn't fit the image of Lawrence as a New England town either. The workers who lived there, mostly German-Americans, African-Americans, and a mix of Middle West and Upper South immi- grants with a variety of national origins, didn't comport like New Englanders. The housing was typical for its period, of good quality, and appropriate for workers with few dollars to spare, but because it did not represent culture with a capital "C," East Lawrence was consid- ered irrelevant. By the end of the century, after the bust of the economic boom in 1873 and an outflow of population especially among the Exodusters, the east side fell into a cycle of decay and abandonment that lowered East Lawrence real estate values until a slow renewal began about 1975. Although the neighborhood today has many historic houses and an intact nineteenth-century urban landscape, East Lawrence still remains vulnerable to destructive de- velopment ideas such as the "Haskell Loop" proposed in the 1980s. Although East Lawrence is merely different and reflects the multicultural nature of the city's beginnings, it looks blighted to upper-middle-class· chamber of commerce leaders, and always has. Myopic, unenlightened leadership has led to the loss of many historic properties on the east side. The battles between the sometimes powerful preservation community and developers over East Lawrence and other parts of the historic city have lent credence to Lawrence's pugnacious past since the 1980s. Many of these battles have divided the city and represent turning points in the contemporary political and economic power structure. One of the most important power structures of the physical city and one of the most expensive to maintain is the Bowersock Dam, which has its own peculiar economic ramifica- tions. Brian Black reviews the dam's problematic history: how it provided an ingenious system of cabled motive power for Lawrence's early industry, how it was lost in flood after flood, how it nevertheless symbolized a complex struggle between nature and human beings through the taming forces of technology, and why it continues to sell electricity to the power system with its obsolete but renewable technology. The Bowersock Dam was always a job for Sisyphus, and families of this unrelenting god have kept one of Lawrence's most enduring historic landscapes operating since 1873. In contrast to this late-nineteenth-century technology at the Bowersock Dam that contin.;. ues uselessly to solve a nonexistent electrical power problem into the twenty-first century, most Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community xvii late-nineteenth-century road technologies were short-lived. Every one of them failed to over- come the environmental disaster that the dusty and muddy roads of Lawrence posed its citi- zens in the early 1870s. All of the expensive wooden block systems that had been used in other cities since the 1820s rotted away in Lawrence within a few years. Even though the rapidly obsolete paving technologies had no lasting value, Cathy Ambler points out that the struggle over who would pay for them played out in a lawsuit during the early 1870s between owners and the city, and the outcome of that disagreement would impact Lawrence's future. By 1875, the formerly laissez-faire government of Lawrence had assumed the huge fiscal and political responsibility for all Lawrence's pitiful roads. In taking on this job, the city accepted a transfer of power over roads from its citizens, who up to that time had paid for road improve- ments only in front of their own property. Since then, the city has wielded its power over road projects through taxation and allocation processes that political and economic leaders influence for their purposes. Road politics have created some of the most pivotal and controversial battles in Lawrence's history. Lawrencians were at their conniving best in the controversy over where in the state to locate the University of Kansas. It took ten years infighting to decide this controversy, as C.S. Griffin's article explains. In 1857, Manhattanites accused Lawrence of attempting "to obtain by trickery'' what "they might not be able to obtain by fair means." In 1861, Governor Robinson from Lawrence vetoed a bill from the Kansas Legislature that placed the university in Manhat- tan. In 1862, James Lane promised to deliver the needed votes for the Manhattanites's cause in exchange for their votes against Governor Robinson, who was Lane's enemy. He broke that promise. In 1863, Lawrencians "bought as many votes as they could at the going rate of around $5 apiece to get the university." Eventually in 1864, the legislature decided to place the university in three locations: Lawrence, Manhattan, and Emporia. Lawrence would not have gotten any part of the university, were it not for a $15,000 fund that Amos Lawrence of the New England Emigrant Aid Company offered to the legislature as part of the package. Was the University of Kansas worth conniving for? Absolutely! Our Past like a Flame before Us: Conflicts of the Twentieth Century Nineteenth-century controversies in Lawrence, such as the location of the university, had huge impacts on the struggles Lawrencians faced in the twentieth century. In the second section of this volume, significant battles of the twentieth century collect into three categories that de- fine insistent, largely unresolved issues that carry into the twenty-first century: Struggles for Civil Rights, the Counter Culture vs. the Establishment, and Building the Contemporary City. Although Lawrence was founded on the struggle against slavery, this did not mean that Lawrence was interested in equal rights for African Americans, as we learn from William Tuttle's essay. What was touted as "the promised land" for blacks immigrating from the reconstructed South turned out to be Jim Crow territory, where a more deceptive, paternalistic racism lurked than in the South. The lynching of three blacks in Lawrence in 1882 and Klan rallies in South Park in the 1920s demonstrated how deeply involved Lawrence was in the consequences of racism. Harvard-on-the-Kaw simply waived the swimming requirement for blacks because the chancellor didn't want white and black students to swim in the same water. In the 1950s Wilt Chamberlain and Chancellor Murphy helped overturn the blatant prejudice of "the Phog" and Chancellors Lindley and Malott. The desegregation of restaurants and movie theaters did not change the hearts of Lawrencians, though. Just below the surface lay tension over unequal justice, unequal pay, unequal housing, unequal schooling, and unequal opportunities. Progress in rectifying these injustices in the United States was slow, and in the late 1960s Lawrence's tense racial environment positioned the city to become a notable battleground in the nation's war for racial equality. In hindsight, this role does not seem surprising, given Lawrence's pen- chant for getting into the middle of things. · xviii Introduction Elizabeth Schultz analyzes the "benevolent racism" and "patronizing exploitation'' that char- acterized relationships between blacks and whites in Kansas in her essay "Dreams Deferred: Growing Up Black and Blue in Langston Hughes' Lawrence" about a young person in Lawrence who suffered from racial prejudice. She uses Hughes's autobiographical novel Not without Laugh- ter to illuminate a young black boy's "struggles to discover his own racial identity" in a Mid- American society that sent routinely contradictory signals about the nature of growing up black. As a result of these struggles, Hughes, like many other young blacks, had to leave Lawrence "to counter the curse of racial inferiority." This exodus represented a huge loss to the city, a loss from which Lawrence has never recovered. Lawrence ceased to be a place where significant numbers of African Americans wanted to live. Lawrence had pushed into the middle of America's racial struggles in 1884, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs founded Haskell Institute as a part of our nation's policy to assimilate conquered Native American children left over from a long and effective war of extermination. Keith Sculle's article shows how nationally successful Indian football teams from Haskell helped create a new identity and spirit for Native Americans based on their traditional values, and how this independent spirit made the BIA and many Lawrence critics uncomfortable. Haskell students' achievements in football also proved a number of racial assumptions about Indians to be wrong, resulting in the kind of embarrassment Adolph Hitler suffered a decade later when he witnessed Jesse Owens win four gold metals at the Berlin Olympics. Hitler couldn't do anything about Jesse, but the BIA could put an end to its embarrassment at Haskell, much to the liking of many Lawrencians. The BIA simply decided not to approve Haskell's status as a junior college, relegating the institute to its original purpose as an industrial school in which sports played a minor role. This policy solved nothing and had to be changed over and over again but the uneasy, untrusting relationship between Haskell and Lawrence endured. This relationship lacked cultural understanding and empathy; it was based on fear and long-term enmity; and it broke down the lives of young people in hateful ways in almost predictable intervals during most of the twentieth century. In her essay on World War II civil rights protests at the University of Kansas, Kristine M. McCusker makes clear that the university's leadership found rationalizations for deferring the civil rights of their students as long as possible. Negro students were restricted in the Memo- rial Union, prohibited from living in residence halls, not allowed to compete in varsity or intramural athletics, segregated to the back of classrooms, and not allowed to do student teaching at the high school. As the University Daily Kansan stated in a 1943 editorial, "segregation ... was analogous to fascism, and KU 'did a good job of practicing what Hitler preached."' In an April 1943 editorial,. the Kansan complained bitterly about the Red Cross's segregation of blood given by blacks from blood given by whites, saying that the practice "contributes to racial discrimination by imitating the Nazi theory of the Aryan superman." Chancellor Malott and his executive secretary, Raymond Nichols, found ways to explain their racist policies and re- buff student demands for a just university. Nichols accused protesters at one point of being Nazi infiltrators, suggesting that the thought of civil rights at the University of Kansas was an enemy plot to disrupt and overthrow the established order that permitted the contradiction between segregation and democracy. Almost a century after the Civil War and in the middle of a world war filled with racial overtones, Lawrence's educational leaders at the highest level stood only a stone's throw away from the stone age of slavery. They considered their students' demands to be radical, and they cast them as brown shirts, in other words, the enemy. These radical students of the war generation were liberal leaders by the late 1950s and early 1960s, and many Lawrencians steadfastly regarded liberal arguments about racial equality with suspicion. Rusty Monhollon's article describes the attempt to integrate the city's only public pool in 1960. The conflicting liberal strategies for racial integration that mostly white University of Kansas faculty members devised for the Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy and dissonants from that group devised for the totally black, newly reconstituted Lawrence chapter. of the NAACP failed to achieve an integrated facility. The city's civic leader- ship had long demonstrated "significant resistance to both liberalism and the civil rights move- Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community xix ment," and in the case of. the Jayhawk Plunge, argued strongly for property rights and the rights to association that they believed were not constitutionally given. As Justin Hill of the Lawrence Paper Company wrote, "white people must earn the rights to these things, it is not given to them. The coloreds should earn the right to these things." Who would decide when African Americans had earned their rights was an easy question to answer in Lawrence. The white guys, of course. How those rights might be earned remained one of the enigmas of racism in the middle 1960s. While struggles for civil rights continued unabated over the next decade, they played out in the complex context of the anti-war movement, the sexual revolution, free love, psychedelic drugs, and muddy concerts. Black Power leaders with raised fists competed on TV with the deadly realities of the growing guerrilla war in Vietnam. Body bags filled with American boys, including some from Lawrence, began arriving for reasons the public did not understand or believe in. Everybody competed with the hippies, who didn't trust anyone over thirty, chal- lenged everything, including established liberal ideas about civil rights, and they flatly rejected the war against communism in Southeast Asia. They had another war to fight, a culture war that continues to fracture the nation. Lawrence was one of the early hot spots of that war because, as usual, Lawrence's reputation and location were strategic. The city was a liberal island in a conservative sea, and it lay on an interstate right in the middle of the country. Hippies from the coasts passed through and stayed on to enjoy the impending action. Lawrence was always ripe for a revolution, and it didn't take long for another run at the ramparts of the establishment. The Counter Culture vs. the Establishment section includes seven essays about the con- flicts of the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s that culminated in the hot summer of 1970, when the Kansas National Guard was called out to quell riots, to enforce a curfew, and to prevent further loss of private and public property. Within four· days, officers of the Lawrence Police Department had killed two young men, Tiger Dowdell and Nick Rice. Noted businessmen in town called for more killing to put an end to the radical uprising. In all this turmoil, Lawrence "teetered on the brink of a civil war," according to Rusty Monhollon in his essay "Lawrence, Kansas, and the.Making of the Sixties." Monhollon argues that the Sixties were a national phenomenon constructed locally. Threads of the national anti- establishment were represented here in the Black Student Union and the Student Peace Union, and they organized and became confrontational. Sit-down strikers were arrested in the Chancellor's Office in 1965. The Military Science building at KU was firebombed in 1969, and more than forty fires were set in 1968 and 1969. A worrisome center of hippie culture thrived around the Gaslight Tavern, where "fascist pig burgers" were sold, and where street people engaged in all sorts of "reckless experimentation." Then the civil war escalated when arsonists burned the Memorial Union, and the governor sent in troops. Chancellor Chalmers believed that the fire was the work of student revolutionaries, while the K.B.I. declared the Black Panthers and Weathermen responsible. After Dowdell was killed, Lawrence police fought snipers and "guerrillas" at the Afro-House, and the senator from Lawrence said that "the town hadn't lost a thing when Dowdell died." On behalf of the street people, George Kimball warned that "if the pigs come in to our community ... there ain't gonna be any dead on our side." Nick Rice was promptly killed right in front of the Gaslight Tavern. This second civil war, Monhollon concludes, "reshaped ... the community's social space" and created "new social identities for its residents," identities that would have a lasting impact on Lawrence for the rest of the century and beyond. One of the most emphatic new identities to emerge in the 1960s, the liberated woman, stemmed more from the sexual revolution made possible by the development of the birth control pill than from the simultaneous second civil war. Beth Bailey's case study of the controversy over distributing the pill to Lawrence women shows how the struggles over contraceptive policies in a Mid-American city reflected in their own way the struggles for sexual freedom nationally. The fight against white male doctors who opposed Douglas County's family planning services and the Planned Pa~enthood Clinic in the city carried over to the University Health Service when the staff refused to distribute the pill xx Introduction to women students. This argument about contraception was an argument about premarital sex, and eventually it was an argument that led to another sit-down strike in the Chancellor's Office, this time by the February Sisters in 1972, who maintained that "control of her repro- ductive functions is the fundamental right of every woman." Petey Cerf's attack on the Health Department's birth control policies also turned out to be a power struggle along gender and class lines, which the male doctors lost. Out of these struggles over sexual freedom came a confident feminist identity that liberated the daughters of the next generations to challenge the sons on every ground. Along with the sexual revolution, the feminist critique, and the nagging new legalities of affirmative action, the hippies' flagrant and public use of illegal, hallucinogenic drugs gave Lawrence a lawless reputation in Kansas. There was plenty of K-Pot around from the days hemp was grown for legitimate agricultural purposes, and mothers refused to send their sons and daughters to the university den of inequity, where getting high and losing one's virginity had become pastimes. It was too great a counter-cultural challenge for the establishment to let Lawrence go unchallenged, and the attorney general of Kansas became famous for sneaking into town in the trunk of a car to make marijuana busts. These legal and cultural battles over drugs and the values of hippy life were fought out especially in the Oread Neighborhood, but ground zero was on one block of Oread Street between the Gaslight Tavern and the Rock Chalk Cafe. Along and around this strip students and bearded or braless hippies rented cheap apartments from the infamous Professor Ling and joined in the fray. Long hair, cheap drugs, flowing 3.2 beer, free love, Jimi Hendrix, and a lot of street theater against the pigs might have been no more than amusing on Oread Street, except for the fact that the establishment was already scared about the potential harmful outcomes of the civil rights struggles. This hippy affront was worse, though, because it was an assault on mom and apple pie. Louie Louis writes in "Picking Hemp in Douglas County'' that "we rejected patriotism, religion, materialism, need for security in career and relationship, fears of drugs. We hanged them all, watching as they twisted, slowly, slowly in the wind. We dissed our families." Many of these counter-culture values proved empty with time and maturity. Contrary to the reefer madness propaganda that predicted the worst, many of the old hippy fighters became upstanding up- per-middle-class citizens who are busily carrying out the hazy mandates of their revolution. Professor Barkley Clark, eventually Mayor Clark, was a newly appointed member of the KU law faculty at the height of conflagration at the university. In his recollections as mayor, Clark remembers sleeping in the law school the. night after the Union burned to protect it from firebombs and thinking· that he "had arrived in Hell." Faculty members slept in many buildings on the campus during that hellish period. A bomb went off in Summerfield Hall a year later, in spite of the faculty's efforts. Soon after that, the draft ended, and suddenly the tenor of the 1970s was transformed from killing and bombing into hilarious attacks from "pieface assassins and streakers," as Clark remembered. This turn to nonviolent nonsense re- lieved an anxious city and allowed talented men like Clark to accept positions of political leadership at a time in Lawrence when the future of the downtown would be determined. "I have always thought that the battle against the dreaded 'cornfield mall' was the single most important public policy decision made by the Lawrence City Commission during the decade," Clark asserts. "It was a noble battle, fought with one consistent voice throughout the decade." This was just one battle among many development battles that Lawrencians would fight over the next twenty-five years. It took heroic efforts of farsighted civic leaders and historic preser- vationists to maintain the vitality of downtown Lawrence in face of the powerful sprawling ten- dencies of late twentieth-century cities. Lawrence's functioning nineteenth-century mainstreet sur- rounding by historic neighborhoods is also authentic, a quality Disneyland does not provide. Lawrence in its nonconformist way refused to participate fully in the mainstream of con- sumer society, a throwaway culture that spewed out gigantic malls and parking lots in every other American city the size of Lawrence. Lawrence definitely did things differently, which attracted many pilgrims seeking refuge from the assault of endless suburbs and traffic jams. These pilgrims included William S. Burroughs, who moved to Lawrence in 1981 and lived Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community xxi here until his death in 1997. James Grauerholz, Burroughs's long-term companion who stud- ied at KU during the Gaslight Tavern years, introduced the famous hipster to "River City," where he could "have a big yard for his beloved cats to roam in and to get out of town in just a few minutes to a place where he could indulge his lifelong pastime of target shooting." Lawrence celebrated Burroughs and his freaky friends with a number of huge events, such as the annual "Lobster Feed," "River City Reunion," and "Nova Convention Revisited," but more than anything else Burroughs enjoyed being himself in the kinky city. James McCrary, who worked closely with Burroughs and spent every Thursday night cooking for him and his friends, stated, "in the end perhaps it was the community of 'fellow travelers' that did make a differ- ence .... "These fellow travelers formed "an alternative community of libertarianism'' in which far-out people like William and Wayne Propst are happy. Propst was in Lawrence at the cre- ation of hippy life on Oread Street, witnessed the killing of Nick Rice, and was a founding member of the infamous Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers. His iconoclastic attack, "Biography of a City," embodies all the values of a now ancient hippy pissing into powerful cultural winds. "Building the Contemporary City" investigates a variety of conflicts of the late 1980s and the 1990s that have fueled a contentious democracy, as it seeks to balance the demands of the increasingly entrenched economic, political, and cultural factions that make up Lawrence's bur- geoning citizenry. During these years of economic boom in Lawrence, the most divisive battles turned on how the city should or should not change its landscape and surrounding environment in re- sponse to demographic growth. In the tradition of all the booster newspapers in Lawrence's history, The Lawrence journal-World spoke for the development community. Lawrence needed all the growth it could encourage for the sake of the economy, and the chamber of commerce led an army of capitalists who have been frustrated time and again but hardly ever stopped by the anti-development community. Anti-development factions, called special-interest groups by the opposition, have been large and vociferous in Lawrence during the past twenty years. Owing to the presence of the liberal university, many one-time hippies and new generation graduates did not leave or they came back to the embattled city. Along with these old hippies, the preservationists, the environmen- talists, and the neighborhood associates argued in ragtag and changing coalitions that growth at any cost destroyed the qualities that made Lawrence unique. These factions based their arguments on the wise decisions Mayor Clark and his contemporaries made about the down- town and in Plan '95 during the 1970s that gave the city a vital historic business center and set the stage for more measured commercial development on the periphery than cities, such as Topeka and Kansas City, hollowed out by abandonment and sprawl. All of the conflicts in Lawrence over growth have helped prevent many of the detrimental patterns of postmodern city building that occurred in neighboring cities where developers forged ahead without any obstacles. In contrast, Lawrence is the envy of many cities. It never aban- doned its central core and became a polycentric commercial city with surrounding suburbs in which most people wanted to live for cultural and economic reasons. The sprawl development in the county, however, which is checked only by an uncertain water supply, will continue to radically change the farm landscape around Lawrence. Barring environmental catastrophe, Lawrence will merge in the twenty-first century with Kansas City and Topeka in a globular, strung-out city, pushing the rural landscape further into the background of Kansas. The most important, long-term factor for human development on the plains of Kansas is the availability of water. Dennis Domer's article on the history of water in Willow Springs Township just south of Lawrence reveals how much this availability in the Kansas River valley depends to a large extent on the weather, a complex of old and new water technologies, my- thologies, and many political decisions. Water issues in Willow Springs Township provide the background for political, economic, and social decisions that have increasingly centralized the control of water and therefore the control of power in Douglas County over the past 150 years for the benefit of development. The creation of rural water districts and the opening of Clinton Lake have stimulated growth throughout the county ·and have transformed a once xxii Introduction frugal attitude toward water into a profligate sense of security about th~ availability of water for any kind and any amount of development in Douglas County. As Lawrence agrees to filter more water from Clinton Lake for water districts, which had only their own wells before Clinton opened in 1981, the number of water rights the districts can sell increases, further encouraging sprawl that eats up the countryside around Lawrence. The city and the county dealt with many of these development issues in their Horizon 2020 plan that laid out the tenets for managing growth over the next twenty years, but in the battle to develop, that plan is often ignored when short-term gains outweigh long-term goals. New informal and formal political organizations emerged in the 1980s to balance the community's interests with the government's, the entrepreneurs' and the _newspaper's interests in growth. Steve Lopes's essay "Building Community Power Structures" takes a grassroots view of the "pro-growth empire" and explains how he and others organized coalitions to beat the chamber's candidates. They gathered signatures to force a vote that defeated a proposed down- town mall and established a political action committee to confront numerous development threats to the Old West Lawrence neighborhood. They worked with "small bands of local guerrilla preservationists ... to resist development" when the Douglas County Bank early one morning destroyed a block of historic houses on Kentucky Street. Comparing this act to the violent history of Lawrence, a city commissioner remarked that Lawrence "had not 'seen that much property dapiage in a single day since Quantrill burned most of the town down."' Lopes and his liberal Democrats formed the Lawrence Area Neighborhood association to create a more powerful political unit and voting block when issues about growth in the community came to a boil. Small anti-growth groups chase away an issue like the Carnegie Library expan- sion and then disband, and smart-growth groups hold conferences to convince the public of their agenda. The publisher of the Lawrence Journal-World complained that the public's vigi- lance and active resistance against the government and the private interests it supports has created a difficult environment for development to occur and has given Lawrence a bad repu- tation. The newspaper, however, routinely overestimates the power anti-growthers have wielded over the years. In the 1990s, almost everything that developers proposed they were· permitted to develop, including a gigantic commercial "power center," South Iowa, which has more com- mercial square footage than the downtown. Paul Schumaker's article details· the history, beginning in the 1940s, of protecting and revitalizing Lawrence's extraordinary nineteenth-century commercial downtown. Since the 1970s the community's interest in its downtown has continually focused the city's political process, making it the central marketplace, the heart of the community, and a vital public space. No one has ever been elected who didn't make downtown the _city's highest priority. Through the mall wars of the 1980s, the downtown was saved. Since the 1990s, the city's government allocates public money for the downtown, subsidizes businesses downtown, and uses its regula- tory authority to manage how the downtown develops. The public process and dialogue around downtown issues have helped to create "a context in which developers are increasingly sensitive to the noneconomic goals of the community." Schumaker argues that through the "participa- tory democracy" of the 1980s, the downtown, the place over which so much conflict has occurred, slowly become a place of reconciliation and cooperative relations, where a "consen- sual democracy" is now at work. Noel Rasor reviews three examples of the controversial developments downtown that illu- minate Lawrence's participatory democracy: the Douglas County Bank demolitions of 1987, the two-year running battle over the English Lutheran Church ending in its preservation in 1990, and the controversy over the Carnegie Library-Lawrence Arts Center addition lasting from 1997 to 1999. The issues that divided government and business leaders from a noisy faction of neighborhood leaders, preservationists, and anti-establishment people in each of these cases "relate to the complex location that the site occupies at the fringes of downtown Lawrence and the balance of power among the city, its citizens, and its businesses." Each of the cases became a cause dlebre for the preservation community, although the outcomes were different; One positive consequence was strengthened regulatory and democratic processes, but on the Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community xxiii negative side, each case left the antagonists more divided than ever when the smoke had cleared. Rasor suggests that many disagreements might have been eliminated if the approval process for these projects had entertained a discussion of the complex urban context and, given the con- text, asked questions about what was needed at the location. in question. Lawrence's govern- ment has always been more concerned with economic questions than with planning questions, and businesses will build "anywhere at any time" for maximum profit. For these reasons, some projects do get approved in the downtown, no matter the contextual discontinuities and no matter the community furor, when they make economic sense to the city commission. The best downtown projects, however, make sense in both economic and urban design terms be- cause these projects allow a consensual democracy to work. Consensus does not mean 100 percent agreement, even if economics and design work together. Most of the opponents of growth in the 1990s had also opposed Lawrence's largest residential development, Alvamar, which opened in 1967 as a golf course community and grew to 3,000 acres and three golf courses by the 1990s. Dennis Domer's article, ''.Alvamar: The City Within" demonstrates the great demand for Bob Billings's suburb that was well planned, carefully designed to take advantage of topography, and reduced erosion, preserved green space, and provided neighborhood shopping. Alvamar generates high property values and enough taxes to restore the old city and a downtown that cannot generate enough taxes to restore itself. Design issues in Lawrence can be just as important as economic issues, as Dan Rockhill and David Sain's. article on new architecture in Lawrence explains. Indeed, the frequent dis- agreements over aesthetics in Lawrence, whether related to public art or private architecture, are episodes of the long cultural war between the avant garde art community, which is a mix of intellectuals, liberals, and old hippies, and the conservative community, which is a mix of business people, the right, and the press. Their work has often been the target of conservative attack in the Lawrence journal-World, even though this work has received glowing attention nationally and many preservation awards from state and local organizations. The newspaper attacked their public sculpture, "Confluence," four times in 1992 and selected this battle as "the second most newsworthy item of 1992." Other public reactions involved houses in the Oread neighborhood, in Alvamar, and on the university's western periphery. More recently, the newspaper has attacked the small, lower-income houses that Rockhill's graduate students have built over the past three years because they do not seem to the newspaper to fit into their respective neighborhoods. After one long editorial in May 2000, John Gaunt, dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Design, responded that "the results of creative artistic en- deavors are necessarily different from norms because they involve the artist's exploration of possibilities for the challenge at hand. There would be no exploration, and insufficient artistic value, in the replication of the familiar and traditional."2 The newspaper and many Lawrence citizens strongly prefer the familiar and the traditional, and the strip aesthetics of Twenty-third Street and the industrial designs of South Iowa are more familiar and more to their liking than an artist's· explorations that disturb the status quo. This culture war in Lawrence will not end any time soon. Conflict and Community: The Twenty-first Century Some of our culture wars in Lawrence have relatively long and contentious histories with many unresolved conflicts that pose evolving questions for our community to sort out in the early years of the twenty-first century. Dan Wildcat introduces one of our longest controversies in the final section of this book, "Conflict and Community: The Twenty-first Century." His article, "Haskell Indian Nations University: The Story of a Contested Terrain," shows how Native Americans and European Americans understand the world in fundamentally different ways. In Lawrence these differences have created an atmosphere of deep-seated distrust and ignorance that has produced innumerable misunderstandings and tragedies for over a century. xxiv Introduction Wildcat explains how Haskell and BJ.A. officials used these cultural differences to forge changing educational policies and philosophies designed to handle the "Indian problem," and how the politics of isolation in Lawrence prevented Haskell from effectively participating in community decisions. The most divisive clash between the warring factions in Lawrence during the last twenty- five years has been the South Lawrence Trafficway controversy that has stymied the develop- ment community and alienated it from Haskell Indian Nations University and environmental- ists who united with the Native Americans to stop this bypass from going through the Haskell-Baker Wetlands. Larry Kipp traces the history of the bypass and its remarkable evolu- tion over the past seventy years. The SLT has deadended as an $80,000,000 road to nowhere for the time being. The driving force behind the project was the Lawrence Chamber of Com- merce. In the chamber's opinion, the road had to be built to divert traffic from Kansas City to west Lawrence and Clinton Lake, as well as to provide one loop of a belt highway around Lawrence. The chamber's opponents, a coalition of Haskell people and environmentalists, saw the belt highway as a development highway and fought it tenaciously on every legal and po- litical front for over fifteen years. One county commission after another tried in vain to put this road in place, but each one made significant, embarrassing mistakes and suffered setbacks in the public eye at the hands of the "antis." The local press lashed out at the road opponents in editorial after editorial, especially at Haskell for putting its own interests in preserving sa- cred Indian wetlands above the transportation interests of community residents who needed to get to Kansas City five minutes faster. Kipp's article brings up all the old battles, reveals the intricate complexity of the political, social, economic, and cultural issues involved, shows how shortcuts and tricks in the process backfired on county commissioners, and explains how dif- ferent governmental authorities came to loggerheads. This conflict is not over; it is likely that battles will be waged over the SLT during the next decade. The Highway 59 roadbuilding adds fuel to the fire about where exactly the new 59 should connect with the SLT that may go south of the Wakarusa River. Lawrencians have been especially contentious when outside money is used to eliminate hometown institutions, businesses, and buildings. The Borders Bookstore controversy of 1998 is a good example that ended in an uneasy compromise with the preservation community. Another example is the battle between supporters of Lawrence Memorial Hospital and Colum- bia/HCA, once the largest acute-care organization in the world, which tried to corner the healthcare business in Lawrence during the 1990s. Columbia lost because it didn't understand Lawrence's peculiar political environment. Columbia assumed, as Ray Davis outlines, that it "only had to talk to elites and not approach the community as a whole. Lawrence ... is a very process-oriented political culture. Decisions are subject to almost endless processes of com- ment and revision before action is taken."For many, this political culture is an ever-frustrating dilemma that impedes the inevitable change in a growing city. Population growth always brings change and inevitably conflict. Lawrence has exploded in population, in size, and in character, especially since 1990. As it grows closer to Kansas City and Topeka, Lawrence is looking and acting more like Johnson · County to the east and Shawnee County to the west. Lawrence is losing its small town iden- tity, values and scale, and the implications of this transformation on the human condition are more than economic, political, cultural, social, and psychological. In her article on the Bert Nash Community Mental Healch Center, Barbara Watkins analyzes the intractable challenges of mental health care in the city. Increasingly, Bert Nash is working cooperatively with a vari- ety of healthcare institutions co manage growing problems of juvenile crime, drug arrests, child abuse, .domestic violence, runaways, finding foster care, and adult mood and anxiety disorders. The center's large new facility that it shares with others near Lawrence Memorial Hospital demonstrates how much work its one hundred full-time-equivalent staff has to do. It also suggests how difficult living in the new Lawrence has become for some since Bert Nash opened its doors in 1950 with two staff members. Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community xxv Throughout the last half century, Lawrence has been transformed uneasily from a small university city with one commercial center to a booming commuter suburbia with multiple commercial centers. Its city-manager/weak mayor form of government has demonstrated through all the change and conflict of that time a "politics without a coherent center," according to Burdett Loomis, professor of political science at the University Kansas. "In the absence of strong leadership," he notes, and with no one "to offer an overall strong vision for the city," the citizens of Lawrence must continue to fight out political battles "one issue at a time." This one-at-a-time approach to political conflict over the past twenty years has its consequences. Loomis argues that although the economic development forces have generally won out over the preservationists, environmentalists, neighborhood groups, and old hippies, these interest and cultural groups have nevertheless had a significant impact on how the city developed during the 1980s and 1990s. They have an impact because they force a thorough evaluation of issues through various public discussions, demonstrations, petitions, elections, and courts. Few city commissioners have had the skills to guide this raucous ship that is sensitive to every political wind, and it is unlikely that Lawrence's contentious democracy will give its political leaders much more power anytime soon. At the outset of the twenty-first century, the alignment of Highway 59, a large tourist development around Clinton Lake, smart growth, the quality and availability of water, the suburbanization of rural Douglas County, the relationship between Lawrence and the rest of the county, the preservation of farmland, and the evolution of downtown are only a few of the current struggles. How these struggles play out in the next decade, and how they will influ- ence the circumstances of our city over the next century, are unpredictable. Although we don't know exactly what the future conflicts will be, we do know that conflict is a part of the human equation. People in Lawrence have never been afraid of conflict. In this study of vari- ous aspects of our local history, we probe this fearlessness and how it has added a tumultuous complexity to the process of change in Lawrence. Even over the last martini in paradise, some- where up on Massachusetts Street, we seem prepared for disagreement-because we refuse to give up defining the contours of our future. What a city! Notes 1. Anne M. Goebel, John B. Heffelfinger, and Delores Gammon, Kansas ... Our State: Geography of Kansas (Topeka, Kans.: State Board of Education, 1952), 151. This text on Kansas explained in detail the plundering nature of the Jayhawk in a story about Charles Jennison's Free State Force. It was used during the 1950s in a state-mandated course for Kansas's primary school children. 2. John Gaunt to the editor, the Lawrence journal-World, May 11, 2000. Past & Prologue Struggles That Define Us Learning from Local History William M. Tuttle Jr. W hat is the significance of local history in understanding our national history? Moreover, what can we learn from local history that we can't learn elsewhere? In answering these questions, it is important to understand that the writing of history has changed signifi- cantly over the past forty years-and this very much includes changes in the goals and functions of local history. During the Cold War years from 1945 until the early 1960s-during the years of McCarthyism, "American exceptionalism," and political and cultural conformity-the story of the United States was quite a simple one- and it was profoundly conservative. The narrative of American history went like this: The United States had evolved through peaceful social change, capitalism, and nonideological pragmatism-what we would call "common sense"-into the greatest na- tion in the world. America had changed when it needed to, but that change had been consensual. This self- congratulatory perspective was well suited for the Cold War in which the United States contested godless, athe- istic Communism. God was on our side, according to this narrative, but what also made America great was its democratic political institutions and civil philosophy. All Americans, for example, believed in the concepts of representative government and majority rule, as determined by a free and open vote. Americans thus enjoyed political self-determination-by electing their leaders, the people's voice would be heard and it would be listened to. The greatness of the United States, however, included not only political self-determination, but also upward mobility through public education and hard work, as well as social justice for all people in the American "melt- ing pot." This was an idealistic vision; it was the embodiment of the American Dream; and, in truth, it was largely incorrect. Like other Americans of the Cold War era, historians were patriots interested in explaining the triumph of the United States in world history. Their particular interest was obviously not in studying local history. In fact, they were disdainful of that subject, which they left to the antiquarians and the genealogists. Their historical focus was quite different: It was top-down history that studied the triumphs and failures of Great White Men, especially presidents and generals, but also robber barons, Supreme Court justices, and highbrow writers. Like most Americans, they expressed the belief that Americans should, at all costs, avoid political passion because that could only get us into trouble and that Americans should trust those men in power: our political leaders, as well as our leaders in religious life, in our schools, in the military, and in business and labor. These historians of the Cold War era argued that anyone in American history who had found fault with the United States was a sorehead and indeed had a psychological problem. Among those who were labeled irrational and said to be suffering from status anxieties were the abolitionists, populists, and progressives. Today, people drive around with bumper stickers that urge people to "Qµestion Authority." That clearly was not the attitude that Cold War Americans embraced. Their slogans were "family togetherness," "The family that prays together stays together," and, in the 1960s, '~erica, Love It or Leave It." What changed all of this? The first causal factor, and perhaps the most potent, was the civil rights movement for African American equality, .beginning with the Brown decision of 1954 but really bursting on the scene in 3 4 Learning from Local History 1960 with a sit-in by black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina. Following on the heels of the civil rights movement-and sharing both its moral outrage and its com- mitment to direct action-were other movements: for student rights; for peace in Vietnam; for women's political, economic, and social equality; gay rights; and for full citizenship rights for Native Americans and Latinos and Asians living in America. Now-instead of top-down history-we have bottom-up history. History from the bot- tom up focuses on the lives of ordinary people, on America's "plain folk" and on the com- munities they have created. It studies families ·and neighborhoods and towns such as Lawrence. In other words, it studies local history. In this way, local history has become important. It is no longer of mere antiquarian and genealogical interest, and it no longer consists of puff pieces for glorification by the cham- ber of commerce and other local boosters. It is no longer a history of local elites written by local elites. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that local history has become a tool for empow- ering people and their communities. Local history, or at least history from the bottom up, has been opposed by elite historians who cling to the Great White Man school of historiography. When I first entered graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in the 1960s, the president of the American Historical Association issued a warning that many younger historians were "products of lower middle class or foreign origins, and their emotions not infrequently get in the way of historical re- construction. They find themselves in a very real sense outsiders on our past and feel them- selves shut out," with the result being that they cannot relate to or "reconstruct the past."1 Fortunately for our understanding of the American past, these younger scholars, many of whom were the sons and daughters of immigrants, went about doing their research and pro- duced classic studies of slavery and race relations, of immigrant groups and ethnic cultures, and of women and gender. And they wrote outstanding local historical studies. Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community, edited by Dennis Domer and Barbara Watkins, exemplifies local history at its best. Rather than focusing only on peaceful social change, this volume of essays on Lawrence examines John Brown, William Qyantrill and violence in the town's earliest history. Rather than studying only the merchant class, it also examines the working classes and the lives and dwellings of these people. And this book presents not only white Americans, but also African Americans and Native Americans-and not only the people who run Lawrence, but also the people who challenge their leadership. Local history offers much of practical value. As Tip O'Neill, at one time the· Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, said, ''All politics is local." Increasingly, histo- rians of the United States act on the intellectual premise that "all ·history is local." But through the years local boosters have sought to sanitize their history. For local history to have value, however, it must be honest. And Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community is, above all, honest. Note 1. Carl Bridenbaugh, "The Great Mutation," American Historical Review 68 (January 1963): 315-31. Yankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its Environs James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge Familiar landscapes, like familiar people, are easy to take for granted. We accept them and learn their surface mannerisms, yet often do not take the time to understand how they came to acquire their present forms and personalities. This geographical axiom is as true for Lawrence, Kansas, as for any other place. Anyone who has attended KU,. grown up in the city, or moved here to work or retire, quickly acquires navigation skills for Twenty- third and North Second Streets, and soaks up the special characters of the Oread Neighborhood, downtown, and Alvamar. These people become aware, too, of the persistent flows of Interstate 70 traffic and Kansas River waters past their homes, of the characteristic bright blue skies overhead, and of a local culture that combines a typical Midwest- ern friendliness and work ethic with relatively liberal politics and a touch of international sophistication. In this essay we probe behind this facade of familiarity. Our concern is for deeper structures, for how a particu- lar collection of landscape elements and human attitudes has come together to create the Lawrence of today. Why is the site where it is, for starters, instead of a few miles up or downstream or in a different location entirely? Were the two universities, which have become so integral to the town, diligently sought after by local promoters or products of more-or-less happenstance events? The list of such questions is easy to expand. Things absent, or nearly so, can be important tools for understanding as well. Lawrence has only a token presence in manufacturing, for example, de- spite having excellent transportation connections and a relatively early founding date. It also lacks a concentration of a single ethnic group such as characterizes many other parts of the plains. We will try to shed light on all these issues in the following pages. . We begin with a sketch of the physical landscape of eastern Kansas and the local Native American culture, and then discuss the types of people who established the city and settled in its hinterland. The hopes and dreams of these settlers, their descendants, and various newcomers especially interest us. Their schemes for economic success and cultural change have been many. Some failed miserably, some were achieved only through the application of raw power and/ or skullduggery, and some have succeeded without much effort at all. Each episode, whether success or failure, is important, however, for it affected local attitudes, the next round of plans, and how outsiders saw the city. The cycle continues t~day, a complex web of local ideas intertwined with state politics, national and international market conditions, chance, and more. All is recorded, one way or another, in the landscape we see every day. The Physical Setting The river valley that the Kansa Indians came to and made their own in the early 1700s was a place well suited to their economy. It was dose enough to the pure prairie lands that the people could travel there easily for their summer buffalo hunts, yet it also possessed numerous groves of trees. Along the nearby Missouri River stood even more extensive stands of the oak-hickory forest that the tribe had come to depend on for fuel and construction 5 Mount Oread, the site of the University of Kansas, was dominated by prairie in the mid-nineteenth century. The university had been open for one year when Alexander Gardner photographed Mount Oread in 1867. 6 Yankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its Environs materials in their former Ohio Valley homes. The Kansas (or Kaw) Valley was, and is, a land that occupies a climatic and vegetation transition zone. East to west the change is most obvi- ous, as precipitation amounts and reliability decrease with distance away from the moisture source of the Gulf of Mexico. But a significant north-south transition exists as well. The over- all effects are most easily seen, perhaps, in the choices Lawrencians make for their lawns. A few people opt for buffalo grass, a species characteristic of the High Plains. At three to four inches in height it requires no mowing, but its dusty color appeals only to prairie purists. The most popular traditional choice has been Kentucky bluegrass, a plant that greens up early but goes brown and dormant in the heat of midsummer. A third option is a so-called warm-season grass such as zoysia or Bermuda, which looks good in the hot months but not in the spring. Extrapolating from grasses to other vegetation and the climate generally, the eastern Kan- sas transition zone can be said to have either the best of all worlds or the worst. Western trees, such as the Colorado blue spruce can grow here; so can sugar maples transplanted from Ver- mont and pecans from Texas. None of them exactly thrive, of course. To say that the climate provides residents with four seasons is true, but also a serious understatement. Octobers and Novembers are the only consistent months. The others vary in character greatly from year to year depending on which air masses invade the plains and control the skies. Some winters bring almost no snow, others several true blizzards. In some Aprils the progression from cool to warm weather is gradual and the redbud season is correspondingly long and beautiful. In other springs we seem to move directly from winter into summer, with only short-lived shows of color from the daffodils and forsythia. This is a country known for both droughts and floods, for spectacular thunderstorms, for magnificent cumulus clouds set in a huge sky, and for some of the world's most memorable sunsets. Most people who live here come to love such displays: their beauty, their power, and their unpredictability. As far as climatic events go, residents realize that outsiders usually hear of the area only when a tornado story makes the national news, but we do not mind the anonymity. Local weather and climate allow us to experiment with almost any plant species in our gardens, keep us alert in making daily cloth- ing choices, and, most important perhaps, keep us from believing too strongly in our power to control nature. 1 Perhaps the most interesting vegetation issue in the eastern plains region is whether the local landscape would become prairie or forest if it were left alone for several hundred years. Early photographs of Mount Oread and the future KU campus attest that prairie dominated in the 1850s, but scholars of the time thought that these grasslands were deliberately created. The Kansa, Osage, and other native peoples had burned the area regularly for a wide variety of purposes, including an inducement for buffalo to range farther to the east. Academicians changed their minds in the first half of the twentieth century. Then they argued that the prairie was natural here because a combination of drying summer winds and an inconsistent presence of snow insulation made it impossible for trees to survive unprotected. Current think- ing, led by the research of KU botanist Phil Wells and bolstered by everyday observations of trees taking over abandoned pasture land, has gone back to the fire theory. 2 The idea of a forested Kansas bothers some people who have come to love the esthetics of a prai- rie landscape, but they can take solace in the promise of ranchers and the National Park Service to keep the nearby Flint Hills swathed with big bluestem and switchgrass. Beneath the trees and prairie plants, the eastern Kan- sas landscape is comprised of alternating layers of sedimen- tary rock, mostly limestones and shales with an occasional lens of sandstone. These originally were deposited hori- zontally beneath a former ocean surface but became tilted slightly when tectonic activity in southern Missouri pushed igneous materials up near the surface and lifted the over- lying sediments into the form of a dome. This process was James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge 7 huge in scale. It affected the surface rocks of Kansas as far west as the Blue and Gypsum Hills in the central part of the state. A geologic map reveals a series of concentric rings of rock around this Ozarks core, each dipping away from the center. 3 In eastern Kansas the rock outcrops are oriented north-northeast to south-southwest, and their dip averages twenty-five to thirty feet per mile. It may seem trivial to dwell on a tilt so modest that it can- not be detected by the eye, but this pitch determines much of the look of the region. As erosion has acted on these rocks over millions of years, the higher, more exposed, and younger portions nearer the Ozark core have been worn away, leaving older layers to occupy the present land surface. The geographical pattern looks like shingles on a roof, with increasingly younger rocks exposed as one moves from east to west across the state. Without the effects of the old dome, we would have a much more monotonous landscape, one dominated by a single rock layer. As . erosion has proceeded, the shales collapse and wash away easily. Limestones resist. Their eastern edges stand as escarpments that rise sharply as much as two hundred feet above a shale base. Some eighteen of these are prominent enough to be noticed easily between the Flint Hills and the Missouri border (see Figures 1 and 2).4 One that dominates the immediate vicinity of Lawrence is called the Oread Limestone. The Oread Limestone takes its name from Mount Oread, the site of the KU campus, and Lawrence's famed Thirteenth and Fourteenth Street hills represent its escarpment face. The limestone's dip also has been experienced by every KU bicyclist. One has to pedal a bit on Jayhawk Boulevard when traveling from the Chi Omega Fountain to Fraser Hall, but can coast in the other direction (when traveling with the dip). The dominant orientation of the Oread Escarpment in the immediate Lawrence area is east-west in- stead of the more general north-northeast to south-southwest. Jayhawk Boulevard traverses a narrow tongue of the limestone, with Memorial Stadium off to one side of it and Malott Hall to the other. The es- carpment reappears in another east-west line as a tree-covered ridge several miles south of town. Highway 59 ascends it at Pleasant Grove, and the Wells Overlook tower sits atop it. These east-west anomalies have been caused by the Kansas and Wakarusa Rivers and their tribu- taries, which have cut notches through the limestone and then ex- panded these openings. The more general course of the Oread Escarp- ment can be seen on a drive northeast from Lawrence to Tonganoxie along Highway 40. The limestone parallels the road about a half mile to the west. In addition to creating "peninsulas" such as Mount Oread, stream action can sometimes completely isolate sections of a particular limestone. A good example near Lawrence is Blue Mound, just southeast of the city. Legend has it that, in the days of the Underground Railroad, signals were sent from the escarpment edge north of Baldwin to Blue Mound, and from there on to Mount Oread. If so, the process was aided by all three locations being at the same elevation because of their shared parent material. 5 The Kansas River marks the approximate boundary between land that once was covered by continental glaciation (to the north) and that which was not. This ice episode was so long ago that many of the features characteristic of more recently glaciated country, say in Wiscon- sin or Michigan, are absent. Kansas has no drumlin hills or finger lakes. The legacy of the ice is still apparent and important, however. As one drives north of the Kaw, the uplands become mantled with ever thicker deposits of "till," the unsorted soil and rock materials brought to Kansas from Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas. The distinctive limestone escarpments of north- eastern Kansas become buried by this material and some of the old stream valleys filled in. This means that residents of Brown County on the Nebraska border have no good quarry sites Figure 1. Major escarpments of eastern Kansas I Figure 2. Hypothetical recession of the Oread formation in Douglas County This twenty-ton glacial erratic of red granite was deposited originally next to the Kansas River near Topeka and was a sacred rock where the Kansa Indians sang to Waconda, their water spirit god. ft was removed to Lawrence secretly during the night in 1929 to establish a park just west of the current city hall in honor of the fi rst governor of Kansas, Charles Robinson from Lawrence, and the two groups of p ioneers who settled Lawrence as members of the New England Emigrant Aid Society in 1854. Photograph by Richard Gwin. 8 Y'ankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its Environs for gravel, but they get compensation in the form of deeper soils (the original plus the glacial debris). Minor, but distinctive signs of glaciated country in Kansas are pieces of a fine-grained, reddish rock known as Sioux Quartzite. The nearest outcropping of the parent material for these stones is in the Dakotas, and, because the ice is the only way they could have been transported, their location can be used to chart the maximum advance of the ice. Farmers used to pile these stones along their fencerows, but many of them now have been collected by city dwellers for use in edging flower beds and creating porch supports. A particularly large example, the Shunganunga Boulder, stands in Robinson Park in Lawrence, at the south end of the Kansas River bridge. Some of the most important legacies of glaciation in the Lawrence area are in the river valleys. The present east-west path and large size of the Kaw itself is thought to have been determined by the ice's maximum advance. A melting glacier produces an incredible amount of runoff, of course, and has the power to essentially recreate the local drainage system. A related phenomenon is the unusual width of the floodplain of the Wakarusa River south and east of Lawrence. Such width (as may be seen on a drive along Highway 10 between Lawrence's East Hills Business Park and Eudora) could only have come about if the stream once carried much more water than it does now. The most likely theory is that glacial meltwater once occupied the Wakarusa at a time when ice temporarily blocked the main Kaw Valley outlet. 6 A final glacial feature is a series of terraces found in the Kansas and Wakarusa (and Mis- souri) valleys. Terraces are former floodplains-flat and fertile-that now stand at various lev- els beside and above the zone of current river activity. They are created during ice ages because so much of the world's water is tied up in the ice at such times that sea levels drop. When such situations occur, rivers began to cut downward in their beds instead of meandering side to side, and the portions of the former floodplains away from the main channel are left as elevated platforms. The one produced by the most recent glaciation is known locally as the Newman Terrace (after a siding on the Union Pacific Railroad between Lawrence and Perry), and it stands seven feet above the floodplain proper. Why is it important? Because it offers all the advantages of valley location-excellent soil, a smooth route for building railroads and highways, abundant water-without the major downside of flooding. If a person looks care- fully for the line of the seven-foot rise, he or she will see that all the valley townsites (such as Perry) are on the terrace, as are the routes of the Union Pacific Railroad and Highway 24. So are the sites of nearly all of the local farmsteads. Closer to Lawrence, a nice example of terrace location is the city airport.7 Native American Settlement Although scattered evidence exists of human settlement in northeastern Kansas for several thousand years, the first society for which details exist is that of the Kansa. Their native language is part of the large Siouan family, but they them- selves have always been a small group. Their numbers have never exceeded 1,800. The Kansa first came to this region in the early 1700s, and they focused their lives in the valley that now bears their name until they were forced to move in 1846. Because they were strongly nuclear in organization, most of the time they lived together in a single large village. No such community ever existed in the immediate vicinity of Lawrence, but one was near Topeka, on Soldier Creek, in the 1700s, and a group of seventeen families lived near the present site of Perry between 1828 and 1833. The Kansa practiced a mixed economy during this period, consisting of gardening in the valley proper, grazing of horses on the grassy uplands, winter hunting in the local woodlands and prairies, and a major buffalo hunt in central and western Kansas from June through early August. 8 The imprint of the Kansa on the present landscape seems minor at first, with only the place names Topeka and Kansas obvious legacies. An important indirect effect, though, derives from the res- ervation boundaries assigned to them in 1825. This reservation was deemed necessary by fed- eral authorities to create room for other In- dian peoples who were to be moved into Kan- sas from the new states north of the Ohio River. As plains natives, the Kansa were pushed to the drier, western side of their tra- ditional lands, onto a strip thirty miles wide north to south, that was centered on the Kan- sas River. Its eastern border began sixty miles west of the Missouri state line (Figure 3). James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge 9 I§ DeJawa • Iowa • Kans& Kicbpoo ~ n. A_ .. Missouri "'oe..., ~ Sauk and Fox of Missouri ~Shawnee D Unassigned land The creation of the Kansa Reservation initiated a series of other land allocations to Indian groups that had important ramifications for later Euro-American settlers. First, in 1825, some 900 Shawnee immigrants were assigned to a piece of land adjacent to the south bank of the Kansas River. This acreage extended westward from Missouri and around the southern side of the existing Kansa Reservation. Soon thereafter l, 100 Delaware immigrants were placed on a similar strip along the north bank of the Kaw. The pattern was complicated a bit in the 1840s when about 600 Wyandots bought a portion of the Delaware land next to the Missouri border and 2,000 Potawatomi replaced a now shrinking Kansa people on their large block of land.9 As the movements described above suggest, federal policy from the 1820s through the 1840s was to make Kansas a permanent Indian territory. Not surprisingly, this ideal began to change as land greed increased on the part of Euro-Americans, especially after the Mexican War of 1848 brought California into American hands. Gold discoveries and dreams of trans- continental railroads quickly raised the value of Kansas acreage, and negotiations began early in 1854 to remove the Delaware, the Potawatomi, the Shawnee, and their brethren-about 10,000 people in all. Indeed, the degree of urgency perceived for this process was so great that officials opted to open Kansas for Euro-American settlement almost immediately. The date set, May 30 of 1854, arrived far before negotiations with tribal leaders had been completed. Some lands had been ceded, but others had not. Some tribes were anxious to leave, but others were trying to stay where they were. 10 A map of the general land status in summer 1854 indicates the subsequent development of the state, for its patterns essentially dictated where cities could be located and where they could not (Figure 4). For example, the mouth of the Kaw, the most promising site for urban growth in a riverboat era, was unavailable because the Wyandots had not yet ceded the land. The Delaware~ were hanging on to most of their territory as well, including all of it along the Kansas River. The only promising city sites open, in fact, were along the Missouri River in a cession made by the Kickapoo people (where Atchison quickly emerged) and along a restricted portion of the Kaw. There the Shawnees, while retaining their easternmost lands, had ceded acreage west of the present site of Eudora. The initial Euro-American settlers in territorial Kansas, not surprisingly, were nearby Mis- sourians. These people quickly assumed con- trol of the Atchison townsite as well as of all the other favorable locations along the Mis- souri River. 11 Other, slightly later-arriving en- trepreneurs perceived the Kaw to be the next most attractive location, and the closer to the transportation nexus at the mouth the better. This was the reasoning of Charles Robinson and Charles Branscomb, two young land scouts hired by a group of investors and colo- nists known as the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. When the company officers EJ3 Delaware • Iowa, Sauk and Fox ofMissourl • Kicbpoo • Pocawltoml ~Shawnee ~Wyandot D C.edcd or Unassigned land Figure 3. Indian reservations, 1830s Figure 4. Indian land holdings in the summer of 1854 and selected towmites 10 Yankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its Environs Amos Lawrence, a wealthy Boston merchant and philanthropist, was a prominent member of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Lawrence, Kansas, was named after him. agreed with Robinson and Branscomb's plan, the general location for the future Lawrence was fixed at a spot near the northeastern corner of the Shawnee cession. 12 Other colonists with the New England group followed a similar logic. Topeka was located near the westernmost point of the Shawnee cession on the Kaw, far enough away from Lawrence to avoid overlapping trade areas and future conflicts over county-seat location. Manhattan and Wabaunsee settlers occupied the next good available sites upstream on the river, beyond the western limit of the Potawatomi Reservation. Euro-American and Afro-American Settlement The popular imagery of early Kansas settlement, and of Lawrence in particular, is highly distorted. The legacy of the Kansa, the Osage, and the Pawnee-the three principal residents of the region for over two centuries-is much less remembered than that of the Delaware, the Shawnee, and the Wyandot, none of whom were here for more than thirty years. Remnants of these latter groups were present for the white entrepreneurs and authors of the 1850s to see, of course. Thus we have not only the roster of tribal names used as street-naming systems for DeSoto and Leavenworth, but also places named for several prominent individuals (for ex- ample, the Delawares Fall Leaf, Sarcoxie, and Tonganoxie; the Shawnees Eudora, Lenexa, and Tecumseh; and the Wyandots Armstrong, Splitlog, and Walker). As for Euro-American distor- tions, the principal one has been an overstatement of the New England presence and a corre- sponding understatement of the Missouri contribution. The explanation is much the same as with the Indians: who was visible and who stayed in the shadows. A New England image for Kansas derives from the turbulent territorial period of the late 1850s. Yankee settlers were vocal supporters of a successful campaign to create and pass a free- state constitution, and, partly because early editors and other writers tended to be fellow Yan- kees, this role got national publicity. 13 The census numbers tell a different story, however. In 1860, only 12 percent of the Kansas population was born in New England, New York, Michi- gan, and Wisconsin, and, by 1865, this figure had shrunk to 9 percent. When the focus is put on Lawrence and Douglas County, a parallel story emerges. To be sure, Lawrence was a true New England place at its start in 1854, founded by ninety-six colonists recruited by the Emi- grant Aid Company from Massachusetts and its neighboring states. The city's location and the company's economic backing were so promising of growth, however, that other peoples were attracted almost immediately and Yankee homogeneity diluted. When the first reliable census after the Civil War was taken in 1865, Lawrence was a rapidly growing community of 4,424. Of those residents who were not born in Kansas itself, 23 percent said they were natives of New England or of other places along the northern tier of states. This figure made Lawrence one of the most Yankee cities in the state, but the percentage was nearly matched by the community's foreign-born populace (18), and exceeded by those native to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa (29), and those from Missouri and other Upper Southern states (29). 14 That Lawrence was dominated by Yankee thinking in its earliest days is evident through place-naming decisions and popular impressions. Many of the original colonists wanted to call their settlement New Boston, for ex- ample, and neighboring settlers almost immediately dubbed the place Yan- kee Town. The name Lawrence, which was officially selected in October 1854, was chosen not only to honor a major financial underwriter of the colonization scheme, but also to counter the New England image somewhat and thereby to make the community seem more open to other peoples. Yankee influence also was reflected in the naming pattern of the city's north- south streets. States were the chosen motif, beginning with the original thir- teen colonies and then adding names in order of admission to the union. James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge 11 The easternmost street was to be Georgia, followed by South Carolina and the other charter states in an order based on their general latitudinal positions. The grid was carefully posi- tioned, however, so that the principal wharf and business street would be Massachusetts, the home of Amos Lawrence and of many of the original colonists.15 A widespread Lawrence myth related to this street-naming sequence should probably be exposed at this point. Since the present grid of old East Lawrence begins with Delaware Street on the east, many people have concluded that the city founders deliberately snubbed the seces- sionist South by not using the names Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. This is not true. All five of these states were on the original plat of October 1854, but their locations were taken in the 1860s to . provide right of way for the city's primary north-south railroad, the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston. A block-and-a-half remnant of Maryland Street south from Fifteenth Street remains, however, and today's Haskell Avenue occupies a path similar to the one once envisioned for South Carolina Street. Although Lawrence in 1865 was a much more diverse place than it had been ten years earlier, settler geography still marked it as a place apart from its immediate neighbors. The sharpest contrast was with North Lawrence, an independent community until 1870 on the north bank of the Kaw. Forty-nine percent of the residents there were Southern born, as were an amazing 76 percent of those in the surrounding township. This area, like the rest of the old Delaware Reservation, was a region of the state dominated by Missourians and Kentuckians. Their influence also was strong in neighboring Johnson County to the east and even in the northwestern section of Douglas County around Lecompton (the old territorial capital that had been promoted by Missouri politicians). 16 With twinkles in their eyes, some local people claim that, even today, the atmospheres of Douglas and Jefferson counties still reflect these early differences in settler origin. They point to a relaxed attitude toward life in North Lawrence, for example, versus more obsessive behavior south of the river. Beyond the differences between Yankee and Southerner, Lawrence was locally distinctive in having sizable African American, German, and Irish populations. In 1865, 773 black Ameri- cans called Lawrence home-17 percent of the total city population. Six hundred and seventy- three people from Europe and British America were residents as well, including 209 Germans and Prussians and 152 Irish. These latter groups were here because of perceived economic opportunity. Ireland had begun to send large numbers of people to the United States in the 1850s after a prolonged famine, and Germans came for a variety of social and economic rea- sons. In Lawrence, as iIJ. other frontier cities, the more moneyed Germans typically engaged in business, while the Irish and other Germans worked as laborers. Lawrence had a lower per- centage of European emigrants than did its larger neighbors Leavenworth and Atchison, but a much higher percentage than all the other political units in the county save one. This excep- tion was Eudora, a relatively new community eight miles east of Lawrence that had been colonized by several hundred Chicago-based Germans in 1857, shortly after a group of Shawnees had vacated the site. Three smaller, but enduring rural German settlements also date from the territorial period: the Clearfield community south of Eudora, the Deer Creek (or Stull) group south of Lecompton, and the Worden Germans in southwestern Douglas County. By the 1860s the Lawrence-area Germans were numerous enough to build a Turnverein social center com- plete with bowling alley, gymnasium, stage, and saloon. Their building still stands at the cor- ner of Ninth and Rhode Island Streets. 17 The African American presence in early Lawrence is more complicated. Almost all of those resident in 1865 were Missouri natives who had escaped across the border during the chaotic years of the Civil War. They usually lacked the means to travel far, yet needed to get away from the immediate border area to avoid repatriation. Most sought urban settings for protection, and Lawrence became a favored site because of its relatively large size, its location near (but not too near) Missouri, and its abolitionist reputation. In 1865, 360 additional black refugees lived in Wakarusa Township adjacent to Lawrence and another 330 in and near Norch Lawrence. Most rural townships, in contrast, were almost entirely white. 18 12 Yankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its Environs If we were to move forward in time from 1865 to 1885, we would see a Lawrence that had more than doubled its size to 10,625 people. The old division between New England and Missouri settlers had faded considerably as native-born peoples assumed majority status. The foreign-born contingent, at 1,106 people, was marginally larger than it had been, but consti- tuted a lower percentage of the total population (10). A similar progression would seem logical for African Americans, but their total numbers actually had increased so much that their per- centage was higher as well. With 2,130 residents, they had become 20 percent of the Lawrence total. In a way, their numbers represent still another legacy of the New Englanders, for many of the new black immigrants, the so-called exodusters, had come to Kansas because of its strong free-state image. Exodusters were former slaves from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas whose lives had been rendered miserable by the end of Reconstruction. Some 6,000 refugees migrated to Kansas in 1879 and 1880. Most entered the state via the Kansas River gateway, and they almost overwhelmed Topeka and Lawrence until some relocations could be arranged elsewhere in the state. Many of the people elected to stay in the two cities permanently, how- ever, where black support groups already existed.19 City Neighborhoods Early Lawrence was entirely on the south side of the Kaw. Because abundant rains during the 1854 season had given hope that steamboats could regularly ply the river, the town's eco- nomic center was the wharf area at the north end of Massachusetts Street. This geographic focus proved stable even as railroad technology quickly became more promising than river transportation. Lawrence business leaders simply adapted. They enthusiastically joined colleagues from Leavenworth and Topeka to lobby federal officials that the Kaw Valley was the best route for a proposed new transcontinental line across the West. The plan would have been audacious had the only voice been small Kansas, but, with more powerful support from St. Louis inter- ests, it was partly successful. A major branch of the Union Pacific would indeed follow the river, although along its northern bank, instead of the southern. Again,. the local people adapted. First, Lawrence resident James Lane, one of the two original United States senators from Kan- sas, argued successfully that the builders should detour slightly from their proposed east-west route so as to provide a station directly across the river from Lawrence.20 This decision helped the city's fortunes, of course, but since the station was in Jefferson County, and thus out of Lawrence's direct control, still another round of lobbying began. This time pressure on the state legislature led to a change in county boundaries. Douglas County acquired a new town- ship north of the river in 1870, and, almost immediately thereafter, Lawrence annexed the fledgling town there.21 The residential geography of early Lawrence was influenced by physical conditions in sev- eral ways. Most fundamental, perhaps, is that North Lawrence was platted directly on the Kansas River floodplain, whereas southside buildings sit on a low bluff, safe from high water. Although some businesses opted to build in North Lawrence to take advantage of railroad proximity, most people decided on other locations for their homes. Western growth was ham- pered by a physical obstacle as well. A substantial ravine lay just two blocks west of Massachu- setts Street, between Kentucky and Tennessee Streets, and extended south from the river past what is now Eighth Street. All the old city maps show this steep-sided gully. It was a useful hiding place for residents during Quantrill's raid of 1863 and was not bridged adequately until about 1880.22 Once spanned, business people constructed an elaborate neighborhood of Vic- torian houses on its western side, a place we know today as Old West Lawrence. In the 1850s and 1860s, however, the impediment was severe enough that most local people built their homes east of Massachusetts Street. Thus, East Lawrence, which came to be known as the poorer section of town once the big homes on Tennessee and Louisiana Streets had been erected, had a wide range of house size and architecture in its early existence. It was a demo- cratic environment by all accounts, a locale where employer and employee rubbed shoulders. 23 James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge 13 The growth of West Lawrence as a businessman's enclave was not caused by a lack of suitable property on the city's eastern side. Although a few people may have wanted to be near the single building of the University of Kansas that had been erected southwest of downtown in the 1860s, a more important reason for their reo~ientation was the emergence of a major drawback to living in East Lawrence. This was the noise, soot, and smoke that accompanied the daily operations of the city's major transportation link to the south, the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad. 24 An East Lawrence location for the tracks seems odd at first, because this neighborhood housed most of the urban population of the time. Presumably residents would have lobbied officials to select an alternate route. There actually was little choice in the matter. Any line built to the south on the western side of town would have encountered the sizable escarpment of Mount Oread, and, with it, the high costs of construct- ing a suitable grade up and down its flanks. The Pursuit of Public Institutions Once early Lawrencians had secured shelter for themselves, the entrepreneurs among them began to think of growth and development. This, in itself, was not unusual, but the scope of their ambitions was unmatched in the new state. Moreover, most of the goals seemed realistic. Because of their New England connections, the Lawrence people were relatively well financed. They also had become powerful politically once the free-state forces had won control of the initial state government. As we noted above, James Lane, one of the first United States sena- tors from Kansas, was a Lawrence resident. In addition, Charles Robinson, the former agent for the Emigrant Aid Company who had located the Lawrence townsite, had been elected the state's first governor. With this kind of clout, the dreams that occupied the minds of settlers elsewhere, such as having their town designated as a county seat, were accomplished for Lawrence with virtually no effort. Local people had their eyes on becoming the state capital. Was this ambition unrealistic? Not at all. In fact, most observers in the late 1850s thought it was almost a foregone conclusion. The city had money and influence, and the only two communities larger at the time, Leavenworth and Atchison, were too far from the actual and predicted future centers of population to merit serious consideration. Lawrence also had served as the informal capital of the territory from 1857 onward. Nearby Lecompton still held the tide officially, but that town's associations with the now disavowed proslavery forces made it anathema for the new legislators. Every fall, after dutifully assembling in Lecompton, they promptly adjourned and rode eight miles east to reconvene in Lawrence. Despite all of Lawrence's advantages, a public election in 1861 produced a different capi- tal site. The winner, with 7,996 votes, was the tiny community of Topeka, a place that had claimed only 759 residents the year before. Lawrence received 5,291 votes, and various other locations totaled 1,184.25 What happened? This puzzle has never been thoroughly explored, but the most likely explanation is a statewide negative reaction to Lawrence's ambitions. Charles Robinson and other local leaders were in pursui~ of the state university as well as the capital at the time, and many Kansans saw in their attitude more than a hint of hubris. When such voters combined with those who favored a more central location for the capital, Lawrence's fate was sealed. Once the chance to acquire the state government was lost, Lawrencians redoubled their efforts to land the state university. Having a college had been part of the original agenda of the Emigrant Aid Company, and, in fact, the familiar site atop Mount Oread was already marked as its location on a plat map published in 1855. The initial plan was to gain sponsor- ship from the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or other church organization. Fundraising began in 1858 but was hindered by bad financial conditions at the time. Leaders then decided that the chances were better of securing legislative funds for a public institution. At the first session of the 1861 legislature, four towns bid to host the new university: Lawrence, Leavenworth, Man- hattan, and Topeka. Observers thought Manhattan stood the best chance of winning since 14 Yankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its Environs Lawrence and Topeka delegates spent the majority of their time lobbying for the capital,. and Leavenworth representatives were most interested in acquiring the state prison. A bill to award Manhattan the prize actually passed both the house and the senate, but Governor Robinson (perhaps already seeing the capital issue in doubt for Lawrence) vetoed the proposal. In the next year, when the legislature met again, Emporia, Manhattan, and Lawrence were the bid- ders; each city made an offer of land and/or cash. A stalemate was ended when the U.S. Congress passed the Morrill Act that summer, which promised federal funds for the creation of state agricultural colleges. Seeing the possibility of a compromise, the Kansas legislature decided in 1863 to award the agricultural school to Manhattan. This still left two towns want- ing the liberal-arts college, however, and Emporia made the better bid. Lawrence leaders, now desperate, used all of their influence. Key votes are reported to have been bought, and rumors surfaced of deals made with representatives from Osawatomie and Atchison who were inter- ested in getting votes for public projects of their own. A bill for Lawrence finally passed the Kansas House of Representatives in 1863 by a single vote. 26 Although the acquisition of the state university was an important goal of Lawrence pro- moters, it was never expected to be a major employer. The school opened with only three faculty members in 1866, and by 1890 it still employed only forty-five. The same was true. for the city's second major educational institution. This was an Indian industrial training school that had been directed to Kansas in 1884 through the influence of a local congressman, Dudley Haskell. To get this prize, Lawrence had only to donate 280 acres for a site. 27 For town boosters, the University of Kansas and Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations Univer- sity) were seen as amenities more than anything else, baubles that might make the city more attractive to railroad investors and manufacturing moguls, the real makers of urban success in the late nineteenth century. Plans for Industrial Glory After the major decisions about state public institutions had been made, Lawrence busi- ness leaders concentrated their energies on railroad promotion. A taste of the possibilities had been provided by a business frenzy that followed the arrival of the Union Pacific in December 1864. For a few glorious months, the city served as the route terminus and default trade center for a huge section of the American Southwest. To participate fully in future develop- ment, local leaders soon agreed that a successful strategy would have two main ele~ents: a rail connection northeast to Chicago and another one south to the Gulf of Mexico. Both goals, perhaps, could be accomplished with a single line. Thus was born the idea of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston (LL&G). With Senator Lane as president, the Lawrence plan was to cooperate with Leavenworth for the northern section of the route and to bridge the Missouri River at that city. To the south, the aim simply was to lay track faster than a rival line being planned to the Gulf from Kansas City.28 The Lawrence railroad vision could well have come to pass and the city have grown into the national role now served by Kansas City. The LL&G began construction to the south considerably before the Kansas City line, for example, and entrepreneurs were successful in getting backing from key Chicago financiers, including the noted inventor and industrialist Cyrus McCormick. People could almost see the giant warehouses on their skyline and the coal being shipped in from southeastern Kansas to power new factories. Such a dream never was realized, of course. Although the tracks in question all were laid, their construction was de- layed long enough for trade patterns to assume the form we see on the present-day landscape. The problem was a series of jealousies and other mishaps. To start the downslide, Senator Lane mysteriously committed suicide in July of 1866. Then local people began to distrust their Chicago partners. Finally, Leavenworth voters decided not to appropriate funds for the needed bridge.29 The stories of two other railroad schemes shed additional light on the ambitious Lawrence mindset of the times. The first was to build a line some seventy miles long directly east from James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge 15 town to a connection with the Pacific Railroad of Missouri (later the Missouri Pacific) at Pleasant Hill in Cass County, Missouri. In theory, this link would enable trade to bypass Kansas City on its way between St. Louis and Denver. Had the grand plan discussed above for the LL&G come to pass, this bypass route might have been a useful adjunct to it. Alone, however, the Pleasant Hill road was only a short-lived branch line. The other interesting rail- road idea was one along the Wakarusa River to the Osage County coal deposits located just south of Topeka. This, too, had potential until the seams there proved to be low in quality and expensive to mine. 30 If anything was bigger than railroad promotion in the Lawrence of 1860-1880, it was the quest for industry. The two went hand in hand, of course, and everyone saw the chance to supply plows, stoves, cotton goods, and cigars to the developing American West as an oppor- tunity with unlimited potential. Given adequate railroad transportation, the only real need was a cheap supply of power. The first large-scale attempt to solve this problem locally occurred in 1864 when three business partners recruited Swedish workers to construct a gigantic windmill. Its location was on a high point of land near the present-day intersection of Emery Road and Ninth Street. The structure had an octagonal stone base fifty-five feet in diameter. Its sails spanned eighty feet of airspace, and the top of the building rotated so as to catch the wind at the proper angle. The building instantly became a city landmark and produced power enough for a standard flour mill, a plow factory, and a blacksmith shop.31 The windmill operated successfully for twenty-one years and then closed for unclear rea- sons. Writers have speculated that the demand for plows may have waned, but a more likely culprit was owner unhappiness with its limited and irregular generation capacity. Most early Lawrence entrepreneurs thought that coal offered a better hope.32 This fuel solved the prob- lems of wind power, to be sure, but raised another issue. Was a high-quality product available close at hand? When the fields of nearby Osage County, some forty miles to the southwest, proved inadequate, this question was answered. The next closest choice, extreme southeastern Kansas, was too far away to be economical. The inadequacies of wind and coal did not vex Lawrence promoters long, however. By the early 1870s their search for power had turned to a harnessing of the Kansas River. This was a resource near at hand, and it drained an impres- sively large ·watershed. Only a simple dam, they claimed, stood between the town and indus- trial glory. Construction of the much anticipated dam began in 1872 and was completed two years later. It was an impressive sight physically, eight feet high and six hundred feet long. Of more importance to investors, though, was an advertised generation potential of 2,500 horsepower. Although spring floods knocked out sections of the structure every year for the rest of the decade, the business community never lost hope. Ownership passed to J.D. Bowersock in 1879, and, after he made major repairs, the manufacturers did indeed began to come.33 Soon hyperbole ruled, as in the following·quotation from the Lawrence Daily journal in 1880: There is no other power like it . . . west of the Mississippi River. . . . It has already been utilized in furnishing power for the Douglas County Mills and Elevator .... It also, by means of wire cables, furnishes power for the Delaware Mills and for Moak's Elevator, on the north side of the river, and for McConnell Brothers Mills, the Lawrence . Foundry and Machine Shops, Wilder's Shirt Factory, Warne's Wire Fence Factory, and Johnson's Hay Press upon the south side. 34 Perhaps the two most important industries that came to be associated with the dam were the Lawrence Paper Company, established by Bowersock in 1882 to convert straw into brown wrapping paper, and the Consolidated Barb Wire Company, created in 1883 through a merger of four preexisting concerns. Until it closed in 1898, the Consolidated factory dominated its field-the leading wire producer in all the West. It represented a pinnacle of achievement for Lawrence industrialists and was a source of pride for the entire community. The paper com- pany, though smaller, has made an impact through endurance. It is still operated by Mr. Bowersock's descendants. 16 'Yankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its· Environs The College Town Even as the city's manufacturing glory peaked in the 1880s, it was obvious to serious observers that Lawrence would never become the industrial center that many had visualized. The dam continued. to require frequent major repairs, for one thing, and water levels in sum- mer often were too low to drive machinery. It also was clear by that time that Kansas City had become the regional hub for rail transportation and, therefore, the site where Eastern capital- ists would invest most of their dollars. Lawrence had to find a different economic path. The search for an alternate, nonindustrial identity turned out to be easy. City leaders gradually began to realize that the University of Kansas was becoming an important economic asset in its own right. Whereas in its early years the campus could only be termed "a fitting crown for Mount Oread," growth was such that, by 1904, a promotional pamphlet could enlarge the scale. Now KU was "the crowning glory of the town," with the city itself, "by reason of its superb educational advantages and the culture of its people, ... called the Athens of Kansas."35 The newspaper claims could be backed up by facts. Enrollment at the university rose rapidly from about 250 students in the mid-1870s to 1,000 by the early 1890s and to 2,000 in 1907. After the 4,000 mark was reached in 1919, growth slowed for a while, but just after World War II, returning veterans with their GI bills of rights quickly pushed the enrollment over 10,000. The booming enrollments brought with them a corresponding rise in faculty numbers and other university employees, plus major increases in retail sales and home con- struction. The influence was even wider than this, however, for the university atmosphere was believed to affect the overall quality of life. "It is this institution which makes Lawrence a most desirable place to live," a journalist wrote in 1904. "Its benign influence is apparent in the social and intellectual life of the town."36 To put the issue more succinctly, after having housed a university for forty years, Lawrence became dominated by it at the turn of the century. The change from an industrial to an educational base in Lawrence was not sudden, com- plete, or universally praised. From 1870, when the. city, with a population of 8,320, was sec- ond· in size only to Leavenworth, Lawrence fell steadily in the state rankings until it was eleventh in both the 1930 and 1940 censuses. Lawrence grew, but not as fast as did Topeka, Wichita, and even such industrial or railroad upstarts as Coffeyville, Parsons, and Pittsburg. Given the realities of business life at the time, however, the town had little choice but to champion what it had. Quality of life became a local byword, and, as time went on, this asset became increasingly saleable. Reuter Organ Company moved to town in 1920, for example, after KU music professor Carl Preyer visited their old factory in Illinois and told them about the advantages of Lawrence.37 A similar encounter involving then Chancellor Deane Malott in 1950 produced a new sodium manufacturing plant run by the Food Machinery and Chemical Corporation (FMC).38 More recently, pharmaceutical research and other companies utilizing the advanced research skills of university personnel have added to the mix. The Fashionable Suburb From the perspective of 1999, the Lawrence that existed between about 1890 and 1960 seems idyllic. It was a comfortable, intellectual community, but one still close to its rural roots. A busy grain elevator stood at the corner of Sixth and Massachusetts Streets and Stokley- Van Camp's vegetable cannery operated just east of Delaware Street. The population was rela- tively stable over most of this period as well, growing slowly from about 10,000 in 1890 to just over 14,000 in 1940, before the influx of former servicemen began to accelerate the pace somewhat. The growth produced a new faculty neighborhood just south of campus between Louisiana and Alabama Streets, and then a more mixed series of housing developments be- tween Nineteenth and Twenty-third Streets. Lawrencians still thought of themselves as small- town folks, though, and they loyally supported their single high school. We saw the last years James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge 17 of this Lawrence when we came to town in 1965 and 1966.39 Since then everything has been dominated by growth and change. Indeed, the transformation has become so great that Lawrence can be said to have undergone a metamorphosis from its 1950 or 1960 self. The recent changes in Lawrence are partly those endemic to all college towns. As Ameri- cans began to retire earlier and to have more time and money to invest in leisure activities, they started to realize that university communities offered many such opportunities. Good libraries existed ther~. So did music concerts, theater performances, and sporting events. If you were an alumnus, the appeal was especially strong, for almost every sixty-year-old looks back at the place where she or he spent young adult years with special fondness. College towns always have attracted some of their older alumni back, but the movement first became large enough to have major economic impact in the 1970s. The big classes of military veterans from the late 1940s began to leave their jobs at that time, and Lawrence quickly found itself the leading retirement center in the state. The return of older alumni, although significant in total numbers, was not the basic force that transformed Lawrence. Instead, it was the location of university-related amenities within commuting distance of a large metropolitan area. Lawrence was rare in this regard, sharing a similar geographical situation with Ann Arbor, Michigan, Boulder, Colorado, and only a few other cities. Driving either the thirty-five miles east to Kansas City or the twenty-five west to Topeka became easy with the construction of the Kansas Turnpike in 1956. The most obvious symbol of Lawrence's transformation, however, was the conversion of state Highway 10 into an expressway. This route connects Lawrence with suburban Johnson County and the metro- politan loop road, Interstate 435. Sinceimprovements were implemented in the mid-1980s, it has carried near bumper-to-bumper traffic morning and evening. Not many years ago miles of agricultural land separated Lawrence from the Kansas City suburbs, but no more. Executives transferred to jobs in Kansas City now look at their housing options and see that Lawrence is scarcely any farther away from their work than the current fringe cities of Olathe and DeSoto. Why not choose Lawrence, many of them say, and get the university amenities as a bonus? Lawrence as a homesite is even more likely when, in a two- income family, one person finds work in Kansas City and the other a job either in Lawrence itself or in Topeka. Population gains for the city have averaged over ten thousand per decade since 1960, and the incorporated area has expanded rapidly to the west. Such western locations make for longer commutes to Johnson County, but the converging floodplains of the Kansas and Wakarusa rivers effectively have limited expansion elsewhere. Iowa Street, which defined the western limit of town in 1960, is now east of the urban centerline. New shopping strips are developing on Wakarusa Drive, a street two and a half miles west of Iowa that ~as a dirt path and home to a drag strip as recently as the 1970s. Homesites even ring Clinton Lake, a large reservoir built by the Corps of Engineers several miles southwest of the city. A second high school opened in northwestern Lawrence in 1997, but, frighteningly, no sooner had it been constructed than planners proclaimed a need for a third. The most interesting cultural aspect of the growth is how people from the older, university and local-industry Lawrence, and those from the newer, commuter Lawrence hardly know or see one another. Most of the houses in far-western Lawrence are much too expensive for a professor or a FMC worker to afford, and the commuters are too busy doing business on their cell phones to socialize much. As we write in 1999, Lawrence retains its long-standing image as an exotic spot on the Kansas map, a place younger, more liberal, and more intellectual than the state as a whole. Despite its soaring population, we chink that most of this exoticism will be retained into the foreseeable future. The people who move to town are not random souls. Instead, they are self- selected for the most pare, people who see themselves as matching the existing image and who want to be a part of it. Still, growth inevitably means change. A glimpse into the more general future is provided, perhaps, by the realities of tickets to the men's basketball games at KU today. Once available cheaply and at the door, these passports to Allen Fieldhouse are now among the most treasured items in the state. People pay premiums just for the opportunity co 18 Yankee Town on the Kaw: A Geographical and Historical Perspective on Lawrence and its Environs buy, and a typical young university employee has little chance of ever getting chem for a season's enjoyment. The golden goose chat is Lawrence is gradually being strangled. Automo- bile traffic gets heavier every year on city streets, and odds of a chance encounter with an old friend downtown diminish. Chain stores selling books and clothing are now downtown as well, adding variety, but making Lawrence more like everywhere else. The city still has great appeal for most newcomers. People who have lived here for a while, though, must be forgiven if they grow nostalgic once in a while, and use any excuse possible to visit the dusty, but wondrous emporium on Massachusetts Street known as Ernst Hardware. Notes 1. For detailed data see Snowden D. Flora, "Climate of Kansas," Report of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture 67 (1948): 1-320. A useful overview of the state's weather, plants, and animals is Joseph T. Collins, editor, Natural Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1985). 2. Philip Wells, "Scarp Woodlands, Transported Grassland Soils, and Concept of Grassland Climate in the Great Plains Region," Science 148 (1965): 246-49. 3. A good, though brief, survey of Kansas geomorphology is Frank W. Wilson, Kansas Landscapes: A Geologic Diary (Lawrence, Kans.: Kansas Geological Survey, Educational Series 5, 1978). For more complete infor- mation in a guidebook format see Rex Buchanan and James R. McCauley, Roadside Kansas: A Traveler's Guide to its Geology and Landmarks (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1987). The best general treatment, however, remains Walter H. Schoewe's "The Geography of Kansas, Part II: Physical Geography," Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 52 (1949): 261-333. 4. Highway 10 between Lawrence and Johnson County provides some clear views of escarpment structure in its roadcuts. 5. For more information on these and other regional sites, see James R. Shortridge, Kaw Valley Landscapes: A Traveler's Guide to Northeastern Kansas, 2nd ed., rev. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1988). 6. Detailed physical maps of the area are in Harold P. Dickey et al., Soil Survey of Douglas County, Kansas (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1977). 7. The local terraces are mapped and described in Stanley N. Davis and William A. Carlson, "Geology and Ground-Water Resources of the Kansas River Valley between Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas," Bulletin 96, Part 5, State Geological Survey of Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Publications, 1952); and in Alvin E. Dufford, "O!,iaternary Geology and Ground-Water Resources of Kansas River Valley between Bonner Springs and Lawrence, Kansas," Bulletin 130, Part 1, State Geological Survey of Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Publications, 1958). 8. Benjamin Y. Dixon, "Ecological Impacts of Euro-American Frontier Advancement on the Kansa Indians" (master's thesis, Department of Geography, University of Kansas, 1996); William E. Unrau, The Kama Indi- ans: A History ofthe Wind People, 1673-1873 (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971). 9. Joseph B. Herring, The Enduring Indians of Kansas: A Century and a Ha!f of Acculturation (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 1-28. 10. Paul W. Gates, Fifty Million Acres: Conflicts over Kansas Land Policy, 1854-1890 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni- versity Press, 1954), 1-71; H. Craig Miner and William E. Unrau, The End of Indian Kansas: A Study of Cultural Revolution: 1854-1871 (Lawrence, Kans.: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1978). 11. James C. Malin, "The Proslavery Background of the Kansas Struggle," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10 (1923): 285-305. 12. Samuel A. Johnson, The Battle Cry of Freedom: The New England Emigrant Aid Company in the Kansas Cru- sade (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Press, 1954). 13. James C. Malin, "Kansas: Some Reflections on Cultural Inheritance and Originality," Journal of the Central Mississippi Valley American Studies Association 2 (fall 1961): 3-19. 14. James R. Shortridge, Peopling the Plains: Who Settled Where in Frontier Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 15-37. 15. David Dary, Lawrence: Douglas County, Kansas: An Informal History (Lawrence, Kans.: Allen Books, 1982), 25-29. 16. Shortridge, Peopling the Plains, 15-37. 17. Shortridge, Peopling the Plains, 15-37; Eleanor L. Turk, "Selling the Heartland: Agents, Agencies, Press, and Policies Promoting German Emigration to Kansas in the Nineteenth Century," Kansas History 12 (1989): 150-59; Katja Rampelmann, "Small Town Germans: The Germans of Lawrence, Kansas, From 1854 to 1918" (master's thesis, Department of American Studies, University of Kansas, 1993). 18. Richard B. Sheridan, "From Slavery in Missouri to Freedom in Kansas: The Influx of Black Fugitives and Contrabands into Kansas 1854-1865," Kansas History 12 (1989): 28-47. 19. Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977). 20. lmre E. O!,iastler, The Railroads of Lawrence, Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1979), 59-72. 21. North Lawrence Civic Association, "Early History of North Lawrence," (mimeographed, 1930), 12-16. James R. Shortridge and Barbara G. Shortridge 19 22. After substantial filling, this ravine eventually became a pleasant recreation area known first as Central Park and currently as Watson Park. 23. For more on East . Lawrence see Dale Nimz, "Building the 'Historic City': Significant Houses in East Lawrence" (master's thesis, Department of American Civilization, George Washington University, 1985). 24. Qyastler, Railroads of Lawrence, 92-113. 25. D.W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (Topeka, Kans.: T. Dwight Thacher, Kansas Publishing House, 1886), 325. 26. Clifford S. Griffin, The University of Kansas: A History (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1974), 13-26. 27. Dary, Lawrence, 151, 188-89, 249. 28~ Qyastler, Railroads of Lawrence, 78-133. 29. Qyastler, Railroads of Lawrence, 134-80. 30. Qyastler, Railroads of Lawrence, 180-216. 31. Kenneth A. Middleton, The Industrial History of a Midwestern Town (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas School of Business, Kansas Studies in Business No. 20, 1941), 25-27; Dary, Lawrence, 123-25. 32. Middleton, Industrial History, 41-47. 33. Middleton, Industrial History, 41-53; Brian Black, "Mastering the Kaw: The Bowersock Dam and the De- velopment of Lawrence Industry," Kansas History 16 (1993): 262-75. 34. Lawrence Daily Journal, special edition, January 1880, 9. 35. Lawrence Daily .Tribune, centennial issue, July 4, 1876, 4; Joseph S. Boughton, Lawrence, Kansas, A Good Place to Live (Lawrence, Kans.: J.S. Boughton, 1904), 1. 36. Boughton, Lawrence, 1. 37. Middleton, Industrial History, 84-85. 38. Dary, Lawrence, 347-48. 39. A good graphic portrait of Lawrence in 1964 is the city's Guide far Growth: 1964-1985 (Lawrence, Kans.: City of Lawrence, 1964). Ad Astra per Aspera The Nineteenth Century John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-1859: A Militant Abolitionist's Relationship with the Free State Fortress Karl L. Gridley Between December 1855 and January 1859 it would not have been uncommon to see in the dusty streets and among the barricades of Lawrence, Kansas, the man known to history as John Brown. Born in 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut; raised in the Western Reserve of Ohio; late of North Elba, New York-Brown came to Kansas, a father of twenty, a devout Calvinist, and a militant abolitionist. He arrived heavily armed-determined to stop the spread of, and ultimately to end, American slavery. Kansas became his preliminary battleground; Harpers Ferry his final one. A controversial, polarizing figure, John Brown would force the issue of slavery to a violent, cataclysmic resolution and forever change the way Americans lived their lives. 1855: "The Mysterious Stranger"-The Wakarusa War and the Liberty Guards Walking alongside a one-horse lumber wagon bristling with weapons, John Brown arrived in the beleaguered settlement of Lawrence, Kansas Territory, for the first time on the afternoon of December 7, 1855. Having crossed the Wakarusa River at Blanton's Bridge, Brown and four of his sons Qohn Jr., Owen, Frederick, and Salmon), came up the wide, frozen-mud swath known as Mas- sachusetts Street and parked in front of the unfinished, three-story stone Free State Hotel. They had come from their claims some thirty-five miles south of Lawrence, "all of us," Brown later wrote, "more or less lamed by our tramp." 1 The arrival of the Browns that afternoon made a distinct im- pression on many of the town's citizens: "[It] was the first intro- duction of the mysterious stranger into the Kansas drama," wrote R. G. Elliott, editor of the Kansas Free State, " ... his grim visage, his bold announcements, with the patriarchal organization of his company, gave him at once welcome entrance into the military counsels of the defenders, and lightened up the gloom of the be- sieged during their darkest hour. "2 "To each of their persons was strapped a short heavy broad- Photogravure of an 1856 daguerreotype of john Brown, taken in Kansas Territory, late summer 1856. Attributed to john Bowles, Lawrence, KT. The original is in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum. 23 24 John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-59 sword," G. W. Brown, editor of the Herald of Freedom, recalled: "Each was supplied with a goodly number of fire arms, and navy revolvers, and poles were standing endwise around the wagon box with fixed bayonets pointing upwards. They looked. really formidable and were received with great edat. A small military company was organized at once, and the command was given to Old Brown."3 The only contemporary, published account of the Brown's arrival is in the December 15, 1855; edition of the Herald of Freedom: About noon Mr. JOHN BROWN, an aged gentleman from Essex County, N. Y., who has been a resident of the Territory for several months, arrived with four of his sons-leaving several others at home sick-bringing a quantity of arms with him, which were placed in his hands by eastern friends for the defence of the cause of freedom. Having more than he could well use to advantage, a portion of them were placed in the hands of those who were more destitute. A company was organized and the command given co Mr. B. for che zeal he had exhibited in the cause of freedom both before and since his arrival in the Territory. Like a number of settlers in the region, Brown came to Lawrence that week in response to a call for defenders. The murder of a free-state settler, Charles W. Dow, near Hickory Point in \ southern Douglas County, by a proslavery settler named Franklin N. Coleman, resulted in the arrest of Dow's friend Jacob Branson by the Douglas County's proslavery Sheriff Samuel Jones. The rescue of Branson by his fellow free starers, near Blanton's Bridge on November 26, ig- nited the call for an attack on Lawrence. The fledgling free-state town was soon surrounded by what was called at the time "Shannon's Posse," a vast gathering of border ruffians nominally under the control of Sheriff Jones and Wilson Shannon, the territorial governor with moder- ately proslavery sympathies. Ezekial A. Colman, ~ prominent Douglas County settler, wrote of the affair: "When Lawrence was besieged, we sent runners to all parts of the Territory, calling on every settler. We met at Lawrence. [Charles] Robinson was commander-in-chief; I was on his staff. ... We had gathered to the number of about two-hundred and fifty, all told. The ruffians were gath- ered at Franklin, four miles east, with four or five hundred men."4 Lawrence became a beehive of activity, with various companies of free-state militia (eventually numbering 800) building defenses, .breastworks, and circular earthen forts thr~ughout the town. There was a heightened state of agitation on December 7 because of the shooting, the previous day, of Thomas . W. Barber, a respected abolitionist from Ohio. Barber was returning to his home near Bloomington, southwest of Lawrence, when a proslavery group of horsemen from Lecompton accosted his party, shooting him dead. Barber's body was brought to the Free State Hotel for viewing. John Brown wrote of this event in a letter dated December 16, 1855, to his wife, Mary, and family in North Elba, New York: . . . On the Evening we left Osawatomie a company of the invaders, of from Fifteen to Twenty- five, attacked some Three or Four Free-State men, mostly unarmed, killing a Mr. Barber from Ohio wholly unarmed. His boddy was afterward brought in; & lay for some days in the room afterward occupied by a part of the company co which we belong (it being organized after we reached Lawrence.) The building was a large unfinished Stone Hotel; in which a great pare of the Volunteers were quartered; & who witnessed the scene of bringing in the Wife & other friends of the murdered man. I will only say of this scene that it was Heart-rending; & calcu- lated to exasperate the men exceedingly; & one of the sure results of Civil War.5 Brown's reference to "Civil War" is prophetic here. Barber became the first martyr of the free-state cause, and John Greenleaf Whittier, the nationally famous abolitionist poet, would soon write a poem "Burial of Barber" memorializing him.6 An impressive marble monument to Thomas Barber still stands in Pioneer Cemetery, on Kansas University's West Campus. Brown's company, with a total of twenty men, of which he was the captain, was known as the Liberty Guards. The original muster roll for the company is printed below:7 Karl L. Gridley 25 "Muster Roll of Capt. John Brown's Company in the Fifth Regiment, First Brigade of Kansas Volunteers, commanded by Col. Geo. W. Smith, called into the service of the· people of Kan- sas to defend the city of Lawrence, in· the Territory of Kansas from threatened demolition by foreign invaders. Enrolled at Osawatomie K. T. Called into the service from the 27th day of November, A.D. 1855, when mustered, to the 12th day of December, when discharged. Ser- vice, 16 days. Miles travelled each way, 50. Allowance to each for use of horse $24. Remark-One keg of powder and eight pounds of lead were furnished by William Partridge and were used in the service." Age John Brown sen. Capt. 55 Wm. W. Up De Graff 1st Lieut. 34 Henry H. Williams 2nd " 27 Jas. J. Holbrook 3rd " 23 Ephraim Reynolds 1st Sergt. 25 R.W. Woods 2nd " 20 Frederic Brown 3rd " 25 John Yelton 4th " 26 Henry Alderman 1st Corp 55 H. Harrison Up De Graff 2nd Corp 23 Dan'l W. Collis 3rd Corp 27 Wm. Partridge 4th Corp 32 Amos D. Alderman 20 Owen Brown 31 Salmon Brown 19 John Brown Jr. 34 Francis Brennen 29 Wm. W. Coine 19 Benj. L. Cochren 24 Jeremiah Harrison 22 On the afternoon of December 8, Charles Robinson and James Lane, the free-state leaders and soon bitter rivals, met with Governor Shannon and worked· out a temporary peace agree- ment. The agreement did not sit well with Brown, and when its particulars were announced to a large gathering outside the hotel, Brown loudly protested: Captain Brown got up to address the people, but a desire was manifested to prevent his speak- ing. Amidst some little disturbance, he demanded to know what the terms were. If he under- stood Governor Shannon's speech, something had been conceded, and he conveyed the idea that the territorial laws were to be observed. Those laws they denounced and spit upon, and would never obey-no! Here the speaker was interrupted by the almost. universal cry, "No! No! Down with the bogus laws!-lead us down to fight first!" Seeing a young revolution on the tapis, the influential men assured the people that there had been no concession. They had yielded nothing. They had surrendered nothing to the usurping legislature. With these assur- ances the people were satisfied and withdrew. 8 Brown, previously eager for a fight, seems to have been satisfied as well-for the time being. On December 12, he and his sons left Lawrence and returned across the tallgrass Osage cuestas to their claims, known as Brown's Station, some ten miles west of Osawatomie. 9 The seeds of distrust however, were ·sown between Brown and Robinson during this tense prelude to Bleeding Kansas, later referred to as the Wakarusa War. On the way back to the claims, a Mr. Foster, of Osawatomie, asked Brown about Lane and Robinson. "They are both men without principle," said ·Brown; "but when worst comes to worst, Lane will fight,-and there is no fight in Robinson." 10 26 John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-59 1856: "Swords in the Darkness"-Sack of Lawrence, Pottawatomie Massacre, Battle of Black Jack A particularly harsh winter followed, but by the spring of 1856 hostilities between the free-state and proslavery forces rose steadily with the temperature in eastern Kansas. On May 21, Lawrence was sacked by Sheriff Samuel Jones and a large border ruffian force made up of Kickapoo Rangers, Doniphan Tigers, and the Platte County Rifles. Beneath a banner pro- claiming "Let Yankees tremble, And abolitionists fall! Our motto is, 'Southern rights to all,"' Senator David R. Atchison of Missouri led the bombarding by cannon of the Free State Hotel, while the Herald of Freedom and Kansas Free State presses were broken to pieces and thrown in the Kaw River. 11 Drinking and enjoying the day immensely, Atchison urged the Rangers on in the destruction of the hotel and their pillage of the town: "If any man or woman stand in your way," he bellowed, "blow them to hell with a cold chunk of lead!"12 Back at Brown's Station, John Brown and his sons heard of the attack and set out imme- diately to aid in Lawrence's defense. But by the time the Browns reached Prairie City (south- west of present-day Baldwin City), news arrived that the Missourians had already left Lawrence a smoldering ruin. Brown listened, with a mixture of fury and disgust, to the story of the town's destruction and of the failure of the townspeople to resist. Later that night, upon hear- ing that Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts had been beaten nearly to death in Wash- ington with a shillelagh by Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, 13 Brown resolved to commit a terrible act of retaliation. On the night of May 24, John Brown, four of his sons, and two other settlers hacked five proslavery men to death with broadswords along the banks of the Pottawatomie Creek. 14 It was done, Brown later said without admitting to personal involvement, to even the score for six murdered free-state men and, "to cause a restraining fear." Whatever the rationale for this butchery, it plunged the territory further into a vicious civil war that raged throughout 1856.15 On June 2, Brown and his forces were battling men under the command of Henry Clay Pate at Black Jack near Palmyra (now Baldwin City) in southeastern Douglas County. 16 Brown, with Captain Samuel T. Shore, routed Pate's men and took most of them prisoner in what is considered the first regular battle fought between free-state and proslavery forces in Kansas Terri- tory and in the nation. Brown's camp along Middle Ottawa Creek was broken up, however, several days later by Colonel Edwin V. Sumner and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart,17 who released Pate's men. For some reason they did not arrest Brown, for whom a warrant had been issued by Judge S. G. Cato on May 28 for Brown's involvement in the Pottawatomie Massacre.18 One of Brown's trophies from Black Jack was Pate's Bowie knife, which Brown later showed a Collinsville, Connecticut, blacksmith, asking him if he could make a thousand like it to be "attached to poles about six feet long." Thus originated the famous pikes of Harpers Ferry that Brown planned to use as arms in his slave uprising against the South. 19 One of these pikes is on display at the Watkins Community Museum of History in Lawrence. For the next month, Brown and his men lived in the brush of Douglas and Franklin counties, "hiding from our enemies," Brown wrote to Mary in North Elba, "like David of old, finding our dwelling with the serpants of the Rock, & wild beasts of the wilderness. "20 Brown's Station was burned to the ground by his pursuers. In Lawrence, Brown's exploits were variously received: some felt he was the only one willing to fight the proslavery forces on their terms, while others saw him dangerously exacer- bating a volatile situation. "The Glorious Beauty of the Landscape" -John Brown on Mount Oread John Brown's next appearance in Lawrence occurred in early July while on his way to Topeka, where the Free State Legislature was gathering in open defiance of the proslavery territorial government. Brown met up with journalist William A. Phillips in Lawrence and gave an extensive interview, partially quoted here: Karl L. Gridley 27 Upon the 2d of July, 1856, Captain John Brown called on me at the Eastern House, in Lawrence, Kansas. He had left his company, twenty-two men, camped on the Wakerusa [sic], a few miles from town. The free-state legislature was to assemble at noon, at Topeka, on the 4th. Franklin Pierce was then president, and the federal officials of the Territory, who all sympathized with the pro-slavery party, had determined that the legislature should not meet. There had been a lull in the winter, but with the spring hostilities set in .... During the day he stayed with me in Lawrence I had my first good opportunity to judge the old man's character. I had seen him in his camp, had seen him in the field, and he was always an enigma, a strange compound of enthusiasm and cold, methodic stolidity,-a vol- cano beneath a mountain of snow .... He looked upon passing political movements as mere preliminaries or adjuncts to more important events in the future. With him men were noth- ing, principles everything. I had intended to drive from Lawrence to Topeka with a friend that day, but he urged me to wait until evening and go with him, and I was so interested in him that I did so. We rode down Massachusetts Street, followed by one of his men, a sort of orderly, if I may designate him. We ascended Mount Oread, and proceeded to the point where the state university now stands, and there reined our horses and looked at the scene, while we waited for the company, which was slowly winding towards the base of the hill, where the old California road ascended it. It was a glorious landscape. Lawrence lay to the northeast, at our feet. Kaw River, like a sheet of silver, could be seen here and there through breaks in the forest. Away to our right was the Wakerusa, winding and twisting to meet it. A few miles distant rose the double- peaked Blue Mound. The streams and creeks were marked by feathery lines of trees, and away five or six miles before us, where the Kaw and the Wakerusa met, there was an immense mass of timber veiling the meeting of the waters. The sun went down as we looked at it, and as I turned my eyes to his I saw he had drunk in the glorious beauty of the landscape. "What a magnificent scene, captain!" I exclaimed. "Yes," he said, in his slow, dry way; "a great country for a free State."21 Brown and his men continued, via Big Springs, to Topeka and set up camp the following day along Shunganunga Creek southeast of the town. The Free State Assembly was soon bro- ken up by Colonel Sumner, who was, however, actually sympathetic to the free-state cause, saying it was "the most disagreeable duty of my whole life." "God Sees It" -Battle of Osawatomie; Siege of Lawrence After a month of secretive travel, including a journey up the James Lane Trail to Nebraska City, 22 Brown returned to Douglas County as trouble brewed all around Lawrence. By mid- August a series of skirmishes had occurred at strategic points around the blockaded town. First at Franklin, then at Ft. Saunders on upper Washington Creek, and finally at Ft. Titus near Lecompton, the free-state forces engaged and routed the proslavery outposts. 23 Brown may have participated in one or more of these events, although the evidence is somewhat contra- dictory. He was likely at the raid on Ft. Saunders.24 John Brown did return to Lawrence on August 17, when prisoners were brought back from Ft. Titus. He and others urged that Colonel Henry Titus himself be hanged.25 Brown eventually returned to Osawatomie and areas southeast. In late August he was off raiding along the Missouri border, and by the 28th he was back in Osawatomie with 150 head of cattle he had "converted to abolitionism." This act of jayhawking was one culminating factor in the decision of General John W. Reid to attack Osawatomie with 250 Missourians on August 30. Brown's young son Frederick was the first killed (by Reverend Martin White); and then a furious firefight developed along the banks of the Marais des Cygnes. Brown and his men, heavily outnumbered, were forced to retreat across the river. As Brown stood on the high ground above Osawatomie he watched the town burn: "God sees it," he said to his son Jason. "I have only a short time to live-only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for."26 28 John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-59 Brown arrived in Lawrence a week later, riding his gray horse up Massachusetts Street on September 7, a rifle slung over his saddle. Looking worn from the battle and the loss of Frederick, he passed Lawrence citizens who "cheered as loudly as if the President had come to town, but John Brown seemed not to hear it and paid not the slightest attention."27 Brown continued to the Eastern House (Seventh and New Hampshire, southwest corner) where he put his wounded comrade, Luke F. Parsons, in the care of Mary C. Killam, the proprietress.28 On the 10th Brown's eldest son, John Brown Jr., arrived in Lawrence following his release on bail, along with Robinson and others, from prison in Lecompton. (After the Pottawatomie Massacre, John Brown Jr. had been brutally arrested, chained, and taken to prison in Lecompton, even though he took no part in the crime.) That evening a large assembly was held in front of General James Lane's headquarters to welcome back the prisoners, and John Brown Sr. was among the speakers. 29 Lawrence, at chis time, was in a desperate ~rate. The long summer of the blockade and breakout battles had taken its toll on the town, described here by eastern newspaper corre- spondent Richard J. Hinton: Lawrence presents a sad picture of the evils this partizan warfare is bringing over us. Buildings half-finished or deserted are now occupied as quarters for the small army of devoted men who are fighting the battle of Freedom. Trade is at a standstill. Work is not thought 0£ ... 30 By September 14 Lawrence was under threat of invasion by the largest band of Missouri- ans yet assembled for its destruction. Under the command of Generals David R. Atchison and John W. Reid, some 2700 border ruffians were encamped just south of Franklin, four miles southeast of Lawrence. The same army that had routed Brown at Osawatomie was now at ten times its strength and poised to march on Lawrence. An eastern correspondent described the apprehension and condition of Lawrence that afternoon: About three hundred persons were found in arms, determined to sell their lives at the dearest price to their ruffian enemies. Among these were many women, and children of both sexes, armed with guns ·and otherwise accoutred for battle. They had been goaded to this by the courage . of despair . . Lawrence was to have been their Thermopylae, and every other free town would have proved a Saragossa . . .. 31 By early afternoon the situation · appeared dire. Richard J. Hinton was with John Brown and wrote of his activity on this occasion: John Brown appeared on Massachusetts Street about one o'clock. I walked with him (he asked me for the place of the meeting) to a large stone building on the corner of Winthrop street [now Seventh], and just opposite the ruins of the Eldridge or Free-State Hotel. In this build- ing were assembled a number of "leading" citizens of the town, engaged in talking about the "situation." I stood by Captain Brown's side as he listened, briefly and impatiently, refusing to partici- pate in · the "jackdaw parliament," and went out with him on the street where about three hundred men, boys, and women were gathered with such arms as they possessed. Among them were a portion of the "Stubbs," under, I think a Captain Cracklin, who now hastens to declare that John Brown had no "command" and did nothing. Among the talking counselors I recall Mr. James Blood, who, in 1884, twenty-eight years after, and when Captain Brown had been dead a quarter of a century, went into cold type to argue the old fighter was an unneces- sary slayer of men or a monomaniac. I recall him listening, also with G.W. Brown and others, who have since assailed John Brown's memory, with muskets or long rifles in their hands, as the Captain mounted a dry-goods box and addressed the excited people. I reported that speech, and I find it printed in my old newspaper letter [Boston Traveller] :32 GENTLEMEN,-It is said there are twenty-five hundred Missourians down at Franklin, and that they will be here in two hours. You can see for yourselves the smoke they are making by setting fire to the houses in that town. Now is probably the last opportunity you will have of seeing a fight, so that you had better do your best. If they should come up and attack us, Karl L. Gridley 29 don't yell and make a great noise, but remain perfectly silent and still. Wait till they get within twenty-five yards of you; get a good object; be sure you see the hind sight of your gun,-then fire. A great deal of powder and lead and very precious time is wasted by shooting too high. You had better aim at their legs than at their heads. In either case, be sure of the hind sights of your guns. It is from the neglect of this that I myself have so many times escaped; for if all the bullets that have ever been aimed at me had hit, I should have been as full of holes as a riddle. 33 Brown then moved among the circular forts and breastworks of the town, most of which were erected during the Wakarusa War. Nathaniel Parker, an eyewitness in town, gave the following account: I was at Lawrence when invested by "the 2000." I was placed in the round fort at the head of-:-[Eighth or Henry and Massachusetts?] St. by old Capt. Brown. We saw the enemy com- ing from the direction of the Blue Mound & from the timber below the town on the Kaw. When old Brown saw them he gathered all the men in the town with pitchforks and clubs and every other implement of warfare to man the works. The old man encouraged us by saying that although we were few in numbers, yet by firing low we could whip them. He says, to the men, says he, if you want to be in the fight, go down to the corn field and support the men there, all of you who have Sharps rifles.34 An advance guard of the Missouri forces (probably Kickapoo Rangers) showed itself shortly within full view of the town, described by Julia P. Lovejoy: At this stage a dense volume of black smoke told us our steam, saw and grist mill, where we hav~ been getting our unbolted flour to feed the hungry multitude was on fire at Franklin, and about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the advanced guard of the enemy, 100 strong, headed by Sheriff Jones, galloped boldly toward the town, followed by the main body with their bloody flag floating in the breeze. 35 A number of Lawrence militia men, primarily under the command of Captains Samuel Walker and Joseph Cracklin and Major James B. Abbott, rode down to engage the Missouri- ans, who retreated to Franklin after a brief skirmish on the southeastern outskirts of Lawrence. Later in the evening a force of 300 federal dragoons arrived in Lawrence from Lecompton under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Joseph E. Johnston.36 Johnston deployed his men across the brow of Mount Oread with a battery of light artillery, and awaiting further orders, kept vigil through the night. Newly appointed Governor John W. Geary and Lieutenant Colo- nel Philip St. George Cooke arrived early on September 15, riding down to Franklin, where the Missourians were massing along the Wakarusa for a full assault on Lawrence. This scene is vividly described by Geary's secretary, John H. Gihon: There in battle array, were ranged at least three thousand armed and desperate men. They were not dressed in the usual habiliments of soldiers; but in every imaginable costume that could be obtained in that western region. Scarcely two presented the same appearance, while all exhibited a ruffianly aspect. Most of them were mounted and manifested an unmistakable disposition to be at their bloody work. In the background stood at least three hundred army tents and as many wagons, while here and there a cannon was planted ready to aid in the anticipated destruction. Among the banners floated black flags to indicate the design that neither age, sex, nor condition would be spared in the slaughter that was to ensue. The arms and cannon also bore the black indices of extermination. In passing along the lines, murmurs of discontent and savage threats of assassination fell upon the governor's ears ... 37 Geary met with Atchison, Reid, William Heiskell, B. F. Stringfellow, J. W. Whitfield and the other proslavery commanders, using a mixture of threats and reason to dissuade them from attacking Lawrence. Finally, after heated negotiations, the Missourians agreed to break up their camp and retreat. They did so by burning and killing their way back to the border. 30 john Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-59 Among those killed by the Kickapoo Rangers was David C. Buffum, a respected settler from Salem, Massachusetts who died in excruciating agony. Buffum's last words, "I am willing to die for the cause of Freedom in Kansas," were also the epitaph on his now-missing tombstone in Pioneer Cemetery. 38 '-/ · . <-' ~ 1 ---.., . J "'-- · · i-+: -~Tu.i; , c.-A.;_ t "-«A. John Brown watched the retreat and then left town him- self, heading for the farm of his good friend Ohio abolition- ist Augustus Wattles on Rock Creek near Bloomington, south- west of Lawrence. 39 Brown was probably concerned that Geary might act on the warrant for his arrest issued by Judge Cato, so Brown eventually returned to Osawatomie for a brief stay. Sensing that the conflict was simmering down, both because of Geary's intervention and the approaching winter, Brown decided to leave Kansas Territory along the Lane Trail the first week in October. Ill with ague, he headed to Nebraska City, narrowly escaping capture by Lieutenant Colonel Cooke; and then he went east to conduct fundraising in New En- gland. ~ ~ J---1,n.A. .;._ ~ $/.., .~,..re-~ t--- -- ~-~ ­ Unbeknownst to most, he was raising funds and arms for a plan that extended far beyond the bloody battles of Kansas. He would take his "war into Africa'': John Brown's bold plan to . liberate the slaves was taking shape. Excerpt of a letter from Amos Lawrence, in Boston, to john Brown, March 20, 1857: "On this acc't and because I am always short of money, I have not the cash to use for the purpose you name. But in case anything occur while you are engaged in a great and good cause, to shorten your life, you may be assured that yr wife and children shall be cared for more liberally than you now propose. The family of 'Capt. john Brown of Ossawatomie' will not be turned out to starve in this country until Liberty herself is driven out." ~ i~ ·0-~ 1857: "Our Ultimate Destination is the State ofVirginia''- John Brown Gathers First Recruits for Harpers · Ferry at the E. B. Whittnan and Daniel Sheridan Farms While on his speaking and fundraising tour through the East during the first half of 1857, Brown met with many of his supporters and benefactors. On January 7 Brown visited in Boston with Amos A. Lawrence, treasurer of the New En- gland Emigrant Aid Company, and the man for whom Lawrence, Kansas, was named. A wealthy textile manufacturer, Lawrence had met Brown as early as 1843 when Lawrence bought wool from Brown, who was then a broker for the wool industry of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Lawrence described Brown as "the Miles Standish of Kan- sas" and made a modest donation.40 In late January Brown attended a meeting in New York of the National Kansas Commit- tee, through whose auspices he received substantial funding and arms. In mid-March, Brown met in Worcester with Eli Thayer, originator of the New England Emigrant Aid Company;41 and in Concord, with Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom spoke of Brown in near reverential terms. Brown's primary benefactors were a group known later as the Secret Six-all influential and determined New England -reformers: Franklin B. Sanborn, Gerrie Smith, George Luther Stearns, Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Samuel Gridley Howe. 42 Throughout his speaking tour, Brown spun tales of his Kansas exploits, engaging the wide- eyed audiences by using as dramatic props Pate's Bowie knife, a charred Bible from the ruins of Brown's Station, and the iron prison chains of his son, John Jr. Brown returned to Kansas briefly in November 1857. On November 5, he arrived at the Edmund B. Whitman farm, a few miles northwest of Lawrence. Whitman was the principle agent for both the Massachusetts and National Kansas Committees, and the man through whom all John Brown's funds were channeled. With his partner A. D. Searl (the surveyor who laid out the city of Lawrence), Whitman ran one of the largest land agencies in Lawrence in the mid-to-late 1850s.43 His farm was located at what is today the southwest corner of the Karl L. Gridley 31 intersection of Kasold and Peterson Roads (Range 19, Township 12, Section 27, N.E. 114- now called Fall Creek Farms). Brown called a number of men to come meet with him at Whitman's farm. This was the first gathering of what would b~come the nucleus of his Harpers Ferry raiders. William Phillips recalled going to see Brown on that occasion: It was a cold, snowy Sabbath morning, about eight o'clock, when a son of Mr. Whitman rode into Lawrence, and told me the "old man" was at his father's and wanted to see me. He brought a led horse for me. It was a cold and disagreeable ride that morning, but as I had not heard of Captain Brown for some time, I concluded to go. When I reached Mr. Whitman's I found him, and with him Kagi, and Whif ple, or Stevens, and Cook; in fact most of the men who were with him at Harper's Ferry .... 4 These men were John H. Kagi, Aaron D. Stevens, and John E. Cook-all three of whom either would die at Harpers Ferry or be hanged subsequent to the raid. All were veterans of the Kansas, wars and militant abolitionists devoted to John Brown: Kagi, a highly literate and intelligent young man originally from Virginia, became Brown's Secretary of War; Stevens was a soldierly, powerfully built, moral man who despised slavery;45 and Cook was a Lawrence resident, former student at Yale, and expert marksman who preceded Brown to Harpers Ferry a year in advance to scout the territory. From the Whitman Farm, Brown went to the Daniel Sheridan Farm near Topeka to gather more recruits, including Luke F. Parsons, Charles Moffett, and the English poet Richard Realf.46 By November 18, this band of men headed north on the Lane Trail to Tabor, Iowa, where John Brown informed them: "Our ultimate destination is the State of Virginia."47 1858-59: "Mrs. Killam, I Am Commissioned of God to Free the Slaves. I Am Bound with Them."-John Brown's Last Visits to Lawrence John Brown next appeared in Lawrence on June 26, 1858. He arrived at the Whitney House (Sixth and New Hampshire, southwest corner) disguised by a flowing white beard. James Redpath, correspondent for the New York Tribune and a free-state partisan, wrote of seeing Brown and conducted an interview. "Our 'warrior of the Lord and of Gideon' -the renowned Old Brown-has just arrived in Lawrence. He leaves tomorrow to visit Capt. Montgomery," Redpath proclaimed to the New York Tribune on June 27.48 Brown had returned to Kansas for two reasons. While at Chatham, Canada, where he was refining his plans for the Virginia raid (through the Chatham Convention with many of his African American supporters), Brown's military advisor, Hugh B. Forbes, betrayed the plan to several officials in Washington. Though Forbes was not believed, Brown and his backers de- cided it would be best to put the raid off until rumors had died down. Also while he was in Chatham, the Marais des Cygnes Massacre occurred on May 19 in southeast Kansas. Five free- state men died from the attack, and it seemed that the bloodletting of 1856 might erupt all over again. 49 Brown passed through Lawrence, leaving on June 28, and headed for Linn County to join with James Montgomery, the free-state "Jayhawker" chieftain of southeast Kansas. Brown had an alias now: Shubel Morgan,50 and within a month he was building a fort just above the site of the Marais des Cygnes massacre, "within full view of Missouri for. miles around." Brown made two brief visits to Lawrence during the fall, once on September 23 and again on October 15 and 16.51 On December 20, after months of relative calm, John Brown led a daring raid into Mis- souri to liberate eleven African Americans who were about to be separated and sold by their owners. For over a month Brown sheltered and led the liberated African Americans along the Underground Railroad through Kansas in the dead of winter. Both the governor of Missouri and President Buchanan put a price on Brown's head.52 32 John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-59 On January 24, 1859, Brown arrived with the African Americans at James B. Abbott's farm just south of Lawrence, also visiting Joel Grover's farm (now the Fire Station House, southeast of the intersection of Clinton Parkway and Lawrence Avenue).53 Brown also came into Lawrence at this time. While at the Eastern House, the propri- etress, Mary C. Killam, inquired about "the tales of blood associated with his name": Brown, who was eating his dinner at the time, did not deny anything-did not take the trouble to, but replied: "Mrs. Killam, I am commissioned of God to free the slaves. I am bound with them." The old man's absolute faith in his mission as he recognized it, was plainly indicated by the remark. He did not say he believed, or trusted, or hoped, or thought, he was commissioned of God to free the slaves: he simply stated that he was commissioned of God. That day he left Lawrence, never to return.54 ANTl·SLAVIRY Brown successfully guided the liberated African Americans, includ- ing a child born along the way and christened "Captain John Brown Daniels," to Canada. This was a fascinating journey even after a final "Barde of the Spurs" near Holton and the exodus from Kan- sas-involving assistance from Joseph B. Grinnell in Iowa, detective Allan Pinkerton in Chicago, and abolitionists in Cleveland and De- troit. MASS MEETING! A1tttmbl1· ,,, u rnll, ~ll(tard b)' •bout .'50 pt'NOll!Ot 11nd 1•u!tll!Jlaed In Cltt" l,aawrt•ttC'<' Hc-p•bllc-am, a !flll!i!i Mc·..-th1a: of 1hc- irlt'1td111 oa l'n-t'clom ''Ill ht' ht"ld llf nlllc-r'li 111111, :IC :II o'C'lod~ (> •• tf.,:,m:••rl • du) Oer. :id 01t• ""'' 011 ,,·hlrla . Over the next six months Brown's plan to raid Harpers Ferry took its final form. In late August 1859, at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Brown's close friend F.rederick Douglass declined to be a partici- pant, warning Brown that he was "going into a perfect steel-trap."55 On October 16, 1859, John Brown and eighteen of his followers attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to incite a slave rebellion in Virginia and throughout the South. Though the raid itself failed, its very occurence set off shockwaves ·that sent the nation irrevocably on course to the American Civil War.56 CAPT. JOHN BROWN IS TO BE EXECUTED, To ft-!itlr)· 11;:11h1"C lht' hllquUc>u!i SI.A l"E POWJ;K tbul rule!i thlll N•tlon, anti htkt- "'e~ to th·g:auhr tin• Anti ·Sh1w1·J Sr11li111e11t or &he C'oanmu1111t)'. Arran11;emeub h"-.·e bt•en m1ule with promJuent ~peaken to~ ~~:~:~~~ 1!,~~~.~~~~~.~~~·i~!li:uuc.~ .• m:n~·rs. La•retllfl', ~•• . ff, l!i.19. Broadside announcing a gathering at Miller's Hall in Lawrence, Kans111, December 2, 1859, to mark the execution of john Brown. The meeting was well attended by Lawrence and Douglas County residents who had known john Brown during his Kansas days. "Let It Be Done" While in prison in Charlestown, following his capture and trial, Brown wrote more than 100 letters and received hundreds of visitors-among them Samuel C. Pomeroy from Kansas. "In prison ye came unto me," Brown said to Pomeroy as he entered the jail cell. Pomeroy asked Brown if he wanted his Kansas friends to attempt a rescue, "You remember the rescue of John Doy?57 Do you want your friends to attempt it?" . . Brown, who had defended himself and his cause with remarkable calm and dignity during his hasty trial following the raid, replied, "I am worth how infinitely more to die than to live."58 Brown was hanged at Charlestown, Virginia, on December 2, 1859. His last handwritten words were: I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this gllilcy, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had !!§. l now think: vainly flattered myself that without ~ much bloodshed; it might be done.59 Throughout the North, towns rang bells and held vigils. For African Americans, Brown's raid had the profoundest impact: never before had a white man sacrificed himself so they might · be free or .so eloquently expressed affinity with their enslavement as when, at his sen- tencing, Brown said: . Karl L. Gridley 33 I believe that to have interfered as I have done in behalf of His despised poor, is no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I say let it be done.60 December 2, 1859, was known throughout the African American community as Martyr Day.61 In Lawrence, an "Anti-Slavery Mass Meeting" was held the day of the execution at Miller's Hall on Massachusetts Street, and participants adopted "eleven resolutions, three of which praised Brown's intentions at Harpers Ferry and asserted that he had given his life for the liberty of man. "62 The final resolution related directly to Brown's Kansas years, saying " ... he was among the first to teach the Border-Ruffian invaders of our soil the wholesome lesson, that oppressors might be made to 'bite the dust,' and to flee from our soil, at a time when they imagined that their foulest dreams were on the eve of being realized." Wendell Phillips, the famed abolitionist, delivered the eulogy at John Brown's burial in North Elba on December 8, closing with the words: History will date Virginia Emancipation from Harper's Ferry. True the slave is still there. So, when the tempest uproots a pine on your hills, it looks green for months- a year or two. Still, it is timber, not a tree. John Brown has loosened the roots of the slave system; it only breathes,-it does not live-hereafter.63 Although Brown was vilified by southern politicians and slaveholders, writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Whittier, Longfellow, Stowe, and Hugo lauded Brown's sacrifice and motives. Among the five African Americans who fought alongside Brown at Harpers Ferry was Lewis Sheridan Leary. Mary Leary Langston, the maternal grandmother of Langston Hughes, the cel- ebrated African American poet who grew up in Lawrence, was married to Leary, who died of his wounds only hours after the raid.64 She later married Charles H. Langston65 of Oberlin, Ohio, also an associate of Brown. They lived near Lakeview and in Lawrence until their deaths. Langston Hughes was always proud of his family's connection to John Brown and the raid.66 T he view of many Lawrence residents regarding John Brown and his family is evident in a brief story written several years later by John Speer in his Daily Tribune of April 19, 1868.67 Speer recalls two encounters he had with Owen Brown, one in October 1856 at Tabor, Iowa, and another in Ohio in 1863 a few days after Quantrill's Massacre. On the latter occasion, Owen "inquired minutely about the sufferings of the people with the deepest interest and sympathy." Speer ended his article by saying of the Browns: "No purer patriots or more de- voted Christians ever lived. They loved their country and all mankind. They might have been enthusiasts; but their principles were based upon the golden rule, which they applied to the whole human race-'Whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them."' To be sure, Lawrence had its Brown detractors. In later years, Sara Robinson was among those highly critical of Brown's character and motives,68 but many in Lawrence were proud to have known or fought with John Brown in his Kansas days and thought his Harpers Ferry raid a noble undertaking. Lawrence and Douglas County are full of sites having to do with John Brown, though many are threatened by either neglect or encroaching development. With a rekindled national interest in the American Civil War comes a renewed interest in the Border Wars of Bleeding Kansas. John Brown's Kansas battles were a harbinger to the greater national conflict: a conflict Brown and his followers irrevocably ig- nited at Harpers Ferry. The sites, stories, and ghosts are still with us, even though "John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave." lewis Sheridan Leary of Oberlin Ohio, was among John Brown's rai~rs !tilled at Harpers Ferry. His wife. Mary, later married another of John Brown's associates from Oberlin, Charks H. Langston. They eventually settled in DougiaJ County and Lawrence. They were the maternal grandparents of Langston Hughes, the renowned African American poet, who grew up in Lawrence. 34 John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-59 Notes OCTOBER 16: THE RAID Perhaps You will remember John Brown. John Brown Who took his gun, Took twenty-one companions White and black, Went to shoot your way to freedom Where two rivers meet And the hills of the North And the hills of the South Look slow at one another- And died For your sake. Now that you are Many years free, And the echo of the Civil War Has passed away, And Brown himself Has long been tried at law, Hanged by the neck, And buried in the ground- Since Harpers Ferry Is alive with ghosts today, Immortal raiders Come again to town- Perhaps You will recall John Brown. -Langston Hughes, 1932 1. Oswald Garrison Villard, john Brown, 1800-1859: A Biography' Fifty Years After (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1910), 118-20. Letter of John Brown, to his wife Mary in North Elba, New York, dated December 16, 1855, Osawatomie, K.T. The original is in the Kansas State Historical Society. In this letter Brown also describes crossing the Wakarusa at Blanton's Bridge on his first approach to Lawrence: "One little circumstance connected with our own number showing a little of the true character of those invad- ers: On our way about Three Miles from Lawrence we had to pass a bridge (with our Arms & Amunition) of which the invaders held possession; but as the Five had each a Gun, with Two large Revolvers in a belt (exposed to view) with a Third in his Pocket; & as we moved directly on to the Bridge without making any halt, they for some reason suffered us to pass without interruption; notwithstanding there were some Fifteen to Twenty-five (as variously reported) stationed in a Log-House at one end of the Bridge. We could not count them. A Boy on our approach ran & gave them notice. Five others of our Company, well armed; who followed us some Miles behind, met with equally civil treatment the same day .... " 2. Villard, 122. From a letter by R. G. Elliott, Lawrence, Kans., to Katherine Mayo, August 6, 1908. 3. "Old John Brown," Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kans., October 29, 1859. Karl L. Gridley 35 4. Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of john Brown (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1885; reprint, Negro Universi- ties Press, 1969), 220. 5. Villard, 118-19. Thomas W. Barber was killed directly south of the modern intersection of Highway 40 (Sixth Street) and 1 OOOE Road. 6. John Greenleaf Whittier, "Burial of Barbour," National Era, March 1856. The spelling of Barber's name was corrected in subsequent publications of the poem. 7. Villard, 121. The original muster roll is in the William I. R. Blackman Collection, oversize portfolio, Kansas State Historical Society. 8. William A. Phillips, The Conquest of Kansas by Missouri and Her Allies (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1856), 222. In this book Phillips, at the time a correspondent for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, provides a wealth of detail about events in eastern Kansas during the turbulent period from July 1854 to June 1856. Phillips also founded Salina, Kansas. 9. Brown's Station, or Brownsville, was southwest of present-day Rantoul in Franklin County. 10. Sanborn, 220. 11. A. T. Andreas, History of the State of Kansas (Chicago: Andreas, 1883), 319-20. See "Schedule of Losses" for the Sacking of Lawrence. 12. Phillips, 296-97. See also Thomas H. Gladstone, The Englishman in Kansas or Squatter Life and Border Warfare (New York: Miller and Company, 1857), 32-38. 13. See James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 145-69. For Brown's reaction to the caning of Sumner, see Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood (Amherst, Mass.: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 128-29: "Salmon said that, while everybody in camp was upset about the beatings, he and his father and unmarried brothers 'went crazy-crazy' when they heard the news. 'It seemed to be the finishing, decisive touch."' 14. Regarding the swords used in the massacre, see Richard Boyer, The Legend of john Brown (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 560. While passing through Akron, Ohio, on his first trip to Kansas, Brown gathered up arms in the town: " ... Mayor Bierce (usually called General Bierce, perhaps because he had headed an unsuccessful filibustering expedition to seize Canada in 1838) was renewing his youth, as far as memory could do it, by prowling through a dark and musty storeroom in which the weapons used by his expedition had been hidden long years ago. With some help he gathered together the guns, ammunition and 'some short artillery swords,' on each of which was emblazoned an American eagle, which had been intended for the purpose of detaching Canada from the British Empire. He gave them to John Brown, who used the swords in the terrible work at Pottawatomie." The five murdered men were James P. Doyle, his two sons Drury and William, Allen Wilkinson, and William Sherman. 15. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss fully the Pottawatomie Massacre. Countless pages have been written on the subject from every conceivable perspective. This brutal crime should, however, be studied within the context of the time and place it occurred. John Jr. and Jason Brown, like many settlers, were aghast at the killings and that their father planned and participated in them. Some free-state settlers (including even Charles Robinson, who later described the killings as having "the effect of a clap of thunder from a clear sky ... "), considered it a necessary blow, at a critical moment, that only John Brown had the audacity to execute. See Sanborn, 171, 281, 331. J recommend the account and analysis of Stephen B. Oates in his biography of John Brown, To Purge This Land with Blood, 126-37. For affidavits of Mahala and John Doyle, James Harris, and Louisa Jane Wilkinson, see Report of the Special Committee Appointed to Investigate the Troubles in Kansas (Wash- ington: Cornelius Wendell, Printer, 1856), 1193-99. A plaque in Lane, Franklin County, Kansas commemorates the Pottawatomie Massacre. 16. The Black Jack Battlefield still exists three miles east of Baldwin, just south of Highway 56. A large granite marker at the Robert J. Pearson Memorial Park commemorates the battle. 17. In a twist of fate, J.E. B. Stuart would meet John Brown again at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. Under the command of Robert E. Lee, ·Stuart approached the Engine House, where Brown was barricaded with his men and prisoners, to demand Brown's surrender. Upon seeing Brown, Stuart later recalled: "I recognized old Osawatomie Brown, who had given us so much trouble in Kansas. No one present but myself could have per- formed that service .... ," Villard, 451. See H. B. McClellan, Life and Campaigns of]. E. B. Stuart (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1885), 28-30. Two of Brown's sons, Oliver and Watson, were among those who died at Harpers Ferry. 18. James C. Malin, John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1942), 576-77. Facsimile of Cato's warrant dated May 28, 1856. 19. Villard, 283. In the U.S. Senate Committee Reports, 1859-60, II, the blacksmith, Charles Blair, described Pate's knife, shown to him by Brown, as a "two-edged dirk, with a blade about eight inches long," 121-29. 20. Oates, 157. Brown Letters, June 24 and 26, 1856, Illinois State Historical Society. Brown's reference to "the serpants [sic] of the Rock" here is both literal and figurative. The diaries, letters, and journals of settlers in Kansas Territory are full of references to snakes. William A. Phillips described Brown himself in terms that reflected the sentiment the settlers had toward these creatures: "He is not a man to be trifled with; and there is no one for whom the border ruffians entertain a more wholesome dread than Captain Brown. They hate him as they would a snake, but their hatred is composed nine-tenths of fear." Phillips, Conquest, 332. 21. William A. Phillips, "Three Interviews with Old John Brown," Atlantic Monthly 44 (December 1879), 738-40. This was the first of three interviews that Phillips published on the twentieth anniversary of Brown's execution. The interviews are vividly descriptive of Brown in Kansas from 1856 to 1859. All three take place in or near Lawrence. 36 john Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-59 22. During this time Shalor W. Eldridge, proprietor of the Lawrence hotel, encountered Brown, replete with his surveying equipment near the Nebraska border. See Shalor W. Eldridge, Recollections of Early Days in Kansas (Topeka, Kans.: Kansas State Historical Society, 1920), 82. 23. See Richard Cordley, A History of Lawrence, Kansas from the First Settlement to the Close of the Rebellion (Lawrence, Kans.: E. F. Caldwell, 1895), 113: "These forts were simply log houses, with port-holes for guns, and supplied with provisions and ammunition, and prepared for defense or siege. These three strongholds practically cut off Lawrence from help and from supplies. So close was the investment at one time, that provisions became very scarce, and there was danger of a famine from the fact that it was not possible to bring in supplies. The garrisons in these forts were continually committing depredations, waylaying travelers and robbing farms and slaughtering cattle. By August the situation in Lawrence was becoming unendurable, and they began to devise plans of relie£" 24. Sanborn, 308-309. Letter of H. Stratton, dated August 12, 1856, concerning request of James Lane (alias General Joe Cook) that Brown meet him to assist in "a fight on Washington Creek. ... "The original letter is in the Kansas State Historical Society. Fort Saunders, which was raided after the murder of Major D. S. Hoyt, was southwest of present-day Lone Star, Kansas. According to Stratton's recollection, Brown commanded the right wing of Lane's cavalry during the Ft. Saunders raid on August 15. Brown was certainly in the vicinity during this time, as the recollection of Henry Hiatt, a prominent early settler at Bloomington, on Rock Creek, confirms: "Before said camp [Ft. Saunders] was routed, old john Brown of Harper's Ferry notoriety stayed at my house overnight. Certain rumors just received led our milling company to anticipate an attack that night from said camp, hue our fears were allayed by the presence and advice of old Mr. Brown, who said he would show us how to make a substantial fortifica- tion in twenty minutes by rolling into proper place a few large saw logs in our mill yard, behind which three or four armed men with loaded shotguns or muskets could defend the place against attacks .... " Letter of Henry Hiatt, dated June 2, 1892. My thanks to Martha Parker, curator of the Clinton Lake Museum, for bringing this letter co my attention. 25. Villard, 233. Recollection of Captain Samuel Walker. 26. Ibid., 248. See also Brown's letter from Lawrence, K.T. September 7, 1856, to his wife, Mary, in North Elba, N.Y., describing the Battle of Osawatomie. The original letter is in the Kansas State Historical Society. The battlefield is preserved at the John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, along with the recently restored Samuel Adair Cabin and Museum, administered by the Kansas State Historical Society. 27. Ibid., 253. Eyewitness account of Henry Reisner, Topeka, in recollection co K. Mayo, July 22, 1908. See also Sanborn, 330-31: Letter from Charles Robinson to John Brown, dated Lawrence, September 14, 1856, express- ing Robinson's admiration for Brown and "sincere gratification that the late report . that you were among the killed at the battle of Osawatomie is incorrect .... " 28. Edward P. Bridgman and Luke F. Parsons, With John Brown in Kansas, The Battle of Osawatomie (Madison, Wis.: J. N. Davidson, 1915). See also "Fed and Sheltered Abolitionists," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 5, 1915 [recollection of Mary C. Killam]: "[Parsons] was wounded night unto death at that fight [Osawatomie], and was brought to Lawrence and nursed for weeks by Mrs. Killam at her boarding house." My thanks to Judy Sweets for bringing this article to my attention. 29. Villard, 255. From a report in the New York Times, dated Lawrence, September 10, 1856. On September 9, William H. Leeman, a sixteen-year-old originally from Maine, joined Brown's company at Lawrence. Leeman would become the youngest of Brown's raiders at Harpers Ferry. Trying co escape, on Octo- ber 17, 1859, he was killed by Harpers Ferry militia while he was stranded on an islet of the Potomac. See Oates, 173, 295; Villard, 408, 440, 685. 30. Villard, 258. The original journal is in the Richard J. Hinton Papers, Kansas State Historical Society. 31. John H. Gihon, Geary and Kansas (Philadelphia: Chas; C. Rhodes, 1857), 150. 32. Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and His Men (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1894), 48-53. Hinton's account is taken from his journals and Boston Traveller reporrs of the time, which are available at the Kansas State Histori- cal Society. In addition to the Hinton Papers, the KSHS contains one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to John Brown. After Harpers Ferry, a tremendous debate over John Brown's role in ·the Kansas wars erupted, with many former allies taking extremely divergent opinions-hence Hinton's rebuke of James Blood, G. W. Brown and Joseph Cracklin. See Malin's critique of these various camps (john Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six, 293-488), although Malin's own bias is relentlessly anti-Brown on every aspect of Brown's Kansas career. Oates comments on Malin in To Purge This Land with Blood, 390-91. 33. Sanborn, 335. Two slightly different versions of the address have been printed in numerous books on Brown. Hinton wrote to Brown biographer William E. Connelly, of the Kansas State Historical Society that the account given of Brown's speech "is accurate. I took it down in shorthand. I am a stenographer. I was by his side. It was published in one of my letters to the Boston Traveller." Villard, 621. See also Sanborn, 336: "[John Brown Jr.] heard his father make the speech above cited, and says it was longer than reported, but the substance of it was caught and reported." The address took place opposite the old Lawrence Post Office, according to Hinton's pdmary account. This would have been approximately 150 feet north of the intersection of Seventh and Massa- chusetts Street, which is the highest point topographically in downtown Lawrence. A plaque at. 636 Massachu- setts commemorates this address by Brown. 34. Malin, 632: Letter of Nathaniel Parker, dated December 5, 1856. The original letter is in the Thaddeus Hyatt Papers, KSHS. See also Malin, 224: T. W. Higginson's account (filed under the name "Worcester") in the October 8, 1856, New York Tribune: "They had no regular commander, any more than at Bunker Hill; but the Karl L. Gridley 3 7 famous 'Old Captain Brown' moved among them, saying, 'Fire low, boys; be sure to bring your eye down to the hinder sight of your rifle, and aim at the feet rather than the head."' (The circular fort at Eighth and Massachu- setts built during the Wakarusa War became known later as John Brown's Fort.) During his New England speaking tour of 1857, Brown himself referred to these events in an account he called The Lawrence Foray, stating: "I well know, that, on or about the 14th of September last, a large force of Missourians and other ruffians, numbering twenty-seven hundred (as stated by Governor Geaty), invaded the Territory, burned Franklin, and while the smoke of that place was going up behind them, they, on the same day, made their appearance in full view of, and within about a mile of, Lawrence. And I know of no possible reason why they did not attack and burn that place except that about one hundred Free-State men volunteered to go out on the open plain before the town and there give them the offer of a fight, which they declined, after getting some few scattering shots from our men, and then retreated back towards Franklin. I saw the whole thing .... " Sanborn, 332. 35. "Letters of Julia Louisa Lovejoy, 1856, Part l," Kansas Historical Quarterly 15, 2 (May 1947): 133. Letter dated September 19, 1856, Lawrence, Kan. Territoty: originally published in The Independent Democrat, Concord, New Hampshire. 36. Johnston later became one of the most important Confederate generals in the Civil War. After Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Johnston surrendered to William Tecumseh Sherman on April 26, 1865. 37. Gihon, 151-52. 38. While plowing his field above Yankee Tank Creek, directly southwest of the modern intersection of Highways 40 and KIO, David C. Buffum was shot by Kickapoo Rangers heading for the Kaw River forty near Lecompton. 39. Villard, 621. Recollection by Mrs. Emma Wattles Morse of Lieutenant Eugene A. Carr, First Cavalry, searching the Wattles home on Rock Creek for Brown, who was hiding in the attic looking "down between the roof boards and the top log of the wall, hearing every word, seeing every movement, with his two loaded Colt's revolvers in his hands." . 40. John Brown spent much of his earlier career in Ohio in the wool business with Simon Perk.ins of Akron and had considerable dealings in the 1840s with Amos Lawrence's family textile business. Samuel Lawrence of Lowell, Massachusetts, was highly impressed by the quality of Brown's wool, calling it "superior to any in old Spain." See Boyer, 361-62, 377. Amos A. Lawrence supported Brown in Kansas and his family farm at North Elba, New York, eventually buying the farm {with George Luther Stearns) for Brown. Lawrence also gave Brown one share of Emigrant Aid Company stock. See William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence {Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899), 122-38. Lawrence admired Brown, although he considered him a "monomaniac" on the subject of slavery and was deeply troubled by Brown's involvement in the Pottawatomie Massacre. Lawrence denied any support for, or involvement in the funding of, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry; however, Lawrence was favorably impressed, as were many in the North, by Brown's defense of his actions during his trial at Charlestown. 41. Brown received $500 worth of arms from Thayer on this occasion, including "a little cannon and carriage." See Eli Thayer, A History of the Kansas Crusade: Its Friends and Foes (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1889), 200. In later years Thayer would become a harsh critic of Brown. For a full catalogue of the arsenal Brown had accumu- lated through the first half of 1857, see his letter to Franklin Sanborn, dated Tabor, Fremont County, Iowa, October l, 1857. Sanborn, 399. 42. See Jeffrey Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, The Secret Six, and a Theory of Slave Violence (Phila- delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), and Charles E. Heller, Portrait of an Abolitionist, A Biography of George Luther Stearns (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996), 69-121. Higginson, Howe, Stearns, and Sanborn all visited Lawrence. Howe invested in the town during the Kansas land boom prior to the Financial Panic of 1857 through Massachusetts and National Kansas Committee agent Edmund B. Whitman (see Register of Deeds for Douglas County, 1855-59 in Kansas Collection, University of Kansas). Howe's wife, Julia Ward Howe, who later wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to the melody of "John Brown's Body," continued to own property in West Lawrence until late in her life {see L. H. Everts' 1887 ownership map of Lawrence, Kansas, southwest corner, Pinckney and Michigan Streets). See also L. E. Richards, The Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe (Boston: Dana Estes, 1909), 415-49. 43. See "Township Map of Eastern Kansas, 1856, Whitman and Searl, Land Agents, Lawrence, Kansas" (Boston: J. P. Jewett, 1856). Kansas Collection, University of Kansas. This is a highly detailed "land promotion" map for Kansas Territory, with text encouraging settlement and speculation. 44. Phillips, "Interviews," 741 (Phillips mistakenly places this interview in Februaty 1857). John E. Cook in his "Confession" following the Harpers Ferry raid, says that Kagi and Stevens did not join the group until after they gathered at the Daniel Sheridan farm near Topeka. See "Old Brown's Invasion-Cook's Confession," Her- ald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kans., December 10, 1859. See also Hinton, 700-701. Charles P. Tidd and William H. Leeman, Kansas abolitionists who also fought at Harpers Ferry, met up with the group in Tabor. 45. ''Aaron D. Stephens, alias, Whipple," Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kans., December 17, 1859. This article is about Stevens during his Kansas days; he was commander of the "Topeka Boys" in 1856. 46. James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain john Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), 168-70. See here one of Realf's highly romanticized free-state poems "The Defense of Lawrence." 47. "Old Brown's Invasion-Cook's Confession," Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kans., December 10, 1859. 48. New York Tribune, July 8, 1858. See Redpath, 199-206, for Richard J. Hinton's interviews at the Whitney House with John Brown and John Kagi. Hinton later wrote of Brown, "The next time we met was on the 25th of June, 1858, at a hotel in Lawrence. In those two years he had aged more than time required. I can hardly define the difference in impression that remains in memory, unless by terms which may seem overstrained. But I venture to say that, in 1858, John Brown looked to me as a 'Prophet' might have done; in 1856, he certainly 38 John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-59 embodied the 'Fighter.' Under no circumstances could he ever have appeared commonplace. The heavy, gray beard, almost snow-white, lent a degree of dignity as well as a grave picturesqueness to his face and figure .... " Hinton, John Brown and His Men, 205. 49. "HORRIBLE TRAGEDY!!" and "THE LINN CO. MASSACRE," The Republican, Lawrence, Kans., May 27 and June 3, 1858. The massacre occurred near Trading Post, Kansas. See also John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "Le Marais du Cygne." 50. Shubel Morgan was Brown's latest alias. During previous years in Kansas, he often used the alias Nelson Hawkins. 51. Brown met with William Phillips on one of these occasions at the Whitney House, Sixth and New Hampshire, in Lawrence and gave his last interview to the journalist. Phillips places the interview in January 1859, but according to Villard (362), this date is incorrect. The interview was a long historical and philosophical treatise by Brown about slavery. Phillips, "Interviews," 742-44. 52. "Reward Offered for Brown and Montgomery," The Republican, Lawrence, Kans., January 13, 1859. This issue also contains the famous "Parallels" written by Brown to justify his Missouri raid. Two more Kansans, Jeremiah G. Anderson and Albert Hazlett, joined Brown for the Harpers Ferry raid during this period. The family names of the liberated African Americans who came through Lawrence in late January 1859 were Daniels, Harper, and Cruise. One of the slaveholders, David Cruise, was killed during the raid. 53. For a detailed first-person account of John Brown's Missouri raid and Underground Railroad journey through eastern Kansas in December 1858 and January 1859, including stops near Lawrence at the Abbott and Grover homes, see the letters of George B. Gill in Richard J. Hinton's john Brown and His Men, 217-27. Brown also stopped at the Soule farmstead, near present-day Vinland, during this trip. 54. "Fed and Sheltered Abolitionists," Lawrence journal-World [Reminiscence of Mary C. Killam], July 5, 1915. William Phillips' last interview with Brown apparently occurred several months prior to this occasion. 55. Villard, 413. 56. See The Republican, Lawrence, Kans., October 20, 1859, for the first announcement in the Lawrence press of the raid, under the headline, "TERRIBLE EXCITEMENT EAST!-Attempted Negro Rising in Maryland- Old Capt. John Brown in the Slave States-TROOPS CALLED OUT-16 Men Killed and about 40 Wounded- THE INSURGENTS CORNERED-Martial Law Proclaimed-THE RIOTERS TO BE HUNG-Most As- tonishing Proceedings." See Oates, 274-361, for an accurate, detailed account of the Harpers Ferry Raid and its powerful national ramifications. For contemporary documents, illustrations, and news reports of the raid, see Stan Cohen, john Brown "The Thundering \.0ice of Jehovah": A Pictorial Heritage (Missoula, Mont.: PHP Company, 1999), 28-115. 57. The rescue of John Doy is a remarkable story in itself. Doy was escorting liberated African Americans in eastern Kansas along the Underground Railroad at the same time as Brown in late January 1859. Brown and Doy met at the Joel Grover farm southwest of Lawrence. While Brown successfully traversed Kansas, Doy was captured and imprisoned in St. Joseph, Missouri. See Doy's own dramatic account of his capture and subsequent rescue by fellow free staters: John Doy, The Narrative of John Doy of Lawrence, Kansas. '.11 Plain, Unvarnished Tale. " (New York: Thomas Holman, 1860). 58. Villard, 546. Though discouraged from it by Brown, a number of Kansas free staters, including August Wattles, James Abbott, James Montgomery, Charles Jennison, Silas C. Soule, and Joseph Gardner seriously considered rescuing Brown from the Charlestown jail. Thomas W. Higginson and George Luther Stearns were both desper- ate to organize a rescue, with Stearns hoping to employ the "boldest jayhawkers" in the enterprise. Lysander Spooner, a Boston attorney, had the ambitious plan to kidnap Virginia's Governor Wise and hold him hostage to prevent Brown's execution. Even after Brown had been hanged, Montgomery and Soule hoped to rescue Aaron D. Stevens and Albert Hazlett, though both prisoners, like Brown, discouraged the attempt-both be- cause of its futility and out of concern for the life of their kind jailer, John B. Avis. Charles Lenhart, another Kansas free-state fighter, had earlier infiltrated Charlestown and nearly succeeded in helping free John E. Cook and Edwin Coppoc. See Villard, 512-14, 570-80; Hinton, 396-97, 401-405, 501-502; Heller, 106. See also 0. E. Morse, ''An Attempted Rescue from the Charlestown, Va., Jail," Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1903-04 (Topeka, Kans.: Kansas State Historical Society), 213-26. 59. Ibid., 554-55. Facsimile of John Brown's last note. 60. Ibid., 498-99. 61. See "Sentiments on Martyr Day (December 2, 1859): Newspaper Reports from 'The Weekly Anglo-African' and an Address by J. Sella Martin" in Benjamin Quarles, Blacks on john Brown (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 20-36. See also Benjamin Quarles, Allies far Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1974) regarding the popularity of the song "John Brown's Body" among African American troops during the Civil War (including the First Regiment of Kansas Colored Volunteers on Emancipation Proclama- tion Day, January l, 1863), 161-163. Also, as noted by John J. Ingalls, the "Exoduster" migration to Kansas in late 1870s was related to John Brown's "labors in the cause" there, with John Brown Jr. contributing to the Exodusters' settlement~ 171, 175. For more insight into the African American perspective on John Brown, see also Osborne P. Anderson, A Voice from Harper's Ferry (Boston: "Published for the Author," 1861); W. E. B. Du Bois, john Brown (Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs, 1909); Daniel C. Littlefield, "Blacks, John Brown and a Theory of Manhood," His Soul Goes Marching On-Responses to john Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 67-97. 62. Oates, 354. See ''Anti-Slavery Meeting," The Republican, Lawrence, Kans., December 8, 1859, for all eleven resolutions. G. W. Brown's Herald of Freedom of December 10 also ran the resolutions, though the tenor of the articles in this paper following Harpers Ferry was decidedly anti-John Brown. G. W. Brown had long been one Karl L. Gridley 39 of John Brown's most ardent detractors, though his editorial wrath seemed aimed as much at T. D. and S. 0. Thacher, who owned The Republican, . as at John Brown. Those present at the Miller's Hall Anti-Slavery Mass Meeting included Joel Grover, chairman; Wm. Hutchinson, secretary; and "Messrs. Ladd, Soule, Stearns, Gardner, Thacher, Hyatt and Jones," among numerous other prominent Douglas County residents. A later edition of The Republican stated of Brown's execution: "It is safe co say that the death of no man in America has ever produced so profound a sensation. A feeling of deep and sorrowful indignation seems to possess the masses." 63. Villard, 562. 64. Ibid., 685-86. See short biography of Lewis Sheridan Leary. (The Appendix of Villard's book has a valuable biographical section "John Brown's Men-at-Arms" on all twenty-one men who went with Brown to Harpers Ferry.) See also Letter of Mary Leary Langston writing from Lawrence, Kansas, to Joshua Young, September 9, 1899, on occasion of reinterment of Lewis S. Leary's remains from Virginia to the John Brown farm at North Elba, N.Y., in Quarles, Allies For Freedom, 174. Original in Villard Manuscript Collection, Columbia University Library, New York. 65. See short biography of Charles H. Langston in Andreas, 350. Langston was, along with Charles Robinson, a keynote speaker in Osawatomie at the dedication of the John Brown monument in August 1877. Quarles, Allies, 189. See also Harpers Weekly, September 22, 1877, 748-50. 66. After the Harpers Ferry Raid "[a] friend brought [Lewis Leary's] blood-stained, bullet-riddled shawl home to Mary in Oberlin. Despite her loss, she always revered the memory of John Brown .... Lewis Leary's shawl remained a symbol for her of his martyrdom; she still wore it fifty years after his death, or used it to cover her young grandchild, Langston Hughes, while he slept." Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume 1: 1902-1941. I, Too, Sing America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 6. The shawl was perhaps Langston Hughes' "most cherished relic of the past," and he eventually donated it to the Ohio Historical Society. Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume 2: 1941-1967. I Dream a World (1988), 38. As a young boy in 1910, Langston had accompanied his grandmother to the dedication of the John Brown Memorial Battlefield in Osawatomie, where, honored as the last surviving widow of the raid, Mary shared the stage with Theodore Roosevelt. 67. My thanks to Katie Armitage for bringing this article, and numerous others regarding the sentiments of Lawrence residents towards John Brown and his family, to my attention. 68. See Malin, 459-69, 485-87, regarding Sara Robinson's funding of G. W. Brown's The Rescue of Kansas from Slavery with False Claims Corrected (Rockford, Ill.: The author, 1902), and Hill Peebles Wilson's john Brown, Soldier of Fortune, A Critique (Lawrence: H. P. Wilson, 1913). The Historic Jayhawkers and the Mythical Jayhawk Richard B. Sheridan Mythical Birds and Marauding Men Near the main entrance of the Kansas Union at the University of Kansas is a plaque of the marble Jayhawk inlay "The Legend of the Jayhawk." It was donated by the Senior Class of 1993. The plaque says, in part: "The University of Kansas is the home of the Jayhawk, a mythical bird with a fascinating history. The origin is rooted in the historic struggles of Kansas. The term 'Jayhawker' was probably coined about 1848. Accounts of its use appeared from Illinois to Texas." The name combines two birds: the blue jay, a noisy quarrelsome robber that pounces on smaller birds and robs their nests of eggs and young birds, and the sparrow hawk-a killer of birds, rats, mice and rabbits, and when necessary a courageous and cautious fighter. 1 According to one account, the term "Jayhawker" was coined in 1849 by a party of gold seekers from Galesburg, Illinois, bound overland for California. Travelling along the Platte River not far west of the Missouri River, the gold seekers observed a hawk sailing in the air reconnoitering for mice and other small prey, and acting as if he were monarch of the sky. "Then the audience of jays and other small but jealous and vicious birds sail in and jab him until he gets tired of show life and slides out of trouble, in the lower earth." Analogous to the birds in the air were the men on the trail who "enacted the same role, pro and con, out of pure devilment and to pass the hours of a long march."2 · The Jayhawker metaphor continued into the Civil War years. The question of whether Kansas Territory should be slave or free divided the nation into hostile camps and led eventually to civil war. The Territory was divided into proslavery and antislavery governments and military and quasi-military units. "Border ruffians" from Missouri won the first round, voting in a proslavery legislature and waging successful guerrilla warfare against their enemies. New England and Northern settlers, armed with Sharps breechloading rifles, retaliated and eventually won the internecine war. The term "border ruffian" was generally applied to guerrillas on the western border of Missouri whose object was the overthrow and destruction of free-state men and the establishment of slavery in Kansas Territory. A "Jayhawker" was, with some exceptions, a Kansan with antislavery and free-state leanings who was a guerrilla or irregular soldier.3 The town of Lawrence was threatened by large numbers of proslavery invaders from Missouri on three occasions in 1855 and 1856, and the second invading force sacked the town in 1856 and ringed it with men in forts who cut off supplies, resulting in near-starvation of the inhabitants. Colonel John W. Geary, the third governor of Kansas Territory, arrived at the capital at Lecompton on September 10, 1856. He wrote to his superior in Washington that he began his official duties in the most gloomy hour of Kansas history. "Desolation and ruin reigned on every hand; homes and firesides were deserted, the smoke of burning dwellings darkened the atmosphere; women and children, driven from their habitations, wandered over the prairies and among the woodlands, or sought refuge and protection even among the Indian tribes. The highways were infested with numerous predatory bands, and the towns were fortified and garrisoned by armies of conflicting partisans."4 41 42 The Historic ]ayhawkers and the Mythical ]ayhawk The free-state town of Osawatomie near the Missouri border was the scene of successive raids and skirmishes by border ruffians from Missouri and retaliation by Kansas Jayhawkers. On June 7, 1856, John Whitfield and 170 Missourians entered the town, taking what prop- erty they could conveniently carry away, and burning the buildings. One source defined a "Jayhawker" as a "freebooting guerrilla'' and applied the term to persons engaged in plundering their political enemies in Kansas and Western Missouri during the territorial period and the Civil War. This source did not make a proper distinction, how- ever, between the "border ruffians," who represented the cause of slavery, and the free-state men, who were the real Jayhawkers. A further distinction is between "real" Jayhawkers who were exclusively "freebooting guerrillas" and those who combined freebooting with military operations on behalf of the free-state and Union cause and who harbored and aided fugitive slaves. One example of freebooting Jayhawkers during the Civil War were the Red Legs, Union scouts who wore red morocco leggings. They were said to "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."5 The gang was said to contain men of the most desperate and hardened character. John Brown, the abolitionist martyr, was closely associated with the free-state struggle of the Kansas territorial period. He came to Kansas in 1855 and settled with his five sons near Osawatomie. He joined with free-staters, becoming a captain in the force recmited to defend Lawrence against the proslavery men. In May 1856 he led a small party that killed five proslavery men in what is called the Pottawatomie Massacre. In early June 1856 he successfully led a free-state military force against a large party of Missourians at the Battle of Black Jack near Baldwin, Kansas. In August of the same year he led an antislavery force in the battle of Osawatomie, in which Brown's son Frederick was killed. Brown left Kansas in 1857 but re- turned in summer 1858 and took part in the border troubles near Fort Scott.6 John Brown claimed that he never passed up an opportunity to harbor and aid fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. While this more passive role did not entitle Brown to call himself a Jayhawker, his rescue of slaves from Missouri gave him this right. In mid-De- cember 1859, one of Brown's men met a fugitive slave who informed him that he and his wife and children and several friends belonged to an estate that was to be sold in the near future. After learning of chis situation, Brown arranged to cross over into Missouri to rescue the slaves. Brown's party, which consisted of twenty men, went to two of the plantations where the slaves were to be sold. Brown and his party took not only eleven slaves, but also oxen, wagons, food, bedding, and other personal effects. Brown made a distinction between the property of the slaves and that of the estate. He took all of the personal property, claiming that it was owned by the slaves because it had been bought with their labor. In one encounter, a slaveowner who refused to give up his chattels and their personal effects was killed by one of Brown's men. Brown and his men escorted eleven slaves; at a stopover a child was born. They stopped for several days at Lawrence. There they were fed and supplied with provisions and other necessities for the long journey to Canada, where they were freed.7 James Montgomery and Dr. Charles R. Jennison were associated with John Brown in jayhawking raids in southeast Kansas Territory. Montgomery was an Ohioan who, after an obscure life as a school teacher and Methodist minister, settled near Mound City in 1854. He was a man of courage and craft who organized a free-state guerrilla gang to drive out every proslavery man and his family in southeast Kansas. On November 26, 1860, George M. Beebe, acting governor of Kansas Territory, wrote to James Buchanan, President of the United States, that in the southeastern portion of Kansas Territory there was "a well-armed, disciplined and desperate band, styling themselves 'jayhawkers'." Furthermore, Beebe was informed that this band had received a large amount of arms, ammunition, and stores and had determined to invade Missouri and Arkansas to incite an insurrection among the slaves in those states. He said he immediately gave the matter his attention and learned that this gang was "led by a notorious offender, one James Montgomery, assisted by a desperate character named Jennison, Richard Sheridan 43 and that they had actually commenced the preparation of their contemplated out- rages by hanging two citizens of Linn county-a Mr. Hinds and Scott-and shoot- ing a Mr. Moore, of Bourbon county." Acting Governor Beebe wrote that he set out at once from Lecompton to Fort Scott, where he found the country in the utmost excitement; "families were flying, panic-stricken, from their homes, and men were hiding in the woods to elude the vengeance of Montgomery and his desperadoes." In his interview with Montgomery and Jennison, Beebe learned that "it was their settled purpose to shelter fugitives owing service in Southern States, and to kill any who should assist in attempting to enforce the fugitive-slave law; stating that they acted upon a settled conviction of duty and obedience to God." To Beebe, their professions were "the exact counter- part of those of the late notorious John Brown, in conjunction with whom they formerly acted."8 At the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, Kansas Jayhawkers, who were already seasoned guerrilla fighters, joined Kansas regiments so they could destroy slavery throughout the nation. They were determined to make reprisals in return for the depredations of the border ruffians from Missouri who had invaded Kansas Ter- ritory. Prominent among these freedom fighters were James Montgomery, Charles R. Jennison, Daniel R. Anthony, and James H. Lane. "Doc" Jennison, who was from New York, had been an associate of Montgomery in the guerrilla warfare in southeastern Kansas. He was commissioned a colonel by Kansas Governor Charles Robinson and charged with raising a regiment of cavalry. Jennison called his regiment the "Independent Mounted Kansas Jayhawkers," although it was officially the First Kansas Cavalry and later the Seventh Kansas Regiment. Immediately after its organization on October 28, 1861, the Seventh was ordered into active service in Missouri, where it served during fall and winter 1861 and 1862, taking part in many skirmishes. On September 26, 1861, the New York magazine Vtmity Fair published the following notice taken from a "Western Paper": "We learn from Kansas Terri- tory, that Captain Jennison, of border fame, has offered six hundred of his well-known 'Jayhawkers', all bold riders and well mounted to the Union cause." One stanza from a poem that accompanies the notice is as follows: Thirty score JAYHAWKERS BOLD, Kansas men of strong renown, Rally round the banner old, Casting each his gauntlet down, "Good for Kansas," one and all Cry to her.9 Jennison declared that the chief mission of his Jayhawkers was to destroy Confederate guerrillas who infested the counties immediately east and south of Kansas City. On November 4, 1861, he issued a proclamation to the people of Jackson, Lafayette, Cass, Johnson, and Pettis counties, which warned that "Every man who feeds, harbors, protects or in any way gives aid and comfort to the enemies of the Union will be held responsible for his treason with his life and property." Although he affirmed that the rights and property of pro-Union men in Missouri would be religiously respected and that confiscated rebel property would be "turned over to the General Government," in actual practice little or no distinction was made between loyal and rebel Missourians. Jennison and his subordinate officers and men were said to have appropriated most of the confiscated property for their private use or sale in the black markets of Leavenworth and Lawrence. Jennison later declared that his regiment had "brought out from bondage a little over seventeen hundred slaves."10 The greatest Jayhawker of all was James Henry Lane (1814-1866), whom John Speer, his close friend and biographer, called "The Liberator of Kansas." A native of Indiana, Lane raised a regiment in 1846 to fight in the Mexican War. In 1849 he was elected lieutenant governor One of the leaders of the anti- slavery forces was Charles R. Jennison, whose '1ndepmdent Mounted Kansas jayhawkers" sought to destroy Confederate guerrillas who infested counties south and east of Kansas City. 44 The Historic ]ayhawkers and the Mythical ]ayhawk James Henry Lane was the military and political leader of the radical, free-state settlers in Kansas Territory. He recruited African Americans for Civil W'czr regiments in Kansas. of Indiana, and in 1852 was elected to the United States House of Repre- sentatives. He came to Kansas with his family in April 1855. Here Lane had a career in politics and as a military commander that was unparalleled. Among other things, he was a leader in the establishment of the Free-State Government, headquartered in Topeka. He commanded forces in numerous military actions against proslavery units and in December 1857 was elected major general of the Free-State Militia of Kansas Territory. In April 1861, Lane was elected to the United States Senate, which was the achievement of a long-cherished goal. Lane was a man of boundless energy, great tenacity of purpose, and personal magnetism, and he possessed oratorical powers of a high order. Appointed a brigadier general of volunteers by President Lin- coln in June 1861, he proceeded from Washington, D.C., to Kansas to raise both white and colored regiments and command a brigade that invaded western Missouri at a time when the Confederate Army of General Sterling Price had achieved notable victories over Union armies. 11 As his "Kansas Brigade" marched through Missouri, large numbers of African Americans escaped from their masters and found protection and aid in Lane's brigade. Although they performed useful services, they soon be- came so numerous that Lane feared for their safety. To cope with the prob- lem he sent for his three chaplains. Hugh Dunn Fisher, who had been the minister of the Lawrence Methodist Church before the War, was asked, "Chaplain, what can we do to relieve the army of these contrabands, with- out exposing them to their enemies?" Fisher replied that "all the men were in the army, and the women and children in Kansas needed help to save the crop and provide fuel for the winter, and I advised to send the negroes to Kansas to help the women and children." Lane's laconic reply was, ''I'll do it." After he returned to Washington, Lane told the Senate of the success of his policies and actions in Missouri and Arkansas. In a speech on May 15, 1862, he claimed that 4,000 fugi- tive slaves from Missouri and Arkansas were then being fed in Kansas, and two months later he said the number had increased to 6,400. In a speech in New York, he claimed that he had himself "aided 2,500 slaves to emigrate to Kansas." 12 Governor Robinson of Kansas and leading Union generals criticized Lane and his Jayhawkers for their actions in Missouri. Writing to Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, on March 25, 1862, General Henry W Halleck, commander of the Western Department, assailed "the Kan- sas Jayhawkers, or robbers, who were organized under the auspices of Senator Lane. They wear the uniform of, and it is believed receive pay from, the United States. Their principal occupa- tion for the last six months seems to have been the STEALING OF NEGROES, the robbery of houses, and the burning of barns, grain and forage. The evidence of their crimes is unques- tionable. They have not heretofore been under my orders. I WILL NOW KEEP THEM OUT OF MISSOURI, OR HAVE THEM SHOT." 13 Lane not only welcomed slaves into his camp and had them escorted from Missouri to Kansas, but he also recruited blacks into the Union Army and trained them in regimental units for combat. In the capacity as "Recruiting Commissioner," he opened an office in Leavenworth, Kansas, on August 4, 1862, to enlist black as well as white soldiers, despite public sentiment against African American soldiers serving in the Union Army. Lane succeeded in raising two black regiments that performed admirably on the fields of combat. 14 Lane made a speech in the Senate on December 17, 1861, justifying the actions of his brigade in Kansas and urging the adoption of similar measures on a national scale. He told his fellow senators that the occupation of the rebel states by the Union Army was a military necessity. He contended that the policy of exhausting the South was a failure so long as there were four million slaves to feed the people. "The slaves are made not only to feed and clothe their oppressors, but to build fortifications for their defense; and even in some cases to bear arms in their service." On the other hand, if Union army commanders led forces into the Richard Sheridan 45 South and succeeded in persuading the slaves to enter their camps, the South "would bow down in dutiful submission, even to Abraham Lincoln himself." With four million slaves on their side, the Union Army would be "more effective in crushing out the rebellion, than the seizure, if it could be made, of every ounce of ammunition they possess." At the end of his speech, Lane broadened the scope of his recommendation to include "all loyal persons, with- out reference to color, sex, age, or condition, who seek protection within your lines who must be protected and treated kindly. That is our motto. With that motto, we believe that the institution [of slavery] will not survive the war, and that peace will be made permanent for our children by the removal of the cause of the war." 15 The Jayhawk on Mount Oread The modern home of the mythical Jayhawk is on the broad acres and numerous buildings of the campus of the University of Kansas. The main campus is on the summit of Mount Oread, overlooking the City of Lawrence and the broad valleys of the Kansas River on the north and the Wakarusa on the south. Today the University of Kansas is a major comprehen- sive research and teaching university that serves as a center for learning, scholarship, and cre- ative endeavor. The mythical Jayhawk was first seen-or rather heard-on Mount Oread leading the stu- dents in the "Rock Chalk, Jayhawk" school yell. The yell, which was later of national and world fame, was borrowed by the University in 1886-87 from the KU Science Club. When first created by Dr. Edgar L. S. Bailey, the Club's first president, it was simply the repetition of the words, "Rah, Rah! Jayhawk!" The "Rock Chalk'' part of the yell was added by A. R. March, professor of English from 1886 to 1889. "Rock Chalk" rhymed with "Jayhawk," and it was substituted for the "Rah Rah" of the· original yell. "Rock Chalk'' was suggested by the chalk strata of the Cretaceous geological period in outcroppings on Mount Oread. President Theodore Roosevelt once called the KU yell the greatest college cheer ever devised. 16 A new role for the Jayhawk was found early in the twentieth century when the mythical bird became an emblem, mascot, icon, insignia and symbol for the athletic teams of the Uni- versity of Kansas. This new role of the mythical Jayhawk can be explained by the early history of sports and athletic events at the University. Professor Clifford S. Griffin, in his monumental work, The University of Kansas; A History, wrote that from 1866 to 1890, "University athletics had been touchingly innocent and the school had neither football nor basketball teams; students played at a variety of sports and formed a number of intercollegiate teams, but their organization was informal, often haphaz- ard, and always amateur." The first major sport at KU was baseball. There is a description of the first University baseball team in the Lawrence Daily Tribune, November 2, 1866. The following year at least two outside games were played by the University team, both with the Shawnee Indians of Topeka. Professor Robert Taft, in his outstanding pictorial history, Over the Years on Mount Oread, 1866-1941, wrote: "There are sporadic records of University base- ball games through the seventies but baseball in this period was confined pretty largely to the campus as a class sport." The first intercollegiate baseball game was played with Washburn College of Topeka on April 18, 1880, and was won by Washburn, 29 to 23. Baseball became a permanent intercollegiate sport after the acquisition of McCook Athletic Field and the organi- zation of the Triangular League of Baker University, Washburn College, and the University of Kansas in 18 91. 17 By the late eighties enthusiasm for intercollegiate sports and teams was on the rise. On December 13, 1889, a mass meeting of students and faculty members heard two professors extol undergraduate athletics and call for a new Athletic Association to pep things up. The goal of the Association that was formed was to first get an athletic field. The following year Colonel John J. McCook, a Harvard alumnus who was then counsel and director of the Santa Fe Railroad, gave $1,500 for an athletic field. At a subsequent meeting of the Association, measures were taken to organize a football team.18 46 The Historic ]ayhawkers and the Mythical ]ayhawk The immediate popularity of football arose from several factors, according to Professor Griffin. "It was a team sport which gave fans a group as a whole to cheer for-yet with ample opportunity for individual heroics." Furthermore, it gave young men of toughness and stamina some diversion from the popular sport of taking college towns apart. Winning football teams would advertise the University regionally and nationally, increase fans and gate receipts, and attract talented young men to add to the student body and athletic teams. Costs could be kept low since sports-minded faculty members volunteered their time to coach athletic teams. As Griffin points out, it was strictly amateur football since "team members received no money for playing, the coach was a faculty member in an academic discipline who received no extra pay, had a perfect moral character, and won games." In 1891 and 1892 the University played full seasons of eight games each; its record for these years was fourteen wins, a loss, and a tie. 19 Initially sports competitions were restricted to a radius of forty miles of Lawrence, but by the early nineties KU football teams had entered into competition with teams in interstate contests. In 1892 KU joined the Western Inter-State University Foot Ball Association with Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa. The Big-Six Conference was organized in May 1928 with Kan- sas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa State, and Oklahoma. Colorado was added to the Conference in 1947, and Oklahoma State in 1957. Today KU is a member of the Big Twelve. 20 Football became increasingly violent in the 1890s with its smashing, battering plays, fly- ing wedge, roughing the kicker, and piling on. Players were vulnerable to injuries, in part because of uniforms and helmets that afforded little protection. "After 18 players died and 159 more suffered serious injuries in the season of 1905," writes Griffin, "opponents of the game were in full cry for its abolition." KU Professor William H. Carruth was the chief local critic. He deplored the misplaced emphasis on football that led to certain evils that it was the duty of the authorities to correct. "The great desire to win breeds professionalism and encourages gambling, and what is of most importance, calls for risk of lives of the students," he con- tended. Two members of the Board of Regents of the University, William Allen White and J. Willis Gleed, declared in 1910 that they would abolish football outright if they had the power. Gleed charged that football "exalts force, treats wisdom, truth, and culture, and justice with ill- concealed contempt," and that educational institutions had no business trying to appease people's lower appetites. Despite these and other criticisms, the game of football persisted and became even more firmly established, although with reforms that curbed professionalism and violence. 21 To honor University of Kansas men who lost their lives in World War I and to accommo- date growing numbers of students and fans, a drive for $1,000,000 was opened in November 1920 to build a war memorial stadium and union building. About $100,000 of the $160,000 student quota was pledged the first day, and Lawrence citizens raised $30,000. At the first foot- ball game in the Memorial Stadium on October 29, 1921, KU defeated Kansas State 21 to 7.22 "Basketball is the only major sport of wholly American origin . . . and the game has a greater attendance and more participants than any other sport in the United States," according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The game was invented by Dr. James A. Naismith in 1891, when he was an instructor at the International Y.M.C.A. Training School at Springfield, Mas- sachusetts. Naismith came to the University of Kansas in fall 1898 as an associate professor of physical training and chapel director. His service to the University continued for forty-one years, interrupted only by leaves of absence for war work. The interest aroused by the new game was described by The University ~ekry of December 10, 1898: "Every one who is at all interested in athletics is now talking basketball yet it does not stop here. Those who hitherto have manifested no interest in any sports of skill and strength seem now to be enthusiastic over the new game. It is talked at the club, it is discussed in the corridors, it is practiced and played in the gymnasium and on the campus. Even the professors have become actively inter- ested in the game and are giving their time of recreation over to this pastime." Dr. Forrest C. "Phog" Allen carried on the tradition established by Dr. Naismith and achieved an outstanding "overall coaching record of 771 victories in 1,004 games-a 77 per- cent average-and he won twenty-four conference championships for the University." Two years before his retirement in 1956, the University's new fieldhouse was named for Dr. Allen.23 Richard Sheridan 47 For an understanding of the history of the Jayhawk, it is important to note that the first three decades of the twentieth century witnessed the accelerated growth of the University of Kansas in its faculty and student numbers, in intercollegiate athletics, and in professional- vocational education. At the turn of the century, Chancellor Frank Strong worked closely with faculty members and the Board of Regents to initiate a policy of increased service to the state of Kansas. Preparation for the professions led to the establishment of the School of Education, and the four-year School of Medicine. A course in newspaper writing was initiated in 1903 and an advertising course followed in 1909. In January 1910, KU held its first journalism conference with Charles M. Harger of the Abilene Reflector as president. The following year the Department of Journalism was established. This was followed by the publication of a daily student newspaper in 1912, the first High School Editors' Conference in 1919, and the first Kansas Editors' Hall of Fame election in 1931. When Professor Leon Nelson Flint, who had been chairman of the Journalism Department for twenty-five years, retired as chair in 1941, he had 1,222 students under his direction. In 1944, the Board of Regents authorized changing the Journalism Department to the William Allen White School of Journalism and Public In- formation, and established the William Allen White Foundation. 24 In Across the Years on Mount Dread, Professor Taft writes, "The story of the development of the present University daily is also the story of the origin of the department of journalism." The title University Kansan was first used by a student newspaper in 1889-90. The Semi- Weekly Kansan appeared in September 1904, and the University Daily Kansan in 1912. All of the students in the newspaper writing class were said to be cub reporters for either the Kansan or one of the Lawrence newspapers. The beginners covered the University beat and the ad- vanced students edited copy.25 Since 1895 there had been an unbroken series of University of Kansas annuals in which individual photos of seniors and student groups were reproduced. In 1901 this annual was renamed ]ayhawker. Photographs of beauty queens first appeared in 1915, and during the fabulous twenties the ]ayhawker reached its greatest importance. Its primary purpose was to serve as a memento of college days for graduating seniors. Other periodical publications of the University were The Graduate Magazine and the Kansas Alumni magazine.26 Besides the photographs of students and other newsworthy individuals and groups who were included in the University Daily Kansan, the ]ayhawker, and other periodicals, students of journalism with a creative turn of mind and hand began to make representations of the mythi- cal Jayhawk to illustrate campus publications. The man who is credited as the first to caricature the Jayhawk is Henry Maloy. He en- tered KU as a freshman in 1910, only to find that his ambition to become a cartoonist was discouraged by the Kansan staff members. At that time the bulldog was used as an emblem on pennants and post cards, and at KU football games was used for parades. Maloy's cartoons went unnoticed until his sophomore year when he met Professor Merle Thorpe of the Journal- ism Department. Thorpe used his influence on Maloy's behalf, and the first rendering of the Jayhawk appeared in the University Daily Kansan on October 28, 1912. Maloy's original Jayhawk was pictured doing human things and had a human expression. This long-legged bird wore shoes to better kick the Missouri hound dog. Later Maloy's cartoons showed the KU Jayhawk kicking the Missouri Tiger. 27 "The Jayhawk and Mr. Maloy," an article in the Kansas Alumni magazine of November 1971, summarizes the history of the Jayhawk: Since Henry Maloy's first rendering in 1912, there have been many attempts to revise and improve the Jayhawk. In 1920, a more somber, motionless bird perched on a K U monogram came into use. This gave way in 1923 to a quaint duck-like Jayhawk, designed by Jimmy O'Bryon and George Hollingbery, which had wide acceptance. In 1929, the Alumni Club of Kansas City adopted the name "Jayhawk Club," and em- ployed an artist to produce a bird which represented the austere, fighting spirit of the Jayhawk. This model was used until 1941 when Dr. Gene "Yogi" Williams created a Jayhawk showing a bird with a perky, contemptuous attitude and which might become tough if bothered. Will- iams' Jayhawk became known as the "Fighting Jayhawk." 1910 Henry Maloy, a KU student, was the first to caricature the jayhawk. His cartoons, which . first appeared in the University Daily Kansan in 1912, pictured a long-kgged bird that wore shoes to better kick the Missouri mascot. In 1941 Dr. Gene "Yogi" Williams created a f ayhawk with a perky, contemptuous attitude-a bird that might become tough if bothered. Williams' jayhawk became known as the "Fighting Jayhawk." 48 The Historic ]ayhawkers and the Mythical ]ayhawk The most recent Jayhawk is that of the "Happy Jayhawk," created by K. U. student Harold Sandy in 1946 and copyrighted by the Kansas Union Bookstore in 1947. Sandy's Happy Jayhawk has served as the official K. U. Jayhawk since that time.28 The Jayhawk has been in popular demand by students, alumni, and followers of the Uni- versity of Kansas and has become KU's trademark. As Maloy once said, "The Jayhawk is worth more in getting attention than all the wheat, oil, Indians and buffalo in the state put together. 29 The Jayhawk Spreads Its Wings The most widely published and circulated group of stories about the Jayhawk-on sale today-is Kirke Mechem's twelve-page, illustrated article "The Mythical Jayhawk." It was first published in the February 1944 issue of the Kansas Historical Quarterly. It was also published twice as a pamphlet during World War II and again in 1956 and has recently been repub- lished. About a thousand copies of the article were sent to Kansans in the armed forces over- seas during the Second World War. Kirke Mechem was secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society for twenty-one years. He wrote extensively about Kansas, including articles about Coronado and the song "Home on the Range." He also wrote numerous plays and an opera about John Brown. 30 Mechem's article "The Mythical Jayhawk" abounds in imaginary, tongue-in-cheek stories and tall tales. He cites an article by Professor Raymond C. Moore, a former KU geologist, which tells of a paleontological field party from Yale University that made the first dis- covery in 1870 of ancestral Jayhawk bones in the Cretaceous rocks of western Kan- sas. The bird, named Hesperornis regalis, which means the "kingly Western bird," had a skeleton of six feet from tip of beak to end of toes. It was a ferocious- looking bird with a big, strong beak like that of the modern Jayhawk, and its upper and lower jaws were armed with a row of sharp, pointed teeth.31 According to Mechem, there was an unverified story that the Indians believed the great round stones in Rock City, in Ottawa County in north- central Kansas, were petrified eggs. "The anonymous Indian who made this statement declared they were laid by the Thunderbird. This, he claimed, is the Indian name of the Jayhawk. When asked how any bird known to man could have laid eggs the size of these rocks, some of which are over twelve feet in diameter, the answer was that the Thunderbird, or Jayhawk, not only could change its size at will but could make itself invisible, and was immortal."32 The same anonymous Indian told how the first inhabitants of the Great Plains, who were Jayhawks, transformed the environment. When they first came to the Plains, the country was a desert, without water or vegetation, and even without wind. When they wanted a drink, they had to fly to the Great Lakes. "One hot summer day several million Jayhawks started northeast for water at the same time. The tremendous force of their flight started a strong breeze from the southeast. From that day the wind has never ceased. Since it blew the first clouds across the plains the Indians always credited the Jayhawk with bringing rain and veg- etation to Kansas."33 Mechem modernized the mythical Jayhawk with the story of a World War II bomber plane crew that had a brush with the last reported Jayhawk near Wichita, Kansas. The pilot saw a sort of shadow pass the plane. ''As it went by it kind of wailed, though maybe it was more like a loud swoosh." As it turned out, the bird that was identified as a jayhawk was jet- propelled. It was able to fly forward, backward, and stop dead in the air. "If this is the stuff of mythology, let us have more of it," Mechem declared. ''As the myths of the Greeks reflected their honor and idealism, the jayhawk is peculiarly an expressions of the spirit of Kansas. " Mechem believed the bird "should be capitalized and advertised and mounted on the state- house dome. It should be the trade-mark of Kansas."34 Richard Sheridan 49 The "Rock Chalk, Jayhawk" yell, which is symbolic of Kansas soil, pioneer struggles, and spirit of victory, traveled with the fighting men of Kansas to the wars of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. So did the mythical Jayhawk. On July 9, 1967, the KU News Bureau released a story about the well-traveled bird. "The Kansas Jayhawk flew in the Philippine jungles as General Fred Funston tracked down Aguinaldo. The Jayhawk went 'over the top' from World War I trenches. Bombers carrying variations of the Jayhawk insignia did their work in the skies of Europe in World War II. Aground the Jayhawk accompanied Kansas men into battle in their tanks. Today a fierce war-like Jayhawk is seeing action in Vietnam." The "Fighting Jayhawk" of World War II was created by Dr. Eugene "Yogi" Williams, who was a student at KU from 1941 to 1943. He was the cartoonist for the ]ayhawker, the University Daily Kansan, and the Sour Owl. His "Fighting Jayhawk" had "a gleam in his eye, his feet planted firmly on the ground, chest thrown out into the third dimension, tail feathers ruffled, and an aggressive stance." Before leaving KU for military service in Germany, "Yogi" agreed to let any department on the campus use his design. He was unaware that his version of the Jayhawk had gained popularity competing with that of the traditional Jayhawk.35 Enrollment at the University of Kansas fluctuated drastically from 1940 to 1949. It de- clined from 5,299 students in the 1940-41 school year to about 3,800 in 1944-45. Enroll- ment in military training courses during World War II prevented a disastrous decline in the number of students. After the war a flood of World War II veterans, along with undergradu- ates fresh from high school, enrolled at KU. Enrollment increased from about 6,300 in 1946- 47 to more than 11,000 in 1948-49. As Clifford Griffin summarized the situation, "The immediate result was a sort of welcome chaos: chaos because the University suddenly had to find rooms and apartments to house the students and classrooms in which to teach them; welcome because the several thousand additional students were an excellent justification for larger appropriations and because veterans brought extra funds from the Federal government in the form of compensatory fees."36 Included among the multitude of KU students after World War II were Harold "Hal" Sandy and the author of this article. Both of us lived with some fifty other male KU students in Spooner Dormitory-now the Museum of Anthropology-on the top of Mount Oread. Hal Sandy designed the most recent Jayhawk, which has been in use since 1947. In that year Sandy graduated from the William Allen White School of Journalism with a Bachelor of Sci- ence degree. His "smiling" or "happy" Jayhawk was designed in 1946, and Sandy sold Jayhawk decals to help put himself through school. He later explained the reason behind his changing the appearance of the Jayhawk, "Ed Browne, who was public relations director of the Univer- sity (1946), suggested that I design a 'happy' Jayhawk. The bird is an adaptation from all the other Jayhawks, but especially from one artist who was on campus while I was there. This man, whose nickname was 'Yogi' [Dr. Eugene 'Yogi' Williams] was truly the most inventive Jayhawk designer of all time." Sandy's new design was a timely change from the fierce-looking "Fighting Jayhawk'' of World War II years to the happy and smiling bird of peace.37 After graduating from KU, Hal Sandy found it difficult to sell the decals with dispatch, so he sold his copyright of the smiling Jayhawk to the Kansas Union Bookstore in 1947 for about $250, which he thought was a lot of money. Writing in the Lawrence Journal-World on September 13, 1996, journalist Tim Carpenter said, "Fifty years ago, Harold 'Hal' Sandy cre- ated a million~dollar image .... In the years since, sales of shirts, hats, shorts, posters, cups, blankets and other items decorated with the mythical jayhawk drawn by Sandy have earned KU millions of dollars. "38 Although Hal Sandy was said to have made a financial blunder, his decision to sell the copyright of his Jayhawk image yielded great psychic income and personal dividends while materially benefitting the University of Kansas. On September 12, 1996, Hal Sandy was feted with a parade down Jayhawk Boulevard with a life-sized Jayhawk mascot and a band. "It's all hard to believe," Hal said, as he and the celebrants ate the cake marking the fiftieth birthday of the smiling Jayhawk. 39 50 The Historic ]ayhawkers and the Mythical ]ayhawk The myth of a myth in the Jayhawk saga concerns the story of Pat Devlin. The earliest printed account of the Devlin story is published in Daniel W. Wilder's Annals of Kansas. Wilder has Devlin entering the village of Osawatomie near the Missouri border in autumn 1856 riding a horse or mule and "loaded down with no inconsiderable amount of articles of various character, which entirely covered his beast." When he was accosted by a neighbor in a friendly manner, Pat said he had been jayhawking, that is, foraging off the proslavery enemy. He then explained that in Ireland there was a bird called the Jayhawk who worried his prey before devouring it. 40 An article in the Kansas City Times of May 24, 1944, said that Paul Wellman, . a well- known writer on the American West, had written a letter of inquiry to the library in Dublin, Ireland, regarding Pat Devlin and the Jayhawk. ''Although the answer was that there is no such bird in Ireland, it was admitted that the name might exist in some isolated locality for some species. At the end of his letter the librarian added, 'May I suggest that you inquire if history relates whether the original Pat Devlin was known sometimes to have an inventive turn of mind'." The writer of the article in the Kansas City newspaper concluded that researchers who had attempted to prove the actuality of the famous Kansas bird had found little substance in folklore or fossils. 41 Later versions of the Pat Devlin story deviate from the one told by Daniel Wilder. One version has Pat returning to a free-state camp somewhere along the boundary of present Mi- ami and Linn counties of Kansas, and being interrogated by Charles R. Jennison, the free-state guerrilla leader. Moreover, this account describes the items of plunder in great detail. Another modern version of the story has Pat Devlin as a member of James Montgomery's free-state guerrilla band. It is possible that Pat was returning with plunder that had been taken from Osawatomie a few months earlier by John W Whitfield's band of border ruffians. One may also question whether Pat Devlin would have gone over the line into Missouri on his foraging expedition, as one source says. Armed and mounted men in guerrilla parties crossed the line both east and west, but it is doubtful that a single forager would have done so.42 Albert D. Richardson was a correspondent of Boston and Cincinnati newspapers who reported on events in Kansas Territory. He was in southeast Kansas at the time of the Marais des Cygnes Massacre on May 19, 1858, when a party of twelve proslavery men from Missouri crossed into Kansas, rounded up nine unarmed free-state men, shot and killed six of them, and severely wounded the other three. In his book Beyond the Mississippi, Richardson recorded for June 13, 1858, "Found all the settlers justifying the 'Jayhawkers,' a name universally ap- plied to Montgomery's men, from the celerity of their movements and their habit of suddenly pouncing upon an enemy. Nearly all the citizens under arms, to defend their homes and if possible ferret out and punish the Marais des Cygnes murderers." Montgomery told Richardson that he had been compelled to organize a guerrilla company to protect himself and his neigh- bors. He continued, "Now a guerrilla company, to be effective, must be self-sustaining-must subsist on the enemy. Therefore we feed ourselves at Pro-slavery larders and our horses at Pro- slavery corn cribs." Proslavery guerrillas had little need to forage off their enemies in Missouri since they were generally supplied voluntarily by slave-owning farmers and planters with food, shelter, arms and ammunition, and horses.43 Both before and during the Civil War, the antislavery guerrillas and federal troops from Kansas were engaged in liberating and rescuing slaves from their enemies in Missouri. They opened their lines to fugitives and defied orders to desist. According to Ira Berlin, "Federal troops from Kansas were encouraged by Senator James H. Lane to pursue rebel guerrillas into Missouri, frequently turning such missions into punitive raids against slaveholders." Lane firmly believed that "the institution of slavery would perish with the march of the Federal armies," and he intended that Kansas troops should do their part. "He urged retribution against dis- loyal Missouri slaveholders, arguing that 'confiscation of slaves and other property which can be made useful to the Army should follow treason as the thunder peal follows the lightning flash'." Berlin concludes by emphasizing that "the Kansas regiments set the standard of antisla- . d . . . h" u . ks "44 very commitment an activity wit m mon ran . Richard Sheridan 51 Lane and other Jayhawker leaders were supported by their fellow citizens. "Kansans gener- ally approved the forays of Lane and Montgomery, of Jennison and Anthony, through the border counties of Missouri," writes Albert Castel in his history of Kansas during the Civil War. "Their growing antislavery fervor caused them to applaud the slave-liberating aspect of these operations, especially since the freed Negroes relieved the labor shortage in Kansas. More- over, reports! true, exaggerated, and false, of outrages suffered by Kansas and other Union adherents along the border at the hands of Missouri secessionists seemed to warrant retaliation in kind. "45 . Frank W. Blackmar, a long-time professor of history and sociology and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Kansas, was reputedly an authority on Kansas history, having pub- lished the two-volume Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History. In December 1926, Blackmar gave a six-minute radio talk in Lawrence entitled "Origin of the Jayhawk." He began by asserting that the Jayhawk is a myth that has no historical use, and that in early Kansas '"jayhawking' became a general term to express marauding or plundering." Blackmar was concerned to break away from and disown what he called "the spirit of robber birds ... the reckless spirit of law and disorder bands of the stress and storm period" of Kansas history. The only beneficial legacy in his opinion was "the spirit of comradeship and the courageous fighting qualities to make and keep Kansas free. The spirit of the modern Jayhawk is to make Kansas great and strong and noble in good deeds. It is a benevolent spirit.''46 I find some things to commend in Blackmar's radio talk, and others to criticize and re- fute. Early Kansans did display a spirit of comradeship and courage in fighting to keep Kansas free, and this is a beneficial legacy. On the other hand, it is wrong or misleading to say that the myth of the Jayhawk has no historical use, and to narrow the meaning of early jayhawking to "marauding or plundering." If it is right to acknowledge that the spirit of the modern Jayhawk is to make Kansas great and strong and noble in good deeds, it is equally important to commend the early Jayhawkers for liberating and rescuing African American slaves from bondage in Missouri and for escorting them to freedom in Kansas.47 For their generous help in preparing this article, the author wishes to thank Barbara Watkins, Harold Sandy, Edward G. Kehde III, William Getz, and Kent Politsch. Notes 1. "The Legend of the Jayhawk, plaque in the Kansas Union, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. 2. Frank W. Blackmar, ed., Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History (Chicago: Standard Publishing Company, 1912), Vol. 2, 21-22. 3. Alice Nichols, Bleeding Kansas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 23-25, 57-80, 105-10. 4. Governor John W. Geary's letter is quoted in Charles Robinson, The Kansas Conflict (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1892), 329. 5. Leverett W. Spring, Kansas: The Prelude to the war for the Union. Rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Miffiin Company, 1907), 237-56, 285-86; Blackmar, Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Vol. 2, 21-22. 6. Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown. 2nd ed. (Amherst, Mass.: Univer- sity of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 82-84, 106-10, 133-37, 152-54, 169-71, 254-60. 7. Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and His Men, With Some Account of the Roads They Traveled to Reach Harper's Ferry (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1894), 217-28. 8. Letter from George M. Beebe, Acting Governor of Kansas Territory, co James Buchanan, President of the United States, November 26, 1860, Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1889-1896 (Topeka, Kans., 1896), Vol. 5, 631-32. 9. Quoted in Daniel W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (Topeka, Kans.: Kansas Publishing House, 1875), 268. 10. Jennison's proclamation is quoted by Stephen Z. Starr, ]ennison's ]ayhawkers: A Civil war Cavalry Regiment and Its Commander (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 79-82, 100. 11. John Speer, Life of Gen. fames H. Lane "The Liberator of Kansas" (Garden City, Kans.: John Speer, Printer, 1896), 1-16, 34-66; Wendell Holmes Stephenson, The Political Career of General James H. Lane. Publications of the Kansas State Historical Society (Topeka, Kans., 1930), Vol. 3, 5-7, 11-18; Wilder, The Annals of Kansas, 440. 12. Stephenson, Political Career of fames H. Lane, 126-27; Richard B. Sheridan, "From Slavery in Missouri to Freedom in Kansas: The Influx of Black Fugitives and Contrabands into Kansas, 1854-1865," Kansas History 12, no. 1 (spring 1989): 31-37. 52 The Historic ]ayhawkers and the Mythical ]ayhawk 13. The extract from General Halleck's letter to Secretary Stanton is quoted in Speer, Life of Gen. James H. Lane, 253. 14. Stephenson, Political Career of fames H Lane, 127-32. 15. The Congressional Globe; Debates and Proceedings, 31th Congress, Second Session, 1861-62 (Washington, D.C., 1862), Part l, December 17, 1861, 110-14. 16. Kay Bozarth, "Outstanding Yell, Rock Chalk, Jayhawk!; Used in World War," University Daily Kansan, May 16, 1941. 17. Clifford S. Griffin, The University of Kansas: A History (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1974), 645; Robert Taft, Across the Years on Mount Dread, 1866-1941: An Informal and Pictorial History of the University of Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Press, 1949), 39-40. 18. Griffin, The University of Kansas, 646. 19. Ibid., 647-49. 20. Ibid., 650, 767. 21. Ibid., 650-60; Taft, Across the Years on Mount Dread, 40-42, 94, 175-76. 22. Mechem, The Annals of Kansas, 1911-1925, Vol. 2, 287, 293, 305; Griffin, The University of Kansas, 415-21; Taft, Across the Years on Mount Dread, 119-21. 23. Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1955), Vol. 3, 181-83; Taft, Across the Years on Mount Dread, 63-65; Griffin, The University of Kansas, 666-67. 24. Student flyer "50 Years of Journalism at the University of Kansas," Journalism Reading Room, William Allen White School of Journalism, KU; Griffin, The University of Kansas, 278-79; Taft, Across the Years on Mount Dread, 60-82. 25. Taft, Across the Years on Mount Dread, 80; Griffin, The U~iversity of Kansas, 278. 26. Taft, Across the Years on Mount Dread, 68-70. 27. "The Jayhawk and Mr. Maloy," Kansas Alumni, November 1971, 1-5. 28. "The Jayhawk and Mr .. Maloy," 3. 29. Ibid., 4-5. 30. Kirke Mechem, "The Mythical Jayhawk," Kansas Historical Quarterly, 13, no. 1 (February 1944): 3-15; Everett Rich, ed., The Heritage of Kansas: Selected Commentaries on Past Times (Manhattan, Kans.: Flint . Hi11s Book Company, 1960), 270-71. 31. Mechem, "The Mythical Jayhawk," 5-6; Raymond C. Moore, "Discovered: Ancestor of Jayhawkornis Kansasensis," Graduate Magazine 30 (April 1932), 10. 32. Mechem, "The Mythical Jayhawk," 7. 33. Ibid., 7. 34. Ibid., 6, 11-13. 35. "The Jayhawk at War," KU News Bureau Release, July 9, 1967; '"Fighting Hawk' Drawn by 'Yogi' Takes a Bow," University Daily Kansan, June 8, 1945. 36. Griffin, The University of Kansas, 488-503. 37. Marcia Foster, "'Fighting Jayhawk' of World War II Replaces the Happy and Smiling Bird of Peace," University Daily Kansan, April 28, 1971. 38. Tim Carpenter, "Smiling Jayhawk Turns 50 Years Young. KU Honors Mascot's Artist," Lawrence Journal-World, September 13, 1996. 39. Ibid. 40. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas, 615-16. 41. "Let's Accept the Jayhawk as Myth but Give It the Proper Exploitation," Kansas City Times, May 24, 1944. 42. The Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration; The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1984), 193; Dary, Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, 84-85. 43. Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi: From the Great River to the Great Ocean (Hartford, Conn., 1867), 125-26; Wilder, The Annals of Kansas, 183-84. 44. Ira Berlin et al., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-1867. Series 1, Vol. 1. The Destruction of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 400-12. 45. Albert Castel, A Frontier State at \%r: Kansas 1861-1865 (Lawrence, Kans.: Kansas Heritage Press, 1958), 60- 61. 46. Frank W. Blackmar, "Origin of the Jayhawk," Six-minute Radio Talk, University of Kansas, December 1926. 47. Sheridan, Richard B., "From Slavery in Missouri to Freedom in Kansas," 28-47; Wi11iams, Burton J., "Quantri11's Raid on Lawrence: A Question of Complicity," Kansas Historical Quarterly 34, no. 2 (summer 1968): 143-49. William Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, August 21, 1863 Richard B. Sheridan T his essay is based primarily on the written recollections and reminiscences of those who were personally associ ated with William Clarke Quantrill and the Lawrence residents who escaped being massacred by Quantrill and his Confederate guerrillas on that day of infamy-August 21, 1863. I have drawn on reliable secondary sources to link together the primary sources that constitute the "true history" of the Lawrence tragedy. 1 The early life of William Clarke Quantrill was obscure and uneventful. He was born at Canal Dover, hio, on July 31, 1837, the eldest child of Thomas Henry Quantrill and Caroline Cornelia (Clarke) Quancrill. even other children were born of this union, of whom only three lived to maturity. Thomas Quantrill was born at Hagerstown, Maryland, and became a tinner by trade. He married Carolina Cornelia Clarke of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on October 11, 1836. Soon after their marriage they settled at Canal Dover, Ohio, where Thomas opened a tin shop and in his spare time wrote small books on his trade. In 1850 he became a teacher in the Canal Dover Union School, and at the time of his death on December 7, 1854, he was the school's principal. We know more about Quantrill as a schoolboy and public school teacher than of his amusements and question- able escapades. Authorities agree that he was a bright student and acquired a better education, generally speaking, than the young men of his age who lived on the Missouri-Kansas border. At the age of sixteen, he became a teacher in the lower grades of the Union School at Canal Dover. In summer 1855, he went to Mendota, Illinois, to teach school. The following spring he settled in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he obtained a teaching post. Returning to Canal Dover in fall 1856, he taught two terms in the country school south of that town.2 The prospects for Quantrill took a turn for the better soon after his school ended. He learned that two Canal Dover men, Harmon V. Beeson and Colonel Henry Torrey, intended to purchase claims and settle in Kansas Territory. With encouragement from Quantrill's mother, the two men agreed to pay her son's ex- penses and, in return, Quantrill promised to help them improve their land claims. In late February 1857, Beeson, his son Richard, and Quantrill set out from Canal Dover. After meeting Colonel Torrey at St. Louis, the party boarded a steamboat and ascended the Missouri River to Independence. There they purchased two ox teams, wagons, and supplies to outfit them for the rough life in the frontier terri- tory of Kansas. Arriving in Lykins (later named Miami) County, Kansas Territory, on March 22, 1857, they settled near the town of Stanton on the Marais des Cygnes River. William Clarke Quantrill came to Lawrence on the eve of the Civil Wtir and joined a band of proslavery border ruffians. As a guerrilla leader in Missouri, he led 453 bushwhackers and their followers in the raid that nearly destroyed Lawrence on August 21, 1863. 53 54 William Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, August 21, 1863 Quantrill soon became embroiled in a dispute with Beeson and Torrey over a land claim. Each of the men bought a claim for himself and another claim jointly in Quantrill's name. When Quantrill later decided to sell his interest in the jointly owned claim but could not agree with Beeson and Torrey on the amount he should receive, the dispute was submitted to a "squatter's court" for arbitration. The court decided that Beeson and Torrey owed Quantrill $63.00. When the two men were slow to pay, Quantrill took a yoke of oxen belonging to Beeson and hid them on the prairie. He also stole some blankets and a revolver from Torrey. Quantrill left Beeson and Torrey and went to live with John Bennings and his family on a claim near Stanton. Bennings, who was a strong proslavery man, probably encouraged Quantrill to favor the border ruffians, according to William E. Connelley. Quantrill later joined a num- ber of young men who had been his schoolmates in Ohio in a settlement in Johnson County, Kansas. After he was caught stealing their blankets and other items, he was forced to leave the settlement. 3 Having alienated himself from his former classmates at the Johnson County settlement, Quantrill went again to live for a short time with John Bennings. He then went to Fort Leavenworth and was hired as a teamster or wagon boss on a wagon train carrying supplies to the army of federal soldiers that had been sent to Utah Territory to pacify the Mormons, who were led by Brigham Young. In the slow journey across the plains and mountains, Quantrill's political views may have been influenced by his talks with the freighters, most of whom were from Missouri. Quantrill arrived at Salt Lake City in early October 1858. In Utah he is reported to have gambled extensively, but there is little or no hard evidence to support this charge. Writing to his mother from Camp Floyd, Utah Territory, on January 9, 1859, he said he was employed as a cook for a mess of twenty-five men.4 In Kansas Territory More than six months elapsed before Quancrill again wrote to his mother, this time from Lawrence, Kansas Territory, on July 30, 1859. He detailed the hardships brought by cold weather, starvation, and hostile Indians when he joined a party that traveled from Salt Lake City to the gold mines in the Pike's Peak region. He told of his meager diggings, which hardly paid for his board and expenses. After teaching school in Stanton township in the winter of 1859-60, Quantrill returned to the Lawrence area. He lived under the assumed name of "Char- ley Hart" with a Delaware Indian on the reservation north of the Kansas River. Several months later he took up residence at the Whitney House Hotel in Lawrence. He was frequently seen riding his Indian pony or loitering at the north ferry landing, which William E. Connelley called "the loafing-place of a very disreputable gang of Border Ruffians. They were thieves, murderers, kidnappers, negro-stealers."5 Quantrill pretended to be an abolitionist and learned where fugitive slaves were hidden. He then kidnapped them and took them back to their owners in Missouri for a reward of $100 to $200 per slave. He played another version of this deceptive game with a group of young abolitionists, leading them on a raid into Jackson County, Missouri·, to capture slaves for the Underground Railroad. Quantrill then betrayed the aboli- tionists to the owner of the slaves, who set up an ambush whereby three of these young men were shot and killed. With the exception of a short visit to Stanton, Kansas, Quantrill remained in the Blue Springs region of Missouri after the raid to capture the slaves was sabotaged. After the Civil War commenced in spring 1861, he joined the Confederate army of General Sterling Price as a cavalry private, fighting in the battles of Wilson Creek, Drywood Creek, and Lexington. Deserting Price's army, he returned to his friends in the Blue Springs region. By December 1861 he had become the leader of "Quancrill's guerrilla band" with eleven original members. As a guerrilla leader, Quantrill and his men depended on pro-Confederate families for subsis- tence, shelter, arms and ammunition, information, and recruits. They captured and returned Richard Sheridan 55 fugitive slaves to their owners, drove out or killed Union sympathizers, burned their homes, and stole their horses and other property. They intercepted Union mail deliveries, cut tele- graph lines, joined with regular Confederate forces in military engagements, and lived a life of adventure and lax discipline in an all-male society of partisan warriors.6 By mid-August 1862 Quantrill and his men had taken part in a number of raids, skir- mishes, and battles in western Missouri and eastern Kansas. His band, which had grown to a formidable fighting force of about 150 men, joined with Confederate troops to wage a bitter fight that forced the surrender of federal forces at Independence, Missouri. Besides aiding Confederate forces, Quantrill and his guerrillas fought against invading Jayhawker military units led by James H. Lane and Charles R. Jennison. Furthermore, they carried the internecine struggle into Johnson County, Kansas, killing three citizens in a raid on Aubrey on March 7, 1862. In September and October of the same year, Quantrill and his men raided Olathe and Shawneetown; they killed one Union soldier and seven civilians and plundered and burned stores and other buildings. 7 The Lawrence Massacre According to Jay Monaghan, Quantrill planned the Lawrence Massacre to redress the Con- federate army's defeat at the battle of Gettysburg. In the first week of July 1863 the curtain rose on four military theaters-Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Helena, and Fort Gibson. West of the Mississippi River the Confederates drove Union forces out of Helena and Fort Gibson. Al- though all four of these engagements went against the Confederacy and morale throughout the South had sunk to a low point, Quantrill saw in these defeats the opportunity of a life- time. Calling together his captains for a conference, he outlined his plans for the greatest raid of the war. Destruction of the "vile nest of nigger thieves" at Lawrence would be "an achieve- ment, he told his men, that would immortalize the participants-and regain for Quantrill his old prestige over the phantom regiment o~ Confederate guerrillas. "8 Quantrill had personal vendettas against certain leading men of Lawrence that motivated him to destroy the town. One of thes~ vendettas was against Samuel A. Riggs, county attorney of Douglas County. Riggs said he prosecuted Quantrill, alias Charley Hart, in the summer and fall of 1860 for burglary, larceny, arson, and kidnapping. These charges were all pending against Quantrill when he disappeared from Douglas County.9 To Quantrill and his guerrillas, Lawrence was also the home of Jim Lane; the headquar- ters of the Red Legs; the chief station on the Underground Railroad; the abolitionist capital of the West; and the recruiting ground for Jayhawkers, Red Legs, and Union soldiers. Quantrill and his men hated Lawrence because it had been the free state fortress and abolitionist capital since the first settlement of Kansas Territory. Michael Fellman says that in the long war on the Missouri-Kansas border, "terror was both a method and a goal."10 Guerrillas had a variety of goals-to secure food, arms, horses, loot, information; to rid the region of enemy civilians; and above all, to gain revenge. Quantrill and his guerrillas came to Lawrence to inflict ven- geance for the killing of their sisters and cousins in the collapse of the Kansas City prison, to retaliate for Jayhawker raids into Missouri, and to seek revenge for the Union Army's General Order Number Ten, which had compelled the families who willfully aided the guerrillas to leave the border district. In short, Quantrill and his men came to Lawrence to sack the town and kill the men. But not all of the raiders were so obsessed by motives of revenge that they were bereft of qualities of mercy. This was the judgment of John C. Shea, the journalist who interviewed a number of survivors of Quantrill's raid twelve to thirteen years after the event. He noted that some of the raiders came to Lawrence "for plunder alone, others to burn and plunder, others to kill and destroy whatever came within their reach, while a few, a very few, mixed with the crowd [to save lives and property]."11 56 William Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, August 21, 1863 In July 1863 Quantrill saw that by combining the forces of the guerrilla captains under his command he could achieve his long-cherished design to destroy Lawrence. Accordingly, he assembled the captains of the various bands of guerrillas on August 10. He urged the adoption of his plan to destroy Lawrence, but nothing was done beyond calling another meeting on August 18 at the farm of Captain Pardee on the Blackwater River in Johnson County, some fifty miles from the Kansas line. This time the decision to march on Lawrence was unani- mous, largely because of the recent collapse of the military prison at Kansas City and the killing of the women prisoners. The march to Lawrence . began on the morning of August 19. The original force of 294 guerrillas proceeded cautiously toward the village of Lone Jack without sighting the enemy. After marching ten miles, they stopped for an hour to eat and let their horses graze. When they reached a point about four miles from the Kansas line at 5:00 a.m. on August 20, they lay concealed in the timber until 3:30 p.m. of the same day. During the march they met up with Colonel John D. Holt, C.S.A., with 104 recruits for the Confederate army who joined the guerrilla march to Lawrence. Another 55 civilians joined the expedition, making a total of 453 guerrillas and their supporters. At 7:00 p.m. Captain J. A. Pike, commanding two companies of federal troops at Aubrey near the Kansas border, received information that Quantrill and his men had just passed into Kansas. Instead of setting out at once in pursuit, however, he remained at the station and merely informed Union headquarters in Kansas City. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to warn Lawrence that Quantrill and his men were coming. The most notable was that of Pelathe, a Shawnee Indian, who learned that Quantrill and his men had crossed the line into Kansas. He rode his horse at top speed with few stops for rest and water to quench its thirst, until at last the horse fell and died short of reaching Lawrence. 12 Meanwhile Quantrill and his guerrillas proceeded during the nighttime hours until they reached the summit of a rise overlooking Lawrence at dawn on August 21. Quantrill ordered a halt and sent five men to reconnoiter the town. When the guerrillas rode into Lawrence at about five o'clock, the streets were deserted and most of the citizens were still asleep. The only organized resistance came from a number of soldiers and surveyors stationed on the north side of the Kansas River. They fired across the river and wounded three of Quantrill's men. 13 Quantrill's plan was to terrorize and intimidate the people of Lawrence and destroy their will to resist. He and his men trusted that the chaos they created would instill a universal feeling of helplessness and submission. As they approached Massachusetts Street, they came upon the camps of young Union army recruits which they overran, killing seventeen whites and perhaps three or four African Americans. None of the recruits had been issued guns and ammunition. Small parties of raiders were detached to prevent the townspeople from receiving assistance from outsiders, including Union forces and farmers who were organized into militia units. Quantrill's men picketed the roads leading into town and stationed lookouts on Mount Oread to warn of any approaching groups of men on horseback. Quantrill then concentrated his men on a dash down Massachusetts Street. With savage yells and loud curses, their horses galloping at full speed, the guerrillas fired their guns indiscriminately at every man in sight, largely with fatal effect. Some of the raiders rode down New Hampshire and Vermont Streets, immediately to the east and west of the main street, shooting down the men and boys who tried to escape through the back doors of their businesses and residences. 14 The major objective of the noisome, intimidating, and murderous dash down the main street was to force the surrender of the Eldridge House Hotel, believed to be a fortress manned by soldiers and civilians prepared to mount fierce resistance. When the hotel was surrendered without· a shot being fired, Quantrill promised to release and protect the occupants before setting fire to the structure. 15 Most of Quantrill's band remained on Massachusetts and nearby streets after the Eldridge House had surrendered. Here was a greater concentration of Lawrence men and boys than in outlying parts of the town. Here were the banks and stores to be robbed and plundered of money and goods. The bushwhackers quickly discarded the clothes, hats, and boots they were Richard Sheridan 57 wearing and replaced them with goods the clerks were ordered to hand over the counter at gunpoint. Here were the saloons and liquor stores where the bushwhackers were said to have drunk freely, with the effect that "an extra devil was fired into destructive activity." Here was the greatest concentration of substantial buildings that were, with few exceptions, burned after they had been thoroughly plundered.16 When the raiders found themselves in possession of the town and serious resistance was impossible, Quantrill divided the men into squads to operate in the adjacent streets. ''Almost every house was visited and robbed," said Rev. Richard Cordley, "and the men found in them killed or left, according to the character or whim of the captors. Some of these men seemed completely brutalized, while others showed some signs of remaining humanity." 17 In planning the raid on Lawrence, Quantrill had spies to inform him of the state of military defense and the residences and movements of prominent citizens who were targeted for assassination. John Shea learned from the survivors he interviewed that "many of the raid- ers had lists of names which they would consult after asking the name of a resident. They sought for well-known and prominent political and military persons with great pertinence. When they found them they shot them down without mercy." Groups of people who were targeted for killing were African Americans who had escaped from slavery in Missouri; Ger- man Americans; abolitionists and antislavery leaders who had been engaged in the Under- ground Railroad; Red Legs and local militiamen; Union military officers and enlisted men; leading politicians, business and professional men; newspaper proprietors; certain preachers and chaplains; officeholders; and white refugees from Missouri and other Southern states who were pro-Unionist. 18 The men and boys of Lawrence were resourceful in finding ways and means to escape from the raiders who were determined to kill them. They hid in remote parts of their houses and outbuildings, and in adjoining gardens and patches of weeds; they fled to cornfields, brushy ravines, and the woods and underbrush along the Kaw River. Several men hid in wells. Men and boys who were chased by mounted guerrillas were seldom pursued into ravines and cornfields where other fugitives might be waiting to fire upon the pursuers from ambush. One man es- caped by being quickly shaved and dressed as a woman wearing a dress and a bonnet on his head. Those who met the raiders face-to-face fared better, as a rule, than those who took flight and invited pursuit with guns blazing. "Frequently a whim saved and as frequently a whim destroyed," noted John Shea. "Where men could get in conversation with raiders, some pleas- antry or smooth word would turn away their wrath. But the raiders usually fired on sight."19 The women of Lawrence helped their menfolk escape from the guerrillas, nursed and comforted the wounded, removed bodies from burning buildings and prepared them for burial, consoled the bereaved, extinguished fires, and saved furniture and homes from destruction. They moved their men to safety under rugs and mattresses or had their men crawl behind them, hidden by their wide skirts. Rev. Cordley said that "some of them by their tact and ingenious conversation diverted the ruffians till their husbands had made good their escape. Others boldly faced them and extinguished the fires as they were kindled. But for this the number of houses burned would have been doubled. In fact there would have been very few houses left." Noted Kansas novelist, poet, historian, and lecturer Margaret Hill McCarter wrote that "Lawrence, in the raid and after it, would not have withstood the blow but for these women. The monument to these wives and mothers is builded in the life and character of a city saved and a citizenship that is honorable and progressive. They did not fail on the day that tried women's souls, they rose up strong and undaunted, they suffered agony, they en- dured horror, but they put down fear, and all valiantly they stood where fire-brands and bullet were hottest. History has few parallels to a courage like theirs."20 The African Americans of Lawrence were pursued with special malignity, but they knew the character of their old masters so well that they all ran who could, at the first alarm. Therefore, comparatively few of them were killed. Most of the killed were the old and de- crepit, who could not run. Old Uncle Frank, as he was called, was about ninety years old. He was born in "Old Virginia." When the rebels came, he was unable to escape. He was seen and shot and was left for dead. After a while, when he thought himself unobserved, he got up and This illustration in Harper's Weekly, September 19, 1863, shows the ruins of the Eldridge House and the Lawrence business district. Quantrill's raid on Lawrence as imagined by an Eastern artist. This illustration appeared in Harper's Weekly, September 5, 1863. 58 William Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, August 21, 1863 tried to escape. Some of the rebels saw him and killed him. "Uncle Henry," another decrepit colored man, hid in a barn. He was burned to death in the building. Old man [Benjamin] Stonestreet, about sixty years old, was a Baptist preacher among the colored people. He was killed, as was Mr. Ellis, another old man of about sixty. Anthony Oldham, another victim, was a black preacher and a man of fine character and of great influence. He was shot in his own door in the presence of his daughter.21 Despite the valiant efforts to save the people and their town, Lawrence was almost totally destroyed. Approximately two hundred men and boys were killed. Their bodies littered the sidewalks, streets, yards, and gardens. All that was left of the business center along Massachu- setts Street was a pile of smoking rubble. Approximately one hundred houses were burned and another hundred were damaged by fire. Almost every house was pillaged. According to Albert Castel, "The Lawrence Massacre was the most atrocious act of the Civil War. Nothing else quite matched it in stark horror and melodramatic circumstances. It gave to Quantrill a som- ber notoriety which persists to this day and made him one of the great villains of American history. And it was the outstanding single event of the Civil War in Kansas, the bloody climax of the border strife with Missouri."22 August 21, 1863, was a hot, still day in the midst of a hot, dry spell of August weather. As the sun advanced overhead, the bod- ies of the victims began to putrefy, demanding quick burial. Vol- unteers came forward to carry the dead to the Methodist Church, which served as a temporary morgue and hospital. Here the sur- vivors came to identify their loved ones amidst scenes of piercing shrieks and piteous weeping. But not all of the bodies were iden- tified. Some of the victims were buried in private yards near their families; most, however, were taken to the burial ground west of town called Pioneer Cemetery, which now is part of the west cam- pus of the University of Kansas. One authority says that forty- nine of the bodies were laid side by side in one long trench, while others were interred in separate graves by families and friends. Carpenters were kept busy making boxes for the dead, but many had to be buried without any cover. 23 In the Lawrence Kansas Weekly Tribune of August 27, 1863, editor John Speer wrote: "We cannot pretend to give anything like an accurate list. Yesterday we heard it stated at one hundred and thirty-eight." The most recent list of names of Quantrill raid victims was compiled by members of the Douglas County Kan- sas Genealogical Society, Mrs. Jean Snedeger, Chair. Volume I of the Complete Tombstone Census of Douglas County Kansas (1987) contains the names of one hundred and forty-four citizens who were killed. When to this number are added the seventeen army recruits, eighteen unknown victims, and an estimated twenty African Americans and fifteen German Americans, upwards of two hundred men and boys are estimated to have been killed in the Lawrence Massacre, or one in five males then in residence.24 The Aftermath of the Sack of Lawrence At approximately 9 a.m. on August 21, after four hours of killing, plundering, and burn- ing, Quantrill's lookouts on Mount Oread reported seeing the dust from what they thought to be approaching Union troops in the distance. The raiders were ordered to form columns of four. Quantrill and his men, who were mounted on the best horses on the border, had taken fresh mounts both going to and at Lawrence, where they raided the livery stables and barns. Similarly, they had taken all the good arms and ammunition they could find. After getting fresh horses, they turned loose the ones they had been riding or loaded them down with the Richard Sheridan 59 plunder taken from Lawrence stores and homes. Most of the guerrillas proceeded south on the Fort Scott road. William Gregg, with · twenty men to the right, and Bill Anderson, with twenty men to the left, were ordered to burn and plunder a swath parallel to the main column as they rode in a southeasterly direction. The raiders were pursued by a large force that included a group of citizens headed by James H. Lane, federal troops, militia units, and farmers who joined in the chase until it numbered an estimated five thousand armed and mounted men. When the pursuers drew close, Quantrill ordered his men to halt and form a line of battle and fight off their adversar- ies. In skirmish after skirmish, the guerrillas always prevailed. They returned to Missouri on the morning of August 22 with only a few casualties. One of Quantrill's men estimated that the guerrillas left Lawrence with money and other valuables worth $3,000,000, but they reached Missouri with less than half that amount.25 Retaliation was to be expected for the Lawrence Massacre. On August 25, two days after the massacre, Brigadier General Thomas Ewing Jr. issued from his headquarters at Kansas City General Order No. 11. All persons in Jackson, Cass, Bates, and part of Vernon Counties, except those who could show that they were loyal citizens, were ordered to move out of these counties within fifteen days. The military commanders were directed to see this order promptly obeyed, and the whole area soon presented a scene of desolation. 26 On October 1, 1863, Quantrill and about 400 of his men began their march from Johnson County, Missouri, to their winter haven in Texas. En route, they encountered near Baxter Springs, Kansas, a wagon train and soldiers guarding and conveying General James C. Blunt, commander of the District of the Frontier, and his staff to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory. Seventy-nine of Blunt's troopers were killed and the wagon train was looted and burned.27 Quantrill's gang began to disintegrate during its stay in Texas during the winter of 1863- 64. Demoralization and unruliness increased until Bill Anderson and his followers broke away, and George Todd replaced Quantrill as commander of the main body of guerrillas. In Novem- ber 1864 Quantrill and a splinter group of guerrillas prepared for an expedition into Ken- tucky. Some of his men later claimed that their final destination was Washington, D.C., where Quantrill intended to assassinate President Lincoln. 28 On May 10, 1865, Quantrill and about twenty of his men were surprised by a band of federal guerrillas at the Wakefield farm in Spencer County, Kentucky. He was shot in the back and died in a military prison hospital on June 6 at Louisville, Kentucky. He was buried in a Catholic cemetery. 29 In December 1887 Quantrill's skull and bones were removed from the St. John's Cem- etery in the Portland area of Louisville, Kentucky, by a Dover, Ohio, newspaperman who encouraged Quancrill's mother to have her son's remains disinterred. Some of the bones were reburied in an unmarked grave in the City Cemetery at Dover, Ohio, and others were hidden by the newspaperman. Four of Quancrill's arm and shin bones were later presented to and accepted by the Kansas State Historical Society at Topeka and exhibited in the Society's Mu- seum. They were reburied in a Confederate Army Cemetery in Missouri in October 1992. Shortly afterwards, Quantrill's skull was reburied in the cemetery at Dover, Ohio. 30 Numerous acquaintances and associates of Quantrill recalled in later years their impres- sions of his physical features, appearance, mannerisms, temperament, and ability to command respect and lead men. He stood about five feet, ten inches, and weighed 160 to 170 pounds. Descriptions of his hair ranged from "tow-head" to sandy and red. He had a Roman or "hooked" nose and down-curling lips that suggested both cruelty and determination. His eyes were of a strange gray-blue color and his eyelids had a peculiar droop. Abraham Ellis, who knew Quantrill in Kansas when he taught school at Stanton and met him again at Aubrey after he became a guerrilla, recalled that at Stanton he was a well-built man, with light hair, blue eyes, round face, pleasant countenance, and little or no beard. However, at Aubrey he had changed in appearance; he had a moustache and side whiskers of a red tinge, and "had assumed the appearance of a desperado-yet he could be pleasant at times."31 60 William Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, August 21, 1863 Reverend Richard Cordley, D. D. long-time Congregational minister of Lawrence, was one of the men marked for death by William Quantrill. He and his family escaped the raiders although their house and all its contents were burned. Cordley later wrote important histories of Lawrence in the settlement era. Widely different views have been expressed about why Quantrill became a bandit. At one extreme are the views expressed by William E. Connelley, author of Quantrill and the Border "Wars, first published in 1909. While Connelley presented the basic facts about Quantrill's career, he accepted the thesis of fundamental depravity. According to Professor Albert Castel, "Connelley was carried away by his pro-Union and pro-Kansas prejudices and pictured Quantrill as a "degenerate" and "depraved" monster who was motivated solely by "blood madness" and a lust for "plunder" and "fallen women. "32 A more sophisticated and satisfying explanation, which combines psychological and environ- mental factors to explain why Quantrill turned guerrilla, is presented by Castel in his William Oarke Quantrill· His Life and Times, first published in 1962. He describes Quantrill as a "young man whose ambitions outran his accomplishments, who desired wealth and success but who was impatient and impotent in their quest; and who came to resent his failure and the world which caused it." The turbulent Kansas-Missouri border inspired the terrible force that raged in Quantrill to express itself in terms of robbery, treachery, and murder. In short, Castel describes Quantrill as a paranoid. He concludes his analysis by stating that "Quantrill, like all men, was an incalculable mixture of good and bad, of the admirable and the detestable. His admired qualities were his military skill, cool courage, and power to command. His detestable characteristics were his bru- tality and callousness, his utter lack of scruples and his treacherous opportunism. All in all, the latter tend to obscure the former." In the case of William Clarke Quantrill, the American West was not a land of new beginnings; instead, it was one of bad endings.33 The best short account of the aftermath of the sack of Lawrence is in Rev. Richard Cordley's article entitled a "Historical Sketch of Lawrence," which was published locally in 1866. Like the mythical phoenix, Lawrence rose renewed from her ashes. For several days following the massacre, the energies of the sur- vivors were directed to burying the dead, caring for the bereaved, and providing food and shelter for the destitute. During this emergency, timely and liberal assistance was received from the citizens of Leavenworth and other towns and cities, both near and far. After a few more days, the prospects for the future began to be discussed. Some of the survivors believed that Lawrence was ruined and should be abandoned, but the great majority expressed their determination to cling to the "Old Town Site" to the last, and "Fight it out on this line." Efficient measures were taken to protect the town from possible future raids including the establishment of militia guard units and the construction of a fort on Mount Oread. Rebuilding of the town began even before the fires were extinguished and the dead were all buried. By spring 1864, citizens had rebuilt seventeen large brick stores and filled them with merchandise. By this time the bridge across the Kansas River was completed, telegraph wires had been brought to the town, and two of the newspapers were reestablished. Rebuilding activity during the summer and fall was hindered by guerrilla threats and the approach of General Sterling Price's Confederate army from Missouri. After Price's raid was turned back at the Kansas border by Union soldiers and the Kansas militia, the progress and prosper- ity of Lawrence was uninterrupted, however, until the nationwide financial panic of 1873. The Eldridge House was rebuilt, new church buildings were erected. One of the finest steam flour mills in the state and a huge windmill to power a plow factory were constructed. Public improvements consisted of newly graded streets, sidewalks, culverts and bridges, schools, and a cemetery. According to Rev. Cordley, "'the burnt district' is now almost one solid block of brick and stone stores. Dwellings have not only risen from the ashes of those destroyed, but half a dozen have appeared where one was before. The completing of the railroad to the opposite bank of the river has given a new impulse to trade, and a new town has grown up around the depot of some 1500 people. Thus has Lawrence risen from her ashes and more than eclipsed her former glory."34 Richard Sheridan 61 Notes 1. Richard B. Sheridan, ed. and comp., Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre: A Reader (Unpublished manuscript, Lawrence, Kans., June 1995), v-viii, 1-27. Copies of this work are available at Watkins Community Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, Kansas, 66044. See also Richard B. Sheridan, "From Slavery in Missouri to Freed~m in Kansas: The Influx of Black Fugitives and Contrabands into Kansas, 1854-1865," Kansas History 12, no. 1 (spring 1989), 28-47. 2. Ibid., 35-36; Edward E. Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders (New York: Random House, 1996), 35-48. "Quantrill, William Clarke," in Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946), Vol. 15, 294-95. 3. William Elsey Connelley, Quantrill and the Border W'lirs (New York: Pageant Book Company, 1956), 65-66. 4. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 36-38; Connelley, Quantrill and the Border W'lirs, 55-85; Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride, 49-63. 5. Connelley, Quantrill and the Border W'lirs, 103-105. 6. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 41-44; Connelley, Quantrill and the Border W'ltrs, 86-200; Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride, 156-92. 7. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 45-57; Richard S. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla W'iirfare in the Wt-st, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge, La.: State University Press, 1958), 53-75; Albert Castel, William Clarke Quantrill, His Life and Times (Columbus, Ohio: The General's Books, 1992), 64-84. 8. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 518; Jay Monaghan, Civil W'lir on the Wt-stern Border, 1854-1865 (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 253-60. 9. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 89; John C. Shea, ed. and comp., Reminiscences of Quantrill's Raid upon the City of Lawrence, Kan.: Thrilling Narratives by Living Eye Witnesses (Kansas City, Mo., 1879), 29- 36. 10. Michael Fellman, Inside W'ltr: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil W'ltr (New York: Ox- ford University Press, 1989), 23-29. 11. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 315; Fellman, Inside W'ltr, 23-24; Shea, Reminiscences of Quantrill's Raid, 13, 19-20. 12. Connelley, Quantrill and the Border Weirs, 332, 334, 415. 13. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 135-36, 148-49; Connelley, Quantrill and the Border W'ltrs, 148-49, 315-18, 330; Castel, William Clarke Quantrill, 122-27. 14. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 306. 15. Ibid., 316-18; Rev. Richard Cordley, Pioneer Days in Kansas (Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1903), 186-89; Tho- mas Goodrich, Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1991), 84-122. 16. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 315-17; Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy, 110-27. 17. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 317; Robert G. Elliott, "The Quantrill Raid As Seen From the Eldridge House," Publications of the Kansas State Historical Society (Topeka, Kans., 1920), Vol. 22, 184-90; Rev. Richard Cordley, "The Lawrence Massacre," The [Lawrence, Kans.] Congregational Record 5, nos. 9 & 10 (Sept. and Oct. 1863), 100~103. 18. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 317-18; Hovey Lowman, Narrative of the Lawrence Massacre on the Morning of the 21st August, 1863 (Lawrence, Kans., 1864), 37, 50-59; Shea, Reminiscences of Quantrill's Raid, 13, 19-22; David Dary, Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas: An Informal History (Lawrence, Kans.: Allen Press, 1982), 104-18. 19. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 319; Shea, Reminiscences ofQuantrill's Raid, 22-23. 20. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 319; Rev. Richard Cordley, A History of Lawrence, Kansas (Lawrence, Kans., 1895), 226; Margaret Hill McCarter, ''A Hundred Kansas Women: The Day that Tried Women's Souls," Topeka Daily Capital, 1908, in Women's Clippings, Kansas State Historical Library, Topeka, Kans., Vol. 1, 65-68; Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride, 214-16. 21. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 159; Cordley, "The Lawrence Massacre," The Congregational Record, 98-115. 22. Sheridan, Quantrilland the Lawrence Massacre, 320-24; Albert Castel, A Frontier State at War: Kansas, 1861- 1865 (Lawrence, Kans.: Kansas Heritage Press, 1958), 132, 136. 23. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 320-24, 362, 538-40. 24. Ibid., 321-23, 538-43. 25. Ibid., 348-57. 26. Ibid., 357-61. 27. Ibid., 33-34; Castel, William Clarke Quantrill, 149-54. 28. Sheridan, Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre, 33-34; Castel, William Clarke Quantrill, 169-72. 29. Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride, 364-69, 433-46. 30. Ibid., 33-34; Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride, 406-38. 31. Castel, William Clarke Quantrill, 42-43. 32. Ibid., 41, 214-15; Connelley, Quantrill and the Border Weirs, 59, 62, 68, 74, 93, 121-23, 127, 173. 33. Castel, William Clarke Quantrill, 41-43, 214-15. 34. Rev. Richard Cordley, "Historical Sketch of Lawrence," City Directory and Business Guide For J 866 (Lawrence, Kans.: Boughton & McAllaster, 1866), 21-22. Elizabeth "Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 Katie H. Armitage Elizabeth Duncan lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary time. Elizabeth, or "Bettie" as she referred to herself, 1 began her diary about four months after Quantrill's raid in August of 1863 had devastated Lawrence. Two months before her final entry of December 1864, she and her family had briefly fled their home in fear of anoth r attack. These traumatic events bracketed the year, but they only periodically intruded into Bettie Duncan' life in which most traumas were of a personal or family nature. This article will examine Bettie Duncan's diary for patterns of daily life and for family and community relationships in a tension-filled time in Lawrence, Kansas, near the end of the American Civil War. Bettie Duncan's diary provides an unusual perspective on this period in Lawrence. She was mostly an observer of events rather than one who shaped the outcome. In her account, the effects of the widely documented raid on Lawrence and other threats to the town reverberate, but they were not the primary focus of her concerns. Yee, her account is typical of many women's diaries of the nineteenth century for as historian Sandra L. Myres, who has examined hundreds of diaries, has observed: Most diaries from the settlement period are daybooks or journals of events, usually intended for private use. Women's diaries of this type often include elements of the journals of conscience as well. Girls in the nineteenth century were encouraged to keep spiritual diaries and to look to their religious development so that they might be better wives and mothers and direct the family's religious life.2 The use of such private accounts for historical purposes has increased in recent years. A recent article on writing and teaching western history discussed the value of diaries and letters of ordinary people: Listening to their voices and perceptions can fundamentally alter our sense of our subject. The values those women (and men) expressed in their diaries, in their letters home, in the stories they told their children, in their churches, in whatever religious beliefs shaped their understanding of the world, in the mean- ings they attached to their daily labors: these are as important to the "image" of the West as any dime novel or Wild West show hero.3 Elizabeth "Watts Duncan. The original photograph I is in the Ladies of Lawrence Album, 1864. Katie Armitage, "Elizabeth 'Bettie' Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1964," Kansas History 10, no. 4 (winter 1987/88): 275-89. Reprinted with permission of Kansas History and Katie Armitage. 63 64 Elizabeth "Bettie" Duncan faithfully kept a diary during the tumultuous year of 1864. The diary entries, almost devoid of pt4nctuation, kept record of events and personal tho14ghts. Elizabeth ''Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 Bettie Duncan's private words can best be heard by readers today from within the context of the ideas and expectations of women of her time and status. Born Elizabeth Watts in Ken- tucky in 1837,4 Bettie Duncan grew up in the period when a new set of ideals of womanhood became widely accepted. Historian Barbara Welter has identified these attributes, as presented by women's magazines, gift annuals, and religious literature of the period, as "the cult of true womanhood." The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardi- nal virtues-piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife-woman. 5 Bettie Duncan may not have described herself as a "true woman" or even as an "evangelical woman," a category that another historian has identified as a particular category of a "true woman"6 of the nineteenth century, but her activities and longings place her solidly within that framework. Early in January, after spending all day at home sewing, Bettie concluded her diary entry: I have felt the Lord to be with me to day while at secret prayer Bless the Lord for religion how many dark hours it makes bright how many hurts that wo[u]ld be sad is gladdened by the comforts of religion 0 that I was more faithful and devoted 0 for a deeper work of grace in my poor heart7 With the exception of several days when she was away from home with- out "my book," Bettie Duncan faithfully kept the diary in her cramped handwriting. The diary entries were almost devoid of punctuation and had many misspellings. These have been preserved as faithfully as readability will allow in the quotes presented here. Daily she noted the weather conditions, recorded her activities and the people she saw. She noted only occasionally significant events, but she exam- ined almost daily her own spiritual and emotional state. At the time she began the 1864 diary, Bettie Duncan was twenty-six years old and had been married for almost ten years to pioneer Lawrence businessman, Wesley Harvey Duncan. How the very young Elizabeth Watts had met and married a wid- ower twenty-three years her senior is not entirely clear, but it may have been through a family connection. Bettie's sister, Adeline, was married to Wesley's cousin and sometimes business partner, Charles Duncan. 8 Another relative, a favorite nephew, was responsible for Bettie having the new diary, and her admiration for him probably spurred her desire to begin it. On January 1, 1864, she made this entry: This morning was intens[e]ly cold but I think some warmer than yesterday I wished all the folks a happy new year. About noon Fred Eggert ... presented me this book which I value very highly .... 9 On the second day of the new year, 1864, the consequences of the Civil War fighting far from Lawrence came home. To day has been very pleasant had several callers ... this afternoon Sister Jones and me went to call on Mrs. Sutherland who has a son just brought home from the army a corpse poor woman how I pity her we then went down town met my sister and Bro Dennis. This evening Sister P and me went over to the Rev Ds to sit awhile We did have a nice time I have been particularly tired today I fear I give in to my feelings to[o] much I am going to try to live a more elevated life this year than I did last Katie H. Armitage 65 The year, however, was a difficult one for Bettie Duncan. Over one hundred persons were mentioned in the diary. Most were residents of Lawrence, a ten-year-old city with a population of over three thousand. Bettie's most frequent references were to her family, which included her fifty-year-old husband, Wesley; her daughters, two- year-old Katie, and one-year-old Cettie; her seventeen-year-old stepson, William, referred to as Willie; and her nineteen-year-old domestic helper, Ella Jackson, who also lived in the Duncan household. 1° Fred, the twenty-one-year-old nephew who had presented the diary and was of- ten mentioned in it, had a-.few years earlier lived in the Duncan household and still clerked in Wesley Duncan's store. 11 Bettie's sisters, Adeline Duncan and Lucetta Gabhart, figured in the diary. Bettie always used formal tides for persons considerably older than herself, regardless of their relationship to her. Thus, her older sister was "Mrs Gabhart," her husband invariably "Mr Duncan'' or "Mr D," while Adeline, Fred and Ella, all nearer her own age, were recorded in the diary by their first names. Almost as important in the diary as family members were Methodist ministers' families, the Dennises and Paddocks, and the Duncans' neighbor, Mrs. Blacklidge, whose husband was away in Washington on city business. Methodist friends were usually referred to as "Bro" and "Sister," and persons with rank were addressed by proper title. Isaac Goodnow, founder of Manhattan, Kansas, and the Methodist college there, appeared as a Duncan houseguest and was referred to as "Bro Goodnow.'' Mary Lane, a member of Bettie Duncan's Methodist La- dies' Social Circle, appeared in the diary as "Mrs. Gen. Lane," as befitted the wife of U.S. Senator James Lane, the 1861 leader of the Frontier Guard. Free-state leader Samuel Walker and his wife appeared in the diary as "Major Walker and wife" when they were guests in the Duncan home. Edmund G. Ross, commander of Union troops sent to Lawrence after Quantrill's raid, was referred to in the diary as "Capt. Ross.'' Ross' order forbidding his troops to patron- ize the local saloon so endeared him to the ladies of Lawrence that they prepared a present to show their appreciation. Bettie wrote in her April 8 diary entry: Sister Blackli[d]ge and me intended to go over to Capt. Rosses camp this afternoon as the Ladies of our place was going to present him with an album and ea~h contributed there [sic] picture in it but the rain prevented us from going over .... 12 Other than a few ventures outside the boundaries of Lawrence, Bettie Duncan for all of 1864 stayed within the confines of a four-block area bounded by the Duncan home, at what is today 1047 Massachusetts Street, the Duncan store in the 700 block of Massachusetts Street, and the First Methodist Episcopal Church in the 700 block of Vermont Street. 13 Most of her days were spent in her own household, in visits to the homes of friends, and in shopping trips to downtown businesses near the Kansas River. Three or four days a week were given over to services or activities of the Methodist church. This pattern of life was typical of many women of her time and of her social and economic class. As women's historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has observed: "Most eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women lived within a world bounded by home, church, and the institution of visiting-that endless trooping of women to one another's homes for social purposes."14 Even when entire days were spent at home sewing, she was visited by friends, and when at home ill, she had a steady stream of visitors. Though Bettie Duncan confessed to her diary that she was sometimes lonely, she was seldom alone. The pattern of Bettie's week included church, thirty-seven of fifty-two Sunday mornings in 1864, as well as afternoon Sunday school class and evening service. Washing alongside Ella Jackson consumed her Mondays; prayer meetings were a highlight of Tuesday and Thursday evenings; Ladies' Social Circle of the church met every other Wednesday; household duties, visiting, and sewing occupied Fridays and Saturdays. Bettie varied this routine only during times of illness, trips out of town, or adverse weather conditions. Her husband, Wesley Harvey Duncan, spent his days attending to his business, which must have been especially demanding in the months after the raid when Lawrence was rebuilding. Duncan and his son Willie, who also worked at the store, came home for "dinner," the midday meal at one or two in the afternoon, then returned to the store until evening. Only on Sunday did Duncan's weekly routine intersect with Bettie's activities. 66 This photograph of Elizabeth and "Wesley Duncan is believed to be their 1854 wedding protrait. "Wesley Duncan, a pioneer Lawrence businessman, was twenty-three years her senior. Elizabeth "Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 Bettie Duncan was fully occupied with household duties such as baking, canning, ironing, gardening, and on one occasion, milking cows, even though she had household help and the Duncan household was more prosperous than most. In the 1865 census, Wesley Harvey Duncan was listed as owning real estate worth $18,000 and with a personal estate of $20,000. 15 This substantial sum in 1865 was despite his loss of $20,000 in Quantrill's raid in which Duncan's business partner, Duncan Allison, died. As did most Lawrence businessmen, Wesley Duncan immediately reopened his store on Massachusetts Street. His new partner was Lawrence busi- nessman Robert Morrow. 16 Evidence in Bettie Duncan's diary indicated that the two-story Duncan home in 1864 was spacious and well furnished. During the year she noted that new chairs and a dining room table were purchased, rooms were plastered and papered, and a parlor carpet was laid. She was also well dressed. In the course of the year she acquired several new dresses, black silk, linen, calico, a "ladies cloth dress," and shoes. The material for the dresses and other purchased goods came from the Duncan store, where she also procured gifts for family and friends. Bettie Duncan had many problems in 1864-a family crisis, poor health, and the threat of another raid-but lack of material goods and comforts was not one of them. The Duncans' earliest years in Lawrence had been more typical of a new frontier community. Wesley Duncan, his young bride Bettie, and Willie, the seven-year-old son from his first marriage, moved to the new settlement of Lawrence in May 1855 and set up housekeeping in a small log house on a hillside southwest of downtown. Bettie's first-born child, Alphonso Duncan, died in Lawrence at age two in July 1857, and six months later she lost her second son, Willis Edward, age ten months, who died of "inflammation of the brain." In 1856 Wesley Duncan opened a general store in Lawrence with his cousin and brother-in-law, Charles Duncan (husband of Bettie's sister, Adeline). This part- nership dissolved amicably and Wesley Duncan entered the dry goods and gro- cery business with two successive partners. 17 Wesley Duncan had a good deal of business experience to draw upon when he reopened his store in "Miller's New Block" on Massachusetts Street after the raid. The Duncan and Morrow store advertised dry goods, groceries, boots, shoes, crockery, and glassware. Early in 1864 their newspaper advertisement promised readers, "We have on hand and are constantly receiving large stocks of goods, which we are prepared to sell at as low rates as can be purchased here or elsewhere." 18 Bettie often visited this well-stocked store, as this typical diary entry of March 16, 1864, illustrated: Some pleasanter to day but still a little cool this morning. I took little Katie and went down town went into several stores then to ours saw Mr. D and Fred then went down to sister Adeline's st[a]yed until after dinner then came home by the store. Fred was standing out he came part way home with me Bless his dear life he does seem to be a brother to me. Bro P ___ and wife Bro Robinson and Bro Barrick are here to night on there [sic] way home from conference to night I feel miserably depressed in spirits This entry is also typical of many in the mention of overnight guests in the Duncan home, in this case Methodists who had traveled to their regional conference. Also typical of many diary entries was her feeling of depression despite her full day of activities and the companionship of her sister and her house guests. The precise causes of the depression from which Bettie Duncan suffered cannot be deter- mined but it must have been related in some sense to the realities of her life and the concep- tion of what she believed her life should be. There was evidence of distance in the Duncan marriage. Not only the age difference but certain temperamental differences separated husband and wife. Many times in the diary Bettie referred to good talks with her nephew Fred and other friends, but only on one occasion did she record talking with her husband. There were also other evidences of a lack of communication. Late in the year, on December 3, Duncan Katie H. Armitage 67 was out all night turkey hunting without his wife knowing where he was. Bettie expressed her worry and gave a veiled rebuke in her diary: am very lonely and sad to night it is now near one 0 clock at night and all are sleeping around me but that well known step of my own loved one has not yet been he[a]rd why is it he will give me so many anxious hours After Duncan returned the next morning, he stayed at home with the baby, Cettie, while Bettie and Ella Jackson attended church. Certainly Wesley and Bettie Duncan spent their days in different worlds or "spheres," as the different social roles assigned to men and women were perceived at the time and have been contemporarily described by historians. Most nineteenth-century marriages followed this pattern without necessarily being bereft of emotional intimacy as the Duncan marriage seems to have been.19 Wesley Duncan was characterized in his later years by a granddaughter as a "ruthless, clever man who made lots of money."20 Business, fraternal, and public life absorbed his attention. He served as the first city treasurer of Lawrence in 1858 and he was a longtime member of the Masonic Lodge. After the 1863 raid on Lawrence, he had the added obligation of participating in the home guard, as did all Lawrence men not serving in regular Kansas regiments.21 Bettie's life centered on home, friends, and church. In private she engaged in Bible reading and prayer. Several times in her diary she vowed to "live a Christian life." Whatever their differences in daily activities and spiritual life, Wesley Duncan was the dominant figure in his wife's diary. Bettie mentioned her husband over three hundred times in the course of the year, more than any other person. She noted his activities, his health, and sometimes his moods. Husband and wife attended public functions, such as weddings, funer- als, and Sunday morning church services together. Occasionally, Duncan joined in the monthly suppers to which the men were invited following the meeting of the Methodist Ladies' Social Circle. But, their religious involvement differed in nature and degree. Bettie structured her homelife and her weekly activities on personal religious practice, church meetings, and a net- work of Methodist friends. Other than Sunday worship and financial contributions to the church building funds, Wesley Duncan attended to other matters. In this difference in reli- gious participation, the Duncans were not unusual. Historian Sandra L Myres in her study of western settlement observed, "serious religion was woman's work."22 Bettie Duncan was a charter member of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Lawrence, but Wesley Duncan did not formally unite with the church. His reasons were not stated, but they may have been related to his Baptist upbringing in a time when doctrinal differences were contentious matters.23 However, it was not at church but in the home that the diver- gence in religious devotion between husband and wife created problems for Bettie Duncan. Protestant religious leaders viewed private study and worship as important, but in sermons and writings they emphasized that the religious life of the family was an extension of the religious life of the individual. A recent study of the Christian home in the nineteenth century stated this case: Private devotion might eliminate hypocritical or ostentatious worship, but it ignored two val- ues held dear in the nineteenth century: the family and the social role of religion .... Family prayer not only seemed natural to the home but also maintained its sacredness .... Protestant ministers and writers encouraged families to organize family worship twice a day.24 The lapse in religious expression, as revealed in Bettie Duncan's diary entry of December 16, was especially troubling to this woman who took her obligations so seriously. Cloudy and cold but thawing some have been at home all day with the horrors Cant write much. Tryed to have family pray[er] to night find it to be a heavy cross can not get courage enough to pray before Mr. Dun[can] we have prayers before he comes home 0 for a deeper work of grace in my poor heart 68 Elizabeth ''Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 In the diary Bettie often expressed feeling "blue," but her use of the word "horrors" to de- scribe her extreme apprehension on December 16 was unique in the diary year. At a time when women were the moral guardians of the home, mothers bore a special responsibility to their sons and husbands.25 A crisis in the Duncan family early in 1864 was especially distressing for Bettie as it indicated that she had not created the right home atmo- sphere. As historian Barbara Welter observed in her study of American women in the nine- teenth century, "Home was supposed to be a cheerful place, so that brothers, husbands and sons would not go elsewhere in search of good times. "26 When seventeen-year-old Willie Duncan ran away from home while his father was on an overnight trip to Fort Scott, Bettie was dis- traught. Her comfort in this time of trial came from her nephew, Fred Eggert, and help in finding the boy came from her brother-in-law, Charles Duncan, as indicated in her diary entry ofTuesday, March 29, 1864. Very muddy and windy to day this has been one of the saddest days of my life All night last night I laid in sleepless agony expecting Willie to come home but he did not come early this morning I went down to town to see about him found he left town about nine 0 clock yesterday morning. Charles Duncan has gone after him we hear he has gone toward Kansas City. 0 how much grace we need to bear the trials and temptations of life this evening I went down town again Fred came home with me I do know he· is the dearest boy ever lived God Bless him forever I do love him .... The following days were equally sad and anxious for Bettie Duncan, who must have suffered, feeling herself a failure to properly influence her stepson as a mother was expected to do. Although Willie was located,· he refused to come home. However, when Wesley Duncan re- turned from his business trip, he retrieved his son from Kansas City, and both returned to Lawrence on April 2. Bettie expressed despair in her diary, "I can not express my feelings only I can say I have no desire to live any longer." Family tension continued, for on the next day she wrote, "I have had my patience very severely cryed."27 During chis family crisis Bettie Duncan's sister, Adeline, wife of Charles Duncan, gave birth to a son. In the circumspect manner of dealing with such intimate matters, 28 Bettie only observed in her diary on April 1, "I went down to see Sister Adeline she has a young son." On Monday April 4, she visited the mother and new baby even as she was preoccupied with resolving the situation with Willie. I went down to see Sister Adeline she is getting along nicely . . . I came home by the store feeling just as angry as I ever had in all my life I have made up my mind that I will not be imposed on any longer by the one that has caused me more trouble than all others in the world This reference to anger and to a decision to make a firm stand was unprecedented in the diary. The next day Willie's immediate future was settled. This has been a lovely day this morning I went down town had a long talk with Charles [Duncan] then went up to the store and got Willie's clothes for him to go away to school got my self and the children a new calico dress have been at home the rest of the day sewing. Sister Paddock came back here this evening and is here to night29 Sister Paddock, wife of the Rev~ George W. Paddock, who was traveling in the Ease . soliciting funds for the new Methodist church building, stayed with the Duncans for most of the month that the tensions with Willie persisted. Bettie may have been particularly embarrassed that her minister's wife witnessed this family conflict. As a diary entry on April 6 indicated, Sister Paddock was not a confidante to Bettie for although "Sister P is here again to night," Bettie wished for "some dear friend to day some one that I could tell my trials to." Not for another month did Willie actually leave. During the interval his behavior exasper- ated his stepmother. On April 12, Bettie wrote: Katie H. Armitage 69 This morning I went down town ... Mr. Duncan was not in when I went. Fred went for him Again we had a talk of what course to take with our wayward son 0 how our hearts is made to bleed the way he acts my only hope now is prayer I have quit every other effort .... During this period Bettie also took notice of a milestone in her husband's life. On April 18 she recorded without amplification, "This is Mr. Duncans birthday he is fifty years old to day I have a bad head ache to day." Finally, on May 3 she wrote, "This morning Mr. Duncan started to Ohio with Willie [and] Johny to school I felt both sorry and glad to see them start." Apparently Charles and Adeline Duncan had decided to send their fifteen-year-old son, John, away to school also. Many parents who could afford to do so sent their older children to eastern schools. Although Lawrence had schools for younger children, there were few local opportunities in 1864 for advanced education.30 In the case of Willie Duncan, sending him to Ohio to school solved a problem for the family in Lawrence. During the period of the problems with Willie, Bettie was without the comfort of the Dennis family upon whom she relied for emotional support. When the Dennises were away on church business, Bettie checked on their home in Lawrence and corresponded with them. When they were at home, she saw them daily. The relationship was as a daughter to parents. On January 4, Bettie noted, "I had a dinner for Sister Dennis as it was her birthday She is fifty years old to day." The two women exchanged foods, as in January, "Sister D gave me a loaf of the best bread," and in the next month she wrote, "I went over to Sister Dennises and took her some butter and milk."31 As important as this neighborliness was, Bettie Duncan had real affection and regard for the older couple who were her friends. On February 15, after receiving "calls" from Mrs. Blacklidge and Sister Dennis, Bettie expressed her feelings in her diary, "how I do love them." On May 9 after "Bro L. B. Dennis" visited the Duncans for dinner, Bettie exclaimed, "he is one of the jewels of this world." Levin Beauchamp Dennis with his wife Betsey first came to Lawrence in 1855, the same year as the Duncans, to serve the Lawrence Methodist congregation. He again ministered to the church in 1863 and during that appointment conducted a revival meeting "which resul[t]ed in many accessions to the Church." By 1864 the Reverend Dennis served as a fill-in pastor while awaiting another appointment. During this time he also sold Bibles. A son, Baxter C. Dennis,32 was also a Methodist minister, and a daughter, Cettie Dennis, was a student at Bluemont Central College in Manhattan. Both Baxter and Cettie Dennis were also friends of Bettie Duncan. In early June, Bettie Duncan accompanied "Bro and Sister Dennis" on a ten-day visit to their children in Manhattan. Starting early on the morning of June 9 the Dennises, Bettie, and baby Cettie Duncan traveled "about 45 miles" west of Lawrence and stopped overnight with Methodist friends. (The ubiquitous Sister Paddock was also visiting.) The next day the travelers pushed on another twenty-five miles, but by the third day travel was slower and settlements fewer. Bettie wrote on Saturday, June 11: found the roads very muddy we have been traveling over Indian lands most of the day about noon we stop[p]ed for dinner made a fire on the side of the road made some coffee had a splendid time some Caw Indians came to us we gave them some dinner which they seemed thankful for about 5 0 clock we reached Council Grove where we will stop over the Sabbath .... The next day, a Sunday, the Reverend Dennis filled a pulpit, and Bettie attended with baby Cettie in tow. She enjoyed the "good sermon" and was proud of the baby's behavior, "she acted real pretty." The next day the travelers reached the home of the Rev. Baxter C. Dennis, son of the elder Dennises. Cettie Dennis was also there, and Bettie recorded the satisfying day in her diary entry of June 13: Very cool and pleasant to day early this morning we started for Manhattan we passed a pretty country and very broken got off our road and had to go back some eight miles got to Bro B C D quite late they all seemed very glad to see us truly they are one good pleasant and sociable family. Cettie the dear girl How glad I was to see her. This has truly been a good day we have had good times to day Bro and Sister L B D are pleasant people to travel with 70 Elizabeth "Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 Bettie particularly enjoyed the company of Cettie Dennis as they shared household chores and confidences. On June 15, Bettie wrote, "Cettie told me some good secrets to night 0 how I love her." ' In Manhattan, Bettie attended the "examinations" at the college, but on this occasion "the little one would not sit still." Other social occasions included a birthday dinner for Isaac Goodnow, founder of Bluemont Central College and fellow Methodist, church services where the Rev. Baxter C. Dennis preached, and ~ Sunday afternoon concert which Bettie enjoyed. 33 The only disappointment in her stay in Manhattan was the lack of a letter from her husband. Letters from nephew Fred Eggert, sister Adeline Duncan, and friends arrived for Bettie. When the expected letter from Duncan failed to come, Bettie found sympathy. On June 18, she wrote, "Bro L B D was I feel very much disappointed that I did not get a letter from Mr. Duncan this evening." Cettie Dennis, her college term over, joined in the return trip, much to the joy of Bettie. While the return home was seemingly as pleasant as the outward journey, Bettie did express some reservation about on~ accommodation: Very warm up very early started for home we have traveled all day very hard felt tired we are stopping with an Indian family they seem very kind yet I cant feel perfectly at home we have had a good time notwithstanding the heat we eat our supper out on the prairie I laughed until I could hardly see I do know Cettie is the34 The uncompleted last sentence was significant as it was the only reference in a year of diary keeping in which she mentioned that she laughed. The travelers reached Lawrence the next day, after a stop in Topeka where Cettie Dennis treated Bettie to candy and lemonade. On June 21, Bettie completed her diary entry thusly, "got home a little after six found Mr. D glad to see me also Ella and Katie Ella had supper ready we eat then all but Cettie [Dennis] went home she is here to night." Ella Jackson was entrusted with the care of the two-year-old Katie and the Duncan house- hold while Bettie was away. Ella and Bettie enjoyed a much more equal relationship than could be implied from their status as domestic servant and mistress of the household. Ella's parents lived in the Lawrence area and visited the Duncan household, and on occasion Ella's brother, Alfred, brought presents to Bettie. In many diary entries Bettie mentioned working alongside Ella, as on April 16, "very busy helping Ella do up Saturdays work"; on July 14, "Helped get the work done up"; and on September 29, "Ella had got up the stove in my room and the parlor she is a good girl." Occasionally, on washdays and for seasonal cleaning "col- ored help" was also employed at the Duncan household. Bettie Duncan and Ella Jackson, fewer than ten years apart in age, shared in Sunday · school class and in their friendship with the teacher of that class, Fred Eggert. On Sunday, September 25, Bettie wrote, "Mr. Duncan and me went to church this morning Ella went to class Fred came home with her." Often Bettie, Ella, and Fred visited before and after the Sunday class. Additionally, Fred often visited the Duncan home, as on December 6 when he brought apples and stayed late, "we all enjoyed our selves hugely." Ella Jackson and Fred dem- onstrated their regard for Bettie on special anniversaries such as the one on October 18: A lovely day but cool To day is my twenty seventh birthday it has been rather a peculiar one to me have enjoyed it better than I had expected this forenoon Sister Blackli[d]ge took me out riding we got home just at noon Ella seemed very anxious for me to dress in my best and remain at home and to please her I did so just as I had completed my toilet who should come but Fred. Ella had invited him he made me a preasent [sic] of a real handsome little silver mustard spoon. I shall always look at it and remember the donor with pleasure he st[a]yed for tea and we had a right pleasant time. Ella made me a preasent [sic] of a handsome back comb This birthday party was one of a limited number of happy times Bettie Duncan experi- enced in the waning months of 1864, a period of growing concern about another invasion of Lawrence, worries about health, and unspecified anxieties. Shortly after her return from the Katie H. Armitage 71 summer trip to Manhattan, she wrote, "went down town he[a]rd some things that made me very sad."35 On a few other occasions she alluded to talk or letters that disturbed her, as on July 8 when she made this entry: after supper I took little Cettie and went down town I bought her a pen knife for Bro D a birthday present and went up to our store saw Mr. D and Fred. I saw some things that make me have most peculiar feelings I started to go to Bro Dennis but mer them on there [sic) way to the bridge36 so I came home. Fred and Charlie [here) this evening I feel as if I did not want to live long What she saw and heard were not explained further, but whatever it was, she was too dis- tressed to be cheered by a visit from Fred Eggert and his brother, Charles. Her concerns over the health of family and friends were more specific. Bettie and her husband, on separate occasions earlier in the year, were confined to their beds by illness and were attended by a constant flow of visitors. Through the year Bettie suffered from headaches and eye strain. At various times the children were sick. On the Fourth of July she noted the festivities and the many people in town but lamented a sad Fourth of July as "dear little Cettie has been sick all day." On July 22, Duncan was "sick with pleurisy in his side the Dr. has been here seven times to day." The next day she noted a recurring complaint, "I am suffering very severely with my eyes again to night." By late August she observed a "great deal of sick- ness here now some days there is as many as four funerals and almost every day one or more." When the Rev. L B. Dennis became ill, Bettie visited and "stayed two or three hours and kept the flies off him." She empathized, "O how I do hate to see one so good as him suffer." The Reverend Dennis recovered, but death was a constant presence in Lawrence. In late August the Duncans attended a "large funeral/' and Bettie specified that the deceased "leaves a dear wife and two children to mourn his loss and many other dear friends. 37 The summer months brought "great excitement in Leavenworth about Quantrill," and Lawrence responded. As Bettie put it, "We have had to look for Quantril[l] double guards out to night. "38 Yet this concern subsided. Militarily, the situation in Kansas was relatively quiet during that summer. 39 The national conflict, however, was never far away, at least in the minds of Lawrence citizens, and the town responded to President Lincoln's call for a day of fasting and prayer. Bettie wrote on August 4, "the day has generally been kept here in our town." For the most part, however, the war did not affect the Duncans' enjoyment of summer pleasures. Bettie was pleased when more than once her husband took her to the "ice cream saloon" in July. They attended traveling entertainments as they had earlier in the year when humorist Artemus Ward performed and a phrenologist lectured. When the circus came to Lawrence in September, Bettie wrote, "there has been an animal show ... it was pretty good." Also, that summer Bettie accompanied the Dennises on a three-day visit to Baldwin Ciry.40 The relaxed summer came to an abrupt end. As historian Albert Castel has described the situation: Then, with the coming of autumn, full-scale warfare again erupted in Missouri. On Septem- ber 19 a Confederate army of 12,000 cavalry moved northward from Arkansas. In command was Sterling Price. . . . Price was determined to make one final effort for the Confederate cause in Missouri. His plan was to strike at St. Louis and Jefferson City [Missouri), march up the Missouri River to Kansas City, and retreat southward by way of Kansas .... 41 By October the "excitement," as Bettie phrased it, was intense. On October 9, she wrote, "The excitement gets worse every day," and the next day she added, "all the state militia was called out I fear we will have another raid here ... the stores are all closed on account of the excitement." Of the charged situation, Castel has written: Rumors circulated that Price was already above Kansas City. In Lawrence an accidental dis- charge of firearms created a near panic .... All business halted throughout the state, and every man capable of bearing arms marched or rode in wagons to the threatened border.42 72 Elizabeth ''Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 On October 12, Bettie recorded, "all the militia but three companys [sic] left for Olathe Mr. D company is here yet ... this truly seems like War times." The next day, October 13, she continued the narrative: "Still a great deal of excitement about Price coming in here all business seems to have stopped there was not prayer meeting to night on account of the excitement." Despite what she described as "peculiar surroundings," Bettie spent that day sew- ing and visiting with her sister Adeline and family and with Fred Eggert. During this time of great tension Bettie was without the daily companionship of the Dennises, who had moved to take a new church in Iowa. The general anxiety created by the threat of a nearby military engagement may have contributed to her even becoming upset with Fred-her beloved nephew and confidante. On Sunday, October 16, Bettie, Duncan, and Ella Jackson attended church services, and as often happened, Fred returned to the Duncan house- hold for dinner and a Sunday afternoon visit. But, when Fred left for evening services without asking "his aunt Bettie" to accompany him, she was hurt. Fred made amends the following day, for on October 17 Bettie wrote that she was pleased when he "called this morning to make some apologyes [sic] for his hatefulness last night." Bettie's spirits remained low, how- ever, for on that same day she wrote, "very sad and much depressed in spirits feel as if I had not a friend in this world." The next day Fred joined Ella in making an occasion of Bettie's birthday, in spite of the general concern about an invasion of Lawrence. Bettie's emotions were so on edge that a perceived personal slight or a few words sent her into despair, as revealed in her diary entry of October 19. went down town in a great hurry for some spices for my pickels [sic] got a letter from a dear old friend which had one sentence in it which made me feel very sad ever since I have cryed and prayed and almost wished my self out of existence News of Confederate troop movements and of the retreat of Maj. Gen. James Blunt, com- mander' of the Union forces, further alarmed Lawrence. A sleepless Bettie Duncan wrote on October 22: Very pleasant Fred called this morning we had a real nice chat he is a dear good boy. I do wish I was a good a Christian as I think he is. About noon to day we had dispatches telling us that our town was in danger of being burnt by the rebbels [sic] by night most all the dry goods in town was started to Leavenworth. Fred went to see to ours to night all is excitement here Mr. Duncan is on g[u]ard. Charly Eggert is here to night it is now two 0 clock in the morning On October 23, she continued: Very pleasant we had still worse news this morning so much so that many females left town. Mr. D thought best for us to go so about noon we started ... when we got about two miles out of town we heard the good glorious and welcome news that our men was victorious and was driving Price with his forces 0 how glad we was The Duncan party camped outside town over night, then the next morning Duncan brought the news that it was safe to return home. Bettie did not record, but she probably knew, that Blunt had made a successful stand at Westport, which ended the threat to Lawrence.43 Quickly, life in Lawrence returned to normal. Fred retrieved the Duncan store's dry goods on October 25. The next day Bettie attended the Methodist Ladies' Social Circle and observed "quite a number out." Soon after the invasion scare, Bettie suffered "severely'' from toothache and had two teeth "drawn." Earlier in the year she had purchased "speckteles" which led her to facetiously observe at age twenty-six, "I find that I am getting to be quite an old lady."44 Throughout October, despite war tensions and various ailments, Bettie continued her fall sewing. She probably used a sewing machine, which was widely available at the time. She surely sewed for weeks at a time even though she employed a dressmaker to construct her best wardrobe. In early spring of that year "Miss Kirkpatrick" spent several days in the Duncan Katie H. Armitage 73 home sewing and fitting clothes; Bettie and the dressmaker consulted Godey's Lady's Book45 for the latest fashions. In early November, Miss Kirkpatrick returned to alter "a silk dress for me," but for the fall sewing the dressmaker did not live in as she had during the spring sewing. Bettie also sewed some of her own clothes, and noted that she had sewn a "Spanish waist." She was clearly interested in her clothes and this concern was not atypical. Sandra L. Myres in her study of western women found that many in new settlements looked to Godey's for the latest eastern fashions. 46 Bettie also received a present from the East when Mr. Blacklidge returned from the nation's capital and presented her with a black veil she found "very hand- some."47 Bettie also sewed for the church "festivals" in the spring and winter. The day before Thanks- giving, which the Duncans observed by attending "union services" at Miller's Hall48 and hav- ing dinner at Sister Adeline's home, Bettie began sewing for "our grab bag." Members of the church's social circle decided to meet weekly rather than every other week as "we are going to have a Christmas tree." Besides Bettie, the women who worked to prepare the festival included her sister, Adeline Duncan; her neighbor, Mrs. Blacklidge; Mrs. Sutherland, whose son had been killed in military service earlier in the year; Mrs. Duncan Allison, whose husband had been Wesley Duncan's partner and was killed in Quantrill's raid; and Mrs. Sam Walker, whose husband was an officer of the Sixteenth Kansas Regiment and had returned recently to active duty after recovering from war wounds.49 Thoughts of the war and of the raid, suffering and loss, could not have been far from the minds of these women as they enjoyed each other's company in the common endeavor of making goods to sell to make money for their church. The women also went out in groups soliciting donations for the festival, or as Bettie Duncan phrased it, "Sister Blackli[d]ge and my self went out begging."50 After baking a ham and a cake for the event, Bettie worked on the festival as her diary of November 30 indicated: Pleasant a little cloudy Early this morning Mrs. Allison called for us to go around with her to get things for the festival. I took mine down. Fred met us at the door and took mine was very busy all day our festival came off this evening I enjoyed it Hugely most everyone seemed to be in fine spirits I never saw Mr. Duncan and Fred enjoy them selves so well of course I felt more interested in them than any one else how very tired to night feel glad our festival is over it is raining The next day Bettie, Mrs. Blacklidge, Fred, and "two or three others" washed dishes and cleaned up "the hall" where the festival had been held."51 A few days after the festival, Duncan and Mr. Blacklidge left Lawrence, as Bettie stated on December 6, "started down south to be gone a few days." During this absence Fred must have felt a special obligation to look in on the household of his uncle, who was also his employer. Bettie enjoyed his visits "hugely." After the Methodist ladies had a social on Decem- ber 7, Bettie wrote: Fred the dear boy came home with Sister Blackli[d]ge and me he came in and stayed a while we had more fun than we wo[u]ld at a dozen socials. Fred had prayers with us 0 what strong confidence I have in him This good time was in contrast to the "blues" Bettie experienced as the Christmas holiday approached. In mid-December she worked on gifts, "Braided Fred's and Mr. Duncans slippers" and "left them at the shoe shop to be soled." She "got Willie a little Christmas present," and since he was still away at school she sent it "in a letter."52 On Christmas Eve, Bettie "went down town got some presents for the children and Ella." Bettie also bought a Bible for Charles Eggert, Fred's brother. On her way home she went by way of "the new church'' where "they are busy fixing the tree." The new Methodist church building at Tenth and Massachusetts, currently the site of the Lawrence Masonic Temple, was not finished, but as the church history stated, "By Christmas, 1864, the new building was so far completed that the children's exer- cises were held there, though the walls were unplastered and the windows boarded up. 53 Bettie 74 Elizabeth "Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 wrote of the occasion, "we all went to the Christmas tree for once I wished my self at home all the time." On Christmas day she recorded: Warm and pleasant but quite muddy well Christmas has come and is about gone and it has been a sad and gloomy one for I found two presents at my plate this morning one a splendid pair of sleeve buttons from my good friend Fred and the other a nice little present from Ella and pretty little col[l]ar from Addie. Mr. D and me went to church. Fred came up to dinner Also Addie I gave Fred his slippers he seemed well pleased with them him and me went to class the best general class and a good meeting. I never felt more sad in my life than I am tonight.54 Missing from the list of presents at Bettie's breakfast plate was one from her husband. In what in a later era would be termed "the Christmas blues," Bettie Duncan's next few days were marked by "as heavy a heart as I ever had in all my life." Despite a few days of visiting with friends in the country,55 Bettie continued to be depressed. On the last entry of 1864, Bettie Duncan-wife, mother, friend, and church member-completed her diary of 1864, "all alone sad and lonely." She also noted that much of the diary had been written with a "sad and heavy heart." Bettie Duncan kept two other partial diaries that have survived to the present. In 1867, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Wesley Duncan and his family joined a wagon train headed for California. Why so prominent a town citizen would decide on "selling out" his business in Lawrence and repeat an overland trip he had made before remains a mystery. A biographical sketch described Wesley Duncan as "an adventurous spirit" and recorded that his first wife had died in California, 56 but this does not explain the decision to move. Bettie Duncan clearly was not happy about the trip. On departure day, June 24, 1867, she wrote in a travel diary she began at that time, "The dreaded day has at last come." Her apprehensions were justified, for half way into the journey, west of Salt Lake City, many in their party became ill. Katie Duncan, then age six, died enroute and was buried in the moun- tains. Bettie grieved during the rest of the trip. After the family settled in San Jose, California, Bettie started another diary, but this jour- nal of 1868 was never completed. 57 Within a year, the family returned to Lawrence where Duncan again entered business with Charles Duncan and built a new home, this one more elaborate than the one they had left on Massachusetts Street.58 Ten years after the Duncan family returned to Lawrence, Bettie died at age forty-two. Her husband, Wesley, and three children survived her: Cettie, then seventeen; a son, age seven; and a baby, Bessie, two years old. Willie Duncan, her stepson, had returned to Lawrence and had become "a promising young business man."59 Bettie's obituary in the Lawrence Standard, read: Mrs. Wesley Duncan, a well-known and respected lady, who for years has been recognized as one of the best and kindest of Lawrence women, died yesterday, after quite a long sickness, through which she received the devoted attention of both her own family and many friends. 60 This description probably would have pleased Bettie. She relished attention of family and friends, and one of her resolutions of 1864 was "to make steady progress in the good way."61 The pattern of Bettie Duncan's daily life in 1864, work and meditation at home, church services and meetings of the social circle, and visits to the homes c;>f friends and to downtown stores was only disrupted once late in the year. The prevalent anxieties of the time in Lawrence may have . aggravated stresses in her life: marriage to an older man of a temperament opposite her own, distress over Willie's rebellious escapade, concerns over illness in the family and among friends, her own ailments and depressions, and her sensitivity to unsettling news and perceived slights. With some insight into the toll the tension was taking on her health in October when invasion seemed imminent, Bettie observed that she felt well in neither mind nor body, "what a powerful influence the mind has upon the boddy [sic]."62 Early in the year during the crisis precipitated by Willie, Bettie took a strong stand when she determined to be imposed on no longer. Yet, later · in the year she was unable to conduct the family prayer life she desired when she "could not get courage enough to pray before Mr. Duncan." Katie H. Armitage 75 For sympathy and support Bettie turned to the Dennis family and to Fred Eggert, who shared her devotion to the Methodist church and the life it held forth. Her neighbor, Mrs. Blacklidge, and her sister, Adeline, were both Methodist women who provided important friend- ships. The presence of Ella Jackson in the Duncan household not only gave Bettie real help in accomplishing household chores, but provided her a youthful companion who remembered her with presents on important occasions. Bettie's young children, Katie and Cettie, men- tioned frequently but almost incidentally in the diary, did not hamper her freedom of move- ment in Lawrence, her participation in the life of the church, or her pleasurable trip to Man- hattan. On several occasions Duncan, Ella, and Mrs. Blacklidge took turns staying with one or both the children, and often Bettie took them along on her errands or even farther trips away from home. Community life in Lawrence, although shadowed by ever present reminders of losses from Quantrill's raid and intermittent reminders of the ongoing war, was unhampered except late in the year and then only briefly. Neither the war nor frontier conditions isolated Bettie Duncan in Lawrence. Although the railroad did not reach the city until late in 1864, the fashions she followed and the religious and domestic ideas that influenced her were those emulated by many American women of the time. Much of what Bettie Duncan experienced in daily life in 1864 was ordinary: cooking, sewing, caring for children, shopping, meeting, and visiting. The extraordinary tensions and threats of the time seemed to heighten her reactions to daily life. In the diary she expressed a full range of emotions: enjoyment and despair, excitement and boredom, laughter and anger, friendship and loneliness, anxiety and hope, and a constant striving to live up to a pious ideal. Her diary adds an emotional and intimate dimension to the historical record of life as it was lived in Lawrence and eastern Kansas as the early settlement period ended. The author would like to thank Marilyn Dell Brady, Laura Tilson Carroll, Nona Brown Thompson, and Barbara Watkins for their assistance in the development of this article, and Ann Clausen, director of Watkins Museum, 1977-79, for encouraging research on the diary. Notes 1. Elizabeth Duncan's 1864 diary, now in the Kansas Collection, Spencer Research library, University of Kansas, was signed "Bettie Duncan" at the end of the December 1, 1864, entry. All public documents, such as census records and newspapers, list her as Elizabeth, but her choice of the shortened form of Elizabeth, Bettie, will be used in this article. 2. Sandra L. Myres, Westering Women and the Frontier F.xperience, 1800-1915 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), xix. 3. William Cronon et al., "Women and the West: Rethinking the Western History Survey Course," Wt-stern His- torical Quarterly 17 (July 1986): 277. 4. United States Biographical Directory, Kansas Volume (Chicago: S. Lewis and Co., 1879), 630; Lawrence Standard, October 2, 1879; Lawrence Daily journal, September 27, 1879. The granite tombstone for the Duncan family in Oak Hill Cemetery, Lawrence, gives Elizabeth Duncan's date of birth as October 18, 1837. 5. Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976), 21. 6. Ronald Hogeland is credited with distinguishing four distinct modes, including the "evangelical woman." See Anne M. Boylan, "Evangelical Womanhood in the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Women in Sunday Schools," Feminist Studies 4 (October 1978): 62. 7. Bettie Duncan, January 19, 1864. 8. United States Biographical Directory, Kansas Volume, 629-30. 9. Bettie Duncan's affection and great concern for Fred Eggert were no doubt heightened by the fact that he had suffered a childhood meningitis that left him with notable physical disabilities. Despite his disabilities, he even- tually owned a Lawrence dry good store, married a homeopathic physician and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he had successful businesses. He died in Portland in 1918 at age seventy-five. IO. Kansas State Agricultural Census, 1865, Douglas County, City of Lawrence, schedule 1, microfilm roll 3, pp. 36-37, Lawrence Public Library. 11. The 1860 U.S. census lists Fred Eggert as a member of the Duncan household. The city directory of Lawrence for the same time period lists him as employed by Duncan and Hornsby and as a boarder at the Whitney House. Although the census spells the name "Eggard," the name appears as "Eggert" in the city directory, diary, 76 Elizabeth ''Bettie" Duncan: Diary of Daily Life, 1864 and Mary Patterson Clarke, History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Lawrence, Kansas (Kansas City, Mo.: Franklin Publishing Co., 1915), 26, 36, 39. See also U.S. Census, 1860, Douglas County, City of Lawrence, schedule 1, microfilm roll 74, copy T-7, p. 4, Kansas State Historical Society; Lawrence City Directory and Business Mirror for 1860-61 (Indianapolis, Ind.: James Sutherland, n.d.), 14. The Duncan residence is listed as being at 113 Massachusetts. 12. The "Ladies of Lawrence Album" is in the Kansas Collection, University of Kansas. Bettie Duncan's photograph is in the album. The name "Blacklidge" was given at least two other spellings in the diary, but "Blacklidge" would seem to be correct for the Lawrence city directories consistently listed ''A. N. Blacklidge," who was Mrs. Blacklidge's husband and a justice of the peace. 13. Almost seventy years later, Ella Jackson's daughter located the Duncan home at the time of the raid as being on the site where the Watkins Bank later stood; this is the present site of the Watkins Community Museum. See Lawrence Daily Journal-World, November 15, 1933, in Lawrence Scrapbook, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas. For information on the new Methodist church being constructed at Tenth and Massachusetts, near the Duncan home, see Clarke, History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, 26, 29-30. 14. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 61. 15. Kansas State Agricultural Census, 1865, schedule l, microfilm roll 3, p. 36, Lawrence Public Library. 16. For Duncan's losses in the raid, see United States Biographical Dictionary, Kansas Volume, 630. Richard Cordley, A History of Lawrence, Kansas, From First Settlement to the Close of the Rebellion (Lawrence, Kans.: E. F. Caldwell, 1895), 251, reported that the "sentiment for rebuilding was universal. ... It was a matter of conscience .... There were business reasons too .... They who rebuilt and resumed at once would retain their trade, and in many cases that was a fortune." 17. For information on the first Duncan home and Alphonso Duncan, see Lawrence Standard, October 22, 1879, and the Duncan gravestone in Pioneer Cemetery, Lawrence. For Willis Edward Duncan, see Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, December 26, 1857, and B. Jean Snedeger, comp., Complete Tombstone Census of Douglas County, Kansas, vol. 1 (Douglas County, Kansas, Genealogical Society, Inc., 1987), 258. There also may have been a third Duncan child to die in infancy. The mortality schedule for Douglas County, June 1, 1859-May 31, 1860, lists E. Duncan, one year old, dying in May 1860. See Snedeger, Tombstone Census, 270. For the opening of the first store, see Herald of Freedom, November 1, 1856. For Duncan's business partnerships, see United States Biographical Dictionary, Kansas Volume, 630. 18. Kansas State Journal, Lawrence, Kans., March 10, April 7, 14, 21, May 12, 19, June 2, 9, August 18, 1864. 19. Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Wt>men and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 26. After citing an example of a close marriage, Degler added, "The love and warmth that flowed between ... [this couple] were probably not typical of middle-class marriages of the Victorian era .... But the affection and emotional dependence were not rare, even among families less well off, or in which spouses were less suited to one another," 35-36. 20. Cettie Duncan became Mrs. Nelson 0. Stevens, and their daughter, Myra Blackburn, donated the Duncan materials to the Kansas Collection .and made this observation of her grandfather in transmittal communications. 21. Wesley Duncan was a member of the Lawrence Masonic Lodge from 1857 to his death in 1902. See In the Beginning, A History and Roster . .. of Lawrence Lodge No. 6, A.R & A.M. (no imprint), 64. 22. Myres, Westering Women, 186. 23. Duncan's mother was a Baptist and four uncles were Baptist ministers. Although not a member, Duncan was a generous contributor to the Lawrence Methodist congregation. See United States Biographical Dictionary, Kansas Volume, 629. Some accounts of the founding of the Lawrence Methodist Episcopal Church list seven charter members; others list twelve. Clarke, History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, 11, concludes, "The first members probably included Mr. and Mrs. C. S. Duncan, Mrs. Wesley Duncan ... " and nine others. 24. Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univer- sity Press, 1986), 78-79. 25. Ibid., 129. 26. Welter, Dimity Convictions, 31. 27. Bettie Duncan, April 2, 3, 1864. 28. Degler, At Odds, 59, observes that "few women wrote about their pregnancies .... A modern reader of their most private journals and letters is often brought up short to learn of the birth of a baby." The Charles Duncan household, as listed in the 1865 state census, included Charles S., 43; Adeline H., 37; Maggie W., 18; John 0., 16; Sybil, 14; Flemon W., 10; Charles S., Jr., 5; Howard, 1 (the newborn mentioned in Bettie's diary); and Mary Hobbs (a domestic), 17. See Kansas Agricultural Census, 1865, Douglas County, City of Lawrence, schedule 1. microfilm roll 3, p. 69, Lawrence Public Library. 29. Bettie Duncan, April 5, 1864. 30. For information on schools in western settlements, see Myres, Westering Wt>men, 182. Cordley, A History of Lawrence, Kansas, 257, notes that Lawrence had plans for a school building but at the time classes met in the Unitarian church's basement. 31. Bettie Duncan, January 6, February 27, 1864. 32. Clarke, First Methodist Episcopal Church of Lawrence, IO, 23. 33. Bettie Duncan, June 14, 17, 19, 1864. 34. Ibid., June 20, 1864. 35. Ibid., June 24, 1864. Katie H. Armitage 77 36. The bridge over the Kansas River at Lawrence was finally opened in 1864. It "drew to itself an immense amount of travel." See Cordley, A History of Lawrence, Kansas, 256. 37. Bettie Duncan, August 26, 27, 29, 1864. 38. Ibid., July 16, 1864. 39. Albert Castel, A Frontier State at W'lzr Kansas, 1861-1865 (Ithaca, N.Y.: American Historical Association, Cornell University Press, 1958), 184. 40. Bettie Duncan, July 16, February 19, March 15, September 10, August 12, 1864. 41. Castel, Frontier State at W'llr, 184-85. 42. Ibid., 188. 43. Ibid., 194-95. 44. Bettie Duncan, July 21, 1864. 45. Ibid., March 18, November 8, 1864. "Miss Kirkpatrick" was either Eliza Kirkpatrick, 45, or Anna M. Kirkpatrick, 25; both were listed as dressmakers in the 1865 state census. See Kansas State Agricultural Census, 1865, Douglas County, City of Lawrence, schedule 1, microfilm roll 3, p. 17, Lawrence Public Library. Godey's Lady's Book, published in Philadelphia and circulated nationally, was the leading fashion oracle for American women from its inception in 1830; patterns for clothing and household items were a staple of the magazine, and later issues carried extensive fashion illustrations. 46. Myres, Westering Women, 150. 47. Bettie Duncan, August 18, 1864. 48. The Thanksgiving of November 1864 was the second national observance proclaimed by President Lincoln, a result in large part of a campaign led by Sarah Josepha Hale, who, as editor of Godey's Lady's Book, had pro- moted the idea of such a holiday for many years . . With its focus on collective prayer and family feasting, the observance appealed to women like Bettie Duncan who could read of Hale's vision of the day in Godey's. For Hale's work, see "Our National Thanksgiving-A Domestic Festival," Godey's Lady's Book 69 (November 1864): 440; Joan Jacobs Brumberg, "Women Influenced Holiday's Origins," Kansas City Times, November 27, 1986, reprinted from the New York Times. Miller's Hall in Lawrence at Seventh and Massachusetts was located where Liberty Hall is today. 49. Bettie Duncan, November 16, 21, 23, 1864. 50. Ibid., November 18, 1864. 51. The festival probably was held at Miller's Hall. 52. Bettie Duncan, December 17, 1864. 53. Clarke, First Methodist Episcopal Church of Lawrence, 30. 54. Christmas fell on a Sunday and regular services were held. Addie was probably Bettie's niece, Adeline Gabhart, fifteen-year-old daughter of Bettie's older sister, Lucetta Gabhart. See Kansas State Agricultural Census, 1865, Douglas County, City of Lawrence, schedule l, microfilm roll 3, pp. 72-73, Lawrence Public Library. 55. Bettie Duncan, December 28, 29, 1864. 56. United States Biographical Dictionary, Kansas Volume, 629-30. 57. The travel diary and unfinished 1868 journal are in the Kansas Collection, University of Kansas. 58. Granddaughter Myra Blackburn described the new home which was west of Lawrence as "more elegant than most" with marble fireplaces. 59. Lawrence Standard, October 2, 1879. For reference to Bessie B. Duncan, see Snedeger, Tombstone Census, 17. Bessie's memorial can be found on the Duncan tombstone at Oak Hill Cemetery, Lawrence; born in 1877, she died in 1903. The 1875 state census listed William Duncan, twenty-seven years old, as a clerk in the Duncan store, and as a resident in the Wesley Duncan household. William's business activities were favorably mentioned in United States Biographical Dictionary, Kansas Volume, 630. See also Kansas Agricultural Census, 1875, Dou- glas County, Wakarusa Township, schedule l, microfilm roll 6, p. 45, Lawrence Public Library. 60. Lawrence Standard. October 2, 1879; Lawrence Daily journal, September 27, 1879. 61. Bettie Duncan, memorandum on last page of diary. 62. Ibid., October 14, 1864. The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 18 54-1864 C. S. Griffin "\VJ'hen the University of Kansas opened on September 12, 1866, the only things it had in common with an W actual university were a name, a charter, and a large measure of faculty factionalism. In every other way, the University of Kansas was merely a preparatory school for an institution of higher learning that did not yet exist, and an undernourished preparatory sch9ol at that. The last section of the charter of 1864 had absolved the legislature of all fiscal responsibility for the university's organization; the charter made no promise at all of financial support in the years to come. In 1865 and 1866 the board of regents had only some $20,000 at its disposal. Three weeks before the opening, moreover, the regents had run out of funds. The university did possess 72 sections of land granted by the national government, the sales receipts from which were to be a permanent endowment, but none of the land had been sold. Just as money was in short supply, so were students prepared for university work. The state's facilities for secondary education were as underdeveloped as its economy. Of the 55 students who matriculated early in the first semester, not one, in the faculty's opinion, was ready for college. To teach them the necessary high-school subjects, the university had a part-time lecturer and three full-time professors, whose abilities as teachers and scholars were as yet uncertain. Small though the faculty was, it was already cliquish: two of the professors thought the third, who was also the acting president, to be personally uncongenial and intellectually incompetent. To house the professoriate and the student body, the university had one three-story build- ing, 50 feet square, located high on a treeless hill in Lawrence once known as Hogback ridge, but now named more elegantly Mount Oread. There were a few books but no library, some scientific equipment but not nearly enough. The university's future was entirely uncertain, and even its present condition was worrisome. Amid the liabilities, however, the University of Kansas had one great asset: it existed. Its existence was its most striking characteristic. Under the most favorable of circumstances, the appearance of a public university in Kansas would have been a significant event. Under the distressing conditions that prevailed in the territory and state of Kansas in the 1850's and the 1860's, the university's existence was surprising indeed. After the organization of the territory in 1854, it had taken Kansans 12 years to create the institution. During those years, Kansans had suffered from practically every affliction known to man: from violence, murder, and territorial civil war, from a bloody and costly national civil war, from drought and famine and disease and poverty, from senseless and unscrupulous political conniving complete with lies, deceit, and wholesale knavery. In such an environment, the cause of higher education had to suffer, and the citizens who were sincerely dedicated to the cause must be disappointed time and again. The creation of the university was not exactly a miracle-miracles were rare in Kansas-but it was still an awesome event. Curiously enough, the University of Kansas in its fetal years suffered most from a general enthusiasm for it in the territorial and early statehood periods. In a later day, many of the university's supporters would be fond of believing that the school was the peculiar product of a noble idealism monopolized by a minority of high-souled C. S. Griffin, "The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864," Kansas Historical Qµarterly 32, no. 1 (spring 1966): 1-32. Reprinted with permission of Kansas Historical Quarterly. 79 80 The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 citizens. According to this legend, it was the men and women who came to Kansas in the mid-1850's to keep the territory free from human slavery who created the state university. They knew, the legend ran, that freedom required the diffusion of education among the people, and therefore they built the school. Naturally enough, they located it in Lawrence, the center of Free-State activity. Kansas in the 1850's, rhapsodized an elderly lady faculty member half a century after her graduation from the university in 187 4, was settled by the pure of heart. Its early settlers had emigrated from their former homes not "in quest of gold, or adventure, as men have peopled many other states, but with the unconquerable purpose to keep this soil free from the curse of human slavery .... It was these freedom-loving men who, with small resources and in a scantily-populated territory, built a complete school system, which they crowned with the State University." "K. U. is a University set on a hilltop," ran a pamphlet of 1922 describing the school to adolescent freshmen. If they gazed off to the eastward from Mount Oread, they could see the "open valley through which came, half a century ago, those New Englanders who brought with them to the outpost of Lawrence the Harvard idea of education, and early set up here the beginnings of a great University." 1 Like many another legend, this one was at once charming and childish. Both before and after the admission of Kansas as a state in 1861, no group or faction was alone in its desire for a state-supported university. The Free Starers wanted one, of course, but so did their. oppo- nents-whom the Free Staters constantly vilified as Proslavery barbarians-and so did large numbers of Kansans who took no sides in the political and inoral conflict. The university's general popularity was chiefly responsible for the delay in its founding. During much of the territorial period, the war between the Free Starers and the Proslaveryites prevented the politi- cal union necessary to create public institutions of higher education. In 1861 and 1862 Kan- sans in various communities were so enamored of the state university that they fought bitterly over its location, and thus delayed its appearance for another two years. And then in 1863 and 1864, the University of Kansas suffered from its very location in Lawrence. By the summer of 1855, the idea of the state university had come to Kansas. No man in truth could say who brought it; no faction could claim it as its own. It appeared naturally, as part of the inevitable effort of Kansans to reproduce in a new environment institutions which had proved valuable in the older states. When Gov. Andrew H. Reeder addressed the members of the first territorial legislature on July 3, 1855, he assumed that they would provide a public educational system for the territory as a matter of course. Every American knew the impor- tance of education, Reeder said, and he would not waste time by describing it. "To enlarge upon the necessity of general education for producing good government," he told the lawmak- ers, "would be at this day a work of supererogation, and I leave the matter in your hands, confident it will receive the attention it deserves."2 If the emphasis of many Americans who saw a relation between education and democracy was on state-supported common schools, state-supported higher education had its own share of enthusiasts. By the mid-1850's state universities had become commonplace in the South and West, though not in the Northeast. Missouri had one, chartered in 1839, and so did Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and a number of other states.3 The territorial legislature responded as Reeder knew it would. During the session in July and August 1855, the lawmakers established a system of common schools for the territory, and also approved a charter for the University of the Territory of Kansas. It was to be located in the town of Douglas, several miles up the Kansas River from Lawrence, providing that the town fathers would give ten acres of land for the site. Although the legislators anticipated private donations, the main source of support was to be a fund derived from the sale of land that the national government would presumably bestow. Under the control of 20 curators chosen by the joint vote of both houses of the legislature, the University of the Territory of Kansas had as its purpose the "promotion of literature and of the arts and sciences." The curators might confer all such degrees as were "known to and usually granted by any college or university. "4 C. S. Griffin 81 Unfortunately, the institution never appeared. Political turmoil surrounded the legislature and its acts; amid the confusion the University of the Territory of Kansas had to remain a dream. According to Free-State partisans, the legislature was the "bogus legislature," elected illegally by Proslavery Missourians who had crossed the border on election day the previous March to make sure that the representatives had the right ideas about Negro bondage. Free Starers denied the legislature's legitimacy, and refused obedience to its laws. In light of what the bogus legislature had done, it was surprising that when Free-State leaders spoke out in favor of a university, they spoke with a comparatively weak voice. In September 1855, many Free Starers gathered in Topeka under the leadership of Charles Robinson and his allies to begin the so-called "Topeka Statehood Movement." Among their accomplish- ments was a constitution under which they hoped that congress would admit Kansas to the Union. The Topeka constitution made the creation of a system of public schools mandatory upon the state legislature. On the subject of the university, however, the document was only permissive. If the legislature wished to do so, it could establish a university "with such branches as the public convenience may hereafter demand, for the promotion of literature, the arts, sciences, medical and agricultural instruction."5 Nothing tangible ever came of that contemplated university, either, for congress never admitted Kansas to the Union under the Topeka constitution. Its significance was only to show that no matter which side won the territorial battle, whether Kansas entered the Union as a slave state or a free state, the commonwealth would almost certainly have a state univer- sity. Through the months of struggle that lay ahead-through the territorial civil war of 1856, the contest over the Lecompton constitution of 1857, the continuing efforts to capture control of the territorial legislature-the contentious Kansans kept the idea of the state university alive. In 1859, with opponents of slavery now vastly outnumbering their opponents, Kansans wrote provisions for a state university into the Wyandotte constitution, under which Kansas became a state in 1861. The idea of the state university transcended the Kansas conflict. The practice, however, was something else again. Both the Free Starers and their enemies wished to control the university themselves. There was not the slightest chance that a territo- rial legislature boycotted by Free Starers would select curators from among their number. Late in 1856, by contrast, when a number of Lawrence men started a territorial university move- ment of their own, it was a strictly Free-State institution that they had in mind. The scheme of the Lawrence promoters represented a change in the original hopes of the town's leaders. Back in 1854, when the vanguard of the New England Emigrant Aid Company's agents and settlers established the Free-State community, the hope had been to establish a private college at an early day. According to the original petition of the New England Emigrant Aid Com- pany to the Massachusetts legislature in 1854, one of the organization's purposes was to furnish the emigrants with the "advantages of education." The company's propaganda assured prospective settlers that schools would appear in the terri- tory right along with all the other institutions of 19th century civilization, such as mills, churches, and hotels. In the fall of 1854, Charles Robinson, one of the company's Kansas agents, told treasurer Amos A. Lawrence that the citizens of the Lawrence settlement would start a college just as soon as they could. A plat of the town made about the same time showed Mount Oread as set aside for the location of a college and churches.6 But if the spirit were willing, the purse was weak. Even if the proposed college was no better than the nation's least distinguished institutions of higher education, it would still require a building, a faculty, and several hundred dol- lars a year. The Emigrant Aid Company never had enough money for the pur- pose, and the Free-State leaders in Lawrence could not raise it among them- selves. In January 1855, they began a school of sorts, its teacher paid by the parents of the 20 or so students in attendance, and the settlers continued a school with changing locations and changing teachers right along. Although the school was a token of an honest desire for education, it was not a college, and it never became one. 7 As the Kansas agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company and a Leading politician, Charles Robinson facilitated the settlement of Lawrence and the Location of the university. As governor, Robinson would wrestle twice, in 1861 and in 1862, with the problem of the university Location without solving it. 82 The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 By December 1856, the Lawrence promoters had abandoned their scheme of a private college and were hunting for larger game. A committee of the town's leading citizens had laid plans which came to a climax in a mass meeting on Christmas day. In the university move- ment appeared a number of traditional American ideas. The welfare of any community, said a planning group, depended in great measure upon institutions of education. The educational system most conducive to the public good was one which provided for the education of the whole people "on an equal basis and at the public expense. The child of the honest and humblest parent," the committee said grandly, "ought in the eye of the State, to stand on a par with the most favored child of fortune. A system of Free Public Schools, in which the child can be received at the start, and carried forward, if he demands it, to the university with all its opportunities for preparation to fill the highest positions in society, is the greatest boon that can be conferred upon any community." On December 8 William F. M. Arny made the same point in a letter to Gov. John W. Geary. Arny was an agent of the National Kansas Committee, an organization supporting the Free-State cause, and he was also at the time a member of the Illinois State Board of Education. Seeking Geary's support for the plans of the Lawrence promoters, Arny said that no argument was required. to demonstrate the advantages of public education. "Our people are generally what their early instruction has made them: morally, intellectually and physically a blessing to their age; or, wicked, debased and destructive to the general welfare." Therefore every state should have the best educational system that its government could provide. Among other things, the system should include a completely mod- ern university, with normal, agricultural, and mechanical schools as well as schools of law and medicine and every other subject that seemed desirable.8 The meeting on December 25 was under the control of Arny, Charles Robinson, George W. Deitzler, Erastus D. Ladd, and several other prominent citizens. With comparatively little discussion, the gathering adopted a resolution from a business committee stating that the time had come to establish a college in Kansas, more specifically in Lawrence. To govern the insti- tution, the meeting approved the appointment of 15 trustees, of whom 10 were to be resi- dents 9f Kansas. They included Governor Geary and a number of men of unquestioned loy- alty to the Free-State cause, such as Charles Robinson, Samuel C. Pomeroy, and the Rev. Ephraim Nute of Lawrence, William F. M. Arny of Illinois, Amos A. Lawrence of Massachu- setts, a wealthy merchant and the treasurer of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, and ex-Gov. William Slade of Vermont, long a leading abolitionist. The college contemplated by the Lawrence men was to be a private one at first, paid for by private subscriptions. Charles Robinson estimated that $100,000 would be necessary to get the institution off to a good start, which meant that much of the money would have to come from outside the territory. Robinson and his cohorts believed that the friends of the Free-State cause would be generous. Ephraim Nute, indeed, had been corresponding with Amos A. Lawrence, and Lawrence stood ready to aid the project with a gift of over $10,000. But the great hope of the Lawrencians was to create a private college so that when Kansas received an anticipated land grant from congress for a state university, they would have a school actually standing on the ground as a worthy beneficiary. Robinson told the mass meeting that if $100,000 could be secured at once, it would be a strong inducement to congress to approve the land grant for which the Lawrence leaders intended to ask. This was persuasive reasoning. Having voted to establish a college, the citizens at once appointed a committee to petition congress for land. It consisted of men who were adept at concealing their real purpose: Robinson, Arny, Philip P. Fowler, F. A. Hunt, and George W. Brown. The members said nothing about the fact that they were working in behalf of Lawrence alone. Instead, they professed to be a committee appointed by a "Mass Convention ·of the citizens of Kansas Territory." With no false modesty, they asked congress for the stupendous grant of 650,000 acres of land. Of the amount, 400,000 would be divided equally among four seminaries to be established in four equal divisions of Kansas, and the other 250,000 would go to the state university. The committee reminded congress that since 1803 every new state had received a gift of land for such a purpose; they neglected to mention, however, that the C. S. Griffin 83 standard land grant for a state university was only 72 sections, or 46,080 acres. The land was to be selected at once, before the Kansas lands were put on the market, and held in trust until the territory became a state. At that time the state legislature-the Free Starers hoped that they would control it, but they did not say so-would dispose of the land as its wisdom dictated.9 If the Lawrence men had one eye on the Proslaveryites, they had the other on Free Starers elsewhere who were also angling for the university. Institutions of higher learning might be a main bulwark of democracy, but they could also be fountains of economic prosperity for the towns that ·got them. The Lawrence men were looking forward to a second meeting of the Free-State legislature, which was the Free Starers' answer to the territorial bogus legislature. Claiming authority under the Topeka constitution of 1855, Free-State representatives were pre- paring to gather in January 1857. To a group of indignant Free Starers in Manhattan, who had their own plans for the legislature, the Lawrence scheme was transparent trickery. On January 12, 1857, Manhattanites held a mass meeting in support of a public university, and charged the Lawrence boosters with underhanded conniving. The call for the general meeting in Lawrence on Christmas day, several of them pointed out, had appeared only on December 20. According to Albert A. Griffin of Manhattan, news of the meeting had not reached his town until after the Lawrencians had met, acted, and adjourned. The meeting, Griffin argued, was a "disreputable attempt to obtain by trickery" what the Lawrence men feared "they might not be able to obtain by fair means." Kansas needed a public university, he said, but it ought to be established in a central and accessible location-he meant Manhattan-rather than in Lawrence. Griffin claimed that he had no objection to locating a university in Lawrence if after full discussion the people of Kansas thought it advantageous. But the Lawrence maneu- vering was likely to injure the Free-State party, and thereby the university cause, he said, when its supporters in the East discovered that "those who have been extolled as martyrs are playing a 'grab game' for the building up of the places they are peculiarly interested in." Griffin had begun to fear, so he said, that the charge of corruption "so long urged against certain leaders, is founded in truth." For all the spleen and all the plans of the Manhattanites, however, the Free-State legislature decided in favor of Lawrence. On June 13 "Gov." Charles Robinson signed a bill establishing a university in his community.10 While the Lawrence and Manhattan rivals were arguing about the location of the univer- sity, still other Kansans continued to be interested in it. In January 1857, the second territorial legislature met in Lecompton, with the Free Starers once more boycotting it and calling it bogus. Governor Geary suggested that the lawmakers create a territorial university. The gover- nor did not care which of the political factions established a university as long as it appeared. Replying to William F. M. Arny's invitation to be present at the mass meeting in Lawrence on December 25, Geary had heartily approved the university scheme. Possibly not knowing ex- actly what the Lawrence men had in mind, or perhaps trying to avert it, Geary said that he would rejoice to see the "citizens of the Territory, without distinction of party,'' petition con- gress for university lands. Now he urged the territorial legislature to ask for acreage to support a university which when completed should include normal, agricultural, and mechanical schools. A university endowed by congress, Geary said, "would be a blessing to our people; disseminate useful and scientific intelligence; provide competent teachers for our primary schools; and fur- nish a complete system of education adequate to our wants in all the departments of life."11 The legislature accepted Geary's suggestion without debate, with the bill coming from the house committee on education whose chairman was Joseph P. Carr of Atchison. On February 19 the governor signed an act creating the Kansas Territorial University. Its purpose was to "promote and encourage the diffusion of knowledge in all the branches of learning, including the literary, law, medical and theological departments of instruction." The site of the univer- sity was to be Kickapoo, in Leavenworth County. A body corporate and politic of 22 men, named in the act, was to govern the school. They and their successors in office were to have all the powers and privileges granted in the act of 1855, including the power to receive and use the receipts from the sale of government lands. 12 84 The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 Throughout 1857 and 1858 Kansans remained divided politically, but united in support of a territorial and state university. In May, 1857, Gov. Robert J. Walker, who had replaced Geary, reminded Kansans that they did not yet have a public university, urged its importance on them, and repeated the old idea that the success of democracy itself depended on the people's enlightenment through education. 13 The following October the men who wrote the Proslavery Lecompton constitution demonstrated perfectly orthodox concepts about higher learn- ing. ''A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people," ran the document, "schools and the means of education shall be for- ever encouraged in this State." A university was not mentioned specifically, but the "means of education"' certainly embraced it. The "Ordinance" which the Lecompton convention adopted, moreover, and which the delegates hoped that congress would approve when it admitted Kan- sas to the Union, envisioned either a state university or a state college. According to the ordi- nance, the President of the United States was to designate 72 sections of land which Kansas was to reserve for the use of a seminary of learning."14 While both congress and Kansans wrangled over the admission of the territory under the Lecompton constitution in the spring of 1858, Free Starers attempted a flanking movement to put a constitution of their own de- sign before the people. The Leavenworth constitution, drafted in March, called for education at all levels. Above the common schools, there were to be four district colleges supported by the proceeds of the sales of the 72 sections of land which congress would grant to Kansas when it became a state. As soon as the Kansas economy permitted, the legislature was to establish "educational institutions of a higher grade." With the common schools and the col- leges, then, Kansas was to have a "complete system of public instruction, embracing the pri- mary, normal, preparatory, collegiate and university departments."15 Kansans rejected the Lecompton constitution, however, and although they approved the Leavenworth constitution, the vote was so small and public interest so slight that the request that congress admit Kansas to the Union under it came to nothing. A year later the fortunes of state-supported higher education in Kansas started to improve, along with the political fortunes of the territory itself. At the call of the territorial legislature in 1859, the voters chose representatives to still another constitutional convention. Its mem- bers met July 5-29, 1859, to produce the Wyandotte constitution. The document required the legislature to create a state university. As one of its regular committees, the Wyandotte convention appointed a committee on education and public institutions. It included seven members: William R. Griffith, the chair- man, of Bourbon County, Samuel D. Houston of Riley County, C. B. McClellan of Jefferson County, Edward Stokes of Douglas County, John A Middleton of Marshall County, Samuel Hipple of Leavenworth County, and Caleb May of Atchison County. On July 14 the group reported its proposals for inclusion in the constitution. The legislature was to encourage the "promotion of intellectual, moral, scientific, and agricultural improvement" by establishing a uniform system of common schools, and other institutions of a "higher grade." Those higher grade institutions were to embrace normal, preparatory, collegiate, and university departments. More specifically, the legislature was to create a state university, which would include both normal and agricultural "departments," or schools, and which would promote literature, the arts, and the sciences. Rather than locate the university at random, the legislature was to place it at some "eligible and central point." Its financial support was to come from the returns on an investment fund made up of receipts from government land sales, grants from the legisla- ture, and private gifts. No religious sect was to have any right to, or control of, the fund. Both the common schools and the institutions of higher grade were to be open to pupils of both sexes. 16 The debate in the committee of the whole revealed almost complete accord among the delegates that the constitution should at least refer to a state university. After adopting without debate the proposal relating to educational institutions in general, the delegates considered an objection to the university offered by John P. Greer of Shawnee County. Greer moved to strike out the section directing the legislature to establish the institution. In support of his motion, C. S. Griffin 85 he argued that higher education should be left to individual or private enterprise. In a shrewd prediction of what was to come, Greer said that state universities were often the subjects of "acrimonious controversy" between the several parts of their states. All in all, he contended, state universities resulted in "no particular good." William R. Griffith contemptuously dis- missed Greer's objections. He would refuse even to debate with Greer the value of a state university to Kansas, he said, and he presumed that there was no significant difference of opinion on the subject among the representatives. He seemed to be correct. The convention voted Greer's motion down without debate. 17 There was a decided difference of opinion, however, about whether the constitution should require the legislature to create a university or merely allow it to do so. After Greer and Griffith had finished, John W. Forman of Doniphan County moved to change the key word "shall" to "may." The most vigorous advocate of Forman's amendment was James G. Blunt of Anderson County. Blunt explained that he had no intention of starting a debate about the utility of a state university. But he thought that the legislature ought to have the power to discuss and decide the question of its existence when it met. Merely giving the legislature power to create the university would properly leave the question open. In spite of the fact that William R. Griffith was chairman of the committee making the report, he said that he had no strong feelings either way. But Samuel D. Houston of Manhat- tan, another of the committee's members, was adamantly opposed to Forman and Blunt. Hous- ton admitted, somewhat vaguely, that he was not especially anxious to have a state university in Kansas if it were to be conducted in the · same manner as state universities elsewhere. But he was anxious indeed that the convention require the legislature to act to improve the economy of Kansas. For this purpose an agricultural branch of the university or a separate agricultural college was essential. The western parts of Kansas, Houston said, were extremely dry. The soil had properties which had never been adequately tested. Houston was certain from his own experience that the land had considerable value when properly treated, but obviously a great deal of experimentation would be necessary to produce a . maximum yield. An agricultural branch of the university would assist the "highest possible development of that soil." Its work would give value to the land, and that in turn would promote. both the settlement and sale · of a vast acreage that otherwise would remain comparatively worthless for a hundred years. "I hope, gentlemen," Houston pleaded, "you will consider the importance of taking some . step that will thus enhance the value of one-half the land in Kansas." By the narrowest possible margin, a vote of 17 to 16, the committee of the whole let the original proposal stand. After making a few minor alterations in wording, it then approved the report and sent it to the convention itself. 18 With only one change, the convention approved what the delegates had just done in committee. That change had to do with the vexing question of whether pupils of both sexes · should be admitted to the university. On July 15, John T. Burris of Johnson County moved to strike out the provision for sexual equality. In doing so, he raised a question which the del- egates had haggled over two days before. On July 13 the convention had considered a proposal by Solon 0. Thacher of Lawrence that when the legislature provided for the formation and regulation of common schools, it should make no distinction between the rights and privileges of males and females. William Hutchinson of Lawrence then moved to make Thacher's resolu- tion apply to the university as well. Burris immediately jumped up to ask if Thacher's motion with Hutchinson's amendment would apply to the government of educational institutions in addition to the admission of pupils-if it would entitle women to hold office and disburse money. Thacher said his proposal would allow them such privileges, whereupon Burris heat- edly objected. He was certainly willing to admit male and female students alike, he said, but he did not want women to be able to vote and hold office in the university. There was no greater necessity, as he put it, for "inviting" them to hold such positions than there was for inviting them to "any other official capacity." James G. Blunt added his support. Whatever their opinions on the structure of the common-school system, neither Hutchinson nor Thacher would argue that there should be female as well as male professors in the univer- 86 The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 sity. Hutchinson was merely supporting an equal admissions policy. He stated that in other states in the Middle West there were no distinctions between boys and girls in the common schools. _At the higher levels of· education, however, there were distinctions, and they were unjust. To make sure that such evil practices did not enter Kansas, Hutchinson said that the "hand of the law must be thrust in" as soon as students rose above the elementary grades. "It is well known that some of the most flourishing colleges in the Union have adopted this system," he said, adding that there was none "more justly prosperous than Antioch College, in the State of Ohio, where both sexes are admitted upon an equality." Yet sensing a sizeable opposition in the convention, and learning that the report of the committee on education and public institutions would provide for sexual equality at all educational levels, Hutchinson with- drew his amendment. The delegates then passed Thacher's motion by a vote of 22 to 19.19 John T. Burris was playing a strange game. Either that, or he changed his mind on the proper admissions policy of the university in two days. Formerly he had supported equal ad- mission. On the 15th, however, he sought and found majority support for his motion to strike out the reference in the report of the committee on education and public institutions. James G. Blunt, who had stood with Burris against the suggestion that women should have equal rights with men in teaching and executive positions, claimed that Burris' motion had to do with racial matters. If the provision for the "admission of pupils of both sexes" were stricken, Blunt said, there would be no chance for the Democratic delegates who were opposed to equal educational opportunities for Negroes to insert the word "white" before the word "pupils." Burris did not explain, however, and his amendment passed. 20 The convention's committee on phraseology and arrangements made a few changes in wording, none of which affected the meaning of the sections on education. The relevant parts of the Wyandotte constitution were sections 2, 7, and 8 of Article VI: Sec. 2. The legislature shall encourage the promotion of intellectual, moral, scientific and agricultural improvement, by establishing a uniform system of common schools, and schools of a higher grade, embracing normal, preparatory, collegiate and university departments .... See. 7. Provision shall be made by law for the establishment, at some eligible and central point, of a State University, for the promotion of literature, and the arts and sciences, includ- ing a Normal and an Agricultural department. All funds arising from the sale or rents of lands granted by the United States to the State for the support of a State University, and all other grants, donations or bequests, either by the State or by individuals, for such purpose, shall remain a perpetual fund, to be called the "University Fund;" the interest of which shall be appropriated to the support of the State University. See. 8. No religious sect or sects shall ever control any part of the common school or University funds of the State. Section 9 of Article VI provided that a board of commissioners was to have charge of the management and sale of the school and university lands. The board was to consist of the state superintendent of public instruction, the secretary of state, and the attorney general. Whatever the grandiose ·hopes of men of earlier days, the convention looked forward only to the stan- dard congressional land grant. In the "Ordinance" that it adopted, the convention proposed that the national government give 72 sections of land to Kansas for the university's erection and maintenance.21 It was one thing to write a provision for a state university into the constitution, however, and another thing to write it into law. On January 29, 1861, congress admitted Kansas as a state under the Wyandotte constitution. In 1861 and 1862 the legislature and Gov. Charles Robinson wrestled twice with the problem of the university's location without solving it. The battle juxtaposed certain amounts of wisdom with large quantities of political scheming. Al- though the participants were honestly eager to create a university, a number of local and per- sonal interests snared the university bill, frustrated the university movement, and prepared the way for measures which directly violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the state constitution. One of the more difficult questions that the legislature of 1861 had to decide was how to parcel out among the chief towns of Kansas the various state institutions which the lawmakers C. S. Griffin 87 had to bestow. Chief among them was the state capital itself, but not far behind came the state university and the state penitentiary. Unhappily for the university cause, there were four towns whose supporters could command enough votes to give them reasonable hopes of cap- turing one institution-Lawrence and Leavenworth in the eastern part of the state, and To- peka and Manhattan farther west. All the men involved understood that no community could expect to get more than one state agency. At the start Manhattan had the best chance of securing the university, for both Lawrencians and Topekans were far more interested in the capital, and the Leavenworth backers proved willing to settle for the penitentiary. On April 17, 1861, with supporters of Lawrence and Topeka arguing over the capital, the house com- mittee on public institutions recommended for passage a bill to locate the penitentiary in Leavenworth, which Rep. Charles Starns of that town had introduced on April 12. In May both houses would approve it. At the same time the committee on public institutions recom- mended for the approval of the house a concurrent resolution about the university's location. A week before Rep. William H. Smyth of Manhattan had brought in a bill to put the univer- sity there. The . committee's resolution said that the Manhattan proposal should receive careful consideration. In that town, the members noted, there was a Methodist institution called Bluemont Central College. Its trustees had offered to donate their building and grounds to the state in return for the university's location in and on them. A joint legislative committee of two should investigate the condition of the college and the terms of the donation, and report to the legislature. 22 Both the house and the senate approved the resolution. The investigating committee con- sisted of Rep. William H. Grimes of Atchison and Sen. Otis B. Gunn of Topeka. On April 29, they made their report. They thought the college almost perfect. Its building was a "sub- stantial and commodious" three-story structure of gray limestone, measuring 44 by 60 feet. It had eight office, class, and laboratory rooms on the first two floors, and an "elegant ball" furnished in a "tasty manner" on the third. The rooms were spacious, airy, well lighted, and well adapted to their purposes. Although the scientific apparatus was not very extensive, it was of the highest quality. In the library were between 1,200 and 1,500 volumes. Just as attractive as the building was its site. Resting on a high piece of land overlooking the countryside for miles, the college presented a "landscape to the eye not surpassed in beauty and variety of scenery by any other locality in Kansas." The site was also a healthy one, for there were no ponds or stagnant water nearby. Not only that, but the college grounds included 120 acres of the "very best quality of arable lands," with a fine quarry which would supply stone in abun- dance for future buildings. Adjoining the college lands were large amounts of unoccupied farmland of the same high quality. The title to the college land was perfectly valid and there were no · incumbrances of any kind. All this the trustees would give to the state of Kansas; their only condition was that Bluemont College become the state university. 23 What Grimes and Gunn did not say was that the offer of the Bluemont College trustees was a shrewd move to relieve themselves of an unbearable burden. Chartered by the territorial legislature of 1858 and opened in 1860, Bluemont had proved a failure. It was never a college, for it had only primary and preparatory students. It was never prosperous, for the Kansas drought of 1859 and 1860 had made money scarce, and funds from the outside proved im- possible to find. With Kansas Methodists having several other schools to support, with the uncertain fortunes of civil war lying ahead, with the treasury empty, the trustees' fondest hope was to unload the school upon the state. Doing so would tie in very nicely with the long- standing desire of Manhattanites to get the state university for themselves.24 Still, the college did have a building and some equipment. If the legislature accepted the offer, the taxpayers would be saved several thousand dollars. On the same day that the investi- gating committee made its report, Representative Grimes offered a substitute bill for William H. Smyth's original proposal. According to it, the legislature would accept the offer of the Bluemont trustees and the condition they imposed. On May 9 the house passed Grimes' bill by a vote of 43 to 19 and sent it to the senate.25 88 The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 In both houses debate over the bill to locate the university in Manhattan was joined with the discussions on bills to locate the state capital and the state penitentiary. Closely watching the whole struggle was Gov. Charles Robinson. Along with the Lawrence legislators and their supporters, Robinson wanted the capital for his town far more than he wanted the university, but if he could not get the one, he was determined to have the other. The Wyandotte consti- tution prescribed that a popular vote should determine the site of the capital. Both the Lawrence and the Topeka backers were seeking a law that would help their chances. Topekans were supporting a bill, already passed by the house, that called for elections on November 5, 1861, and annually thereafter, until some place received a majority of all votes cast. Lawrencians wanted a bill which would confine the second and subsequent elections to a runoff contest between the two places receiving the most ballots in the first vote; they were afraid that a scattering of ballots would hurt their chances. On May 23, as the result of a deal among the supporters of the various towns, the senate passed with a few minor amendments the house bill to locate the university at Manhattan, and approved the location of the penitentiary at Leavenworth. At the same time the senate amended the house bill to locate the capital to conform with the desires of the Lawrence men. 26 When the capital bill got back to the house, and then went to a joint conference commit- tee, there was a fierce debate over the senate amendments. It lasted until May 31, when the senate finally agreed to withdraw the changes and accept the original version. Meanwhile, the house had approved the slight amendments in the university bill and sent it to Governor Robinson. With the capital issue in doubt, with Robinson uncertain whether Lawrence would get any state institution at all, he saw no choice but to veto the measure. On May 28 he returned the bill with a message that was both brief an~ shrewd. The location of the univer- sity, he said, purported to be made because of the donation of Bluemont College. But if the University of Kansas was to be located for such a reason, "all portions" of the state should have notice and be allowed to make proposals. In addition, Robinson objected that the state had no money available for the university, and claimed that its location · was therefore prema- ture. "It will be time enough to lo~ate this Institution," he told the legislators, "when the endowment can be made available, and the question can have been fully canvassed before the people." The constitution required a two-thirds majority to override, but in spite of frantic efforts, the Manhattan men in the house could muster only 38 of the 58 votes, two less than they needed. 27 Between the meetings of the legislatures of 1861 and 1862, two events occurred which affected the university's location. On November 5, 1861, Kansans went to the polls to choose Topeka as the state capital. The decision meant that the Lawrence legislators and their allies would have to make a greater effort than before to capture the university, lest they get no state institution at all, and to post double guard to prevent Manhattan from winning the prize ~28 The second event, which proved even more important, originally had nothing to do with the university. In 1862 James H. Lane of Lawrence and his faction within the state ·Republican party tried to oust Gov. Charles Robinson and several other elected state officials from office. In a climax to a long-continuing struggle for power between the two men, Lane accused Robinson and his cohorts of conspiring to defraud the state of thousands of dollars worth of state bonds. In February the house of representatives voted to impeach Robinson and the others, and the trials before the senate were fixed for June. At once Lane 'began scheming to get a satisfactory majority in the senate. 29 Meanwhile, the house was once again . trying to decide which of the contending towns ought to get the state university. The chief competitors were now Manhattan, Lawrence, and Emporia. The Manhattan supporters had renewed their offer of a year before to donate the Bluemont College building and grounds to the state as the university site. In an effort to outbid them, a group of Lawrence men offered on behalf of the citizens $15,000 in cash-the money was a fund which Amos A. Lawrence had earlier donated to the Lawrence college project-20 acres of land for the campus, and $10,000 worth of real estate besides. Emporia's offer was merely 40 acres of land. After debate the house committee of the whole rejected the C. S. Griffin 89 Lawrence and · Emporia measures on February 17, and recommended the Manhattan bill. A day later the house approved it by the comfortable majority of 45 to 16.30 When the measure reached the senate, James H. Lane and his cronies were trying not only to round up enough votes to convict Robinson and the other officers, but to expel four pro-Robinson senators and replace them with Lane men. Lane's charge against the four was that they held Kansas elective office at the same time that they held federal military office, which violated the constitution. Because the senate was closely divided between the Lane and Robinson supporters, Lane had to proceed carefully. He and his faction managed to delay a vote on the university bill while they negotiated with the Manhattan backers. On February 21 one of the men charged with dual officeholding resigned, leaving three for Lane to vote out if he could. On the same day the senate committee on public institutions sent the university bill to the floor. As it happened, the three men whom Lane wanted expelled from the senate were also supporters of Manhattan, and so was the man who held the balance of power between the Lane and Robinson groups, Sen. M. L. Essick of Manhattan. Until Lane approached him with the obvious deal, Essick had been voting to keep the Robinson men in the senate. Lane told Essick that if he would change his vote, Lane could supply the votes of four or five senators for the Manhattan bill, or enough to secure passage. Essick at first rejected the proposal, then changed his mind. As an added payment for his anti-Robinson vote, however, he asked Lane's assurance that the four new men who appeared would also support the Manhattan bill. Lane apparently promised this, too, and Essick switched his vote.31 Unfortunately for the Manhattan men, Lane's promises were worthless. On February 27, before the expulsion of the Robinson men, the senate had defeated the Manhattan bill by a vote of 13 to 10. Four days later, however, with the new Lane men now present, the senate approved Essick's motion to reconsider. At that point the hopes of the Manhattan supporters were high, for the vote to reconsider had been 18 to 4, and three of the four new senators had voted with the majority. But immediately afterward, when the bill came up for a final vote, only one of them voted in favor, and the other three-John M. Rankin, C. S. Lambdin, and Thomas Roberts-voted against. The Manhattan bill lost, 12 to 11, in a stunning disappoint- ment to Essick and his friends. 32 For all that any man could tell in the spring of 1862, the Kansas legislators might go on arguing forever about which town should get the university. Because the state constitution and its framers contemplated only one university, to be located at some "eligible and central point," and because the Bluemont College trustees were willing to donate a building and land to the state free and dear, Manhattan was the logical place for the school. But the Kansas legislature was not operating according to the rules of logic. In 1863, moreover, when the legislature finally reached a decision on the university,s site, it was apparent that the lawmakers cared little for the constitution,s spirit. To end the competition and the squabbling, to placate the citizens of Manhattan, Lawrence, and Emporia alike, they divided the university into three parts and distributed them to the three towns. Securing the University of Kansas for Lawrence required the kinds of political acumen and sheer good luck that the town,s would-be· college builders had lacked in the past. For all the hopes of the early settlers, by 1863, the cause of higher education in Lawrence had come to nothing more than the foundation of an uncompleted college building on a few acres of ground atop Mount Oread and a large number of thwarted hopes. There was no superstruc- ture on the foundation, no equipment, no faculty, no students, no cash. In December, 1856, when the Lawrence leaders had organized their mass meeting in behalf of a private college which they hoped would become the state university, Amos A. Lawrence in Boston had stood ready to give well over $I 0,000 to the institution. It grieved him that he could not give enough money to construct a building, he said, but the amount could pay for regular expenses later on. The contribution that Lawrence proposed to make was in the form of two promis- sory notes for $I 0,000 and interest which he held on Lawrence University of Appleton, Wis., to which he had earlier loaned the sum. The college that Amos Lawrence had in mind, he told the Rev. Ephraim Nute, had two purposes. On the one hand, it would be a "center of 90 The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 learning." On the other, it would be a "monument to perpetuate the memory of those martyrs of Liberty who fell during the recent struggles. Beneath it their dust shall rest. In it shall burn the light of Liberty which shall never be extinguished until it illumines the whole continent. It shall be called the 'Free State College' & all the friends of Freedom shall be invited to lend it a helping hand." Five days later, Lawrence assured Nute that the trustees of the Appleton scho~l were sound men who would pay off the notes within two years. But he cautioned the minister and his friends not to do anything rash. They ought to have $100,000 in hand, Lawrence thought, before they started the college.33 Unfortunately, the other friends of freedom, when invited to extend a helping hand, proved unresponsive. Charles Robinson and other Lawrence men had hoped to divert to their college some of the funds raised in the East to relieve the suffering Free Starers, but they had no luck. Amos Lawrence tried to induce John Carter Brown of Providence, R. I., to put up money for another Brown University in Kansas, but failed. In January 1857, Robinson himself went east to attempt to separate Free-State sympathizers from their money, but came away emptyhanded. 34 With no college in prospect, in February 1857 Amos Lawrence withdrew his offer. Believing now that a system of common schools in Kansas was more desirable than a college or a uni- - versity "at this early day'' he wished to see his money used for them. If at some later time the government should provide for a university, he said, no private funds would be necessary any- way. Lawrence transferred the notes against Lawrence University to Charles Robinson and Samuel C. Pomeroy as trustees, and he added an additional $1,000 in the stock of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. The whole sum amounted to $12,696.14. Only the interest on the sum could be used. Half of it was to go to support common schools in Kansas settle- ments; the ot}ier half was to go to the support of Sunday schools and to supplying them with books. Only if Lawrence died without giving further orders could the money go to the Free- State college. And if Kansas entered the Union as a slave state, Robinson and Pomeroy were to return the money to Lawrence or his heirs.35 Throughout the rest of 1857 and during most of 1858, the cause of higher education in the town of Lawrence languished. A national financial panic in 1857 and a subsequent depres- sion made private money scarce, and congress granted no land. In addition, the trustees of Lawrence University in Wisconsin found it impossible to pay their debts, and the cause of common and Sunday schools in Kansas therefore suffered as well. Six years later, the notes were still unpaid, in spite of the trustees' earnest efforts to find the money.36 By the fall of 1858, however, the Lawrence promoters had hit upon a new scheme. If their projected college was a denominational institution, perhaps they could get money from churchmen and church governing bodies. To create a denominational college in Lawrence would be to follow the example of men elsewhere. The territorial legislatures of 1858 and 1859 had granted charters for a number of sectarian institutions-for Methodist schools in Palmyra and Atchison and Manhattan and Doniphan, for a Presbyterian university in Highland, for a Prot- estant Episcopal university in Wyandotte, and several more. After some discussion, the Lawrence boosters decided to throw in their lot with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, which was the so-called "Old School," or conservative wing of Presbyterianism. There was irony in the choice, for the Old School Presbyterians had great support in the South because of the long-standing refusal of their general assembly to condemn slavery.37 But vari- ous reports had reached Lawrence that money from the general assembly's board of education might be available. After routine passage by the legislature of 1859, on January 19, Gov. Samuel Medary signed a bill to charter the Lawrence University. Of its 21 trustees, 12 were to be appointed by the governing body of the Old School Presbyterian Church in Kansas. Its pur- pose was to educate youth in the "various branches of literature and science." To that end, the trustees ~ould offer instruction in the liberal arts and sciences, and they might also train their students in theology, medicine, and law. The trustees could award any degrees that they thought proper. Among the original trustees, named in the act, were Charles Robinson, Samuel C. Pomeroy, Charles H . Branscomb, Timothy Dwight Thacher, and several other leaders of the Lawrence community.38 C. S. Griffin 91 Within a few months, however, the trustees had become disenchanted with Old School Presbyterianism, and had conceived another plan. In the spring of 1859 the Kansas General Association of the Congregational Church met in Lawrence. Congregationalists had long de- sired a college of their own. In 1858 the association had chosen Topeka as its location, provid- ing that Topekans would provide enough land and money to subsidize it. But churchmen in Topeka had defaulted on their pledges and now the association put the college up for grabs. Lawrence men grabbed with a will. College enthusiasts promised $15,000 in cash-most of the sum was Amos Lawrence's gift-151 town lots in Lawrence and elsewhere, 170 acres of land adjoining the townsite, and 1,200 acres in other parts of the territory. The institution was to be called Monumental College as a monument to the Free-State cause and its partisans. The Congregational association was to choose the trustees. 39 Such offers confused the plans for the college. A Congregational school would require either a new charter or a change in the old one that only the legislature of 1860 could make. Congregationalists in Topeka claimed that the general association had cheated them of the college, and began to squabble with both the association and their coreligionists in Lawrence.40 Meanwhile, the Lawrence University trustees had scraped together enough money to build a foundation for the college structure. The more optimistic among them had hoped to open the school in April 1859, but that proved impossible; not until October did they lay the corner- stone. Into it went a copy of the Presbyterian Confession of Faith, for the trustees were still relying on hopes of Presbyterian aid. It never came. Hard times and the dubiousness of the whole enterprise made the general assembly's board of education unable and unwilling to send money to Lawrence. By the spring and summer of 1860, the Lawrence leaders had given up on the Presbyterians, and were scouring the East for Congregational dollars. None of the money that Amos A. Lawrence had contributed in 1857 to common schools and Sunday schools had been spent because the trustees of Lawrence University in Wisconsin had not paid it. In No- vember 1859, Amos Lawrence had assented to the use of the fund for a Congregational college. He himself was a "pretty rigid Episcopalian," he had said the year before, but he had no preju- dice against "any body of men who love the Lord Jesus Christ," which certainly included the Congregationalists. Promissory notes were not cash, however, and cash was scarce everywhere.41 In January 1861, the Lawrence leaders made their last gambit. Presbyterians and Congre- gationalists being equally poor, they . turned to the Episcopalians. Late in the month, Acting Gov. George M. Beebe signed a bill to charter the Lawrence University of Kansas. Half of its trustees were to be chosen by the standing committee of the Episcopal diocese of Kansas, on nomination by the bishop. Among the first trustees, · named in the act, were Charles Robinson, Charles E. Miner, the Rev. Charles Reynolds, and James Blood, all of whom had been trustees of the Lawrence University in its Presbyterian phase.42 It no longer mattered, however, which denomination backed the college. By 1861 Lawrence men believed ·either the state capitol or the state university a more attractive adornment than a private institution. When Kansas became a state, the college cause and the college building were no farther advanced than they had been in October 1859. Drought and depression in Kansas had made it impossible for the citizens to help themselves. During the next two years, the Episcopalians were unable to aid the institution. The Lawrencians had dreamed nobly, but their dreams had failed. Thus they turned to the last possible source of aid available-the state legislature. On January 14, 1863, Gov. Thomas Carney, the state's new chief executive, delivered his inaugural message. In it he urged the legislature to set about establishing a state university. Noting that the constitution required the institution, he called the attention of the legislators to the Morrill act, passed by congress the year before. The law gave to each state 30,000 acres of government land for each senator and representative to which the state was entitled under the apportionment of 1860. After selling the land, the states were to use the receipts as an investment fund whose returns were to support at least one college. The "leading object" of the colleges was to teach such branches of learning as were related to "agriculture and the mechanic arts," in such manner as the state legislatures might prescribe, in order to "promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and profes- 92 The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 sions in life." But the law also stated that "scientific and classical studies" might be taught in the colleges.43 Carney naturally assumed that the Kansas legislature would establish one insti- tution that would both take advantage of the Morrill act and fulfill the provision of the state constitution requiring a university. ''A wise combination of the interests of the State, and a just application of the means ~hich the General Government should grant," he told the lawmak- ers, "will enable us to do for education all that an intelligent people could ask or desire." It was for the legislature to "perfect this combination. "44 Carney's idea was not only natural but sensible. The Kansas constitution envisioned one university, which would include a department-that is, a school-of agriculture, and the gov- ernor was interpreting it in the only reasonable way. But the legislature of 1863 was divided into three parts on the question of where the school should stand, with the adherents of Manhattan, Lawrence, and Emporia still seeking satisfaction. Thanks in part to the Morrill act, it proved possible to please them all. Manhattan came first. On February 3 Carney signed a joint resolution of the legislature by which the state accepted the terms of the Morrill act and agreed to follow its provisions. Scenting a victory, the trustees of Bluemont College and their Manhattan backers had once more offered their land and building to the state, this time in return for the agricultural college. Between January 29 and February 7, a bill to locate the new institution on the Bluemont College grounds, introduced by Henry W Ide of Leavenworth, moved routinely through the house to unanimous passage. The senate debated the matter for a time, briefly entangling the bill with the contest between Emporia and Lawrence for the uni- versity, and on February 13, also approved it unanimously.45 While one part of the originally contemplated University of Kansas was heading west to Riley County, other parts of it headed east to Lawrence and south to Emporia. The climax of the two-year struggle to locate the institution was furious. By the end of January the house of representatives had a Lawrence bill and an Emporia bill to deal with. The former was intro- duced by George Ford of Douglas County, the latter by Charles V. Eskridge of Emporia. Lawrence was now offering less than it had in 1862; the $15,000 Lawrence fund and the 20 acres of land were in the bill, but not the $10,000 worth of land. Emporia, by contrast, had increased hs promised gift from 40 to 80 acres. Despite the more attractive terms of the Lawrence proposal, on January 31, the house committee on public institutions, whose mem- bers very likely knew that the Lawrence town fathers did not have the $15,000 actually in hand, recommended the rejection of the Lawrence bill and the passage of the Emporia mea- sure. This was a blow to the Lawrence hopes, but during the next ten days the city's support- ers formed a massive lobby to secure passage despite the committee's disapproval. Their most effective inducement to the legislators, of course, was the promised $15,000. After the contest was over and the Lawrence men were victorious, Charles Robinson told Am.os Lawrence that the fund was chiefly responsible for the triumph. "It was with great difficulty that the' location was secured here," Robinson wrote, "and nothing saved us but the inducement of your fund."46 Possibly Robinson was correct. But if several of his contemporaries were also correct, there was political jobbery involved as well. In a later year, a brother of one of the Lawrence lobby- ists recalled that the Lawrence men had bought as many votes as they could at the going rate of around $5 apiece to get the university. William Miller claimed that his brother Josiah, the Lawrence postmaster, had actually saved the institution for his own town when he accidentally discovered two unbribed members of the house and paid for their ballots with $4 that he happened to have in his pocket at the time. Charles V. Eskridge stated in the house on Febru- ary 10 that on the streets of Topeka men were talking about the use of "corrupt means" to procure passage of the Lawrence bill, and demanded an investigation. In the absence of any specific charges, however, the house refused to act. 47 At the same time, rumors were common in Topeka that the Lawrence men had made a deal for an exchange of votes with men inter- ested in securing the state insane asylum for Osawatomie in Miami County, and that they had done the same thing with representatives of the northern tier of Kansas counties who desired a railroad to connect with the great transcontinental line. The Pacific railroad bill which con- gress had passed in 1862 included a section-the so-called "Henderson Amendment" -which C. S. Griffin 93 allowed the Kansas legislature to decide whether the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad of Missouri might lay track west through Kansas from St. Joseph, ultimately to join with the main line which moved west from Omaha. The amendment was the product of a struggle for economic supremacy between St. Joseph and Atchison. If the state legislature forbade the ex- tension of the Hannibal and St. Joseph road, Atchison would win a notable victory, for the congressional act authorized the Hannibal and St. Joseph to build through that city. In the absence of a railroad west from St. Joseph, Atchison might well become the railroad hub of the region. Naturally enough, the northern counties of Kansas wanted a railroad west from St. Joseph very badly indeed.48 It was impossible to say, however, exactly what factors influenced the individual members of the house in the maneuvering which led to Emporia's defeat and Lawrence's victory. After several days of debate and delay, the house took up Eskridge's bill on February 9 in the com- mittee of the whole. After hours of bitter argument, the house found itself evenly divided. In the course of debate, the Lawrence supporters, led by James S. Emery, George Ford, and William Foster, managed to get the bill amended to provide for the university's location at Lawrence instead of Emporia, providing that Lawrence gave $15,000 and 40 acres of land to the state in return. When the amended measure came to a vote in the committee of the whole, the house was tied, 33 to 33. Luckily for Lawrence, Rep. Edward Russell of Doniphan County was speaker pro tempe, and he cast his tie-breaking ballot for Lawrence. Having rec- ommended the amended bill for passage, . the committee of the whole rose, the house beat down a motion to adjourn by a vote of 37 to 36, and by a vote of 38 to 35 ordered the bill engrossed for a third reading and final action. On February 10 the measure passed the house, 38 to 32. The final balloting gave credibility to the idea of a deal between the Lawrence backers and the supporters of the northern railroad line. Every one of the 11 representatives from Doniphan, Brown, Nemaha, Marshall, and Washington Counties-the extreme northern tier-favored the measure; the role played by Representative Russell was obviously crucial. All except seven of the other 27 affirmative votes came from the two eastern tiers of counties south of the Kansas River. The Lawrence promoters won the votes of all the representatives from Douglas, Franklin, Miami, Anderson, Linn, and Allen Counties. In addition they picked up votes from two of the three representatives from Johnson County, and one of the three from Bourbon County. Beyond those, there were four votes from Leavenworth County, two from Jefferson County, and one from Osage County. The opposing votes came in part from Atchison and Leavenworth Counties to the north and east of Lawrence, but mainly from the counties lying to the west and southwest, whose representatives saw no particular advantage in locating the university in Lawrence.49 The senate proved to be far more hospitable to the Lawrence bill than the house had been. On February 13 its committee on public institutions and buildings recommended the measure for passage. On the 17th it survived its crucial test. In a last effort, Sen. Perry B. Maxson of Lyon County moved to strike out all of the bill after the enacting clause and to substitute the original Emporia measure, but the senate defeated his proposal decisively, 18 to 7. The next day the senate passed the Lawrence bill, 19 to 4. On February 20 Governor Carney signed it. so If the new act was an obvious victory for Lawrence, it was not necessarily a triumph for the university itsel£ Now that both Manhattanites and Lawrencians had been satisfied in their desires for state institutions, there seemed to be no reason not to satisfy Emporia as well. On February 19 Representative Eskridge introduced a bill to establish, locate, and endow a state normal school at Emporia. The bill passed both houses easily; early in March, Governor Carney obligingly signed it, too.SI Kansas now had three state institutions of learning, two of which had been unforeseen until 1863. Both the agricultural college and the state normal school were properly parts of the university. If the university fulfilled the provisions of the state con- stitution, Kansas would have two agricultural schools and two normal schools. There might be a higher wisdom at work amid the local rivalries and the dismemberment of the university, but it was hard to discover. 94 The Universiry of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 According to the university law, Governor Carney was to appoint three commissioners to locate the institution at "some eligible point" in or near Lawrence on a site of not less than 40 acres of land. In addition the citizens of Lawrence were to raise $15,000 for an endowment fund which they had to deposit with the state treasurer within six months after the 40-acre site had been given to the state. Failing the deposit of the money, Emporia instead of Lawrence would get the university, providing that its citizens contributed 80 acres of land.52 Carney appointed Simeon M. Thorp and Josiah Miller of Lawrence and Isaac T. Goodnow of Manhattan as the commissioners. Thorp had just completed a year's term as state superin- tendent of public instruction; Goodnow, who had once been principal of Bluemont College, was his successor. Miller was the Lawrence postmaster. 53 On their first official inspection of possible sites in and around Lawrence, the three men canvassed a number of places, but none of the others was as attractive as the obvious one atop the highest part of Mount Oread. The land belonged to Charles and Sara Robinson. However much the Robinsons' desired a college or university in Lawrence, they were not at all willing to donate 40 acres to the state. In March and April the commissioners, the Robinsons, and the Lawrence city council worked out a scheme by which everyone seemed to gain something. Charles and Sara had originally been willing to sell the 40 acres for $2,000. The logical purchaser would have been the city itself or a group of citizens who would have given the land to the state. But surplus capital both public and private was hard to find. A subscription drive having failed to raise all the money, the Robinsons and the city council arranged two swaps and a payment in cash. In return for 22-1/4 acres, Charles Robinson received half a block of land from the city. Sara yielded 17-3/4 acres for $600 and 10 acres of land on another part of Mount Oread. With these arrangements perfected, Charles and Sara bestowed the 40 acres directly on the state.54 After the site had been· chosen, the Lawrence residents had until November 1, 1863, to raise $15,000. On February 22, two days after Governor Carney signed the Lawrence bill, Charles Robinson wrote to Amos A. Lawrence to ask permission to use the money owed by Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., to secure the state university. Robinson had already told the citizens that he believed that Amos Lawrence would consent; as a result, Robinson wrote, they· were relying on his approval. Amos Lawrence agreed at once, and even offered to bring whatever pressure he could on his Wisconsin debtors to pay up. In spite of their desire to honor their obligations, however, the Lawrence University trustees simply could not do so. 55 Because it was utterly impossible to raise the money in Lawrence, Kan.-especially after William Clarke Quantrill's devastating raid on August 21-Robinson and his colleagues asked Lawrence for a gift of $15,000. In return for it, they promised, they would surrender the notes they held. This was boldness and it was partially successful. Lawrence . agreed to furnish 10,000 in cash, if the Lawrence citizens would raise the rest. With November 1 drawing ever closer, there were public spirited men ready enough to make pledges, but the law demanded cash. After frantic search, the Lawrence leaders found that Governor Carney would advance the money from the personal wealth that he had accumulated as a wholesale grocer in Leavenworth. He took the notes of the citizens for $5,000, and thus the Lawrence men scraped in under the deadline. On November 2 Carney formally announced that Lawrence had met the requirements made by the legislature and that the university was in Lawrence to stay.56 Having been extremely generous, Carney and his debtors then worked carefully to get their money back from the state. In his message to the legislature of 1864, the governor asked the lawmakers to reimburse the Lawrence citizens for the money they had in effect just con- tributed. His justification was that the people of Lawrence had lost much in Quantrill's raid through no fault of their own. As he contemplated their sufferings and pleaded on their be- half, he grew almost maudlin. Their $5,000 gift had been "noble as well as generous." In a "fell hour," he said, "they lost, as it were, their all. Rebel assassins did this fatal work. Where, then, the patriot heart in the State, that would not say promptly, 'Return to these public- spirited men the generous gift, which, when wealthy, they promised, and which promise, when poor, they fulfilled?' Where the legislator, knowing these facts so honorable to them and to humanity itself, who would hesitate in meeting this wish of the people, and of doing a duty which the State owes to herself?"57 C. S. Griffin 95 There were patriot hearts aplenty among the leg- islators. The relief bill, introduced by Rep. James S. Emery of Lawrence, passed the house, 55 to 0, and the senate, 16 to 0. In relieving the Lawrence citizens of their indebtedness, and Carney of his fear that be might go unpaid, however, the legislature put yet an- other burden on the future University of Kansas. For Emery's bill took the money from the endowment fund itself, reducing it by slightly over $5,000. The money had made a swing from Carney to the Lawrence citizens to the state to the Lawrence citi- zens and back to Carney. Before the university opened-before it had a charter, for that matter- the institution was already over $5,000 poorer than it should have been. 58 But at least and at last, the University of Kansas had a home. The legislature of 1864 would also give it a form by passing a charter law which Governor Carney signed on March 1. As the first stage in the university's history ended, how- ever, and the next stage began, the institution was already different from the one that the framers of the Wyandotte constitution and many sympathetic Kansans had expected. Thanks to the existence of the schools at Manhattan and Emporia, there was a real doubt that the university would ever contain an agricultural school and a normal school as the constitution required. Although Lawrence might be an "eligible" point for the university's location, it was anything but a "central" point in the state as a whole. Precisely because of its location in Lawrence, the university's endowment fund was a third smaller than the original location law required. Neither the Lawrence citizens nor the state legislature had committed themselves to any material assistance. Kansans who were sincerely interested in the cause of state-supported higher education could only hope that the future would be happier than the past. Notes 1. For these and similar expressions of the Free-State legend, see Hannah Oliver, speech on September 30, 1926, "Annual Freshman Induction Ceremony. Speeches on the History of Kansas University by Hannah Oliver, Graduate of the Class of 1874, Professor Emeritus of Latin" Mss, Watson Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans.; "When You Come to K-U." Bulletin of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, 23 (May 15, 1922): 11; Scott Hopkins, ''Address on Behalf of the Board of Regents by Hon. Scott Hopkins," The Graduate Magaz ine of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, 1 (November, 1902): 56; Franklin D. Murphy, Statement by Franklin D. Murphy on the Occasion of His Inauguration as the Ninth Chancellor of the University of Kansas, September 17, 1951 (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas, 1951), 3, 4. 2. Journal of the Council of the Territory of Kansas, at Their First Session (Shawnee Manual Labor School, Kansas territory, John T. Brady, Public Printer, 1855), 18. 3. Donald G . Tewksbury, The Founding of American Colleges and Universities Before the Civil War: With Particular Reference to the Religious Influences Bearing Upon the College Movement (New York: Bureau of Publications of Columbia University Teachers College, 1932), 167, 178, 192, 195, 198-200, 202, 203. 4. The Statutes of the Territory of Kansas; Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly, One Thousand E ight Hundred and Fifty-Jive (Shawnee Manual Labor School, Kansas Territory, John T. Brady, Public Printer, 1855), 931-36. 5. "Constitution of the State of Kansas," Kansas Free State, Lawrence, Kans., November 26, 1855. 6. Samuel A. Johnson, The Battle Cry of Freedom: The New England Emigrant Aid Company in the Kansas Crusade (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Press, 1954), 17, 33; Amos A. Lawrence to Charles Robinson, No- vember, 1854, William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888), 115, 116; Frank E. Melvin to Ernest H. Lindley, October 28, 1938, "Chancellor's Papers," University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans. 7. Frank W. Blackmar, Higher Education in Kansas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), 17. 8. "Public Schools," Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kans., December 13, 1856; William F. M. Arny to John W . Geary, December 8, 1886, ibid., December 20, 1856. 9. Ibid., January 3, 1857. 10. Ibid., January 31, 1857; "The Topeka Movement," Kansas Historical Collections 13 (1913-1914): 245, 246, 249. While in Lawrence in 1867, Alexander Gardner photographed the original building, Old North Collrgr, of the University of Kansas. Thr town of Lawrmcr and thr Kansas Rivrr arr in the background. 96 The University of Kansas and the Years of Frustration, 1854-1864 11. John W. Geary to William F. M. Arny, December 24, 1856, Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kans., January 3, 1857; Journal of the Council of the Territory of Kansas, at Their Second Session,. Begun and Held at the City of Lecompton, on the Second Monday (12th) of January, A. D. 1857 (Lecompton, Kans.: R. H. Bennett, Public Printer, 1857), 17. 12. Ibid., 241;Journal ofthe House of Representatives ofthe Territory of Kansas, Begun and Held at the City of Lecompton, on the Second Monday (12th) of January,.1857 (Lecompton, Kans.: R. H. Bennett, Public Printer 1857), 193; Laws of the Territory of Kansas, Passed at the Second Session of the General Legislative Assembly, Begun and Held at the City of Lecompton, on the Second Monday (12th) of January, A.D. 1857 (Lecompton, Kans.: R.H. Bennett, Public Printer, 1857), 112, 113. 13. Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kans., June 6, 1857. 14. Daniel W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas(Topeka, Kans.: Kansas Publishing House, 1875), 143, 148. 15. Ibid., 176. 16. Harry G. Larimer (comp.), Kansas Constitutional Convention: A Reprint of the Proceedings of the Convention Which Framed the Constitution of Kansas at Wyandotte in July, 1859. Also the Constitution Annotated to Date, Historical Sketches, Etc. (Topeka, Kans.: Kansas Printing Plant, 1920), 14, 170, 171. 17. Ibid., 172, 173. 18. Ibid., 173, 174. 19. Ibid., 135-37. 20. Ibid., 192, 193. 21. Ibid., 583, 584. 22. G. Raymond Gaeddert, The Birth of Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas, 1940), 116; State of Kansas, HouseJournal, 1861, 95, 112, 113, 151, 178, 179. 23. Ibid., 1861, 271-73. 24. Julius T. Willard, History of the Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (Manhattan, Kans.: Kansas State College Press, 1940), 11, 12;John D. Walters, History ofthe Kansas State Agricultural College (Manhattan, 1909), 18. 25. State of Kansas, House Journal, 1861, 274, 296, 316, 349, 354, 355. 26. Gaeddert, Birth of Kansas, 117; State of Kansas, Senate Journal, 1861, 287-93. 27. Gaeddert, Birth of Kansas, 117, 118; State of Kansas, HouseJournal, 1861, 460, 494, 509, 510, 539. 28. Gaeddert, Birth of Kansas, 118. 29. Ibid., 178, 179. 30. H.B. 32, Legislature of 1862, ''An Act to Locate the State University," in letter from Solon 0. Thacher, S. N. Simpson, and others to the legislature of the state of Kansas, January 27, 1862, and H. B. 69, legislature of 1862, "An Act Locating the State University,'' "Legislative Collection," Kansas State Historical Society Ar- chives, Topeka, Kans.; State of Kansas, House Journal, 1862, 69, 82, 97, 107, 119, 170, 237, 271, 276. 31. Gaeddert, Birth of Kansas, 120, 121, 179-82. 32. State of Kansas, Senate Journal, 1862, 125, 127, 144, 149, 150, 155, 158, 191, 192. 33. Amos A. Lawrence to Ephraim Nute December 6, 21, 1856 (copies), "Charles Robinson Papers," Watson Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans. 34. Amos A. Lawrence to John Carter Brown, January 10, 1857 (copy), "Copies of Letters of Amos A. Lawrence about Kansas Affairs and to Correspondents in Kansas: From June 10, 1854 to August 10, 1861; Presented to the Kansas State Historical Society by Mrs. Sarah E. Lawrence, September 17, 1888," typewritten ms, Kansas State Historical Society; Charles Robinson to Sara Robinson, January 11, 1857, "Charles Robinson Papers," Kansas State Historical Society. 35. Amos A. Lawrence to Charles Robinson and Samuel C. Pomeroy, February 14, 1857, "Robinson Papers," Watson Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans. 36. R. Z. Mason to Charles Robinson, October 28, 1862, and Charles Robinson to Amos A. Lawrence, March 17, 1863 (copy), ibid. 37. Robert E. Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1895), 136, 137. 38. Private Laws of the Territory of Kansas, Passed at the Fifth Session of the Legislative Assembly; Begun at the City of Lecompton, on the 1st Monday of Jan'y, 1859 and Held and Concluded at the City of Lawrence (Lawrence, Kans.: Herald of Freedom Steam Press, 1859), 81-85. 39. Charles M. Correll, A Century of Congregationalism in Kansas 1854-1954 (Topeka, Kans.: The Kansas Congre- gational and Christian Conference, 1953), 75, 76. 40. Ibid., 76. 41. Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, October 18, 1859; Wilson Sterling, "Historical Sketch of the University of Kan- sas," Wilson Sterling, ed., Quarter-Centennial History of the University of Kansas, 1866-1891. With Portraits of Chancellors (Topeka, Kans.: George W. Crane & Co., 1891), 53, 55, 56; Amos A. Lawrence to Charles Robinson, November 25, 1859, and S. M. Simpson to Charles Robinson, January 16, 1860, "Robinson Papers," Watson Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans.; Amos A. Lawrence to S. M. Simpson, November 9, 1858 (copy), "Copies of Letters of Amos A. Lawrence," Kansas State Historical Society. 42. Private Laws Passed by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Kansas, far the Year 1861: Commenced at the City of Lecompton January Seventh, and Adjourned to and Concluded at the City of Lawrence (Lawrence, Kans.: Sam. A. Medary, Public Printer, 1861), 29-32. C. S. Griffin 97 43. United States Statutes at Large, vol. 12, 503, 504. 44. Thomas Carney, "Inaugural Message of Gov. Thomas Carney," State of Kansas, Pub. Documents, 1863, 14. 45. State of Kansas, House journal, 1863, 145, 148, 162, 213, 216; State of Kansas, Senate journal, 1863, 133, 140, 142, 158, 159, 170-72; State of Kansas, General Laws, 1863, 10-12. 46. H. B. 81, Legislature of 1863, ''An Act to Locate the State University," and H. B. 122, Legislature of 1863, ''An Act to Locate the State University at Emporia," "Legislative Collection," Kansas State Historical Society Archives; State of Kansas, House journal, 1863, 82, 92, 119, 149, 162; Charles Robinson to Amos A. Lawrence, February 22, 1863 (copy), "Robinson Papers," Watson Library, University of Kansas. 47. "Notes on Father's Talk to Miss Minnie Moodie," January 29, 1917, in account taken down by Mrs. E. M. Owen, Lawrence, from her father William Miller, brother of Josiah Miller, "Josiah and William Miller Pa- pers," Watson Library, University of Kansas; State of Kansas, House journal, 1863, 227, 237, 238. 48. George L. Anderson, ''Atchison and the Central Branch Country, 1865-1874," Kansas Historical Quarterly, 28 (spring 1962): 3, 10; Gaeddert, Birth of Kansas, 111, 112, 121; Daily Conservative, Leavenworth, February 12, March 3, 1863. 49. State of Kansas, House journal, 1863, 82, 92, 119, 149, 162, 213, 222-24, 230, 366. 50. State of Kansas, Senate journal, 1863, 148-50, 170, 173, 174, 191, 192, 199; State of Kansas, General Laws, 1863, 115, 116. 51. State of Kansas, House journal, 1863, 292; State of Kansas, General Laws, 1863, 93.,.-95. 52. Ibid., 115, 116. 53. Sterling, "Historical Sketch," Quarter-Centennial History, 69; Willard, History of the Kansas State College, 12; John D. Walters, "The Kansas State Agricultural College," Kansas Historical Collections, 7 (1901-1902): 170n.; "Report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction," State of Kansas, Pub. Documents, 1863, passim. 54. M. W. Sterling, "Early K. U. Finance," Graduate Magazine 11 (April 1913): 204, 205; Frank W. Blackmar, The Life of Charles Robinson, the First State Governor of Kansas (Topeka, Kans.: Crane and Company, 1902), 343, 344; Isaac T. Goodnow, Josiah Miller, and Simeon M. Thorp to Thomas Carney, April 30, 1866, and accom- panying documents, Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Locate Permanently the State University, With Ac- companying Papers (n. p., n. d.), 3-9. 55. Charles Robinson to Amos A. Lawrence, February 22, March 17, 1863 (copies), R. Z. Mason to Charles Robinson, March 30, 1863, "Robinson Papers," Watson Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans. 56. Sterling, "Historical Sketch," Quarter-Centennial History, 72. 57. State of Kansas, House Journal, 1864, 30, 31. 58. H. B. 108, Legislature of 1864, ''An Act Relating to the Endowment Fund of the State University," "Legisla- tive Collection," Kansas State Historical Society Archives; State of Kansas, House journal, 1864, 123, 264, 265; State of Kansas, Senate Journal, 1864, 213; State of Kansas, Laws of the State, 1864, 194. Charting a Course: Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1872 I. E. Quastler The Kansas Territory opened to settlement in 1854 and immediately witnessed a rapid influx of farmers. This expanding rural population was served by a number of small Missouri River frontier towns such as the older settlements of Kansas City and St. Joseph in Missouri and the new communities of Atchison and Leavenworth in Kansas. Another newly founded Kansas town that provided services to a surrounding rural population was Lawrence, the home of many free-state leaders, located on the Kansas River about thirty-three miles west of its confluence with the Missouri. 1 Despite the small populations of some of these growing places, within a short time their civic leaders began to develop plans designed to make their respective towns the future regional metropolis. Since the nearest metropolitan center, St. Louis, was about 250 miles away, residents anticipated that a major city soon would develop in the region. They also recognized that only one of the contenders for regional urban dominance could succeed. Expanded trade, lower per capita taxes, and especially rapidly increasing land values were among the expected benefits of success. In each community, leadership was vested in a small number of politicians, businessmen, and professionals. Their plans for inducing urban growth were promulgated through community newspapers, the owners and editors of which also tended to belong to the urban leadership. In the s~cond half of the nineteenth century in this part of the United States, strategies for achieving urban leadership were based primarily on plans to make the city the regional railroad center. An emphasis on a railroad strategy was logical since frequent low water levels in summer, cold winters, and a swift current that impeded up- river traffic made transportation on the Missouri River (the region's main waterway) unreliable, seasonal, and slow. Therefore urban leaders developed plans for a system of rail lines to tie their communities to important traffic sources, such as rich farmlands and major cities. This strategy, if successful, would make the city the regional center for traffic interchange between railroads and could attract such labor-intensive activities as railroad shops and offices. Major rail centers also obtained low rates for long-distance freight and therefore could attract wholesalers and large manufacturers. Civic leaders did not command enough capital to build the railroads themselves, and so they did what they could by securing the necessary charters, obtaining federal and local aid, and trying to attract capitalists who would undertake construction. Urban boosters sought financiers who supported their railroad plans, but they always faced the risk (and perhaps the inevitability) that the two groups' interests would soon diverge. This study focuses on the railroad strategy of the leadership of one of these towns, Lawrence, and deals with the railroad rivalry between Lawrence and the eventual winner of the competition, Kansas City. This case is noteworthy as an example of almost total failure of community railroad policy. In support of their civic leaders' plans, voters in Lawrence and surrounding Douglas County invested more than nine hundred thousand dollars in several railroads, none of which achieved the advantages claimed for them. This is not to imply that the leaders' plans were impossible I. E. Quastler, "'Charting a Course' Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1872," Kansas History 18, no. 1 (spring 1995): 18-33. Reprinted with permission of Kansas History and I. E. Quastler. 99 100 Charting a Course: Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1872 or that residents were illogical in pursuing them. As historian Albert Fishlow has said, not to have tried would have meant giving up any possibility of large profits; that is, it would have involved almost infinite opportunity costs. With more timely and complete plans, herculean efforts, and a more fortuitous combination of circumstances, Lawrence conceivably could have become the regional rail center and metropolis.2 This study illustrates two important themes of current research in western history. One is that the West was not an isolated frontier, and that western development can only be under- stood in its relationship to a larger national and international economy anchored in the East and in Europe. Thus a chronic shortage of capital in the West made it necessary to depend on eastern and European financial markets as well as on federal aid in the form of land and financial subsidies. As historian Richard White has pointed out, railroads were the first west- ern enterprises that required substantial capital. Because the main sources of capital were in the seaboard cities, eastern financiers and lawmakers could make or break western plans for development. Such western dependence inevitably led to resentment of eastern power and con- trol. A second somewhat related theme focuses on: the important role of cities in the develop- ment of the West. Historian William Cronon has shown that Chicago was the main western outpost for eastern control of the economic development of the nation's interior; in the pro- cess, the city became the main gateway linking the West with the seaboard economic. core. Chicago's growing influence in Kansas during 1854-1872 played an important role in the outcome of the urban rivalry involving Lawrence. The same theme is illustrated at a local scale by Lawrence's impact on the regional rail network. This impact shows that even the losers in the urban competition can have longer-run economic impacts. The general theme of the los- ers' influences on western development merits further investigation.3 Several aspects of the locations of Lawrence and Kansas City form important background elements to this study. One of these is the location of these communities relative to the area's major streams, the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. Lawrence is on the south bank of the Kansas River, approximately thirty-five miles southwest of Kansas City. Here the river is near its south- ernmost point; the site is twelve miles south of the latitude of downtown Kansas City. There- fore Lawrence was closer than Kansas City to what its leaders considered the most promising nearby agricultural hinterland, "southern Kansas"; during 1854-1872 that term referred to all of the area south of the Kansas River. Kansas City is on the south side of the Missouri River, just east of its confluence with the Kansas where the river changes direction from northwest- southeast to largely east-west. Therefore Kansas City was located where the Missouri River was closest to southern Kansas and at a favorable place to conduct trade with the Southwest. Both Lawrence and Kansas City were especially interested in controlling the trade with these two developing regions; most of the area north of the Kansas River was firmly in the orbits of Leavenworth, Atchison, and St. Joseph. Another consideration was the location of the cities relative to the expanding rail net- works of Chicago and St. Louis. In 1854 two major railroads were under construction west- ward across Missouri. North of the Missouri River was the standard-gauge (a distance of 4' 8.5'' between the rails) Hannibal and St. Joseph (H&StJ, later the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy), a company soon identified with the system of railroads radiating from Chicago. To the south was the broad-gauge (5.5') Pacific Railroad of Missouri (hereafter referred to by its later and more familiar name, the Missouri Pacific) extending westward from St. Louis. As early as the mid-1850s some strategists in the region became aware that the first city to gain rail access to both Chicago and St. Louis would have an initial advantage difficult for rivals to overcome. Since Kansas City and Lawrence were south of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, it was unnecessary for a railroad from St. Louis to either city to cross a major stream. A line from Chicago to Kansas City would cross only one large river, the Missouri, while a direct railroad from Chicago to Lawrence would cross both the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. Because large bridges were a major expense, the number of such structures required was of some conse- quence in railroad locational strategy. 4 I. E. Quastler 101 In t_he ensuing rivalry, Kansas City gained some advantage from its location within Mis- souri, for in the 1850s and 1860s the state provided aid to several railroads. As residents of Missouri, Kansas Citians could and did use the political process to try to obtain a railroad. At the same time, Kansas was still a thinly populated territory, and as such it could not have afforded a railroad subsidy program. This disadvantage for Lawrence was reinforced by its location west of Kansas City, and therefore farther from an existing railroad.5 Lawrence was further handicapped by not being located on the Missouri River. Although this river initially was important in moving heavy goods in the region, it required major im- provements before it could become a reliable traffic artery, and early railroads were able to divert substantial traffic. Therefore the main longer-run disadvantage for Lawrence did not involve the river's transportation role, but was more subtle. 6 During 18 54-1872 American railroad companies were small relative to the systems that developed later in the century. Thus the longer distance movement of freight and passengers usually required two or more railroads. Westward from Chicago, for example, one set of rail- roads went as far as the Mississippi River, with another group of companies crossing Iowa to the Missouri River, and a third set operating beyond that waterway. As the foregoing demon- strates, major rivers often were used to separate groups of railroads; in part, such separation was maintained to control competition within the industry. This practice was a convention, not a necessity, but quite possibly the Missouri River along the Kansas-Missouri border also would be used as a boundary separating the railroads to the east and west of it, with river cities acting as traffic-interchange points. Therefore a city on the Missouri River had an inher- ent advantage in the struggle to become the leading regional rail center.7 Before the Civil War it often was assumed in Kansas and Missouri that for many decades only one trunk line would run to the Pacific, and it would follow the so-called central route westward from Baltimore and St. Louis. This location was considered likely because it was the only alignment that could serve both North and South, thereby satisfying these strongly con- flicting sectional interests. Within Missouri it would follow the Missouri Pacific from St. Louis to the Kansas border; perhaps another railroad would continue westward via the "natural path" up the Kansas River valley. Given these plans, both Lawrence and Kansas City quite possibly would be on this prospective trunk route, with attendant urban-growth implications. 8 The projected Pacific railroad prompted the first Lawrence newspaper article to discuss possible rail connections for the city. This piece appeared in the January 10, 1855, issue of the Kansas Tribune, when Lawrence was less than a year old and still more than two hundred miles from the nearest railhead. The editor pointed out that a projected railroad to the Pacific probably would follow the south side of the Kansas River and therefore would serve Lawrence. The same issue noted that the Hannibal and St. Joseph and the Missouri Pacific were under construction toward the Kansas border. The editor called for a citizens' meeting to determine which company offered the better prospects for Lawrence, a suggestion that went unheeded. Despite such articles, and partly because much community energy was going into the slavery issue, throughout the pre-Civil War period Lawrence lagged far behind Kansas City in taking steps to attract railroads. Between 1855 and 1860 Kansas Citians, who consciously tried not to let partisan politics interfere with city business, developed a well-articulated rail- road master plan designed to make their city the regional metropolis. Voters there also passed a number of bond issues in support of projected railroads; for example, in 1857 and 1859 they approved aid to the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Importantly because of such support, by 1858 Missouri Pacific officials seemed to have assured civic leaders that they would build to Kansas City. As early as 1856 Kansas Citians also had recognized the strategic importance of obtaining a second, competing line to Chicago. In 1859 a company was organized to build such a connection northward to the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad at Cameron, Missouri, and in April 1860 voters approved two hundred thousand dollars to aid this project. By that October a contract providing for Hannibal and St. Joseph support to the proposed line was signed. Because of financial difficulties and the advent of war, work was suspended in 1861 after about two-thirds of the roadbed had been completed. The contract expired in 1862, and without maintenance the roadbed deteriorated.9 102 Charting a Course: Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1872 Figure I. Major railroads in eastern Kansas, June 1866. LEGEND H&StJ-Hannibal & St. Joseph UPEO-Union Pacific. Eastern Division MP-Missouri Pacific (Pacific Railroad of Missouri) Railroad in Existence Railroads Planned or Under Construction In sharp contrast, by 1860 Lawrence's leadership had developed no railroad plan, had placed no propositions for aid before the voters, and had convinced no railroads to build to their city. This was partly because, before 1857, Lawrence citizens generally assumed that a city on the Missouri River would become the regional metropolis. For example, in 1855 a local newspaper identified Kansas City as the great regional commercial mart, and the editor thought that, because of its locational advantages, it would remain so for years. This percep- tion was reinforced by the discovery that commercial navigation on the Kansas River was impractical. It also was understandable when the town's size is considered; in 1860 Lawrence had only 1,650 people, compared with about 4,400 in Kansas City and 7,400 in Leavenworth. 10 In mid-1857 local attention to railroads began to increase. An editorial in July noted that Lawrence was starting to feel a need for railroads and that Kansas' trunk lines eventually would diverge from St. Joseph. This was a logical assumption as that city soon would become the western terminus of the Hannibal and St. Joseph, which was well ahead of its rival in com- pleting a line across Missouri. The same editor noted that while other Kansas towns were making railroad plans, Lawrence was inactive. Nevertheless, that month the city had its first railroad meeting to discuss a potential line from Chicago to Santa Fe, New Mexico, via Lawrence. 11 Local activity picked up considerably in 1858 and 1859 when Kansas experienced a rail- road boom in the form of a proliferation of charters. Among these was a charter for the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Ft. Gibson Railroad (LL&FtG), a company meant to link Lawrence (and Leavenworth) with southern Kansas and eventually with a port on the Gulf of Mexico. Initially its offices were in Leavenworth, then in Prairie City (near Baldwin City), but in 1859 they were moved to Lawrence, where they stayed for many years. The main Kansas railroad event of 1858 was a large meeting in Wyandotte (later a part of Kansas City, Kansas), where delegates devised plans for a system of Kansas railroads. One recommended line was to run from Wyandotte up the Kansas River valley via Lawrence, while another would follow the route planned for the LL&FtG. Lawrence editorials in July and September 1859 were highly f ?:Kansas . ~ i / I City critical of the lack of local action on railroads as com- pared with such rivals as Leavenworth, Atchison, and Wyandotte. As if to highlight that point, by year's end a Leavenworth-Lawrence survey had almost been completed for the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad, a Leavenworth project. 12 \lo\ // : .,,Jf----1' a // J "' I -- • Not until 1860 were there signs that the Lawrence leadership would develop a railroad plan. That same year the notion of a direct railroad westward from Pleasant Hill, Missouri (thirty miles southeast of Kansas City), to Lawrence first appeared in the community press. It was noted that if the Missouri Pacific were built to Kansas City, it would turn northwestward at Pleasant Hill (Fig. 1). Alternatively, it could continue directly west, bypass- ing Kansas City and perhaps striking the Kansas River valley near Lawrence. Such a route was said to be shorter by fifteen to twenty miles compared with a line via Kan- sas City. Lawrence leaders argued that this was important, for in the long run the shortest route inevitably would attract the bulk of the traffic. As envisioned, this proposed line would form a part of the main transcontinental route to California, with Lawrence occupying a key location. This proposal acted as a catalyst in Lawrence. It appears that, for the first time, civic leaders could envision their city as the regional rail center and metropolis. Soon edito- ·~ "' I - - - • 1'1athe I _rf. / f-- . ~'f"' · I S" I ---i.. __ '\O"'"' I J? I ! - -~"' : ~ I L Pleasant ~ill I ~I ~:I~ "' ~ .~ I l <'1~-0ttaw:t ~ .~ ~ 1 o Miles u i 13 I o Kilometers 2.1 ,·, ~· ~ i I. E. Quastler 103 rials began to stress Lawrence's other alleged advantages, particularly its central location in the Kansas River valley and its proximity to southern Kansas. 13 The Lawrence Railroad Plan After 1860 As a result, during the difficult Civil War years, the leadership finally developed a railroad plan designed to achieve regional urban hegemony. In this period Lawrence also had an energetic, persuasive, and politically powerful leader in U.S. Senator James H. Lane, a man determined to do everything he could to promote the city. In mid- 1864 he was elected president of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Ft. Gibson Railroad. 14 The community plan that evolved emphasized three key railroads, to be controlled (as much. as possible) by Lawrence interests, that would link the city with St. Louis, Galveston, and Santa Fe (Fig. 2). Most important to the strategy was the construction of the LL&FtG southward through Kansas and Indian Territory, to connect at the Texas border with a railroad to Galveston. Since that port was closer than any on the Atlantic Ocean, most Kansas foreign trade was expected eventually to flow through it. A second railroad, sometimes called a branch of the LL&FtG, was projected to the southwest. Initially it would be built to Emporia, but eventually it would ter- minate in Santa Fe and bring the famous trade of that place to Lawrence; later it would be extended to the Pa- WYOMING NEBRASKA To Pacific - COLORADO KANSAS NEW MEXICO 0 SO I 00 200 Miles cific Coast. Finally a broad-gauge line, visualized as a vital link in the central transcontinental route, would be built to the Missouri Pacific at Pleasant Hill. Since all other projected Lawrence railroads would be standard gauge, the city would become a major change-of-gauge point. 15 Two other railroads played somewhat less important roles in the plan, and they were not expected to be controlled by local interests. One of these was the central transcontinental railroad; from Lawrence's perspective this was the continuation of the Pleasant Hill route west- ward from the city. The second was a connection to Leavenworth and through that town to the Hannibal and St. Joseph and to Chicago. A Lawrence-Leavenworth railroad had been authorized by the LL&FtG's charter, but it was less emphasized than the route south once Lawrence interests controlled the company. In retrospect, this plan was based on several questionable assumptions. Most critically, despite strong evidence to the contrary, community leaders seemed to think that St. Louis would remain the dominant higher order center for the region; this would account for the secondary role assigned to a direct Chicago connection. Second, the assumption that most trans-continental traffic would flow via the Pleasant Hill route did not recognize that the cost advantages of the shortest route could be overwhelmed by the economies of concentrating traffic interchange at one major rail center in the region. Third, since both Leavenworth and Lawrence were in Kansas, it was naively assumed that the cities would work cooperatively to assure that the regional metropolis developed within the state rather than in Missouri. The cities' interests were said to be complementary not competitive, and Leavenworth's anticipated success in building connections to the Chicago rail network and to Lawrence was expected also to benefit the latter. 16 Had Leavenworth succeeded, however, almost certainly it would have become the regional metropolis. Passage of the Pacific . Railroad Act of 1862 led to Lawrence's first rail connection. That law allowed one branch of the Pacific Railroad to start at the south side of the mouth of the Kansas River in Wyandotte (immediately adjacent to Kansas City, Missouri) and to build west- ward via Fort Riley. This route was awarded to the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western, soon renamed the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division. In September 1862 this com- G .. lf of Utsico Figure 2. Routes of the Lawrence railroads after I 860. 104 Charting a Course: Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1872 pany awarded contracts to build two lines westward from the Missouri River, one from Wyan- dotte and the other from Leavenworth. These segments were to join near Lawrence, from where a single track would be built westward. Partly because the Union Pacific, Eastern Divi- sion, was a Leavenworth railroad, the Pacific Railroad Act was seen in Lawrence as favorable to its interests. 17 During this period Lawrence witnessed substantial benefits from Senator Lane's political power and his persuasive abilities. It was he who applied strong pressure on the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, to serve the city when the promoters started to locate the railroad some miles to the north. To help pay for the route change, the city donated land for a new right-of- way and for a depot. Thereafter the railroad reached the north bank of the Kansas River opposite Lawrence in December 1864, and for about a year the city benefited substantially from being the railhead. Lane also was instrumental in securing a land grant for the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Ft. Gibson's main line and for its branch to the southwest.18 While Lawrence was making progress, Kansas City also remained active. In 1863 the Cameron railroad proj"ect was reorganized in anticipation of renewed activity after the war, and officials obtained a state charter for a Missouri River bridge at Kansas City. That year Kansas Citians also helped convince the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, to move its headquarters from Leavenworth to adjacent Wyandotte. One inducement to make this change was to offer the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, control of the Cameron-Kansas City line. Soon construc- tion westward from Leavenworth stopped, and all Union Pacific, Eastern Division, resources went into building the line up the Kansas River valley from Wyandotte. 19 In 1865, for the first time, Lawrence and Douglas County voters were asked to approve aid to the railroads planned by their leaders. In September the county overwhelmingly voted for a proposal to provide $125,000 to Lawrence's first priority project, the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Ft. Gibson's main line. At the same time voters approved like amounts for the Emporia branch and for the newly organized St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver Railroad (StLL&D, the; Lawrence-Pleasant Hill line). By then all but one of the Kansas counties along the LL&FtG main line had voted for aid. This outcome had followed Lane's June tour of the route, where his speeches had strengthened support for the project. In November he was in St. Louis addressing the chamber of commerce on behalf of the Pleasant Hill "cutoff." Late in 1865 the LL&FtG was renamed the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad (LL&G).20 In February 1866 the LL&G received more aid in the form of one quarter of a five- hundred-thousand-acre land grant to Kansas for internal improvements. In April voters unani- mously approved a Lawrence subscription of two hundred thousand dollars to the St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver, and permanent location stakes were driven for the LL&G main line. By June a preliminary survey had been completed to Emporia, and four months later a report of the first survey for the St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver was issued. In July the LL&G sent agent B.S. Henning to Chicago and to East Coast cities to find capitalist support. Three months later an agreement with Chicago capitalist William Sturges to build the LL&G was announced. At this time Lawrence appeared to have caught up with Kansas City in terms of plans, and it was well ahead in progress toward a line to southern Kansas. Near the end of 1866 Lawrence residents were optimistic that they were winning the urban rivalry.21 Nevertheless, in the midst of these significant gains were some major setbacks. Early in 1866 the Kansas legislature struck the Pleasant Hill railroad from a measure for land grants. Over Lane's objections, in July Kansas City's projected railroad to southern Kansas was awarded a congressional land grant. It is noteworthy that Lane (suffering from the effects of a mental breakdown) was absent from the Senate floor during all debates about this proposal. In Sep- tember and November Johnson County, Kansas, decisively defeated proposals to aid the Pleas- ant Hill project, probably because it already had voted to aid Kansas City's line to southern Kansas. These defeats effectively stalled the St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver. 22 In July 1866 Lawrence lost its chief spokesman when Senator Lane committed suicide. Because he backed President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policies, which were unpopular in Kansas, he had suffered serious political setbacks, and his Kansas support had been severely I. E. Quastler 105 eroded. Possibly Lawrence's political defeats in Congress and in the Kansas legislature were related to Lane's close identification with the city. Nevertheless, he had been a strong leader, and his loss at such a critical time was a severe blow. 23 Thereafter local railroad leadership passed to George W Deitzler. In the early 1860s he had served briefly as president of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Ft. Gibson, and during the Civil War was given command of the Kansas State Militia after distinguishing himself as colo- nel of the First Kansas Volunteer Infantry. But Deitzler did not have Lane's political power or persuasive abilities, and he suffered from a debilitating physical condition resulting from a wartime wound. He was president of the St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver Railroad and fo- cused his energies on that project. Deitzler no longer was directly involved with the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston. 24 During 1865-1866 Kansas City made considerable progress. In mid-1865 interests there organized the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad to build to southern Kansas. This company usually was called the "Border Tier" because its planned route went through the east- ernmost tier of Kansas counties. In September Kansas City voters approved two hundred thou- sand dollars for this project, and two Kansas counties, Johnson and Miami, also voted for aid. As mentioned earlier, in the following year Congress approved a land grant to the Border Tier.25 In September 1865 the Missouri Pacific was completed to Kansas City.26 Thereby the city had direct rail access to St. Louis a month before the first (and later rejected) survey for a Lawrence-Pleasant Hill railroad was completed. Now Kansas City had two railroads, the broad- gauge Missouri Pacific and the standard-gauge Union Pacific, Eastern Division, and it had become the change-of-gauge point. Most damaging to Lawrence, however, was its lack of representation in an 1866 railroad battle that was vital to its interests. At this time Leavenworth and Kansas City leaders were competing to convince the Hannibal and St. Joseph directors to support their project for a connecting link. By June the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, had completed its Leavenworth- Lawrence line, which virtually had been required under the Pacific Railroad Act of 1864, and the Missouri Pacific had been extended from Kansas City . to Leavenworth. Therefore Leavenworth and Kansas City were about equal in terms of railroads, each with a line to St. Louis and one to the west; neither had a direct Chicago connection (Fig. 1). In the important rivalry for such a link, Lawrence relied on Leavenworth to act as a kind of surrogate. It is revealing that the Lawrence leadership had so long played down the importance of a direct route to Chicago; the Lawrence press first explicitly mentioned the strategic significance of such a connection only on February 16, 1866. 27 During this critical period committees from both Leavenworth and Kansas City met fre- quently with the Hannibal and St. Joseph officials. In this competition Kansas City had sev- eral advantages. For one, a line via that city to southern Kansas would require but one major bridge. Only Kansas Citians could assure the H&StJ that they could wholly finance the con- struction of the roadbed to Cameron. Furthermore, Kansas City's leaders apparently convinced H&StJ officials that their roadbed was almost finished, which was not true. The Leavenworth cause was damaged by the presence of two rival groups, each with a charter for a Cameron link. By August 1866 Kansas Citians had both state and federal authority for a Missouri River bridge and a land grant for their railroad to the south. In the midst of the negotiations, the chance factor may also have worked against Leavenworth. The sudden illness of a key Hannibal and St. Joseph decision maker John W. Brooks led the Boston capitalists who controlled the railroad to ask James F. Joy (not a Boston insider but a close associate and a noted railroad builder) temporarily to assume official repre- sentation for the company. Although it may not have been a major consideration, earlier in the year Joy had begun to invest in Kansas City real estate. On his recommendation, on December 19, 1866, H&StJ directors approved a contract to supply iron and rolling stock for the Cameron-Kansas City project and to furnish funds for a steel bridge across the Missouri River. Although this bridge was not finished until 1869, by the end of 1866 Kansas City had achieved a decided initial advantage that none of its rivals could overcome. 28 mile' 0 10 20 I I I I I I 0 10 20 30 km Figure 3. The Lawrence railroad network in 1872. 106 Charting a Course: Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1812 In November 1867 workers finished construction to the north bank of the Missouri River opposite Kansas City, and for some time ferries were used to complete the connection to Chicago. During the two and one-half years of the bridge's construction, Kansas City's popula- tion grew from about thirteen thousand to thirty thousand; leaving its rivals far behind. By 1870 Kansas City had thirty-two thousand people, while Leavenworth had eighteen thousand and Lawrence slightly more than eight thousand.29 In retrospect, for the Lawrence plan to have succeeded, a number of conditions would have been necessary. The Missouri Pacific would have had to support construction of the Lawrence-Pleasant Hill line and make that route, rather than the one to Kansas City, its main line. This would have required its western connection, the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, to agree to interchange its transcontinental ·traffic with the Missouri Pacific at Lawrence rather than at Kansas City. This the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, would have resisted to avoid short-hauling itself. In addition the Hannibal and St. Joseph interests would have had to build from Cameron to Leavenworth and then build beyond (or buy the Union Pacific, Eastern Division's, Leavenworth-Lawrence branch) to Lawrence. That in turn would have required constructing major bridges at Leavenworth and Lawrence. Only if timely commitments had been made to ensure all of these changes would Lawrence's position have been analogous to Kansas City's when the latter achieved its initial advantage. With the aid of hindsight, it is apparent that each of these conditions was problematic and that the need for them all made success for Lawrence unlikely. Lawrence Railroads Other Railroads For several years after 1866 Lawrence residents did not completely understand that the urban rivalry had been lost. Therefore all three top-priority lines in the master plan eventually were built, at least in part (Fig. 3). Following passage of a $300,000 Douglas County bond is- sue in February 1867, replacing the $125,000 approved in 1865, the first twenty-eight-mile segment of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston, between Lawrence and Ottawa, went into service on January 1, 1868. Thus the LL&G began operating almost a year be- fore the Border Tier opened its first seg- ment from Kansas City to Olathe.30 Unfortunately for Lawrence, completion to Ottawa was followed immediately by a bitter dispute between William Sturges, president of the LL&G, and a portion of the local leader- ship. The latter claimed delivery of the Douglas County bonds should be withheld until the LL&G had met all requirements including acquiring and occupying its permanent route within the city, obtaining land for a depot, and constructing a bridge over the Kansas River. This conflict escalated and resulted in a stalemate, a condition made possible because Kansans con- tinued to hold several seats on the board of directors. Virtually all construction stopped for about eighteen months allowing the Border Tier to catch up with and pass the LL&G. Even- tually Lawrence's perception of Sturges and his associates grew so negative that widespread opposition threatened passage of the Osage treaty, under which the LL&G would be allowed to buy eight million acres of Indian lands in southern Kansas for only twenty cents per acre. Sturges, who recognized far greater potential for profit in the land than in operating the rail- road, applied pressure by saying repeatedly that passage of the treaty was a precondition for renewed construction. The Osage treaty never was ratified.31 As the foregoing demonstrates, the decision allowing William Sturges and his associates to build the LL&G proved damaging to Lawrence. Sturges' reputation among respected capitalists can be gleaned from a statement by Nathaniel Thayer, a member of the Boston group that controlled I. E. Quastler 107 the Hannibal and St. Joseph. In a letter to James Joy, Thayer noted the only problem with Joy's pending business transac- tion was that it would be necessary to deal with a man like Sturges.32 If the community had not been so eager to find a capitalist to build the LL&G, perhaps more time would have been devoted to investigating Sturges' character. Whether an- other capitalist group could have been found to build the rail line, and if so, whether it would have acted more in accor- dance with community goals, is not clear. The long impasse was broken in June 1869 when James F. Joy and the same Boston capitalists who now also controlled the rival Border Tier purchased the LL&G. This move completed a common western pattern; the need for outside capital led to eastern control of what had been a local enterprise. Now the LL&G would be integrated into a broader railroad pattern designed primarily to forward western goods to eastern markets. Strictly local goals would become largely irrelevant. Construction resumed under Joy, but both the LL&G and the Border Tier lost a famous three-way race (which the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad won) to be the first to reach a certain point on Kansas' southern border and thereby obtain exclusive rights to build through Indian Territory to Texas. In August 1870 the LL&G lost most of its value to Lawrence when a cutoff between Ottawa and Kansas City was completed; thereafter southern Kansas traffic was routed directly eastward through Kansas City bypassing Lawrence (Fig. 3). The poor quality of construction under Sturges between Ottawa and Lawrence, including excessive gradients, and the continued lack of a Lawrence railroad bridge to connect with the city's only other railroad, the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, reinforced the logic of this change. Subsequently the Lawrence-Ottawa line became an underutilized branch, which one Lawrence editor sarcastically called "our Galveston switch swindle."33 Workers completed the Pleasant Hill line in late 1871, which the Missouri Pacific imme- diately leased. It was built to the standard gauge because in 1870 the Missouri Pacific had been converted to that width. For a few years it provided convenient service to the East, but it lost its greatest potential value to Lawrence when the Missouri Pacific would not give the city freight rates as favorable as those it gave Kansas City. That decision resulted from the 1868 completion of a second St. Louis-Kansas City railroad, the North Missouri (later the Wabash). By threatening rate competition if its rival did not cooperate, that company forced the Mis- souri Pacific to give Kansas City more favorable rates. The Pleasant Hill-Lawrence branch lost money, and subsequently the Missouri Pacific lease was broken. This abandonment of service to Lawrence represented a Missouri Pacific retreat to the Missouri River; until the 1880s the Missouri formed the border separating the railroads running westward from Chicago and St. Louis from those operating to the west and southwest of the river. The newly independent Pleasant Hill line soon went bankrupt, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe purchased the route in 1877 primarily to utilize the seventeen miles between Lawrence and Cedar Junction as a part of its first main line into Kansas City.34 In 1872 a local company, the Lawrence and Southwestern, built the planned railroad to the southwest as far as Carbondale, thirty-one miles. By that time the Santa Fe had preempted most of its intended route and construction ceased. For a few years the company did modestly well, as the Santa Fe utilized it for some eastbound traffic. When the Santa Fe later obtained its own essentially parallel link to Lawrence, that traffic disappeared, and the company went bankrupt. In 1879 it was bought by the Union Pacific (a successor to the Union Pacific, Eastern Division), and for some years it carried coal from Carbondale mines. When the mines closed, the line became unprofitable and was abandoned in 1894. 35 In March 1871 the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston completed a Kansas River rail- road bridge at Lawrence. It had been required by the company's charter and probably would not otherwise have been built. However, the bridge was a cheaply constructed wooden struc- The Leavenworth, Lawrma, and Galveston railroad bridge crossing the Kansas River at Lawrence, 1867. Photograph by Akxandu Gardner. 108 Charting a Course: Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1872 ture on wood pilings. In 1879 the Union Pacific bought it for use with its Carbondale branch, but it saw little traffic when coal shipments declined. The bridge was abandoned in 1894.36 Finally, the Union Pacific, Eastern Division (later the Kansas Pacific), did not become the main transcontinental route; that role went instead to the Union Pacific line through Ne- braska. The Kansas Pacific eventually merged with the Union Pacific and developed into a major traffic artery. The line continued to terminate in the Kansas City area, however, and Lawrence became just one modest-sized on-line traffic point. The Leavenworth-Lawrence seg- ment became a light traffic density Union Pacific branch line.37 After 1872 Lawrence obtained one railroad that had not been included in the city's plan. In 187 4 the Kansas Midland, an affiliate of the Santa Fe, finished a line from Topeka along the south bank of the Kansas River. Thereafter the Santa Fe completed a connection from Lawrence into Kansas City using a portion of the St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver. Lawrence editors enjoyed pointing out that the Santa Fe was the only railroad ever to reach the city without public subsidies.38 In all, about 120 miles of railroad were built primarily due to local efforts (Fig. 3), but Lawrence and Douglas County received little from the large amounts they had invested in railroads. Instead a large debt in bon:ds accrued, a burden that became unbearable during the depression that start.ed in 1873. After the city and county applied much pressure, bondholders agreed to a 50-percent decrease in the face value of their bonds. 39 The Lawrence example is not unique. To varying degrees other nearby cities such as Leavenworth, Atchison, and Fort Scott also had unsuccessful railroad programs. Scores of other examples may have been scattered over the country thus adding many thousands of miles to the nation's rail network. Some mileage was incorporated into various main lines, and some was abandoned quite early. Most segments, however, became parts of low traffic density lines that came to characterize the American railroad network. Notes 1. William F. Zornow, Kansas: A History of the ]ayhawk State (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), 67. 2. I.E. Qgastler, The Railroads of Lawrence, Kansas, 1854-1900 (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1979), 247; Albert Fishlow, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Antebellum Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 195. Examination of the rivalry between Lawrence and Kansas City is facilitated by references to Charles N. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads (Madison, Wisc.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1962). This fine work makes it possible to compare, with some precision, the timing and scope of Lawrence railroad efforts with those of its main rival. Glaab saw Leavenworth as Kansas City's chief oppo- nent, and his findings about that city also are useful. 3. Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A History of the American West (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), especially 247-69; William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), especially 60-92, 300-302. An earlier work on city rivalry is Wyatt A. Belcher, The Economic Rivalry Between St. Louis and Chicago, 1850-1880 (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1947). 4. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 38-40. The Hannibal and St. Joseph was intended to be a feeder to steamboats serving St. Louis, but interests oriented to Chicago gained control and made northern Missouri tributary to that city. Railroad gauges did not become substantially standardized nationally until the 1880s. 5. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 37-41. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), 30. In 1860 Kansas had slightly more than one hundred thousand people, compared with about 1.2 million in Missouri. 6. Early American railroads often acted as feeders to waterways, but as they became improved technologically the two forms of transportation became increasingly competitive. 7. In economic terms, earlier railroads were characterized by more limited economies of scale. Rather than using rivers, regional groups of railroads could have been separated by a line connecting a series of cities. The tendency for railroads to use major rivers for regionalization has not received systematic treatment in the literature. Early railroad regionalization west of Chicago is illustrated in Richard C. Overton, Burlington Route: A History of the Burlington Lines (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), especially 39-139. 8. See Herald of Freedom (Lawrence), January 6, 1855. 9. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 42, 64-92. 10. Herald of Freedom, April 7, June 2, 1855, October 17, 1857; U.S. Department of the Interior, Eighth Census: I. E. Quastler 109 Population of the United States, 1860, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), 163-65, 288-98. These figures show that population size was not the dominant factor in determining the outcome of the urban rivalry. 11. Herald of Freedom, July 11, 25, 1857. 12. Railroad Charter files, Library and Archives Division, Kansas State Historical Society; Leavenworth, Lawrence and Ft. Gibson Minute Book, 369, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Offices, Topeka, Kans.; Herald of Freedom, December 25, 1858,July 30, September 17, November 26, 1859. 13. Lawrence Republican, May 31, July 19, 1860. As built, the line was only twelve miles shorter than the route via Kansas City. The concept of a line west from Pleasant Hill dated from at least 1857 when it appeared in the Jeffersonian Inquirer. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 66. 14. Leavenworth, Lawrence and Ft. Gibson Minute Book, 397. 15. See Lawrence Republican, September 19, 1861; Kansas Tribune, November 29, 1863, February 27, 1864. 16. See Kansas Daily Tribune (Lawrence), August 27, 1864. Occasionally Lawrence residents stated that it did not matter which city became the metropolis as long as it was in Kansas. 17. Lewis Haney, A Congressional History of Railways in the United States, vol. 2 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968), 65; Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 109-15. 18. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 120; Kansas Tribune, December 20, 1864, May 27 1866; Qyastler, Rail- roads of Lawrence, 67; Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 3d sess., 1862, 1: 138; Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 3d sess., 1863, 2:1157-58, 1484-85, 1499; Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America, from December 5, 1859 to March 3, 1863 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1866), 340. The land grant for the branch extended to its intersection with the proposed Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line in the Neosho River valley. 19. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 116-17, 141-42. Union Pacific, Eastern Division, control of the Cameron- Kansas City line never was implemented. 20. Kansas Daily Tribune, July 4, 25, September 15, 16, December 3, 1865, January 14, 1866. 21. Ibid., February 9, April 10, 28, June 9, July 15, 25, October 17, November 9, 10, 1866; Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Minute Book, 48.:..49, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Offices; Thomas Le Due, "State Administration of the Land Grant to Kansas for Internal Improvements," Kansas Historical Quarterly 20 (No- vember 1953), 547. 22. Kansas Daily Tribune, February 9, September 13, November 22, 1866; Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess., 1866, 4: 3009-10, 3123-26, 3334-36; Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess., 1866, 5: 4169; Statutes at Large, 236-39. 23. Albert Castel, A Frontier State at U0r: Kansas, 1861-1865 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1958), 231- 32; Kansas Daily Tribune, August 7, 1866; Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 131. 24. Leavenworth, Lawrence and Ft. Gibson Minute Book, 378-79; Allen Johnson and Sumas Malone, eds., Dic- tionary of American Biography, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), 201-2; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 5 (New York: James T. White and Co., 1907), 367; C. M. Deitzler, "History of the Deitzler Family;" letter dated January 24, 1893, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence; St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver Railroad Minute Book, 6, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Offices. Deitzler also engaged in farming, real estate, and Indian trading, and for a short time he was treasurer of the University of Kansas, but his prominence came from his roles as politician and soldier. His wound was re- ceived at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, August 10, 1861. Deitzler was promoted to brigadier general in No- vember 1862, resigned his commission in August 1863, and took command of the state militia in February 1864. 25. Kansas Daily Tribune, August 4, 1866; Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 130. The Missouri River, Ft. Scott and Gulf originally was named the Kansas and Neosho Valley Railroad. 26. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 128. 27. Kansas Daily Tribune, February 16, May 16, 1866; Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 132. 28. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads, 152-60; Overton, Burlington Route, 87-92; Theodore S. Case to James F. Joy; March 26, 1866, R.S. Watson to Joy, June 6, July 11, 1866, John W. Reid and Case to Joy, June 7, 1866, James F. Joy Papers, Detroit Public Library; Detroit, Mich. 29. Overton, Burlington Route, 90, 92; U.S. Department of the Interior, Compendium of the Tenth Census, 1880 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883), 455, 458. 30. Kansas Daily Tribune, February 10, 1867, January 1, November 18, 1868. 31. Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Minute Book, 118-19; Kansas Daily Tribune, January 12, March 7, June 7, 11, 18, August 2, October 22, December 24, 1868; Paul W. Gates, Fifty Million Acres: Conflicts over Kansas Land Policy, 1854-1890 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1954), 161-62, 197-210. Likely Sturges saw the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston primarily as a way to justify obtaining Indian lands. Since at least January 1867 he had been working with Joy of the rival Border Tier to obtain another Indian tract. 32. Nathaniel Thayer to James F. Joy, June 10, 1869, Joy Papers. 33. Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Minute Book, 160-61; Kansas Daily Tribune, July 20, 1869, April 1, August 18, 1870, April 5, 1872; H. Craig Miner, "The Border Tier Line: A History of the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad, 1865-1870" (master's thesis, Wichita State University, 1967), 103-4, 113; Oc- tave Chanute to James F. Joy, November 10, December 15, 1869, Joy Papers; Report of the Directors of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad Company (Chicago: Rounds and Kane, 1871), 16. At the height of the race to the border, the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston was so far behind the other two railroads 110 Charting a Course: Lawrence, Kansas, and Its Railroad Strategy, 1854-1872 that Joy shifted its workers to the Border Tier. In 1880 the successor to the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston became part of the Santa Fe system. The northern half of the Lawrence-Ottawa line was aban- doned around 1960, and common-carrier operations over the southerri half ceased some years later. In the 1990s a segment around Baldwin City is used seasonally by a museum train. 34. Kansas Daily Tribune, December 3, 1871, February 23, 1877; Republican Daily Journal (Lawrence), January 20, 1876; St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver Railroad Minute Book, 83-91, 149; the Missouri Pacific-St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver Railroad contract stated that for the first fifteen years of the lease, the Lawrence rate was not to exceed the rate between St. Louis and places "unaffected by river competition," and that the St. Louis-Lawrence rate should never exceed the St. Louis-Kansas City rate by more than 30 percent. River competition referred to cities on the Missouri River, for at this time steamboats were not competitive with railroads in the region. Under the Santa Fe, the Cedar Junction-Olathe section was abandoned in the 1880s, and the Olathe-Pleasant Hill portion was sold to another railroad. 35. St. Louis, Lawrence and Western Minute Book, 163-66, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Offices; Kansas Daily Tribune, December 7, 1872; Republican Daily Journal, June 24, 27, 1875; Evening Standard (Lawrence), May 17, 1879; Lawrence Daily Journal, July 11, October 9, November 27, December 31, 1879, January 8, 1880, March 21, 1894. After the Missouri Pacific relinquished its lease of the St. Louis, Lawrence and Denver Railroad, the latter merged with the Carbondale line to form the St. Louis, Lawrence and West- ern Railroad, which had a short corporate existence (with headquarters and operating base in Lawrence) before it went bankrupt and its constituent parts were sold to the Union Pacific and the Santa Fe. When the Carbondale line was abandoned in 1894, it was being leased by the Kansas City, Wyandotte and Northwestern Railroad. 36. Kansas Daily Tribune, December 1, 6, 24, 1870, March 25, August 18, September 29, 1871, March 17, 1872; Lawrence Daily journal, October 9, 1879, March 21, 1894. 37. Lawrence Daily journal, January 27, 1880. The Leavenworth-Lawrence branch was abandoned in about 1980. 38. Kansas Daily Tribune, June 2, 3, 1874, February 23, 1877. 39. Evening Standard, June 25, July 28, 1879, January 13, 26, 1880; Lawrence Daily Journal, July 1, 1883. From December 1867 to June 1871 the city had the Union Pacific, Eastern Division-Kansas Pacific headquarters, and some secondary shops until 1875. Kansas Daily Tribune, December 6, 1867, June 28, 1871, October 21, 1876; Republican Daily Journal, August 10, 1875. For some years the Union Pacific Railway helped support Bismarck Grove, a park near Lawrence where fairs and meetings were held. Lawrence had the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston offices until 1874 and those of its successors between 1882 and 1888. Republican Daily Journal, April 1, 1874; Kansas Daily Tribune, September 12, 1874; Lawrence Daily journal, April 12, 13, May 27, June 24, 1882, January 24, 1884, April 14, May 30, June 2, October 20, 1888, June 2, 22, 1889. From 1887 to 1889 Lawrence had the offices and was the operating center of the Lawrence, Emporia and South- western Railroad, which leased the Carbondale line from the Union Pacific. This was a minor railroad and the employment impact was small. Lawrence Daily journal, October 4, 1887; Lawrence, Emporia and Southwest- ern Minute Book, 19, 22-23, Union Pacific Railroad Offices, St. Louis. Workers' Housing, Workers' Neighborhood: Historic East Lawrence Dale E. Nimz A lthough the early town of Lawrence, Kansas, developed with roughly equal-sized residential districts on both I\sides of Massachusetts Street, the east side-or East Lawrence-generally has not been recognized as significant in local history. The evidence and conclusions from a general study of East Lawrence and the detailed investigation of a particular group of houses that still stand on the east side of the 700 and 800 blocks of Rhode Island Street tell us why East Lawrence, a workers' neighborhood, was left out of the popular image of historic Lawrence. By the end of the nineteenth century, Lawrence was well known as the "historic city" of Kansas. 1 This distinction was based on the dramatic events related to early conflict over slavery and statehood from 1854 to 1863. The years immediately after Quantrill's destructive raid in 1863 were more important, however, in the town's growth. During this townbuilding period, many houses in East Lawrence were constructed within walking distance of transportation, indus- trial and commercial enterprises, and social institutions (see Figure 1. Lawrence-original town site, ca. 1858). Even before the dramatic population growth that began in 1864, however, settlers from diverse origins outnum- bered New Englanders in Lawrence. Lawrence was much more than a New England town. 2 In fact, the town was shaped primarily by the same processes of urbanization and industrialization that affected most other towns west of the Missouri River. In the formative years of the nineteenth century (1864-1899), the population of Lawrence was diverse. During the town building period, these aggressive and . optimistic settlers transformed the landscape. Change rather than stability was the rule. Later there were periods of recession when residents left Lawrence and businesses failed. The cycle of boom and bust in Lawrence made it different from a stable New England village. In terms of its population, architectural environment, and institutions, nineteenth-century Lawrence was a western town. A detailed study of the historic houses and residents on Rhode Island Street demonstrated that the townbuilding period from 1864 to 1873 was especially significant in local history and that several groups besides New England emigrants contributed to that development.3 Understanding the history of East Lawrence corrects an unbalanced view of the town's development. Residents east of Massachusetts helped build the town with their work on the railroads, in construction, agricultural processing, and manufacturing. East Lawrence was an essential part of the town's historic social and urban structure. But the working people of East Lawrence were left out of local history because the area became identified with economic failure, vice, and deterioration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. By the 1970s, East Lawrence was a neighborhood of aging houses. The oldest part of East Lawrence, near Massachusetts Street and the Kansas River, became a target of redevelopment plans that would have destroyed part of the neighbor- hood to provide better access to downtown Lawrence, the Kansas River bridge, and the Kansas Turnpike. At the . beginning of the crucial town building period after the Kansas Pacific Railroad reached North Lawrence in 1864, traffic into the town was concentrated at the Massachusetts Street bridge crossing. Many emigrants arrived by the railroad and one newcomer from Illinois was so impressed in 1865 by the rebuilding after Quantrill's raid that he commented, "a people that can make such improvements as I see amid such ruin and slaughter as this city has experienced, show enterprise such as I never saw. This is bound to be the city in Kansas."4 Lawrence was a busy 111 Loi - (,) z 2 .. ~ I .. ~.~< ... t-: I ~ - • .J ~ .. ~. &.. ~ .. 0 112 Workers' Housing, Workers' Neighborhood: Historic East Lawrence Figure 1. Lawrence- original town site, ca. 1858. See Holland Wheeler, City of Lawrence, Kansas, with Its Additions (New York: T. Bonar, 186?). place during this period. The Kansas Tribune reported in 1866 that "a large number o f houses are being erected in different parts of the city, but the demand is also increasing at a much more rapid rate. "5 During these years, the town's population increased from 1,645 in 1860 to 8,320 in 1870. New England settlers were important, but other groups were just as influential. Emigrants from Massachusetts planned Lawrence, but they did not build the town alone. In th e settle- ment period, Lawrence was settled largely by people from Missouri, Illinois, Ohi o, Indiana, and other north central states. 6 With the outbreak of the Civil War, blacks migrated to Lawrence. Building the railroad brought Irish and French Canadian laborers to the town. Sig- nificant numbers of German and Scandinavian emigrants also were attracted to Law rence. Dale E. Nimz 113 The development of East Lawrence was stimulated by construction of the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad (LLG) bridge in 1867 at the head of Delaware Street. Eight blocks east of the town's main business district on Massachusetts Street, the LLG railroad line defined the eastern boundary of the town and the neighborhood. After a LLG railroad depot was constructed on Delaware, East Lawrence was situated between two important north-south routes. To the north along the Kansas River, milling, manufacturing, and food-processing en- terprises were concentrated between the Massachusetts Street wagon bridge and the railroad bridge. Houses in East Lawrence were conveniently located within walking distance of the railroad to the east, industry to the north, and businesses to t~e west. By the end of the townbuilding period, the Fourth Ward north of Ninth Street in East Lawrence was largely developed. 7 Of the twenty surviving houses on the 700 and 800 blocks of Rhode Island Street, about half were erected soon after the Civil War. - Even more directly than East Lawrence, North Lawrence was created by the construction of the Kansas Pacific railroad along the north side of the river in 1864, hut that neighborhood's history also was influenced by the development of manufacturing and agricultural processing. Like East Lawrence, North Lawrence became a neighborhood of small businesses and skilled and production workers, as well as a center of the African American community. By the mid- 1870s, North Lawrence had its own business district on North Second and Locust Streets, residential neighborhoods, churches, and schools. Lawrence enjoyed the rewards of being the western railroad terminus for less than two years. In 1865 a local editor predicted, "for an inland town like ours, the true sources of our future growth depend on the development of our mercantile, manufacturing, and educational interests."8 When regional trade declined, several manufacturing operations were started in- cluding the production of farm implements, carriages and wagons, soap, furniture, chemicals, and an iron foundry. The townbuilding period of growth and high expectations ended in the nationwide reces- sion of 1873. In the rush to attract railroads, Lawrence and Douglas County issued a total of $900,000 in bonds to support railroad construction. This governmental debt became a crush- ing burden as soon as the economy collapsed. Early in 187 4, the Lawrence Journal editor insisted, "We must retrench. The people are poor. The times are hard, and show no sign of getting easier."9 The crops of Douglas County were devastated that year by a plague of grass- hoppers and drought. Farmers and townsfolk began to leave for more secure settlements in the East or opportunities in the West. By the time the state census was taken in 1875, Lawrence had lost 1,052 residents. A long period of population stability and economic conservatism in Lawrence began in the late 1870s. For the next sixty years, the town's population increased by less than 10 percent each decade. Manufacturing became the economic hope of the community in the late nineteenth cen- tury. Building a dam on the river to provide water power was an attempt to solve the problem of the high cost of fuel for steam engines. Wood for fuel was becoming scarce in Lawrence by 1869 and transportation costs made coal expensive to import." The dam on the Kansas River was completed in 1874, partially destroyed by high water in the spring of 1876 and again in spring 1877, and finally rebuilt in 1878. Power from the water wheel was transmitted to enterprises near the river by cable. During the 1880s, Lawrence benefitted from the personal energy and wealth of J.D. Bowersock, who led the manufacturers using the water power. He inherited the dam and the Douglas County Mills in 1879 and bought the Lawrence Paper Company. Bowersock later held directorships in the Consolidated Barb Wire Company and the Griffin Ice Company, which cut and stored ice from the large pool of still water backed up by the Kansas River dam. Another flour mill near the da,m was established by the Pierson brothers in 1879 and flourished until it was destroyed by fire in 1900. At the east edge of Lawrence, the Lawrence Canning Company was established in 1881. By the early 1890s, the company produced one million cans of food a year and was one of the largest inland canneries in the country. 10 Along with the dam, the Barb Wire Company was the most important industrial develop- ment in the late nineteenth century. By 1898 the company provided the main justification for 724 Rhode Island. This "two over two" house, with two main rooms on the first floor and two on the second floor, was constructed for 0. W McAllaster in 1861. ft is a typical urban house type that was perfected in Philadelphia. Although close to downtown, this house survived Quantrill's Raid. 114 Workers' Housing, Workers' Neighborhood: Historic East Lawrence Lawrence's claim to be a manufacturing center. When the Barb Wire Company was acquired by U.S. Steel in January 1899 and shut down, the town lost its most important business in terms of payroll, number of employees, and the amount of capital invested. 11 In the years after it closed, the University of Kansas became the dominant economic institution in Lawrence. Like the demographics of Lawrence as a whole during the late nineteenth century, the population of East Lawrence also differed from the image of a New England town. During the settlement period, for instance, there were no New Englanders on the 700 and 800 blocks of Rhode Island Street. Rhode Island Street was on the eastern edge of the developed area. O.W McAllaster from New York and Henry Martin, born in Germany, were the earliest residents. Both the McAllaster and Martin houses survived Quantrill's raid, perhaps because they were masonry buildings widely separated in the middle of undeveloped blocks. 12 That landscape changed quickly after 1863. The Lawrence Tribune reported on July 28, 1865, "New and substantial buildings rising as by magic all over this plateau we call a city." After the railroad reached Lawrence, it brought diverse people, popular ideas, and industrially produced building materials to the town. Fifteen houses were constructed on the east side of the 700 and 800 blocks of Rhode Island Street during the townbuilding period. 13 The popu- lation of the Fourth Ward north of Ninth Street in East Lawrence peaked in the 1870 census. The Fourth Ward's relatively stable set of residents and property owners persisted until the late nineteenth century. The study of Rhode Island Street residents documents the significant presence of German American settlers in Lawrence. German immigrants concentrated on the east side in the townbuilding period. They were the most nu- merous property owners on the 700 and 800 blocks. Ger- man Americans may have been attracted first by Henry Martin's boarding house and afterwards by the most im- portant historic building in East Lawrence, the German American Turnhalle. Built in 1869, the massive stone building at the corner of Ninth and Rhode Island was the social center for German Americans in Lawrence. Rhode Island Street property owners Henry Martin, Carl Wyler, Charles Achning, Julius Fischer, Simon and Leo Steinberg, and Fred Deichmann were charter members. 14 Besides the T urnverein, which hosted a variety of social, educational, and athletic activities, German Methodist and German Evangelical churches also met in East Lawrence. To serve the neighborhood's children, New York [Street] School was constructed two blocks east of Rhode Island Street in 1865. Next to the school, the African Methodist Episcopal church on the corner of Ninth and New York became a social center of the black community in Lawrence. Most early residents on Rhode Island Street had businesses on Massachusetts Street. In the townbuilding period, Henry Martin and Charles Achning were saloonkeepers, Simon and Leo Steinberg were partners in a clothing store, Fred Deichmann was a butcher, Julius Fischer had an ice business. C.R. Wyler was a house and sign painter. Other residents on Rhode Island Street included European immigrants and Westerners. Hannah Williamson, a widow, was born in Ireland. Louis Peterson was a stone mason from Sweden. Harrison Hatch, a livery and feed stable owner, was born in Ohio and came to Kansas from Illinois. 15 In the 1870s, however, some early residents, such as 0.W McAllaster, moved to West Lawrence. As more prosperous residents moved west of Massachusetts Street, this trend contributed to the decline of the neighborhood in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The most numerous emigrants to Lawrence in the late 1870s, black Southerners, were received with ambivalence. African Americans represented 22.5 per cent of the town's popula- tion in the 1880 census-the highest proportion in local history. Although there was no strictly segregated district in Lawrence, black residents were concentrated in East and North Lawrence. 16 The rich history of African Americans in Lawrence, their role in local society, and their significance as workers in the economy remains to be documented and interpreted. European cultural origins were not ex- pressed in the form and style of individual resi- dences on Rhode Island Street. Individual Ger- man Americans constructed different types of houses and chose buildings much like those of the other settlers in Lawrence. Although there was experimentation during the settle- ment period, architecture in Lawrence after 1864 expressed the popular culture of nine- teenth-century industrialized America. The oldest surviving house (0. W. McAllaster, 724 R. I., const. 1861) had a simple 2 over 2-room plan with a gable front facing the street. Of the residences constructed dur- ing the townbuilding period, the second Carl Wyler house (728 R. I.) was an upright and ell. Fred Deichmann and Charles Achning built I-houses paralleling the street. This house type was much more common in rural areas and was given its name because it was so prevalent in the states of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Julius Fischer built a more formal version of the 2 over 2 plan with an enclosed side stair hall. This was one of the most common house forms in Lawrence from 1854 to the 1880s.17 The Rhode Island streetscape resulted from uneven development. Because townbuilding pro- ceeded so quickly and the boom ended abruptly, scattered lots were unimproved for several years. Q 7th St. r D' Bra 0 1 I .,, ., I -.ol Bl 01 • I • 01 I II d • DI -I _, cl \. 8th St. r ' • 1111 IP DI 1111 .. II a1 al al •' t en ml 81 t' ~ c: .= IS • .... - I cu ~ Bel .2 co: • CJ I • DI I J 9th St. 1•1 Dale E. Nimz 115 702 Rhode Island J. Fischer House (1870) 708 Rhode Island H • Williamson House (? 1866) 712 Rhode Island J. D. Bowersock House ( 1~90) 714 Rhode Island " " " 716 Rhode Island Bowersock/Wieman House (1890) 720 Rhode Island o. W. McAllaster House* ( 1870) 724 Rhode Island " " " ( 1861) 728 Rhode Island c. R. Wyler House* (1871 ) 732 Rhode Island C. R. Wyler House (1865) 738 Rhode Island R. E. Krum Hous e (1 915) 740 Rhode Island S. Steinberg House (1869) 800 Rhode Island Roberts/Doane House (1901 ) 806 Rhode Island II II II II 808 Rhode Island Urbansky/Freschmann House (1867) 812 Rhode Island F. Deichmann House (186 7) 816 Rhode Island A. Urban House (1867) 822 Rhode Island (c1906) 826 Rhode Island (cl 906) 828 Rhode Island L. Peterson House (c1881 ) 830 Rhode Island M. Bond Rouse (cl 915) 836 Rhode Island J. Longanecker House (1 905 ) 900 Rhode Island Turnhalle ( 1869) On Rhode Island Street and throughout the "historic city," houses from several different periods may be found on the same block. In the years from 1874 to 1915, some new houses filled in vacant lots on Rhode Island Street (see Figure 2. Rhode Island Street houses). More people and houses were concentrated on the street and more of the houses were rented to wage workers. Figure 2. Rhode Island Street houses. The most notable investment came from outside and indicated the decisive change to a working-class neighborhood. Only two houses were erected in the 1880s, but these were built for owner occupants. The new property owners were predominantly native-born, not immi- grants. Later, two groups of houses were constructed by capitalists J.D. Bowersock and J.N. Roberts. In 1890 Bowersock built three adjacent houses in the 700 block that were rented to railroad and industrial workers (712, 714, 716 R.I.). Unlike the rectangular gable-roofed houses of the earlier periods, these modest houses had irregular plans and ornamentation that re- sembled more elaborate Queen Ann style residences popular at the time. Roberts built three houses on the corner lots at 8th and Rhode Island in 1901. These residences had square plans that resembled the pyramidal house type common throughout Kansas in the first decades of the twentieth century. The most recent historic houses were two bungalows (738 and 830 R.I.) built about 1915 (see Figure 3. Common Housetypes of the Prairie Plains). After 1915 no new buildings were constructed on the 700 and 800 blocks of Rhode Island Street. 18 The pattern of building on Rhode Island Street was consistent with that of the entire neighborhood. East Lawrence was the largest residential neighborhood in the "historic city" with the most buildings. According to a historic preservation survey of the area in 1995, 85 m BENT(T&L) U•27/12.796 R•Sl/11.896 ® == COTTAGE U•6/l.896 R•3,0.7% '° -- ---FOUR·SQUAAE CUBE U•7/J.J% R•ll/2.6% ~ PmAMIOAL U•S/l.2% R•9/2.1% ~ SPUT-UVEl U•O,.0% dni!J UPRJGiT ANO EU. U•l.().9% R .. 1.().196 ~ m; CAPE COD QASSICAL. REVIVAL U=l.().9% R=38~.896 U•l.0.5% R=0.0.0% ~ ~ ENQJSH COTTAGE FOUR·OVER-FOUR. U•l.().9% R=0,0.0% U•20f1.'496 R=0,().0% ~ ~ MISSION REVIVAL POST-MODERN U•l.().9% R=0.().0% u .. '4/1.8% R.a92/2.l .'4'l6 !§lffi.2§ Ulfij-j]J IVNCHER SHOTQJN u-914.2% R.=93/l I .6% U•3/l .'4% R.•0.0.0% ~ - ~ ~ ,r .,r ......... l~gls1=1~ TIWl.£R TRJPl.£X U•O, press their personal distaste with racial segregation and promised their financial support of an integrated pool. Typical of the letters was one from Juliet Popper, a professor of psychology at KU, an advisor at the picket, and the wife of LLPD president Harry Shaffer. Popper wrote that segregation was "an offense to human dignity and a violation of the basic principles of a democratic society." Popper promised to purchase a membership when the pool integrated but vowed never to attend if it remained segregated. Stuart Levine, a professor of English at KU, had had a family membership at the Plunge in 1959, but was "not willing to join this year" and would "join next year only if the pool (were] integrated." He closed by telling Nottberg: "You will, of course, have to integrate the pool or close it if the League takes legal action."24 On May 20, 1960, the Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy mailed a questionnaire to the university faculty asking whether they supported integration of the ]ayhawk Plunge. Many respondents also wrote to Bertha Nottberg, the pool's owner, to express their personal distaste for racial segregation. Local officials were not, however, as certain of the LLPD's position on this point. Restau- rants and hotels were subject to the antidiscrimination law because they were named specifi- cally in the act, swimming pools were not. The LLPD believed pools were "places of public amusement" and thus were covered by the statute: Douglas County Attorney Wesley Norwood, at the LLPD's annual meeting in March 1960, had commented on the "absurdity" of quib- bling over · whether "bowling alleys or skating rinks or swimming pools" fell under the provi- sions of the 1959 amendments. He remi~ded the LLPD that the law had been in effect for less than a year and believed that the LLPD could best use its activism by lobbying for new civil rights legislation rather than attempting to use the courts or protests to end segregation. 25 In May Lawrence City Attorney Charles Stough had told the LLPD that the city ordinance requiring the licensing of pools was unconstitutional. Stough explained that the ordinance had been designed as a revenue measure rather than a health and safety law. Citing a 1959 Kansas Supreme Court ruling, Stough claimed that since the intent of the ordinance was not dear in 198 Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas its title, it would not stand up to a legal challenge. Members of the LLPD, however, disagreed and insisted they were on secure legal ground as long as the licensing action was not "arbitrary and capricious."26 With more than one hundred persons attending, on June 14 the city commission repealed the old ordinance and charged Stough with studying and composing a new one that would withstand a legal challenge. The repeal of the ordinance left civil rights activists with no legal foundation on which to seek an injunction against the Plunge, but the LLPD ·contingent left satisfied that a new ordinance would be in their best interests. Denying charges that they were protecting Nottberg, the city commission affirmed its desire to desegregate the pool by "legal steps" but set no timetable to achieve that goal. Mayor John Weatherwax said that he hoped "any public business would be open to anyone who can pay the price, regardless of race or creed." He "personally would boycott a bigoted person's business." The commission also de- fended the rights of property owners, claiming they would be reluctant to "forc[e] a property owner to do something to which he was opposed."27 While Shaffer and the LLPD initiated the campaign against the Plunge, Jesse Milan, the first African American teacher in the post-Brown Lawrence public schools, and ocher African Americans were reconstituting the NAACP chapter in Lawrence. The Kansas City Call re- ported that Milan and Reverend A.L. Parker of the First RM Baptist Church led an organiza- tional meeting for a "proposed NAACP chapter" at the Ninth Street Baptist Church on May 15. Another meeting was held on May 24 to elect officers, with state NAACP leader Samuel Jackson, a Topeka attorney, attending. Reverend Therion Cobb was elected president, Rever- end Frank Brown of Ninth Street Baptist was selected vice president, and Milan was chosen secretary.28 The treasurer and executive committee were all black women. The formation of the Lawrence-Douglas County NAACP suggests a level of dissatisfaction with the LLPD among some African Americans. Milan had been president of the LLPD before Shaffer but had grown tired of what he perceived to be the LLPD's lack of commitment to action. "They didn't do a damn thing," Milan recalled, without citing any specifics. "They raised concerns, but didn't get any results." Milan had wanted to convert the LLPD to a branch of the NAACP as early as 1956 but was unsuccessful.29 In fact, Milan moved to organize the Lawrence-Douglas County NAACP only a few weeks after he stepped down from the leadership of the LLPD. It is possible that personality conflicts had arisen between Milan and Shaffer, although no documentation exists to support this possibility, and neither Milan nor Shaffer would confirm it. The divergent tactics and leadership of the two organizations hinted at an impending rift in the movement. The LLPD's leadership in 1960 was mostly white liberals from the university. The newly organized NAACP's leadership was entirely black and included several pastors of black churches. It appears that none of the NAACP's officers was affiliated directly with the university.30 In 1960, however, the NAACP · and the LLPD both wanted to integrate the Jayhawk Plunge, although accounts differed over the best way to achieve that goal. Milan claimed that the NAACP had "strategized" with Stough, Shaffer, and other individuals interested in inte- grating the Plunge before the pool opened in early June. Led by Vice Chairman Samuel Jack- son, the state NAACP would seek a court injunction against the Plunge for violating the city licensing ordinance. In all likelihood, the meeting to which Milan referred was the one Shaffer called for June 13, at which Sam Jackson was present. At this meeting Shaffer wrote to LLPD members that "we will discuss any and all lawful methods" of integrating the Jayhawk Plunge. Milan claimed, however, that picketing or any other public protest was not discussed because it was agreed that direct action would probably cause the pool to be sold, preempting the effect of an injunction. The injunction strategy, according to Milan, was the preferred course of action for desegregating the pool and the one upon which all who attended the meeting had agreed.31 Newspaper accounts corroborate Milan's assertion that activists had been seeking a legal solution to the problem, either through a court injunction or the licensing power of the city. Rusty L. Monhollon 199 Evidently Harry Shaffer and the other LLPD leaders did not agree with Milan. A clear sense of urgency shows in Shaffer's letter and notes regarding the June 13 meeting and the statement of "action to be taken now" against the Plunge. On June 10 Shaffer sent a telegram to Kansas Attorney General John Anderson asking if Ander- son could give his opinion on the constitutionality of the city's licensing law before the June 13 meeting. Shaffer emphasized to Anderson that the LLPD needed "to decide upon immediate steps to integrate swimming pool." Another handwritten note, probably written by Shaffer before the June 13 meeting, read, "We are acting in democratic fashion. But if [the] rational approach [is] blocked our friends will prob- ably take other legal measures such as public demonstrations, etc." Shaffer called an- other meeting for June 29 to discuss ''Action to be taken NOW!"32 It seems clear that Shaffer, with the support of at least part of the LLPD, was intent on a showdown with Nottberg at the Jayhawk Plunge. The LLPD did not rest while the city moved to pass a new ordinance to license the pool. It met frequently and distributed flyers encouraging local residents to sup- port the integration of the pool. It also prepared newspaper advertisements. Although the ads never ran, they provide insight into the LLPD's effort to take the Plunge. One advertisement showed a young black boy and black girl holding hands; the caption read, "It's so hot and sticky in Lawrence in the summer/We want to go swimming/Other boys and girls can go swimming-in Topeka, in Kansas City, in Wichita, and in other Kansas towns/Why can't we?" Another asked for support from children in the community: "Be with us from that day on until we dive into the Jayhawk Plunge together with our white classmates." The LLPD emphasized the nega- tive impact segregation had on children and used this emotional appeal to garner support for its cause. 33 By July l, after the pool had been open for more than a month, the injunction still had not been obtained nor had the city licensed the pool or passed a new ordinance. Some LLPD members encouraged patience and opposed picketing; others, however, had run out of pa- tience. 34 Around noon on July 4 more than thirty African Americans, mostly students from the university and including some members of the LLPD, began picketing the Plunge. Impa- tient at the pace of legal efforts to integrate the pool, the students, with encouragement from Shaffer and other LLPD members, initiated the protest. Marvin McKnight, one of the pickets, declared, "We are interested in gaining our rights. We will do it peaceably, but we will do it." The protesters vowed to continue the picket until the pool was integrated.35 Although officially distanced from the picketing, Shaffer, John Sr. and Vernell Spearman, and other LLPD members were present at the pool as "advisors" and "observers." They wel- comed "student support" to fight segregation. "This action today was spontaneous and by word of mouth," Shaffer claimed. Virginia Titus, a vice president of the LLPD, and Clifford Ketzel, also of the LLPD and an assistant professor of political science at KU, said that the LLPD "welcomes student support toward the objective of swimming facilities for all Lawrence citizens. However, it is not participating in nor is it a sponsor of this demonstration. As far as we know it is completely student-initiated and student-directed .... It would be fair to say, however, that we are most sympathetic to their objective."36 Apparently Shaffer always had the picket in mind, and his decision for the LLPD not to participate officially in the protest was mostly symbolic. The sight of young African Ameri- cans-including ten-year-old John Spearman Jr., who had decided it was the "right thing to do" after conferring with his parents-picketing a segregated facility created a more powerful image than a group of white, middle-class, university professors doing so. Shaffer's notes sug- gest that in early June he was considering using students as pickets.37 According to Jesse Milan, the protest also contradicted the strategy to which Milan, Stough, and Shaffer had agreed a month earlier. It is not clear why the LLPD broke this agreement or if such an agreement had been made.38 Even as it pushed the picket, the LLPD continued to A picket marches in prote.rt rlf the }ayhawk Plunge durinJr. the summer of 1960. 200 Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas press the city to pass an ordinance on which an appeal for a court injunction could be made.39 Nonetheless, the picket was what Shaffer and part of the LLPD wanted all along. Shaffer apparently believed that direct action was the only option left to pursue because of the delay in obtaining the court injunction and Nottberg's intransigence. For his part, however, Jesse Milan believed "a Judas" must have been at that June meeting who "convinced some black folks to not use the approach of the injunction ... and to go ahead and picket." Milan would not name the "Judas" but likely he was referring to Shaffer. Milan did not participate in or support the picketing. He told blacks participating in the protest that they were not "thinking for themselves" and were "doing what some white folks put [them] up to do." Although previ- ously frustrated with the LLPD because it was "all talk and no action," Milan believed the NAACP's legal strategy had been ignored because "black folk suggested" it. If the injunction tactic had been followed, Milan contended, it would have "shut that damn pool down and nobody would have swum and then the heat would have really been on . . . and the bond issue [for a new pool] would have passed."40 Milan's statements point to the beginning of a struggle between white liberals, like Shaffer, and black activists, like Milan, not only over tactics and strategy but also for control of the movement. Nottberg decried the picketing, claiming that integration would be "economic suicide" for her. She publicly offered to sell the pool to the city or the LLPD and let them operate it as they saw fit. 41 Inexplicably, the LLPD, the NAACP, nor any other Lawrence group or indi- vidual turned to the state to intervene in or mediate the matter. The protest remained local. After the picket began, the LLPD demanded that the city commission take immediate action to enact the new city ordinance that would force integration of the pool. At the July 5 commission meeting, Stough insisted that he was "trying to get a good swimming pool ordi- nance drawn up, irrespective of the controversy around integration." Weatherwax remarked that if "our action has been slow to date it is the result of the LLPD's visit en masse to our meeting of June 14." He added, "We are trying to get an ordinance that will stand the test of time." Pointing out that "many unanswered questions" remained, Weatherwax asserted that "rush legislation on our part probably would weaken" the LLPD's case for an injunction. Stough did draft a new licensing ordinance, and it was given a first reading July 12.42 While the city moved cautiously, picketing continued and tensions increased. John Spearman Jr. recalled that after the protest began slats had been placed in the chain link fence and protesters could no longer see the pool or the swimmers. Harold Stagg affirmed the picket's goals: "We will continue to picket until Mrs. Nottberg decides to open the pool to us." Mrs. Stagg added, "If it were just a matter of owning a pool I would build one in my back yard. We feel that as long as there is a pool here and it is supported by the public, we should be allowed to use it."43 On Sunday, July 10, a token counter protest began. Signs hung on the fence surrounding the pool by unidentified supporters of Nottberg asked, "What happened to the personal rights of private industry to operate at a profit?" and "KU does have a pool, what's wrong with it?"44 As these signs suggest, Nottberg's supporters opposed the picket on two grounds: the protest was trampling on the right of a property owner to use her property as she saw fit, and "outsid- ers" from the university were responsible for stirring up trouble. 45 Ed Abels, the libertarian, anticommunist publisher of the weekly Lawrence Outlook, had written before the picket began that the only "rights" that supporters of integration had were "to build one of the finest pools that can be built and operate it according to the plans that they advocate." Abels argued that since Nottberg had invested her money in the pool, it was her right not to admit "just anybody" to the faciliry. 46 Lawrence homemaker Norma McCanles wholeheartedly agreed. She wondered why all of a sudden there has developed a prejudice against Negroes. They've always had their voting rights, educational opportunities, along with certain other rights as citizens of Lawrence. Then all of a sudden, the pool has been considered to belong in the inalienable rights cat- egory. What about the rights of business owners? Have they lost their right to run their busi- ness as they see fit[?] ... Rusty L. Monhollon 201 Did the city consider action in the building, running, and expenses of the pool? If they are going to take action on business problems that they have no control over, then it seems that rights mean nothing. If the city takes action on this problem, it might as well take over everything. 47 McCanles also worried that "the nation [was] going to break up in small minority groups and small-scale pressure groups and completely destroy the business rights of this nation. "48 Charles C. Spencer Sr., who lived outside Lawrence, also defended Nottberg. He claimed that the LLPD was "interfer[ing] with the right of a private property owner to operate her business and · make a living." Spencer accepted the "very sensible and logical" explanation Nottberg offered for not integrating the pool and questioned if "taking over, or integrating" the Jayhawk Plunge was "a necessary public need?" Spencer concluded: "There is no law, Con- stitutional, Federal, state or municipal that can compel an individual or group of individuals to have to associate with another group against their will. In other words, in this grand coun- try of ours, an individual still has the inalienable right to pick or select his own friends and associates." In another letter Spencer reiterated that the "picketing of a private business, where no labor trouble is present, is nothing more or less than downright intimidation! It is un- American. It makes no difference whether the picketers were white or colored," as long as their prevailing attitude was "We swim or you don't!"49 While this property rights defense suggests the complexity of the issues involved in the protest, the claim that "outsiders" were responsible for creating the problem speaks to a "town- gown'' split in Lawrence. Norma McCanles also questioned the motivation and leadership of the picket. In an obvious reference to Shaffer and the other LLPD leaders, she asked, "Just who is behind · it? Is it the Negroes or certain men who are after personal recognition .... It appears that they [the pickets] are being pushed and agitated by those who have no interest other than the notoriety." She also wondered why KU students, to whom "a pool [is] open ... free of charge," were picketing. "Why should the city be influenced by the actions of stu- dents," she asked, "who have no say in the management of the city?" She expressed concern not just for Lawrence but for the entire nation. "The country will be in poor shape if we depend on these morally delinquent people to lead the world. Why don't these professors clean up their own stew pot of problems before they tackle other things?" She concluded that "Freedom and rights of a group, any group, are one thing, but should these infringe upon the freedom and right of another group?"50 "Outsiders" from the university, especially transitory students, had no real stake in the Lawrence community, many townspeople believed. Nottberg's supporters, however, never acknowledged that she too was an outsider (she lived in Kansas City, Missouri). With picketing by both sides leading to fears of violence, the Lawrence Police Depart- ment stationed a police officer at the pool. Mrs. Avon Roberts thanked Lawrence police for protecting "club members and guests" during the picket. She also considered "those people parading in that area a menace to drivers as some of them seem to feel that they are to be 'watched out for."' Clarence R. Macfarland, writing for the "Picket Line Members," also thanked and complimented the department for its "prompt" action and "interest" in maintaining the ,peace. 51 Abels was critical of the decision and claimed that the police were there solely to protect the protesters. Lawrence chief of police John Hazlett defended his decision, asserting that the officer was there "to prevent any trouble that could arise on either side." "I hope that what goes on at the pool can go on peaceably," Hazlett remarked. "I also hope that trouble does not develop from picketing, however, if it does, certainly we'll do everything in our power to stop it."52 The threat of violence, though, was real. Macfarland claimed that frequent "vitupera- tions" came from whites standing across the street from the demonstration. Several times cars had "buzzed" the picket, and on another occasion three whites tried to start a fight with a white member and "nearly hurt" a woman picketer. The picket was again "buzzed" after this 202 Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas incident.53 On July 11 eleven carp were dumped into the pool, while a similar number were left on the Shaffer's doorstep. An effigy of Shaffer, impaled with sticks and carrying a sign that read "You will never swim again" was left in his yard. Shaffer also received threatening phone calls warning him to leave town.54 No one claimed responsibility for the carp prank or the death threat. These incidents marked the end of the protest. Despite the city's commitment to compel the Plunge to integrate, its efforts proved too slow. On July 12 Nottberg announced that she had "taken a terrible financial beating" and would close the pool, vowing not to reopen it. "Bad weather" had cut into profits and "this picketing took care of the rest," Nottberg said, adding that she could not "blame parents for not sending their children to the pool where there might be trouble." Nottberg condemned the picketing as unjust because one group had moved in and "ruin[ed] a private concern." Further, the protest was "unfair" because the "picket line was not a city group ... [i]t was all University." Exasperated, Nottberg concluded that this was "the end of my problems in Lawrence. I'm not going to continue taking it. "55 In Nottberg's financial woes the LLPD saw an opportunity and asked the city to purchase or lease the pool and operate it as a· municipal facility, which is also what Nottberg wanted. The city refused, however, claiming that such action would be "illegal" because no money was in the city budget to buy the pool. Moreover, the commissioners preferred to put the question to a citywide referendum. "If there is to be a financial loss there as the result of a citizens [sic] group," Nottberg said, "then it should be a municipal loss." Outlook publisher Ed Abels sided with the pool owner. There were "no friendly, sympathetic or helpful faces in the picket line," Abels wrote, "only bearded men, colored men who are strangers and others who appear to be foreigners. Practically none of our good Lawrence citizens [were] ... implicated in this affair." Abels growled that neither the LLPD nor any of the protesters had "made any attempt to buy" the Plunge. 56 Nottberg ended the possibility of a city purchase when she leased the pool to Kansas City businessmen Mack O'Banion and Richard L. Harris, who renamed it the Olympic Swim Club. O'Banion and Harris, who also owned the Wyandot Swim Club in Kansas City, Kansas, said that they would operate the pool as a nonprofit private club, with a board of directors to set all policies and rules. Because the club was incorporated solely for the enjoyment of its mem- bers and not for profit, it could skirt the provisions of the public accommodations law. Non- members could swim as guests, but only if accompanied by a member-this rule would be "strictly enforced." "It's strictly a matter of what the members want," O'Banion replied when asked ·the pool's policy on integration. The "social, educational and economic levels of mem- bers would determine integration policies" and, he added, members could "swim with anyone they chose, regardless of race or creed." Never was any mention made of a vote by members to integrate the club. O'Banion and Harris promptly named an all-white board of directors, sold charter memberships (again, only to whites), and had the former Jayhawk Plunge operating again within a week. Had Nottberg operated the pool strictly on this basis, the LLPD would have had no recourse except to appeal to her conscience to drop the color ban. A month after the picket, the city commission passed an ordinance that provided "health safeguards" and a licensing requirement for pools charging an admission. The Call reported that the LLPD would "have to prove that the former Jayhawk Plunge is a public rather than a private operation in order for the new ordinance to apply."57 The LLPD admitted as long as the pool's owners ran it solely as a private club, there was little it could do to force integration. It promised to monitor the club's guest policy. The LLPD-inspired picket clearly had failed. The protest had not forced integration of the pool but had only compelled a private club to operate as such. Meanwhile, the picket upstaged the injunction strategy and polarized public opinion, while the city bureaucracy moved slowly to exercise its licensing power to force the Plunge to integrate. A possible solution to the problem-a city purchase or lease of the pool-had received little consideration. Nottberg Rusty L. Monhollon 203 acknowledged that she preferred to sell than to lease the pool and was willing to sell it to the city at book value, a price that would have been less than constructing a new pool. While budgetary concerns may have prevented the city from leasing or purchasing the pool in July, any interest by the city might have induced Nottberg to wait until the legal obstacles had been hurdled. Despite the lower costs, and given the history of pool bond elections, it is doubtful that a citywide referendum would have passed. As in 1956, the "racial issue," however it was defined, was still present. "The pool is not integrated; it is closed," wrote Ed Abels, "The colored boys and girls cannot swim, but neither can the white boys and girls." One week later, of course, this was no longer true. White children could swim there by purchasing a membership to the new club. It is not clear if any blacks tried to join the club. None, however, ever were accepted as mem- bers. 58 Instead of placing responsibility for the pool's dosing on Bertha Nottberg's racism or the tacit approval of a large portion of the white community or the foot dragging of the Lawrence City Commission, Abels offered another explanation: the fear of racial violence. Abels's fear was not unfounded, for in the wake of the lunch counter sit-ins in early 1960, outbursts of violence against civil rights activists were common throughout the South and alarmed many in the North. The instigators of this violence, however, were not protesters but angry whites. "Pool patronage stopped because of a fear of violence that usually develops at picket lines," Abels wrote, clearly blaming the protesters for creating that fear. Although the threat of vio- lence, at least to many opponents of the protest, appeared very real, actual violence never was likely. Lawrence police officers always were at the scene, as were advisors from the LLPD. · Moreover, the picket was deeply committed to nonviolence. More significantly, Abels and others defended racial exclusion by arguing for the rights of the owners of private property to refuse service to whomever they chose. The picket at the Jayhawk Plunge drove "a desirable business out of town and caused 21 persons to lose their jobs," argued Abels, and this "points up the need for legislation that will stop such foolishness. Settling disputes with guns was outlawed many years ago." Abels continued: "When picketing is used as unfairly as in the local case, where it has caused a financial loss not only to the business but to the employees, the use of pickets cannot be justified in any way." He con- cluded by assessing the state of race relations in Lawrence. "This community has advanced far since the days when Negroes were hanged from the Kansas river bridge."59 Abels's comments suggest that a major obstacle confronting civil rights activists in their struggle to achieve racial equality in Lawrence was an apathetic, even hostile, white commu- nity that placed property rights above equal opportunity and sought to maintain existing racial boundaries in Lawrence. Opponents of integration later in the decade voiced similar senti- ments against civil rights legislation and the further extension of the activist, liberal state. This opposition was perhaps best expressed by Justin Hill, president of Lawrence Paper Company and an active civic leader, who remarked on a 1965 sir-in at the University of Kansas. Blacks, he wrote, were "demanding housing in suburbs developed by whites, jobs in companies devel- oped by whites, the right to eat in restaurants and go to stores owned and developed by whites." Moreover, Hill believed that "white people must earn the right to these things, it is . not given to them. The coloreds should earn the right to these things."60 By opposing integra- tion based on the right of an individual to do with his or her property what they wanted, and by avoiding overt appeals to white supremacy, Bertha Nottberg, Ed Abels, Justin Hill, and other white Lawrencians nonetheless defended a segregated society by reaffirming their white- ness. They argued that the rights of individuals, as property owners, superseded the rights of blacks, as a group, asking for equal opportunity (although, ironically, they did so based on a group identification). They did not close the door to racial equality someday but made clear it would be opened wide only when blacks somehow "prove" themselves worthy. It was ambigu- ous, however, how or when blacks could accomplish this. It was clear that whites would de- cide when that point had been reached. Confronted with strong grass-roots opposition, the limits of liberal reform were painfully exposed. 204 Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas The struggle· to end racial segregation in the United States was waged on many fronts. Freedom workers frequently targeted recreational facilities, especially swimming pools, that de- nied access to African Americans. Swimming pools were symbolic for both sides. For segregation- ists, integrated pools exacerbated their fears of dose, interracial contact. Established in part to avoid public accommodation laws, private swim clubs like the Plunge also signified to segrega- tionists the right of free association. On the other hand, civil rights activists argued that segre- gated, publicly supported or licensed pools implicated local governments for at least tacitly ac- cepting, if not outright promoting, segregation. Additionally, black citizens' taxes provided financial support for recreational facilities they were unable to use. Finally, black youths were denied the chance to take swimming lessons and the opportunity to swim in safe, guarded pools. Many black children such as Wray Jones drowned while swimming in local rivers, creeks, or ponds, the only places they were allowed. Jones's death illustrated the human costs of racial exclusion.61 Ultimately the Jayhawk Plunge was not integrated. The question of whether a different approach-such as the legal injunction that Jesse Milan and the NAACP wanted-would have been successful is moot. Other private swim dubs continued to operate in Lawrence during the 1960s, all of which denied admission to African Americans and which civil rights organi- zations tried unsuccessfully to integrate. Civil rights activists, joined by civic organizations, continued to advocate the construction of a municipal swimming facility, but it was not until 1967 that Lawrence voters agreed to fund such a pool and 1969 before that pool was opened. The LLPD had taken the plunge in 1960 and used direct action to integrate recreational facilities in Lawrence, but it was a brief dive into a deep pool. In its twenty-year existence the LLPD had made incremental progress toward racial equality in Lawrence. But the group never again mounted another direct action campaign to integrate public facilities, working instead to gain fair housing and employ~ent opportunities for blacks in Lawrence. Even that effort was short lived and had ambiguous results. In 1965 the LLPD disbanded, citing the preponder- ance and overlap of civil rights organizations in Lawrence. Like many white liberals, several members of the LLPD, including Harry Shaffer, directed their activism toward opposing the Vietnam War, although they never lost their commitment to social equality.62 The picket at the Jayhawk Plunge was significant for several reasons. It initiated a decade of increased racial tensions in Lawrence that culminated in 1970 with two deaths, countless arsons, thousands of dollars in property damage, and a polarized community teetering on the brink of a race riot. 63 It revealed the fissures of an impending split over tactics and strategy within the movement itself and presaged· the demise of liberal, interracial approaches to com- bating racial discrimination. Part of the failure to integrate the Plunge can be attributed to a lack of concerted, united effort by civil rights organizations and activists. The picket, inspired by the white-led, liberal, university-based leadership of the LLPD, was opposed by part of its own membership and by many African Americans, including Jesse Milan of the predominantly black, church-based Lawrence-Douglas County NAACP. For decades African Americans in Lawrence had relied on the good faith of legislation, white city officials, and white civil rights workers, but with only marginal improvements in their social condition. Grass-roots civil rights activism continued in Lawrence after 1960, but it did so increasingly on an agenda set by African Americans, espe- cially the young. Eventually, many African Americans in Lawrence embraced Black Power and began to shape the discussion about race relations on their own terms. The effort to take the Plunge also testified to the potent forces impeding racial equality in Lawrence and the limits of liberalism in challenging those forces. White racism was one such force. But many Lawrencians defended segregation through their opposition to the activist, liberal state and a steadfast belief in the rights of individuals to use their property however they wanted. These defenses were perhaps more potent. By framing their opposition not around the nexus . of white superiority/black inferiority, but around their appeals to the Constitution and mainstream American conservatism, these Lawrencians wielded a powerful means of resist- ing integration, maintaining existing racial boundaries, and challenging the post-World War II liberal consensus. Rusty L. Monhollon 205 The author sincerely thanks Sonja Erickson, Chris O'Brien, Bill Tuttle, Carl Strikwerda, Ted Wilson, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments, suggestions, and assistance. Research for this paper was funded in part by an Alfred M. Landon Historical Research Grant administered by the Kansas State Historical Society. Notes 1. All quotes and accounts of the drowning, unless otherwise noted, were taken from "Drowning, Wreck Claim Two Lives in Area Friday," Lawrence Daily journal-World, June 4, .1955. 2. Lawrence did not approve bonds for building a municipal pool until 1967. The pool finally opened amid acute racial tension in the summer of 1969. See Kathy King and Marilyn Beagle, "The Historical Development of Obtaining a Public Swimming Pool in Lawrence, Kansas," (paper prepared for Sociology 165, Dr. Norman Yetman, fall 1970, University of Kansas), Lawrence Swimming Pool file, Watkins Community Museum of His- tory, Lawrence, Kans.; Rusty L. Monhollon, "Black Power, White Fear: The 'Negro Problem' in Lawrence, Kansas, 1960-1970," in Race Consciousness: Aftican American Studies for the New Century, ed. Judith Jackson Fossett and Jeffrey Tucker (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 247-62. 3. Unknown to its white owner, blacks did swim at the Plunge. Speaking at the annual Brotherhood Banquet in Lawrence in 1961, George Brown, a Colorado state senator and ·an editor for the Denver Post who had grown up in Lawrence, recalled with amusement that he and his friends often would scale the fence at the Plunge after dark and swim in the "white-only" pool. See "Lawrence Indicted for Discrimination," University Daily Kansan, February 20, 1961. 4. Ethel May Moore, born in Lawrence in 1889, recalled that in her lifetime "several" black children had drowned in the river. See Ethel May Josephine Elizabeth Lenore Johnson Moore, interview transcript, Watkins Commu- nity Museum of History. Although no other drowning cases have been identified, a letter from Katie Argensinger to the editor, Lawrence Daily Journal-World, June 4, 1955, noted that such accidents were not uncommon and were among the motives behind the push for a public pool. 5. Baur was referring to the city recreation commission's water safety program. Dolph Simons Sr., editor and publisher of the Lawrence Daily Journal-World, defended the commission's decision, arguing that it was only following the rules · set by the owner of the pool. The commission eventually dropped the program. The Plunge simply filled the void by providing swimming lessons and other water safety instruction, but only to white children. See E.J. Baur to the editor, and editor's reply, Lawrence Daily journal-World, June 7, 1955. 6. "Lawrence Pool Being Picketed," ibid., July 5, 1960. 7. William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 350-51. The "liberal consensus" is best explained by British jour- nalist Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time: From World tmtr II to Nixon, What Happened and Why (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), 76. 8. Gary Gerstle, "Race and the Myth of the Liberal Consensus," journal of American History 82 (September 1995): 580. 9. Thomas Sugrue's study of Detroit and Arnold Hirsch's work on Chicago demonstrate how working-class and lower-middle-class whites resisted integration and social reform as far back as the 1940s, questioning the notion of a liberal consensus. The "local politics of race," Sugrue writes, "fostered a grass-roots rebellion against liberal- ism and seriously limited the social democratic and egalitarian possibilities" it promised. See Thomas J. Sugrue, "Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964," journal of American History 82 (September 1995): 551-78; Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, N .J .: Princeton University Press, 1996); Arnold R. Hirsch, "Massive Resistance in the Urban North: Trumbull Park, Chicago, 1953-1966," journal of American History 82 (Septem- ber 1995): 522-50. 10. Dan T. Carter traces the intersection of race, integration, and politics in The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995); Carter, From George tmtllace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996). 11. For more on civil rights activism at the University of Kansas prior to the 1960s, see Kristine M. McCusker, "'The Forgotten Years' of America's Civil Rights Movement: The University of Kansas, 1939-1961" (master's thesis, University of Kansas, 1993); McCusker, '"The Forgotten Years' of America's Civil Rights Movement: Wartime Protests at the University of Kansas, 1939-1945," Kansas History: A journal of the Central Plains 17 (Spring 1994): 26-37; Clifford S. Griffin, The University of Kansas: A History (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1974), 627-28. On Chamberlain's "modest" role in integrating Lawrence, see Wilt Chamberlain and David Shaw, Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1973), SI. 12. The LLPD apparently had absorbed much of the NAACP's membership sometime during the 1950s. Jesse Milan, along with several African American ministers, revived the NAACP in the spring of 1960 at the same time Shaffer and the LLPD launched the campaign against the Plunge. Unfortunately, papers of the Lawrence- Douglas County NAACP for the years 1960-1965 are yet to be found. The Kansas State Historical Society has on microfilm the Kansas chapters' papers to the national office, but only two miscellaneous letters from the 206 Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas Lawrence chapter after 1960 are included. Information in this article about the NAACP are from reports and other memoranda found in the papers of the LLPD and other Lawrence organizations, and in oral histories. 13. McCusker, "'The Forgotten Years' of America's Civil Rights Movement," 72. For the early history of the LLPD, see ibid., 72-82; the Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy Constitution and Pledge, amended July 1, 1959, LLPD Constitution and Pledge file, box l, Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy Papers, Kan- sas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence, hereafter referred to as LLPD Papers. The 650 mem- bership estimate comes from George Caldwell, LLPD president in 1965, in a history he wrote of the organiza- tion. See Papers, History file, box 4, ibid. 14. John Spearman Jr., interview by author, October 9, 1994. 15. Information on Shaffer's background is from "Vitae," Morgue file, University of Kansas Archives, Lawrence; Harry Shaffer, interview transcript, Retirees Club Oral History Project,. University of Kansas Archives; Shaffer interview. For more about the LLPD's membership, see McCusker, '"The Forgotten Years' of America's Civil Rights Movement," 73-78; Rusty L. Monhollon, "'Away From the Dream': The Roots of Black Power in Lawrence, Kansas, 1960-1975" (master's thesis, University of Kansas 1994), 31-33. 16. See Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy, "Report on a New Lawrence Swimming Pool," Discrimina- tion in Lawrence file, box 3, LLPD Papers. 17. Lawrence Daily Journal-World, November 3, 13, 1956, as quoted in King and Beagle, "The Historical Develop- ment of Obtaining a Public Swimming Pool in Lawrence, Kansas," 3. 18. Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy, "Notes on Annual Meeting," March 31, 1960, History file, LLPD Papers. 19. Kansas General Statutes, Supplement (1959): 21-2424; the LLPD's recommendations are in "Preliminary Recom- mendations to the Legislative Council Committee," History file, LLPD Papers. For a brief history of civil rights legislation in Kansas, see Joseph P. Doherty, Civil Rights in Kansas: Past, Present and Future (Topeka: State of Kansas Commission on Civil Rights, 1972). 20. Lawrence City Ordinance, Section 10-11, Swimming Pool Integration file, box 2, LLPD Papers. 21. The Kansas City parks department closed the Swope Park pool in 1952 and 1953 rather than allow blacks to swim. The pool finally was integrated in 1954, more than two years after the Kansas City NAACP filed suit to challenge the park board's segregation policy. A city-operated, black-only pool was opened at Seventeenth and The Paseo, but the suit argued· that it was not as "equal and adequate" as the Swope Park pool. The U.S. District Court upheld the right of blacks to equal facilities in 1952, but the city could not afford to build an "equal and identical" pool. The park board relented in 1954 and reopened the pool to all. As in the Plunge case, opponents (including members of the Kansas City Park Board) claimed an integrated pool would lose money. One board member cited two pools in St. Louis that had experienced a "90 percent loss in patronage." This was a frequent claim of opponents of integration; although it may have been a legitimate assertion, no figures were provided in either case. The Swope Park pool opened for its eleventh season in 1955 with no mention of racial problems or loss of patronage from the previous summer. See "May Sue over Pool Use," Kansas City Times, June 8, 1951; "Quiet on Pool Opening," ibid., April 14, 1953; "To Open Swope Pool," ibid., April l, 1954; and "Swope Pool Opens Today," ibid., June 11, 1955. 22. Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy, "Talk with Mrs. Nottberg," Swimming Pool Investigation, Lawrence, 1960-1961 file, box 3, LLPD Papers. 23. It is not clear if the LLPD sent the questionnaire only to faculty or to all KU employees and staff. The latter seems more likely, as KU had only about seven hundred full-time faculty in 1960. See "Questionnaire, May 20, 1960," Swimming Pool file, box 3, LLPD Papers. 24. Juliet Popper to Bertha Nottberg, June 3, 1960, ibid.; Stuart Levine to Bertha Nottberg, June 6, 1960, ibid. 25. Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy, "Notes on Annual Meeting," March 31, 1960, History file, LLPD Papers. 26. The Kansas Supreme Court ruling to which Stough referred was probably State of Kansas, ex rel Moore v City of Wichita, 184 Kan 196 (1959). The court ruled unconstitutional a Wichita city ordinance requiring the licensing of "certain trades, occupations, businesses and professions" because the "subject of the act authorizing cities to license for revenue purposes is not clearly expressed in its title." Stough's position was explained in "Lawrence Pool Target in Move on Segregation," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, June 15, 1960. For the LLPD's take on the ruling, see Swimming Pool file, LLPD Papers. 27. "Lawrence Pool Target in Move on Segregation." 28. Brown also was first vice president of the LLPD and likely the only black among the group's officers. Additional information about Therion Cobb has not been found. The Call did not identify his church or where he lived, nor does his name appear in the city directory. 29. Jesse Milan, interview by author, May 27,-1994. Several LLPD members supported Milan's contention, agreeing that the organization tended to focus "on talk rather than action." See McCusker, "'The Forgotten Years' of America's Civil Rights Movement," 74. 30. Call (Kansas City, Mo.), May 20, 27, June 3, 1960. 31. Milan interview. 32. Form letter, June 8, 1960, Swimming Pool file, LLPD Papers; notes regarding June 13 and June 29, 1960, meetings, ibid. 33. The ads never ran, probably for lack of money. A handwritten note suggested that they would cost $100.80, $140, and $191.20. See notes and advertisement copy, ibid. Rusty L. Monhollon 207 34. According to several letters from LLPD members, the entire membership did not advocate picketing. See Sally Krone to Harry Shaffer, July 9 [1960], ibid., C.A. Valentine to editor, Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 15, 1960. In fact, there appeared to be some confusion over the LLPD's "official" role. Valentine said it was "clear" to him that the LLPD was "not responsible for the picketing," but opponents of the picket felt otherwise. A few days earlier a letter from the officers of the LLPD reiterated their position of not being "sponsors" of the picket. The same letter, however, also restated that the LLPD was "actively engaged in promoting integration at Lawrence's only commercially operated swimming pool." Shaffer and the LLPD's leadership distinguished their other efforts to integrate the pool from the picket. See Harry Shaffer et al. to editor, Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 11, 1960. 35. Call, July 15, 1960; "Lawrence Pool Being Picketed." 36. Call, July 15, 1960. 37. Spearman interview. See also notes, Swimming Pool file, LLPD Papers. 38. No evidence has been found to support or refute Milan's contention that such an agreement had been made. Although newspaper accounts, including the Call, frequently refer to the LLPD's effort to obtain a court injunc- tion, none mentions either Milan's or the NAACP's role in that effort. It seems clear that while the LLPD wanted the injunction, its papers and Shaffer's recollections suggest that part of the organization intended to picket the Plunge if other tactics did not produce results. During an interview Shaffer indicated that the picket had indeed been at the behest of the LLPD. Moreover, Shaffer never mentioned any meeting with Milan or Stough to discuss other options. See Shaffer interview. 39. "Fast City Action Sought by LLPD," Lawrence Daily journal-World, July 6, 1960. 40. Milan interview. 41. "Lawrence Pool Being Picketed"; Call, July 15, 1960. 42. "Fast City Action Sought by LLPD"; "Pool Measure to Commission for Discussion," Lawrence Daily ]ournal- World, July 11, 1960; Lawrence City Commission Agenda, July 12, 1960, Swimming Pool file, LLPD Papers. The measure finally was approved late in July. In early August commissioners moved to establish an ordinance requiring private pools to be licensed. See "Non-Public Pools Included in Next Ordinance Action," Lawrence Daily journal-World, August 8, 1960. 43. Spearman interview; Call, July 15, 1960. 44. "Anti-Picket Signs Show Sunday at Local Plunge But Marching Continues," Lawrence Daily journal-World, July 11, 1960. 45. The property rights defense of segregation was used elsewhere in the United States to fight liberalism and civil rights activism. See Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, especially 209-30. 46. "Comments on Local Affairs," Lawrence Outlook, June 23, 1960. 47. Norma McCanles to editor, Lawrence Daily journal-World, July 13, 1960. 48. Ibid. 49. Charles C. Spencer Sr. to editor, ibid., July 14, 1960; Spencer to editor, ibid., July 19, 1960. 50. Norma McCanles to editor, Lawrence Daily journal-World, July 13, 1960. McCanles later was selected to the incorporating board of directors and served as secretary-treasurer of the new Olympic Swim Club, the renamed Jayhawk Plunge, after two Kansas City businessmen had purchased it from Nottberg. The Olympie's other board of directors are named in "Director Board for Local Pool," ibid., July 20, 1960. 51. Mrs. Avon Roberts to editor, ibid., July 7, 1960; Clarence R. Macfarland to editor, ibid. 52. "Ed Abels' Column," Lawrence Outlook, July 7, 1960; "Chief Says Police Not Taking Sides," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 11, 1960; Call, July 15, 1960. 53. Clarence R. Macfarland to editor, Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 7, 1960. 54. "Carp Are Dumped into Plunge," ibid., July 12, 1960; Shaffer interview. 5 5. "Friday Last Day for Local Plunge," Lawrence Daily journal-World, July 12, 1960. 56. "Pool Ordinance Has a Reading at Commission," ibid., July 13, 1960; "Swimming Pool Will Be Closed This Afternoon," ibid., July 15, 1960; "Swimming Pool is Closed and for Sale," Lawrence Outlook, July 14, 1960; "Comments on Local Affairs," ibid., July 14, 1960. 57. "Plunge in City May Be Opened with New Plan," Lawrence Daily journal-World, July 18, 1960; "Lawrence Pool Leased by Two Kansas Citians," ibid., July 18, 1960; Call, July 29, August 5, 1960. 58. No evidence has been found to suggest that the LLPD or other civil rights activists monitored the Olympic Swim Club's membership policies or if any blacks even attempted to join the club. In 1964 two white members ·of the local CORE chapter unsuccessfully tried to bring a black guest to the Dune's Club, another private swim club. Rather than allow blacks to swim, the club closed its doors. See Monhollon, '"Away From the Dream,"' 102-104. 59. "Swimming Pool is Closed and for Sale"; "Ed Abels Column," Lawrence Outlook, July 14, 1960; see also clip- ping, Swimming Pool file, LLPD Papers. 60. Justin D. Hill to W. Clarke Wescoe, March 10, 1965, Hate folder, box 9, Chancellor's Office, Executive Secre- tary, Case Files, 1959-65, University of Kansas Archives. This property rights defense would be used frequently later in the decade as Kansans opposed civil rights legislation. See constituent correspondence to Kansas senator James B. Pearson, James B. Pearson Papers, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence; con- stituent correspondence to Kansas congressman Robert F. Ellsworth, Robert F. Ellsworth Papers, Library and Archives Division, Kansas State Historical Society. Ocher examples are found in CORE flyer, Other Kansas Civil Rights Organizations file, box 6, LLPD Papers; "Civil Rights Group Pickets Apartments," University Daily Kansan, April 29, 1965. 208 Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas 61. The Greensboro sit-ins of 1960, for example, were preceded by efforts to integrate the white-only pool in Lindley Park. According to William H. Chafe, although this "bold action frightened some blacks and offended many whites, it had the effect of forcing people to think through their own positions and choose sides." See Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights, 110. Other U.S. cities had similar experiences. See, for example, Howard Shorr, "Thorns in the Roses: Race Relations and the Brookside Plunge Controversy in Pasadena, California, 1914-1947," private collection of Rusty L. Monhollon, Topeka; Matthew Countryman, "From Civil Rights Liberalism to Black Power Organizing in Philadelphia" (paper presented at the Civil Rights Movement: Local Perspectives workshop, University of Houston, March 20-23, 1997); Pamela Smoot, "Taking It to the Streets: Black Civil Rights Struggles in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1937-1967," ibid.; Patricia L. Adams, "Continuing the Fight for Democracy: Civil Rights in St. Louis, 1945-1950" (paper presented at the Eighty-ninth Annual Meet- ing of the Organization of American Historians, 1996, Chicago); William C. Boone, "Springlake Park: An Oklahoma City Playground Remembered," Chronicles of Oklahoma 69 (1991): 4-25; Enrique M. Lopez, "Com- munity Resistance to Injustice and Inequality: Ontario, California, 1937-1947," Aztldn 17(1986): 1-29; James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, rev. ed. (Seattle: Open Hand Publishing, 1985), 178-86; Darryl Paulson, "Stay Out, the Water's Fine: Desegregating Municipal Swimming Facilities in St. Petersburg, Florida," Tampa Bay History 4 (1982): 6-19; Alan Shultz, "Silver Beach: A Scrapbook of Summers Past, " Michigan History 63 (1979): 8-19. 62. Shaffer interview. 63. See Monhollon, "'Away From the Dream."' Lawrence, Kansas, and the Making of the Sixties Rusty L. Monhollon O n July 16, 1970, Rick "Tiger" Dowdell, a black, nineteen-year-old lifelong resident of Lawrence, Kansas, was shot and killed by Officer William Garrett of the Lawrence Police Department, following a car chase involving the two men. Four days later, Nick Rice, a white, nineteen-year-old student at KU, died after being shot by police officers in riot gear, who were attempting to disperse a crowd angry over Dowdell's death. Precipitated by the e deaths, and by more than a decade of racial and cultural conflict, for nearly two weeks Lawrence teetered on the brink of a civil war. Since 1960, social activism had transformed both the content and the context of the public culture in Lawrence, just as it had the rest of the United States. 1 In their homes and churches, in the media and in the streets, the people of Lawrence debated the meanings of traditional American values such as freedom, equality, justice, and community. Civil rights activism in Lawrence after 1960, for example, had evolved from direct action to integrate places of public accommodation and to obtain equal housing, educational, and job opportunities for blacks to an Afro-centric cul- tural and political movement called Black Power, which empowered many blacks and alienated many whites. Simi- larly, some students at the University of Kansas, who had protested on campus against dorm closing hours, in loco parentis, and racial exclusion in university housing earlier in the decade, by 1970 defiantly took to the streets of Lawrence to oppose the Vietnam War, the impersonalization of the academy, and the dehumanization of American society. Lawrence also had become a haven for an alternate culture of self-styled street people and freaks seeking to escape from or destroy corporate middle-class America. At the same time, police surveillance and narcotic busts increased, which led to an even more strained relationship between the police and blacks, students, and the street people. Women in Lawrence active in the civil rights, student, and antiwar movements argued for gender equality in work and pay and against double standards of morality for men and women, but also for greater access to health care, child care, and birth control. Even folks from the political extreme right became social and political activists. Some banded together in a grass-roots anticommunist movement or used existing civic organizations to protest the growth of the federal government, the extension of the welfare state, or to oppose the Vietnam War in their own way. The sixties was a national phenomenon that was con- structed and created locally. The sixties would have meant very little if, for example, the black freedom struggle only occurred in the South or if opposition to the Vietnam War only mobi- lized in Washington. 2 The era is significant because what we call the sixties politicized and socialized all Americans and In July I 970, the killing of Rick "Tiger" Dowdell, a black nineteen-year-old Lawrence resident, and Nick Rice, a white nineteen-year-old KU student, by local police climaxed a decade of racial and cultural conflict that brought Lawrence to the brink of a civil war. 209 210 Lawrence, Kansas, and the Making of the Sixties Civil rights protest on KU campus, 1965. changed American society and politics, for better or worse, depending on your point of view. This essay offers a tour of the sixties in Lawrence, with a focus on the emergence of the Black Power Movement and the radicalism of both the far left and right. Examining these extremes, although they are not representative of all protest and social activism in Lawrence during the 1960s, suggests the range of the community's experience, and how that experience contributed to and helped to create the larger phenomena we generally call the "sixties." With about 45,000 residents in 1970, Lawrence was not a sprawling urban area. Unlike the industrial, urban North, Lawrence did not endure the economic dislocations of deindustrialization, the loss of jobs, or flight to the suburbs that were central to civil distur- bances and social unrest in other communities.3 Average income increased during the decade for all groups, including the five percent of the population that was African American. Race relations in Lawrence were hardly comparable to the Jim Crow South. There was no legal segregation in Lawrence, although discrimination in housing, education, and employment ex- isted for racial minorities, as did blatant racism. Because of the baby boom, the university's enrollments and the town's population and physical boundaries expanded throughout the de- cade. Additionally, Lawrence's free-state heritage, born of the violence of "Bleeding Kansas" during the sectional crisis of the 1850s, resonated still. What some call the "John Brown legacy" attracted many people, especially the young, to join the struggle for freedom and equality. 4 This was most clear in the black freedom struggle. Black Lawrencians had struggled for more than a century to make their community the "homestead of the free." 5 Civil rights activists during the 1960s continued the fight to end racial exclusion and to improve housing and employment opportunities for blacks in Lawrence. These modest goals, however, were opposed by thousands of white Lawrencians, who felt that civil rights legislation and affirma- tive action programs were unfairly and undeservedly "giving" blacks rights and equality. Many long-time Lawrencians, including many civic and business leaders, believed that whites had somehow "earned" their place in American society and that it was unfair for white society to "give" that same equality and opportunity to blacks. The freedom struggle in Lawrence often focused on a single issue, such as the lack of an integrated, municipal swimming pool. In 1960, for example, freedom fighters were unsuccessful in integrating the Jayhawk Plunge, which was privately owned but operated as a public pool open only to whites. The protest failed for several reasons, including the great apathy and antipa- thy toward the protestors and their goals from the bulk of white Lawrencians. The efforts of civil rights activists finally bore fruit in 1967, when, after at least four previous failures, the citizens of Lawrence voted to issue bonds to construct a municipal pool open to all. Controversy and hints of violence preceded the election, and the vote was close. A key factor in the bond cam- paign was the growing dissatis- faction and anger of many young African Americans with the pace of social change in their community. Between 1960 and 1970, the town clearly became polarized along racial lines, which often threatened to spill over into racial violence. 6 At the University of Kan- sas, students protested racial ex- clusion and discrimination, par- Rusty L. Monhollon 211 ticularly in campus housing. Inspired by the freedom struggle in places like Selma, Alabama, in March 1965 more than 100 students sat down in Chancellor Clarke Wescoe's office to protest racial exclusion on campus. The protestors' main demands were to eliminate racial exclusion from all university-approved housing, includ- ing fraternities and sororities; to force the University Daily Kansan to stop accepting racist advertising; and to create a university human relations council to hear and rule on grievances. Wescoe had the demonstrators arrested (although he also offered to post their bail), but they continued their protest in the following days. It ended when the All-Student Council approved legis- lation that met all of the protestors' demands. This dem- onstration easily had been the most successful civil rights protest ever in Lawrence. In many ways, however, it was a hollow victory. Racial exclusion had been removed from the campus through legislation, but that could not remove the lingering racism and prejudice that still permeated the campus and the community. Less than a year later, as one of the protestors walked across campus, a group of young white men, in blackface and with bones in their wigged hair, hurled racial epithets at her as they raced down Jayhawk Boulevard in the back of a truck. These all too frequent experiences, coupled with repeated failures to build a municipal swimming pool and continued white resistance to racial equality, led many young African Americans to embrace the ideas of Black Power.7 Black Power encouraged African Americans to take control of their own lives and institu- tions, and it empowered hundreds of young African Americans in Lawrence. The Black Power Movement had many features. On campus, it was embodied in the Black Student Union, which was formed in 1968. In the community, Black Power was closely associated with Leonard Harrison, the director of the Ballard Center in North Lawrence. Although a powerful political and cultural force, Black Power also created in the minds of white Lawrencians a threat- real or perceived-of black violence, which was crucial to the passage of the pool bond issue, as well as in challenging the racial boundaries and status quo in Lawrence. 8 The Vietnam War was a crucial element in constructing the sixties in Lawrence, too. Like racial issues, Vietnam divided the community, and at its core was a debate over the meanings of American symbols and institutions. Protests against the Vietnam War had occurred since at least 1963 in Lawrence, when the Student Peace Union (SPU) had held candlelight vigils and nonviolent protests on campus. Pacifists, religious groups, and other concerned citizens peace- fully opposed the war. For more than five years dissenters held a weekly "Silent Vigil for Peace" in South Park. In October 1969, more than 4,000 KU students and faculty marched peacefully down Jayhawk Boulevard and took part in workshops on ending the war, part of Lawrence's participation in the nationwide Vietnam Moratorium. By the end of the decade, however, many antiwar protests had become confrontational and akin to street theater. In Lawrence most of these demonstrations were directed at symbols of American militarism: the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), the draft board, or the National Guard. The Mili- tary Science building at KU was firebombed in February 1969. In April 1969 student protest- ors waved toy guns in the faces of ROTC cadets during an awards presentation on campus, and in May students and faculty disrupted the annual Chancellor's Review of ROTC, taunting the cadets and forcing the cancellation of the event.9 Although by January 1970 there appeared to be more opposition than support for the war in Lawrence, Vietnam polarized the community. There was a range of perspectives on the war. At one extreme were Left revolutionaries, who not only wanted to end the war but saw the conflict as symptomatic of the greater evils in American society: American imperialism, dehu- manizing capitalism, racism. These self-proclaimed revolutionaries believed that the only solu- tion was the destruction of American institutions. At the other extreme were pro-War advo- Strong Hall sit-in, 1965. In March 1965 more than 100 KU students protested mcinl exclusion on campus in rt sit-in that lasted several days. The students' demands focused on elimination of all racinl exclusion in campus housing, including sororities and fraternities; forcing the Kansan to stop accepting mcist advertising; and creation of a university human relations council. The All-student Council approved legisilttion that met all of the protestors' demands. 212 Protests against the Vietnam war began in the early sixties and involved pacifists, religious groups, and concerned citizens, as well as KU faculty and students. By the end of the decade the formerly peaceful protests had turned to confrontation and the issue of Vietnam had polarized the community. Lawrence, Kansas, and the Making of the Sixties cates, who were unwilling to criticize American policy in any form. Their support of the government and its policies, which they believed was their patriotic duty, gave them a sense of identity as Americans. They also viewed protest and dissent as afronts to their vision of America, thus challenging who they were and what their identities meant. In between were thousands of Lawrencians who, for moral, religious, or eco- nomic (that is, the cost of the war) reasons opposed or supported the war. By the end of the decade there was also a marked increase in violence in Lawrence. Between March 1968 and September 1969 there had been at least forty fires, from arson or firebombing, resulting in more than $200,000 in property damage. The local alternate press, especially the Vortex, claimed the bombings were part of the "class warfare" being waged by young black and white radicals against a racist, dehu- manizing "pig Amerika." Whether the editors of the Vortex knew who was respon- sible for the bombings (and they probably did), most Lawrencians accepted the claims as true. The appearance of strange, new faces in Lawrence led many locals to blame these acts of violence on "outsiders," the hippies, freaks, or street people who claimed part of the town as their own. 10 Indeed, the growth of the counterculture was an important factor in Lawrence's sixties experience. One street person remarked that in the mid-1960s Lawrence was "a friendly place for wayward freaks, ... like the Oregon trail for hippies." Another claimed that Lawrence was "a very small colony of gentle hippies smoking grass." 11 By 1970, however, that had changed. The talk of revolution was taken seriously by some young radicals, many of whom lived among the street people in Oread, a neighborhood that abutted the university's northern and eastern boundaries and formed the core of Lawrence's diverse counterculture. Thousands of students and hangers-on lived in or near the university's dormitories or scholarship halls north of the campus, or in subdivided apartments on Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana Streets. A block-long strip on Oread Boulevard, running from the north parking kiosk to what is now the Crossing, was the heart of youth radicalism. This strip attracted serious radicals, fun and thrill seekers, and curious voyeurs. Several older homes had become student communes, including the infamous "White House" on the west side of the street, across the street from where the Adams Alumni Center now stands. The Gaslight Tavern and the Rock Chalk Cafe were gathering places for Lawrence's street people. At the Rock Chalk in 1970, one could buy "fascist pig burgers" for thirty-five cents. 12 Not surprisingly, few old-stock Lawrencians welcomed the street people, whom they saw as threats to their own children, their values, and sense of themselves. Many of the street people, however, were natives of Lawrence or Kansas. One fringe of the Lawrence counterculture embraced the use of hallucinogenic drugs, free love, communal living, and "reckless experimentation." Some arrived disgruntled with parents, society, school, and other forms of authority. No doubt many adopted the countercultural lifestyle for purely idealistic reasons: the desire to live a simpler, more egalitarian and commu- nal lifestyle, perhaps. Many sincerely wished to create a world at peace, based on social justice for all people. There was an inherent paradox in this oppositional culture, between the ideals of free love and social awareness and the reality of violence and destruction. There were mean hippies who enjoyed fighting with the local "rednecks," and others who sold illegal firearms and ammunition. These stories also suggest the sometimes violent relationship between the counterculture and radical politics in Lawrence, and how these pushed at the margins of main- stream American society. The underground or alternative press in Lawrence also challenged the status quo and shaped the content of the public discourse. There were perhaps a dozen or more alternative newspapers in Lawrence throughout the sixties. If what was reported there is reliable, a signifi- cant portion of the street people believed that an armed revolution against mainstream Ameri- can society was possible and perhaps imminent; indeed, it appears that some individuals were intent on waging this war and, by 1970, had initiated it. For many reasons, some of Lawrence's trouble was the result of this agitation by hard-core radical revolutionaries. Rusty L. Monhollon 213 Since 1960, civil rights, antiwar, and student activism, and the responses to these move- ments had challenged the community's social boundaries and transformed the public culture in Lawrence. This dynamic had, for the most part, remained peaceful, although the threat of violence was real. By 1970 the strain from years of cultural, racial, and social conflict exploded in July into a two-week spree of violence, culminating in the deaths of Rick Dowdell and Nick Rice. Racial and cultural politics were at the heart of the tragedy. In January 1970, the Political Science Department at KU contracted Leonard Harrison to lecture on black politics. Harrison was a leader of the Black Power Movement in Lawrence and a role model for many young, black males, the movement's core constituency. Harrison's hiring was controversial. He had been convicted of burglary (for which he had served his sentence) and, when he was hired by KU, was appealing a conviction for armed robbery in Wichita. Kansans were concerned that taxpayers' money was being spent to hire a convicted felon. There was nothing illegal, however, about Harrison's hiring; he had paid his debt to society, and student fees were paying his salary. Not surprisingly, the controversy centered on Harrison's criminal record, although his hiring would have been contested anyway, given the political climate of the time. Leonard Harrison was a race man: proud, defiant, and to most whites, a demagogue. Dressed frequently in a dashiki, publicly celebrating African culture, refusing to speak deferentially to whites, and uncompromising in his vision of black power, Harrison was a nightmare .to most white Lawrencians. His militancy did little to assuage those fears. More significantly, his rhetoric was_ very relevant to young blacks, and Harrison exploited the tangible indignities of racism to motivate some young blacks in Lawrence to action. 13 The Black Student Union (BSU) also embodied the Black Power Movement in Lawrence. This was evident in Harambee, the BSU's newspaper. Harambee celebrated black culture and encouraged black solidarity. It reported on the scholarship programs the BSU had established or the breakfast program it ran for black children. While each issue promoted Black Power and disparaged the oppressive white society, it also encouraged black self-defense, including informa- tion on weapons, ammunition, and guerilla tactics, and stressed the need for oppressed people to arm themselves to achieve freedom. The response to Harambee from whites was predictable; they labeled Harambee and the BSU racist and dangerous, threats to law and order. This was apparent in February, when the university printers refused to print Harambee because they believed it contained obscene material. A Kansas Attorney General's opinion called the material "inflamma- tory." In retaliation, on February 23, 1970, several blacks (probably led or encouraged by Leonard Harrison) gathered about 6,000 issues of the University Daily Kansan and threw them into Potter Lake on campus. Like the movement itself, one either loved or hated the BSU and Harrison; there was little middle ground. Both the · Black Student Union and Leonard Harrison were sig- nificant challenges to the racial status quo in Lawrence, and they brought significant changes- for good or bad, depending on one's perspective-to the community. The Black Power Move- ment, and racial issues in general, were fissure points in Lawrence.14 Many white radicals shared with the BSU the belief in armed revolution to free them- selves from their oppressors. Predictably, the consequences of their rhetoric and actions were to create opposition and resistance from the "silent majority." An example of this increasing di- vide in Lawrence occurred in April 1970, when the radical activist Abbie Hoffman, leader of the Youth International Party (the Yippies), spoke to a crowd of some 7,000 in Allen Fieldhouse. Hoffman's performance inflamed the passionate opposition of many Lawrencians, who feared his radical politics and rhetoric would incite students to riot. A typical response called Hoffman's appearance "irresponsible, un-American and not even sound judgment. I think the so-called 'silent Majority,' ... who elected Richard Nixon, is about fed up with our elected representa- tives stand-in [sic] around while those advocates of violence, hard drugs, etc. have free access to the air ways." Hoffman's profane, sometimes shallow rhetoric and colorful stunts, such as blowing his nose in a handkerchief that resembled the American flag, angered many locals and left the crowd of students mostly unimpressed. One KU student called his appearance "theatri- cal" and expressed "disappointment" that Hoffman had "no plan." Hoffman received no ap- plause from the audience, then headed out of town, calling KU "a drag." 15 214 Lawrence, Kansas, and the Making of the Sixties Although most KU students rejected Hoffman's views, what happened after his appear- ance in Lawrence only confirmed the fears of many Lawrencians. Some left-wing radicals ap- peared to be heeding his calls for a revolution and, by mid-April, Lawrence seemed headed for an armed confrontation. Guns, explosives, and other weapons flowed freely within the com- munity. The street people and black radicals were stockpiling weapons, as were vigilantes. BSU president John Spearman encouraged African Americans to arm themselves, affirming that the BSU was "taking responsibility for insuring the safety of all blacks on the KU campus" be- cause of death threats from whites. BSU members allegedly were methodically buying pistols, rifles, and ammunition. 16 Nothing, it seemed, concerned white Lawrencians more than the thought of black men with guns. White vigilante groups already had weapons and had easy access to more. National papers confirmed the existence of white vigilantes in Lawrence, a claim previously made by blacks and the street people (although the Journal-World refuted the report). One vigilante claimed his group included "300 members in Lawrence and 1600 back-up people." He vowed to use "guerilla warfare" to halt the "nigger and hippie militants," and believed further that the "elimination of 14 people would do much to quiet the city." Another declared that "If we don't stop them in East Lawrence they'll be in West Lawrence."17 While the spread of Black Power and the BSU's influence mobilized significant opposition from whites, it was more powerful in mobilizing and uniting parts of the black community. During the third week of April, black students at Lawrence High forced their way into Princi- pal William Medley's office and presented him with a list of demands similar to those made during a 1968 LHS walkout and by the BSU to university officials the previous October and again in March. These demands included the addition of black history and literature courses and the hiring of ten new black teachers, not, as the students declared, "those colored teachers we have now." Mike Spearman, the brother of the KU-BSU president, pushed Medley aside, telling him they were taking over his office. Another student tried to kick in the outer door to Medley's office. Medley claimed the students were "loud and boisterous" and that many "rude and sarcastic remarks were directed at him and his staff" He refused their demands and or- dered them to return to class, which they ignored. As some of the students occupied his . office, others pounded on classroom doors with bricks, rocks, and clubs. Teachers removed debris from their rooms, locked their doors to keep the students out, and heard several black stu- dents threatening white students. Medley called the police, who made several arrests. He also suspended the protesting students. 18 Three days later, several black students gathered in Veterans Park, across from the high school, while white students amassed in the cafeteria parking lot. Police patrolled the school grounds and formed defensive lines. Small groups of blacks broke classroom windows. Fistfights erupted between black and whites, resulting in several minor and one serious injury. Medley blamed these disturbances on "outsiders," specifically the BSU and Leonard Harrison. The school closed on April 17, and a special school board meeting to examine the episode was called for April 20. Fifteen hundred people attended, many of whom blamed the city's racial problems solely on blacks. In contrast, the black students' parents told the board they were "proud" of their children's actions and reminded it that when . their children had made a simi- lar protest in 1968, the school administration had stonewalled and had taken no action to address their grievances. The students and parents then walked out of the meeting when the board again made only a vague promise to consider the students demands. Later that evening, the Administration Building was firebombed. Lawrence police warned Medley that his home was a likely target of firebombs; he took his family to a motel for the night. 19 To make matters worse, that night a multimillion dollar arson consumed the Memorial Union at the University of Kansas. It is likely the high school problems and the fire were connected. Evidence gathered by the FBI and the KBI implicated several young black men, who reportedly were seen leaving the Union shortly before the fire was discovered; however, the arson has never been solved. The next day, Governor Robert B. Docking placed the city under a dusk-to-dawn curfew that was extended for two additional nights. Arson, firebombings, Rusty L. Monhollon 215 and sniper fire increased during the curfew period, including another fire at Lawrence High. Frequently, fire fighters responding to calls were shot at by snipers.20 The curfew shocked many Lawrencians, who were alarmed at what they believed was a flagrant disregard for law and order, and a breakdown of moral authority. One business man spent the first night of the curfew at his business with his fire extinguisher and shotgun. Like others, he was "getting tired, Damned Tired!" of "lawlessness and the destruction of ... prop- erty," which was not "an answer to our Civil Rights problem. Law and Order must be respected and returned."21 The street people, however, saw the curfew differently, believing instead that they were engaged in an armed revolution. They claimed that "Last week in Lawrence our streets were also occupied" by Lawrence police and that "our brothers" were imprisoned. They also celebrated the cancellation of the ROTC review and encouraged their followers that street theater and a rally would be held in front of Strong Hall. 22 The fire seemed to be a sign to radicals, moderates, and conservatives alike that the revo- lution against ''Amerika" was underway in Lawrence. Abbie Hoffman's appearance, many be- lieved, had incited· radicals to burn the Union and threaten the town. To many Lawrencians, the Union fire was the logical conclusion of what they perceived as the entire nation's liberal toleration of political and cultural radicalism. Chalmers believed that the national media por- trayed the fire as the work of student revolutionaries trying to shut down the University, both to end the Vietnam War and as part of the revolution. Chalmers' assertions were shared by much of the community and supported by law enforcement agencies. The KBI claimed that "Militant Weatherman and Black Panthers" were reported in "Lawrence to join in the discur- · bances," and that "75% of those arrested appeared to be 'testing' the efficiency of the police and National Guard."23 On April 21, the simmering threat of violence at Lawrence High nearly boiled over into a riot. About 150 black high school and junior high students, their parents, and other support- ers-many carrying clubs and baseball bats-assembled again in Veterans Park. Some crossed the street, passed by police officers, and broke school windows. Lawrence police formed a line in front of the administration building and used teargas to disperse the demonstrators, and they again made 'several arrests. Black students who did not participate in the walkout were threat- ened by both angry whites and the protesting black students. The BSU was euphoric amid the chaos, as Harambee proudly proclaimed the disturbance as "THE WEEK THAT WAS."24 The community's problems were intensified by the American invasion of Cambodia at the end of April and the deaths of students at Kent State University and Jackson State University a few days later. Like other communities across the nation, Lawrence and KU bore their share of the fallout from Kent State. Chalmers was besieged by horrified and angry students and fac- ulty, radical agitators, and a disgruntled citizenry. The pressing issue was, would the University would remain open for the last three weeks of the semester? Governor Robert B. Docking avowed that he would "not tolerate the closing of any campus institution." The Kansas Board of Regents declared that the "University would remain open." Students for a Democratic Soci- ety (SDS) and the BSU called for a general university strike on May 8 and an unequivocal shutdown of the school. Other groups, such as the Kansas University Committee for Alterna- tives (KUCA), preferred instead that classes be dismissed to allow teach-ins and discussion on the war. University officials huddled to conceive a plan that would keep the University open, to appease the right-wing factions, and more importantly, keep the Kent State tragedy from occurring in Lawrence. 25 On campus the situation deteriorated in the days after the Cambodian invasion. On May 7, at least two hundred people pelted the military science building with rocks, breaking win- dows. The KHP sent additional troopers to relieve weary Lawrence police, and the National Guard stationed guards in most of its armories, including Lawrence's, only a few blocks from the southwest edge of campus. One hundred students blocked Iowa Street before police in riot gear dispersed them. Five hundred demonstrators gathered in front of Strong Hall to protest the Cambodia invasion and the Kent State shootings and demanded that the campus be shut down. Scattered others again peppered the Military Science building with stones.26 216 Lawrence, Kansas, and the Making of the Sixties African Americans, street people, and many KU students were outraged by the killing of Rick "Tiger" Dowdell on July 16, 1970. This set the stage for more violence in the Lawrence community and another death. The question of closing the University remained unresolved until Chalmers called a con- vocation for May 14 in Memorial Stadium. There students and faculty voted on how they wished to finish the semester: either by doing "alternative" work (teach-ins, discussions about the War), or taking a grade of "pass" for work already completed. An estimated fourteen to fifteen thousand filled the stadium, amid tight security and fears of further confrontation. Chalmers presented the proposal, asked those assembled to vote, and then declared the pro- posal for a "Day of Alternatives" passed by acclamation. Not all students and faculty sup- ported the proposal nor its results. Some argued that the "alternatives" offered to faculty did not give them the option of going on strike and using their class time to discuss peace activi- ties and the war. The BSU and SDS were angry that they were not allowed to speak. State politicians and local media questioned Chalmers' assertion that the university had not closed down. The chancellor and his supporters believed that the alternatives met a "variety of needs," the greatest of which was avoiding further violence, for which Chalmers deserved much of the credit. The community had precariously escaped serious violence in April and May; there were no deaths, only minor injuries and, apart from the Union arson, minimal property damage.27 The town would not be so lucky in July. On the night of July 16, three separate incidents of gunfire occurred east of downtown. A black man sitting on the porch of the Afro-House, a cultural center organized by the BSU on Rhode Island Street, was wounded by buckshot. Nearby, a white woman was shot in the leg. When Lawrence police officers Kennard Avey and William Garrett responded to the shooting around 10: 15 p.m., snipers also fired at them. The two officers reportedly saw two people retreat from the area of the shootings and head toward the Afro-House. There they saw two blacks drive away in a Volkswagen, which they followed. According to the police report, the driver violated several traffic laws and drove recklessly; the officers turned on their lights, but the driver did not pull over. When the Volkswagen struck a curb and came to a stop, a young black male fled the vehicle. Garrett ordered him to stop and fired a warning shot. Garrett, who claimed the suspect fired back, then squeezed off three rounds, one of which hit the black man in the head. Rick "Tiger" Dowdell was pronounced dead at the scene. 28 After the shooting, Garrett was temporarily relieved of his duties pending a coroner's in- quest; an all-white panel exonerated him. The KBI affirmed Garrett's and the LPD's recount- ing of the shooting. Many African Americans, however, rejected the story and the verdict, and some threatened retaliation. Harambee vowed that Garrett "shall reap what he has sown." Led by Harrison, Dowdell's comrades vowed that his murder would be "avenge[d] ... by any means necessary" and threatened to kill "any other muthafucka that gets in the way of the total liberation of our people." Similarly, the street people and many KU students felt the same alienation and harass- ment from police as blacks, and they too were enraged by the shootings. The Vortex published Garrett's photograph with the caption "Wanted for Murder," which enraged Garrett's supporters. George Kimball, a leader of the street people and the antiwar movement who lived in Oread, promised that "[i]f the pigs come in to our community ... there ain't gonna be any dead on our side."29 The stage was set for another death. Between Dowdell's death on July 16 and July 20, snipers shot out car win- dows and street lights and fired at police officers and firefighters responding to calls. A police officer was wounded in a gun battle with blacks reportedly using "gue- rilla tactics" near the Afro-House. Firebombings and shootings, which the Highway Patrol claimed were the work of the street people in retaliation for Dowdell's death, continued to rock the city. On Oread Street on July 20, fire hydrants were opened and a car was set on fire by the Rusty L. Monhollon 217 street people. The police were called to the scene and attempted to disperse the crowd by firing into the throng. In the confusion, Nick Rice lay bleeding in the street, dying of a gunshot wound to the head. Another student was wounded, although not fatally. Bystanders carried Rice to the Gaslight, but police fired teargas into the building, which forced his rescu- ers out. By all accounts, Rice was an innocent victim; he was not a radical, had not had previous encounters with the police, nor had he been involved in the altercations that led to the police being called to the area. An investigation into the shooting was inconclusive as to whether the police had fired the shot that killed Rice, but witnesses claimed police were the only ones with guns. The following day, Governor Docking declared a state of emergency, prohibiting the purchase, sale, or use of weapons and ammunition or flammable materials. 30 Rice's death generated more indignation from the greater Lawrence community than did Dowdell's. Outrage came exclusively from the black community and the radical fringe when Dowdell was killed; some whites even justified the shooting; An Oread business owner ex- pressed "gratitude and sympathy' to police wounded by sniper fire, and praised the "coura- geous action of the police officer who fired the shot that killed Dowdell." Lawrence's state senator remarked the town "hadn't lost a thing" when Dowdell died, which the black commu- nity decried as symptomatic of white's general indifference to blacks. The Dorsey-Liberty Ameri- can Legion Post in Lawrence passed a resolution supporting law enforcement's "conduct and handling of the conditions in Lawrence," which included the shooting of both Dowdell and Rice. "The law should crack down," claimed a Lawrence insurance agent. "[T]he only thing that will cure this situation is to get tough." A downtown merchant claimed he did "not like killing[, b]ut if it's going to take some killing to get the job done" and return Lawrence to normal, "then I say let's get on with it."31 Although there were no more deadly outbursts of violence, the threat remained. An un- derground paper, the Oread Daily, wrote that to the "shame and discredit of all River City citizens, William Garrett Continues [sic] to ride around alone and alive on the streets of Lawrence." The Kansas Highway Patrol labeled the remark an "open solicitation for the mur- der of a policeman." George Kimball, who had won the Democratic nomination for Douglas County sheriff in the August primary, declared that "if elected" he would order his deputies to "kill on the spot all Lawrence Police Officers who stop one of 'the people' for any reason."32 Various factions in the community continued to arm themselves. Several BSU members were arrested in the fall, and the KBI reported that African Americans were buying ammuni- tion from local stores and stolen handguns at the Rock Chalk Cafe. The KBI also claimed that one black man had obtained explosives. Fights between blacks and whites were common on the KU campus. In late October, a bomb exploded in the high school administration building. The BSU issued an ultimatum to University officials late in November, demanding the rein- statement of Gary Jackson, a BSU member who had been fired from his job as assistant dean of men in July for buying ammunition during the emergency period. A general university strike to support Jackson's cause was called by the BSU, with the support of the Lawrence Liberation Front, a group of white Leftist radicals. As blacks became more defiant, whites became weary of the tension and confrontations. 33 . In December, Summerfield Hall sustained almost $29,000 damage from a bomb. In soli- darity with Jackson and for the general strike, BSU members painted graffiti on university sidewalks, buildings, and equipment. They disrupted the flow of traffic and students, accosting students and other people on campus. On December 12, Harry Snyder, a white student at KU, tried to stop two black students from spraypainting the word "strike" on the steps of Watson Library. One of the black students shot Snyder in the throat with a pistol, although he later recovered from the wound. This incident marked the last serious episode of violence in Lawrence, although scattered explosions and fires occurred in 1971. After 1970 antiwar protests continued and the BSU still struggled to gain political and cultural power in Lawrence, but a dialogue was initiated among the smaller communities within the larger Lawrence community that took the edge off the protests. The community as a whole seemed willing to listen to other points of view and to try to address the legitimate 218 Lawrence, Kansas, and the Making of the Sixties concerns of minority populations. It also seems that the community was just tired of a decade of increasingly intense confrontations.34 The Lawrence Human Relations Commission, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Menninger Foundation of Topeka all studied the problem. Their findings echoed the conclu- sions reached by national commissions on the causes of unrest in America: racial tensions and strained police-community relations, especially with the street people and African Americans, were primary causes of violence in Lawrence. 35 These in turn flowed from the contemporary social questions with which the entire nation was grappling: racism, the Vietnam War, campus unrest, women's liberation, the counterculture. Lawrence was only one site in the United States where the sixties was constructed as part of the broad sweep of social change across the coun- try. These changes were grounded in the experience of local people responding to local condi- tions. This of course took place in Berkeley and Madison and New York and Chicago, but it also happened here in Lawrence, Kansas. The rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael or Huey Newton would have been meaningless had African Americans not had similar experiences. Additionally, the radical rhetoric of left revolutionaries and right reactionaries would have been empty to citizens of Lawrence if it did not resonate with their own experiences. The issues surrounding Lawrence's sixties experience was deeply ingrained in local circumstances. In Lawrence, the heart of the sixties experience was a public debate over the content, the context, and the meaning of such ideas as equality, freedom, justice, and community. This debate took many forms: Black Power, the student movement, women's liberation, anticommunism, the rise of the Christian Right, and so on. What gave the sixties its vitality and vibrancy was the dynamic created by these competing visions of what the "good life" in the United States should look like. As these examples suggest, the sixties experience in Lawrence reshaped and redrew the community's social space and created new social identities for its residents. That process was exciting and exhilarating, but it also was tragic and came with significant social costs. For better or worse, this sixties experience has shaped Lawrence over the last three decades, adding another chapter to its often bloody and dark past. Notes 1. Thomas Bender argues that the public culture "embraces a wide range of manifestations of power in society-- from the institutional power of the state through the more subtle power to assign meaning and significance to various cultural phenomena, including the power to establish categories of social analysis and understanding." See Bender, "Wholes and Parts: The Need for Synthesis in American History," The Journal of American History 73, no. 1 (June 1986), especially pages 126-36. 2. The historian Beth Bailey, among others, emphasizes this point in her work. See Bailey, Sex in the Heartland (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), and "Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland," Journal of Social History, 30, no. 4 (summer 1997), 846. 3. See Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 4. Demographic and economic figures are culled from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, US. Census of Population: 1960. Volume L Characteristics of the Population. Part 18, Kansas (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960); U.S. Bureau of the Census, US. Census of Population: 1970. Volume L Characteristics of the Population. Part 18, Kansas (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970); Institute for Social and Environmental Studies, Kansas Statistical Abstract (Lawrence, Kans., 1971). 5. The quote is from John G. Whittier, "Emigrants Hymn," in Sons and Daughters ~f New England, Lawrence, Kansas, "Seventy-second Annual Reunion" program, December 9, 1968, Sons and Daughters of New England, Lawrence, Kansas, Papers, 1921-1972, Box 1, Folder 9. Kansas Collection. For an overview of civil rights activism in Lawrence and at the university between 1940 and 1960, see Kristine M. McCusker, "'The Forgot- ten Years' of America's Civil Rights Movement: Wartime Protests at the University of Kansas, 1939-1945," Kansas History 17, no. 4 (spring 1994): 26-37; or McCusker, "'The Forgotten Years' of America's Civil Rights Movement: The University of Kansas, 1939-1961" (master's thesis, University of Kansas, 1993). 6. On the Jayhawk Plunge picket, see Rusty Monhollon, "Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas, 1960," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 20, no. 3 (autumn 1997): 138-59; on the transition from civil rights to black power, see Rusty Monhollon, "Black Power, White Fear: The 'Negro Problem' in Lawrence, Kansas, 1960-1972," in Race Consciousness: African-American Studies far the New Century, Jeffrey Tucker and Judith Jackson Fossett, eds. (New York: New York University Press), 1997, 247-62, and Rusty Monhollon, '"Away from the Dream': The Roots of Black Power in Lawrence, Kan- sas, 1960-1970" (master's thesis, University of Kansas, 1994), passim. Rusty L. Monhollon 219 7. Norma Norman, interview with author, Topeka, Kansas, May 25, 1994; Monhollon, "Black Power, White Fear," 247-62; Monhollon, "'Away from the Dream,"' chapters four, five, and epilogue. 8. On Black Power generally, see William L. Van Deberg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) and Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1974). 9. On the Silent Vigil for Peace, see Mrs. Tom Moore and Mrs. Otto Zingg, to the editor, Lawrence Daily journal-World, March 7, 1970; flyer, n.d., Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice Papers, "Kansas Peace Forum," folder; Informational Clearing House for the Weekly Vigil For Peace, Newsletter, No. 2, November 9, 1966, in the Lawrence Peace Center Papers, Kansas Collection; see also Charles Hubbell, The Weekly Vigil for Peace: Suggestions for the Conduct of Recurrent Silent Witness (Santa Barbara, Cali£: Charles Hubbell, 1967), in Lawrence Peace Center Papers, "Vigil" folder, Kansas Collection; Informational Clearing House for the Weekly Vigil For Peace, Newsletter, No. 2, November 9, 1966, in the Lawrence Peace Center Papers, RHMS 186, Kansas Collection. Information on the 1969 ROTC demonstration is compiled from the following: W. Clarke Wescoe, "Confidential Report to the Board of Regents," June 1969, Chancellor's Office Correspondence, "State Board of Regents, Governor" folder, Box 1, University Archives, University of Kansas (hereafter, "Confidential Report, 1969"); various articles in the September and October 1970 University Daily Kansan; Audrey Curtis, "The Disruption of the 1969 Chancellor's Annual Review of The ROTC," unpublished paper, December 13, 1989 (copy in author's possession); Michael Fisher, "The Turbulent Years: The University of Kansas, 1960- 1975, A History" (Ph.D diss., University of Kansas, 1979), 128, 130-131; W. Clarke Wescoe, ''Address," Oc- tober 16, 1990, Heritage Lecture Series, University Archives, University of Kansas; 1970 ]ayhawker, 79. On the moratorium, see loose clipping, "Citizens Group Making Oct. 15 Activity Plans," Lawrence Outlook, Octo- ber 2, 1969; loose clipping, "Local Group Seeks War's End," Lawrence Outlook, October 6, 1969; loose clip- ping, "Meetings Mark Oct. 15 Protest," Lawrence Outlook, October 13, 1969; loose clipping, full-page adver- tisement, Lawrence Daily journal-World, n.d. [October 1969], all in Lawrence Peace Center Papers, RHMS 186, Kansas Collection. 10. The property damage figure comes from Kansas State Fire Marshall, "Investigative Report, 3/13/68-9/9/69," RBD Papers, Box 41, folder 10. On "class warfare" and the bombings, see, for example, Vortex [Lawrence, Kans.] 2, no. 5, April 29-May 12 [1970]). Copies of Vortex and other alternative or underground papers can be found in the Kansas Collection and the University Archives. 11. David Ohle, Roger Martin, and Susan Brosseau, eds., Cows are Freaky When They Look at You: An Oral History of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers (Wichita, Kans.: Watermark Press, 1991) is an evocative look at the countercul- ture in Lawrence; the "Oregon trail" quote is on page 5; "small colony" as quoted in "New Campus Problem: Young Drifters," New York Times, November 10, 1970, 34. 12. "New Campus Problem: Young Drifters," New York Times, November 10, 1970, 34. 13. The information on Harrison's · criminal record, which reportedly came from Douglas County Attorney Dan Young, was found in a memo from Raymond Nichols to E. Laurence Chalmers, January 13, 1970, Chancellor's Office, Correspondence, "General, 69-'-70, AAUP-MASUA," Box 1, "Leonard Harrison'' folder, University Ar- chives. Additional information about Harrison was taken from Francis Heller to E. Laurence Chalmers, Feb- ruary 1970, attached to a list of Black Student Union resolutions to Chalmers, February 26, 1970, Black Student Union Records, Box 1, Folder 7, University Archives; "Shultz Opposes Hiring of Harrison," Univer- sity Daily Kansan, February 10, 1970; Robert B. Docking to James Huff [copy], January 30, 1970, in Chancellor's Office, Correspondence, General, 69-70, "AAUP-MASUA." Box 1, "Leonard Harrison'' Folder, University Archives; Bill Simons, interview with Marian J. Weeks, in Marian J. Weeks, "Lawrence, 1970: A Narrative and Oral Histories Surrounding Three Crises" (master's thesis, University of Kansas, 1990), 172; Dick Raney inter- view with Marian J. Weeks, in Marian J. Weeks, "Lawrence, 1970: A Narrative and Oral Histories Surround- ing Three Crises" (master's thesis, University of Kansas, 1990), 265; Dick Raney interview with Rusty Monhollon, October 8, 1996, Lawrence, Kansas. 14. Assistant Kansas Attorney General Ernest C. Ballweg to Kent Frizzell, June 10, 1970, Robert B. Docking Papers (hereafter, RBD Papers), Box 41, Folder 10, Kansas Collection; Harambee, n.d., [May 1970]; Kansas Highway Patrol, "Intelligence Report," February 24, 1970 (hereafter, "KHP Report, February") and Kansas Bureau of Investigation Report, to Attorney General Kent Frizzell, June 10, 1970 (hereafter "KBI Report, 6/ 10/70"), both in RBD Papers, Box 41, Folders 10 and 11, Kansas Collection; Monhollon, "'Away from the Dream'," passim. 15. Robert W. Doores to James B. Pearson, May 6, 1970, James B. Pearson Papers, 266:91.13, Kansas Collection (hereafter, JBP Papers); Dennis Embry and John Miller, "Racial and Student Disturbances: Documentary, Lawrence, Kansas, 1970" (audiotapes) Tape 5, Side A, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas; Hoffman quotes in Bill Moyers, Listening to America: A Traveller Rediscovers His Country (New York: Harpers Magazine Press, 1971), 101; "drag" quote is from Kansas Alumni, May 16, 1970, 6. 16. Ohle et al., Cows Are Freaky, 25; "Threats Spark Reaction," University Daily Kansan, April 13, 1970, 1; Kansas Highway Patrol Intelligence Report, March 28, 1970, in RBD Papers, Box 41, Folder 11, Kansas Collection. 17. The existence of vigilantes is confirmed in Richard Beaty's interview with Marian J. Weeks, September 1989, Lawrence, Kansas, in Marian J. Weeks, "Lawrence, 1970: A Narrative and Oral Histories surrounding Three Crises" (master's thesis, University of Kansas, 1990), 216-52, and loose clipping, "Fear Forms in Kansas Com- munity," San Francisco Chronicle, December 26, 1970, in Anne Moore, collector, Support Your Local Police Committee, 1970-1971, "Correspondence-clippings," Kansas Collection. 220 Lawrence, Kansas, and the Making of the Sixties 18. The paragraphs about the Lawrence High School walkout are taken from the following: William Medley report to Superintendent Carl Knox, April 13, 1970, statements from Lawrence High teachers, n.d., and other ephemeral material, all in Max Rife personal collection; Lawrence Human Relations Commission, "A Study of the Lawrence High School Confrontation in April, 1970," December 1970 (hereafter, "LHRC Study, 1970"), Lawrence Public Library; "LHS Disturbance Prompts Arrest," University Daily Kansan, April 15, 1970; Mar- tin Modricin, "The Black Student Movement at LHS: A Study of the 1970 Black Student Demonstrations," unpublished History Honors Thesis, University of Kansas, n.d., Kansas Collection; and various correspondence in "Black Walkout, 1970" vertical file, Douglas County Historical Society. 19. "LHS Disturbance Prompts Arrest," University Daily Kansan, April 15, 1970, 20; Modricin, "Black Student Movement"; LHRC Study, 1970. 20. E. Laurence Chalmers interview with author, April 1-2, 1994, San Antonio, Texas; Donald E. Metzler and Daniel A. Young, telegrams to Robert B. Docking, April 21, 22, 23, 1970; Gubernatorial Proclamations, April 21, 22, 23, 1970; KBI Report, 6/10/70; "List of subjects arrested in Lawrence, 21-23 April 1970," attached to Merwyn V. Purdy to Ed Collister, June 2, 1970 (hereafter, "List of subjects 1970"), all in RBD Papers, Box 41, Folder 11, Kansas Collection. For general accounts of activity during the curfew, see, for example, the Topeka Daily Capital, the University Daily Kansan, or the Lawrence Daily Journal-World, April 22-25, 1970. 21. Lee Scott to James B. Pearson, April 24, 1970, JBP Papers, 266:89.1. 22. Untitled flier (mimeographed), n.a., n.d., [May 1970], David M. Katzman personal collection. 23. On KBI claims, see "List of subjects, 1970." 24. Harambee n.d., [April or May 1970]. 25. Chalmers interview; "Student Senate for Discussion," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, May 7, 1970, and "Dock- ing Says State Schools Won't Close," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, May 8, 1970. 26. "KU Mob Breaks Windows," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, May 7, 1970. 27. Chalmers interview, April 1, 1994; Francis Heller, "K.U. Notes, 1948-1972," unpublished manuscript, n.d., 107-10, University Archives; "Alternatives?" newsletter, n.d., n.p., [May 1970], David M. Katzman, personal collection; Ronald Eugene Johnson, "Student Unrest and the Kansas Press: Editorial Reactions to Violence in Lawrence and at the University of Kansas in 1970" (master's thesis, University of Kansas, 1982), 54-70. Stu- dent and faculty petitions, as well as various letters of support, are found in Chancellor's Office, Correspon- dence, Box 3, University Archives. 28. ''AG Report, 1970"; "KHP Report, 7120170." 29. Typed statement, n.a., n.d., [July 1970], attached to Governor's Office Memo to Robert B. Docking, July 22, 1970, RBD Papers, Box 41, Folder 10, Kansas Collection; Vortex n.d, n.p., [July 1970]; "Ideological Chasm Seen in City," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 22, 1970; "Street People Still Defiant," Kansas City Times, July 22, 1970. 30. ''AG Report, 1970"; "Massive Ideological Chasm Apparent in Lawrence," Topeka Daily Capital, July 22, 1970; "Street People Still Defiant," Kansas City Times, July 22, 1970; "Ideological Chasm Seen in City," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 22, 1970; ''AP Reporter Views Lawrence Turmoil," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 31, 1970. 31. Dorsey-Liberty American Legion Post #14 (Lawrence, Kans.), Minutes, July 21, 1970; "Massive Ideological Chasm Apparent in Lawrence," Topeka Daily Capital; "Petition Backs Officer Garrett," Lawrence Daily Journal- World; ''Amid Fear, No Solutions," Kansas City Star, all July 22, 1970; "AP Reporter Views Lawrence Turmoil," Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 31, 1970. 32. Oread Daily, September 2, 1970; Oread Daily, September 8, 1970, "Student Pubs" folder, David M. Katzman, personal collection; KHP Report, September 3, 1970, RBD Papers, Box 41, Folder 10. 33. "KHP Report, 7 /17 /70," and Kansas City, Missouri Police Department Interdepartmental Communication, July 17, 1970, both in RBD Papers, Box 41, Folder 10. Kansas Board of Regents, "Minutes of Special Meet- ing, July 26, 1970"; Robert H. Nates, telegram to E. Laurence Chalmers and the Kansas Board of Regents, July 30, 1970; Max Bickford to Kent Frizzell, July 27, 1970; and Bickford, memorandum to Kansas Board of Regents, July 31, 1970, all in RBD Papers, Box 54, Folder 20. Kent Frizzell to Kansas Board of Regents, August 28, 1970, attached to Board of Regents to Robert B. Docking, September 4, 1970, RBD Papers, Box 54, Folder 21. E. Laurence Chalmers to Keith Nitcher, July 27, 1970; "Report of the Special Committee Ad Hoc Committee to the Board of Regents," September 17, 1970, both in RBD Papers, Box 54, Folder 22. 34. KHP Report, September 3, 1970; September 11, 1970; September 18, 1970; September 25, 1970; December 11, 1970, all in RBD Papers, Box 41, Folder 10. - 35. "LHRC Study, 1970"; Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, "Chamber of Commerce in Action," Lawrence Cham- ber of Commerce Monthly Action Report, August-September, 1970, and Lawrence Police-Community Rela- tions Steering Committee, "Lawrence Police-Community Steering Committee Recommendations," June 15, 1971, both in Kansas Collection. Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland Beth Bailey "\Vlhe~ ..the American mass media attempted to take stock of what it had akeady, by the early 1960s, labeled · W · "The Sexual Revolution," commentators frequently linked changes in the "morality'' of youth to the introduc- tion of "The Pill." 1 The historians who are beginning to write the history of the (hetero)sexual changes of that era tend to agree, though in different terms: the birch control pill was central to the behavioral and cultural changes that · make .up what we still call · the sexual revolution. But while historians have historicized the development of the pill, situating it in a larger history of birch control in America, they have not truly analyzed its impact. Somewhere between the story of the development of the pill and discussions of its importance to the young single women who lived the revolution, a historical step is missing. 2 How did these young women get the pill? It was not simply a new technology available in the free marketplace of postwar American culture. The pill had to be prescribed. Medical doctors, then as now, controlled access to oral contraceptives. And in the early 1960s when the pill was introduced, only a small minority of physicians would prescribe oral contra~eptives to unmarried women. Many believed, along with a large majority of the American public, that it was wrong for unmarried women to engage in sexual intercourse. 3 Therefore, a significant change had to take place before the pill could play any role in th~ sexual behavior of young, single women as a group. Unmarried women-in large numbers-had to be able to obtain the pill. This article is a case study of the introduction and use of oral contraceptives in one community: Lawrence, Kansas. Moving beyond the rhetoric and policy statements of national organizations, I analyze the specific institu- tional changes that made the pill available to single women and place those changes in the context of cultural change. Within the framework imposed both by governmental policies and national discourses on birth control, people in Lawrence fought to determine who would have access to the pill, and on what grounds. Around what sets of beliefs and understandings did participants frame their discussions about the pill? What notions of cultural au- thority and political legitimacy did they employ? What languages (a language of rights? of morality? of private or public good?) were available to them? In Lawrence, the struggles over the pill were not cast, as one might expect, simply as "traditional" morality versus sexual freedom. This article challenges-or at least significantly complicates-the conventional story of the 1960s sexual revolu- tion: plot, setting, and cast of characters. I argue that the significant changes in sexual behaviors and their meanings that took place in this era must be understood in the context of a complex web of structural changes that were remaking American society-most particularly the rise of a national culture and the concomitant reconfiguration of national and local interests and identities. Thus I am not focusing on self-consciously radical movements on East and West Coasts, but instead on the process of change in a Midwestern town. By studying the pill in Kansas, a heartland state, the state that most consistently represents the antithesis of bi-coastal sophistication in the American imagina- Beth Bailey, "Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland," Journal of Social History 30, no. 4 (summer 1997): 827-56. Reprinted with permission of the journal of Social History and Beth Bailey.· 221 222 Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland tion, I can show the extent to which the changes we call the sexual revolution were national phenomena.4 In analyzing the struggles over the pill in Lawrence, this article demonstrates that the social changes central to the sexual revolution were not dictated to unwilling local (provincial) populations from above by national (cosmopolitan) sources-whether one defines "national" here as the federal government or as East and West Coast centers of counterculture, New Left, or feminist activity and thought. Instead, increasingly in America's postwar culture, those who struggled over issues like the pill in places like the university town of Lawrence, Kansas, were part of the national culture. These local elites were residents of Kansas, but that was only one part of more complex identities. Medical doctors, professors, university administrators,. public health officials-all had professional identities that transcended the local, and they claimed authority to act and to speak based on professional credentials that were nationally constituted and recognized. They participated in national professional organizations and in local branches of national organiza- tions. University and high school students also claimed a larger identity-as part of the na- tionally validated category of "youth." They understood their actions as part of a national canvas, formed local branches of national organizations, and corresponded with their peers throughout the nation about the issues of the day. Finally, all these actors were immersed in national culture as embodied in the mass media. It was not a foreign culture; it was the cultural sea in which they swam. These people acted in a local arena but drew on identities, understandings, and institutions that were defined nationally. The pill did not trickle down from California and New York to Kansas. It was, instead, introduced in a parallel set of struggles by Kansans who were full participants in the emergent postwar national culture. Secondly, and more specifically, I demonstrate that the pill did not become available to unmarried women because they raised their voices and demanded the right to sexual freedom and control of their own bodies. Instead, the pill became available to single women because of two developments that had little or nothing to do with women's claims to sexual freedom. The first was the concern about population growth, both international and domestic, which be- came widespread and powerful in the United States during the 1960s. The second was the extension of the role of the federal government in Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. While neither was intended to enable a "sexual revolution," together they helped make the pill avail- able to single women, partly through framing justifications in terms that avoided a language of morality. Understanding the implementation and results of such programs on a local level should make tis reevaluate still dominant social control interpretations.5 If the programs that grew out of population growth or social welfare rationales did not foment revolution, they offered young women a greater degree of autonomy and choice, and opened a space in which significant change could take place. With the development of a strong and increasingly radical women's movement, young, unmarried women would begin to publicly contest the social mean- ing of the pill, not simply claim access to it. These women would reject both the policy driven concerns about population growth and social welfare and the parallel "moral" framework that centered around the question, "does the pill promote promiscuity?" insisting, instead, that the key issue was a woman's right to control her own body. The story of the pill in Lawrence, Kansas, is no more representative than any case study. It is a story full of personal idiosyncrasies and accidents of time and place. Yet these contin- gent factors are the stuff of history, and an important reminder that the plans of policymakers, the claims of activists, and the discourses of popular culture are mediated, contested, and negotiated by local actors, often to unexpected ends. What emerges in this study, however, is a portrait of a community fully involved in the struggles of the nation and significantly affected by the social, economic, and cultural changes of the postwar years. Lawrence is located in the eastern part of Kansas, a state characterized in the postwar era by a brand of conservative populism. Just off 1-70 (which was built under the 1950s National Highway Defense Act) in a traditionally agricultural region, the town is home to the Univer- sity of Kansas, with its regional student body and national faculty. Lawrence grew rapidly in Beth Bailey 223 the years following World War II, with a 40.7 percent increase in population between 1950 and 1960, followed by a 39.1 percent increase the next decade. Most of Lawrence's residents were white and Protestant, of old midwestern stock. The town also had a significant and longstanding African American population, going back to Kansas's free-state status in the Civil War. There was a mix of economic classes, though extremely wealthy families were rare. Lawrence's middle class was comprised primarily of University faculty and administrators, professionals such as physicians and teachers, and members of the business community. ·In the 1960s and 1970s, Lawrence became home to a fairly large counterculture community and was well known as a drug entrepot and a center for (lowgrade) marijuana cultivation. Like many other college and university towns in postwar America, Lawrence was increasingly closely linked to national insti- tutions and national culture, and so served as a wedge for social change in its region.6 In the 1960s and early 1970s, Lawrence would witness four major struggles over the availability and the meaning of the birth control pill. The first was between the local Planned Parenthood group and the head of the Public Health Department; the second and third cen- tered in the University; and the fourth led to the complete reorganization of Lawrence's public health program. In these struggles, there is no central site of power against which proponents of freedom rebel. Instead, one sees a more complex process of change, in which cultural nego- tiations over meaning play as important a role as institutional reorganization. State, City, and Nation: The Political and Institutional Base It was not until 1963 that the Kansas State Legislature passed a law making it legal for public agencies to distribute information about contraceptives to citizens of the state.7 Those who were most immediately affected by the bill, the heads of local health departments, under- stood the limitations of the legislature's act. While legal sanctions were removed, the legislature had offered no mandate. More importantly, the legislature had offered no funding. In Lawrence, Dr. Dale Clinton, the director of the health department, immediately began seeking ways around the funding problem. All his proposed solutions violated one or another government regulation, however, so public birth control services remained on hold, awaiting funding. 8 Dr. Clinton's sense of urgency was not due to the demands of his clientele, the Douglas County taxpayers, but rather to his own professional concerns. As chief public health official in the county, Clinton was a zealous advocate of birth control. He was not interested in "fam- ily planning," per se, nor in the health and welfare of individual women patients. Instead, he was motivated by his belief that the population explosion was the single largest threat to pub- lic health. Clinton's understandings were fully in keeping with mainstream thought in public health. In 1959 the professional organization for public health workers, the 20,000 member American Public Health Association (APHA), had adopted a resolution that called for attention, at "all levels of government," to "the impact of population change on health." And in 1963, the APHA called population growth "one of the world's most important health problems" and began lobbying government officials for action.9 On January 3, 1965 (one day after Dr. Clinton had published a letter in the Lawrence journal-World warning that "the ever accelerating wild rate of population growth" was the world's "most · serious health problem"), President Johnson pledged in his State of the Union address "to seek new ways to use our knowledge to help deal with the explosion in world population and the growing scarcity of world resources." 10 In April, Senator Gruening of Alaska introduced a bill that led to the funding of domestic birth control programs through the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Even earlier, however, the Office of Economic Opportunity had funneled money to family planning programs under the "local option" policy that allowed community groups to initiate welfare programs. 11 Clearly, the federal government's decisions to spend taxpayers' money on public family planning programs were not justified by 224 P~escribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland concern about women's reproductive health or sexual freedom, but rather by the confluence of alarm about the "population problem" and increased federal involvement in programs intended to alleviate the effects of poverty in the United States. 12 The political implications of what was, in prac:;tice, linking Johnson's Great Society (with its strong focus on poverty) to population control were as apparent to actors at the time as they are to us. Well aware of the uncomfortably close links between the birth control move- ment and eugenics movements in the past, and facing the suspicions of targeted groups such as poor African Americans, professionals in the field of public health diseussed justification as well as strategy. 13 Writing in the major national public health professional journal, one promi- nent activist insisted that attempts to "sell" low income people on birth control must be predi- cated on a philosophy of "broadly democratic principles of equal opportunity for all." Birth control,. she wrote, shifting the grounds for suspicion, shoul.d not be the "special privilege" of the "well-to-do."14 Governmental policy addressed this issue directly, if not always successfully. When state and then federal monies were allocated to family planning in Kansas in the spring of 1965, the funding was accompanied by a directive from the Kansas Department of Social Welfare. It advised public family planning clinics to exhibit "due regard for the individual rights and beliefs of the recipients" and strongly warned against giving clients the impression that public assistance checks were contingent upon accepting birth control. 15 Once the Kansas legislature had allocated funds, Lawrence's Dr. Clinton moved quickly to claim the mandate and the funding, making the Lawrence Health Department one of fewer than one-in-five health departments in the United States to offer "family planning" services. 16 Clinton was, however, decidedly uninterested in the professional debate about birth control for the indigent and the related directives. Though the framework provided by state (and eventually federal) guidelines indicated an implicit, but clear, association of these programs with services for the poor, Clinton made equally clear that his birth control clinic was not "indigent-oriented," nor did he consider it the appropriate site for clinical medicine. He did not intend to focus on the poor, nor did he intend to provide women (of any income level) with health care. Instead, he intended to combat the scourge of unrestrained population growth by offering contraceptives to any and all. 17 This definition of mission would, however, raise questions of constituency and clientele. Kansas's laws against birth control had applied only to public agencies, and a married woman in Lawrence had ready access to birth control if she could afford a private doctor. 18 When oral contraceptives came on the market in 1960, Lawrence doctors had begun prescribing them to married women. In August 1962, in association with some Associated Press articles on the possible dangers of the pill, the Lawrence Journal-World sought estimates of how many Lawrence women used oral contraceptives. Dr. Clinton ventured 300, but the reporter got estimates from other doctors and pharmacists that ranged up to 3,000. Clinton responded to the higher estimate as a challenge to his authority, calling it "ridiculously high," but then backpedaled in support of what he had recently called a "wonder drug." ''A drug like this," he said, "could increase tenfold in two weeks. It's something people have been waiting for the past 15 years." 19 As private doctors in Lawrence were already meeting the needs of their· clientele, the health department, naturally, would draw from a different constituency. Married women who could afford private doctors were more or less out of the pool. Who was left? Those for whom medical fees were too expensive, the indigent. Of the 7,399 families recorded in the 1960 census, 20.1 percent had incomes under $3000 a year (the median family income was $5,427 a year; a dis- proportionate number of poor families were African American). Clearly there were married women for whom a private doctor was at least a stretch, if not prohibitively expensive. 20 There was also another constituency, one that the state and federal governments had not intended to target: unmarried women. And because of the University of Kansas, Lawrence had a disproportionately high number of young, unmarried women.21 The Kansas legislature had mandated access to contraceptive information and services only for married women 18 years and older. Parental permission was required for women under 18, regardless of marital status. But the legislature also provided a backdoor to access: any woman might receive contraceptives Beth Bailey 225 at a public clinic if she was "referred to said center by a licensed physician." Clinton inter- preted this law in the broadest terms. He was a licensed physician, legally authorized to make such referrals. Thus, as he made clear in newspaper interviews and public talks, any woman desiring birth control services might receive her referral at the clinic itself, at the time of her appointment. 22 With virtually no · exceptions, women seeking contraceptives at the health de- partment came away with the pill. Struggle I: The Lawrence Health Department and Planned Parenthood It was in 1966, soon after Clinton's birth control program was initiated, that the city of Lawrence became embroiled in its first major controversy about the pill. In the spring of 1966, a small group of Lawrence residents, primarily nurses and wives of KU faculty and administrators, formed the Douglas County Family Planning Association. The impetus came partly from the Greater Kansas City branch of Planned Parenthood, Inc., which saw a need for an "educational arm" in Lawrence. It found a committed group of volunteers. One key member of the organization was Rev. John Simmons, a minister with the United Campus Christian Fellowship at KU; its first president was Mrs. Aldon (Betsy) Bell, wife of the Dean · of the Faculty. Mrs. Raymond (Petey) Cerf quietly funded the organization and also volun- teered for mundane tasks such as poster-making. The new organization's first meetings, at Trinity Episcopal Church, were to hear Dr. Dale Clinton discuss birth control techniques.23 Perhaps not surprisingly, this group of volunteers was motivated by concern about popula- tion growth. Mrs. Bell explained to a Journal-World reporter: There is increasing need to face the problem of overpopulation. The world now is adding one million more people each week, and unless private physicians, the public, volunteer health agencies, medical centers and government agencies assume the responsibility of meeting this crisis, the population explosion will outstrip the world's capacity to feed its people and will cause pressure on educational costs, jobs, crime and revolution. 24 More than 4,000 married Women in Lawrence, Mrs~ Bell estimated, needed information about birth control. The group pursued its ends aggressively, enlisting the active support of Lawrence's Ministerial Alliance and even sending a letter to each woman who gave birth at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, offering ,to come to her home and counsel her about birth control tech- niques. Many of the volUnteers joined because they thought it was crucial to bring birth con- trol information to low income, less educated married women who could not afford private doctors, but in working through churches and through the only hospital in town, they were not narrowly targeting poor women. (Significantly, while class played an important role in these discussions, race never appeared.) Initially, the Planned Parenthood group attempted to affiliate with the health department, offering to provide publicity, education and counseling and then refer women to the health department for contraceptives. But Dr. Clinton said no, both to that proposal and to a subse- quent request to use health department facilities temporarily for an independent clinic. Per- haps a man of different temperament would have welcomed the assistance. After all, Clinton's vehemence on the issue of population control was matched, at least in tone, by these crusad- ing volunteers. To Clinton, however, it was not only a question of territory, but of proper authority and of philosophy. He claimed the authority of the state, not the implied reciprocity inherent in a rhetoric of physician's responsibility and patients' needs.25 But the Planned Parenthood clinic was far from dead. These were resourceful people. By late February, a birth control clinic was operating out of the Lawrence Community Nursery on alternate Monday nights. The staff showed two films (Population Ecology and Planned Fami- lies); a social worker offered counseling and a doctor volunteered his services for examinations and prescription of contraceptives. And over at the health department, Dr. Clinton put up a sign proclaiming it the "Official Planned Parenthood Office." 226 Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland This conflict made birth control's availability more visible to Lawrence residents, for the skirmishes between Clinton and the family planning group had been chronicled by the local paper from the beginning. Finally, in January, both Clinton and his thwarted allies in population control made their cases before the public in the Sunday Outlook section of the Journal-World. Here, Clinton failed to set the agenda. The reporter cast her story as a series of oppositions, but the terms were not Clinton's "regulatory v.s. [sic] service" dyad. Instead, women (as patients or clients) became the site of struggle. The difference between the two, simply put, was that the family planning clinic offered women education about birth control options and required a physical examination. The health department did not. Mrs. Bell explained that her group believed infor- mation and examinations made women "more comfortable" about birth control. Dr. Clinton argued that required examinations frighten women away. Most women do not want to "go through the ordeal" of an exam, he explained. "Our job is simply to give them what they ask for, ... and we do not attempt to educate the women."26 The differences had been clearly drawn, and what remained was for the women of Lawrence to vote with their feet. Struggle II: The Pill on the Hill While Clinton and the Planned Parenthood group struggled, a different sort of contro- versy had begun at the University, up on the Hill.27 The question was whether the University Health Service should prescribe the pill to unmarried women students. This debate, unlike the conflict between Planned Parenthood and the health department, centered around issues of sexual morality. Reverend Simmons, the campus minister who was involved with the Douglas County Family Planning Clinic, also focused on sexuality counseling and birth control in his ministry at KU. In late 1966 he organized a forum on the topic: "Should unmarried undergraduates be given birth control information and/or materials through Watkins Hospital (the student health service)?" The panelists were three: Simmons; Father Falteisch, chairman of the moral theology de- partment at St. Louis University and a Roman Catholic priest; and Dr. Raymond Schwegler, director of the student health service. According to coverage by the University Daily Kansan ( UDK or Kansan), Simmons argued that population control was desperately needed. Father Falteisch agreed with Simmons, and suggested that the Church was moving toward accepting the "responsible use" of contraceptives as legitimate, though not for the unmarried. In the context of 1966 America and their respective churches, both men of the doth took liberal to progressive positions. The hard line, however, came from the man of medicine. Dr. Raymond Schwegler was, in his own way, as quirky and stubborn as Dr. Clinton. The Kansan described him as a "small, white-haired man" with a soft voice, but he certainly never minced words. Watkins would not, Schwegler insisted, give contraceptives to unmarried stu- dents "under any circumstances." "I know this is old fashioned, mid-Victorian, and the Kan- san will cut us to ribbons," he is quoted by the University Daily Kansan, "but I don't want to do it and my staff backs me completely." Rev. Simmons pushed, arguing that unless premarital intercourse was grounds for expulsion, Schwegler's policy was unfair. Schwegler replied: "We'd have trouble keeping the student population up [if we expelled students for premarital inter- course]. But Watkins will not contribute to the recreational activities of the campus."28 This Religious Forum on birth control prompted a flood of letters to the Kansan. The letters contained no dire predictions about earth's future if population growth continued un- controlled. Instead, these students used a language of morality to dispute Schwegler's stance. However, most of the writers did not discuss sexual morality. Their concerns were framed in existential terms, in keeping with the tone of the campus-wide debate over parietal rules the previous spring term. This challenge to administrative regulation, known locally as the "Stu- dent Responsibility Movement," had its origins in the KU philosophy department and the local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.29 The first response to Schwegler published Beth Bailey 227 in the Kansan-a long, carefully reasoned letter from an Iola, Kansas, graduate student-indi- cates similar origins. Noting that the Health Service did provide the pill to married women, he argued that by so doing the administration had defined the issue as moral, not medical. Thus, the real question was: "Who should make the moral decision, the university or the students themselves?"30 Another graduate student (from Gettysburg, South Dakota) questioned the "irresponsible use of the concept 'morality' as employed primarily by the 'anti-pill' propo- nents." Morality, he insisted, existed only in a situation when there was "opportunity for choice." Without "free access" to contraceptives, students are not making a moral-or immoral-choice about premarital intercourse. Instead, their choices are constrained by fear or coercion.31 Only one writer, a sophomore from Nebraska, supported Schwegler's position, asking, by way of analogy, "If the possibility of punishment for murder were eliminated," would there not be "a substantial increase in the number of murders committed every year?" Subsequent writers questioned his logic, his psychological adjustment, his sexual adjustment, even (implic- itly) his gender (one writer described his letter as sounding "like something a Midwestern coed would write"). 32 What's missing in this flurry of discussion is a statement embracing sexual freedom. While all but one writer agreed that the pill should be available to unmarried women at the student health service, they decentered sex in their arguments. 33 Furthermore, there were no demands, no arguments centering around the rights of women to control their own bodies. In fact, there were virtually no women's voices in this debate. Only two women signed letters to the editor, and their names appear nowhere, effaced in the signatures "Mr. and Mrs. James Cooley" and "Mr. and Mrs. Angus Wright" (all seniors from Salina, writing together).34 Why didn't women write? Given that historians and sociologists have seen the liberating effects of the pill in its woman-centeredness (its use being fully under the woman's control, and, since noncoital, possibly fully discretionary), why were the "coeds" of KU not involved in the debate? Women did not write because the stakes were so high. The larger discourse on morality and the pill was not centered on the ~orality of existential choices but on the immorality of premarital sex. In the February 1967 Good Housekeeping poll on unmarried women and the pill, respondents made comments such as: "I truly pity a generation growing up with the morals of alley cats," and "Making birth control available to unmarried girls to me would mean lowering our moral standards and destroying our culture."35 These women were not policy makers or experts, but their voices represented a different sort of authority. They were the voiees of mothers-mothers of the sort whose daughters went to state colleges in the Midwest. The Kansan was a student paper, but news of a daughter's making public claims about her right to birth control was very likely to travel fast and to travel home. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these voices of "traditional morality" were provincial leftovers, out-of-touch with dominant beliefs or with the "modern" views of experts. Writings in the Journal of the American College Health Association, School and Society, and the journal of School Health at the time were equally emphatic about the evils of premarital sex, although in a different sort of language. The director of the Princeton Health Service, acknowl- edging that he was largely saved from this dilemma because his was a men's college, warned against prescribing contraceptives to unmarried women, as "the student's unconscious mind might interpret such restrictions as a signal from 'authority' giving permission for sexual freedom."36 Another health services director, in "Problems of Married College Students," devoted a significant chunk of his article to what he called "pseudo-marriage." This sort of relationship allows students to avoid guilt, he explained, but is still wrong because it "violates the custom of our land." Quoting Samuel Clemens, he proclaimed: "Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment."37 And finally, in "The College Unmarried Population Explosion," a physician in the Ohio State University Health Service drew a "cause and effect relationship between mental health and promiscuity." Ending on a light note, he, like the Midwestern sophomore, made an unfortunate analogy with sex: "It is all a bit like cars-some choose a new one and break it in 228 Prescribing the Pill· Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland with loving care; others buy from a used car lot-it is just as nice and shiny but you are not sure what problems the previous drivers have left you. "38 These articles do not represent one side of a lively argument in these journals. In the mid-1960s, they are the argument. Mass-circulation magazines and professional journals would not have devoted so much space to debates over premarital sex if there was no audience for them. And it is clear from these articles that significant and relevant portions of the U.S. population, in the mid-to-late 1960s, still strongly disapproved of premarital sex. Nonetheless, these were essentially prescrip- tive discourses. What of the students themselves? In spring semester 1964, the "Roles of Women" committee of the Associated Women Students, having read about a similar study at Michigan State University, decided to survey its constituency. Presented with a description of behavior ("Using race as . one basis for choosing your associates"; "Showing disrespect for those in authority"; "Wearing short shorts in town"; · "Feeling very angry with someone") students were asked to judge each item. Categories were: "Morally or ethically right"; "Generally acceptable"; "Generally unacceptable"; or "Morally or ethically wrong." The instructions emphasized that each student should indicate what was right or wrong "for you." To the item, "Having sexual intercourse prior to marriage if engaged," 86 percent of freshmen and 83 percent of seniors responded in the negative, with 77 percent and 68 per- cent, respectively, choosing the strongest ("Morally or ethically wrong") response. Even stron- ger was student response to the item about sexual intercourse prior to marriage ("not en- gaged"). Ninety-one percent of both freshmen ·and seniors labeled it unacceptable. Only 2 percent of each group deemed it "morally or ethically right." These numbers are clearly not an accurate guide to behavior. It is extremely unlikely that 98 percent of KU senior women were virgins. But almost all of them either believed that premarital sex was wrong or that they should say they believed it wrong. The survey was anonymous and student-conducted, so the easy explanation-direct fear of adult authority-is not sufficient. 39 In tracing the public discussions of sex within the University community, it becomes clear that students also saw their peers as sources of danger. For example, in 1967, prompted by another Student Union Activities Religious Forum in which three professors addressed the question, "Is Free Love a Bargain?" a single woman finally wrote to claim her right to both sex and the pill: I take the Pill because I'd rather express my love than repress it. I'm not promiscuous, but once in awhile I meet a "special" guy. I've seen too many girls on campus totally disregard school for several weeks as they suffer anxiety over a missed menstrual period. . . . If a girl takes one chance a year, that's enough to warrant taking the pill. The "Free Love" Forum was dominated by a conservative English professor who told the audience, "You're all here to find some rationalization for the sex you've indulged in." In recent months the national organization Campus Crusade for Christ had been active on the KU campus, using strong language to condemn premarital sex. But this woman countered their charges: "The 'Christian' way is not the only way in my opinion. If I'm destin~d for Hell as you think, then I'll be condemned for something I believe in 100 per cent. "40 Her letter, which had begun, "I'm a woman and I'm glad," employed a feminist language, emphasizing women's right and capacity to choose. It took a strong and affirmative position. But it was unsigned. An editor's note below the letter read: "Contrary to established editorial page policy, we are printing this letter without signature."41 All letters, no matter how contro- versial their claims, required signature-except this one. A woman's claiming her right to sex and the pill was understood as a whole different category of risk. That this woman remained anonymous and was allowed to do so by the editorial board in violation of its policy, that (unmarried) women's voices were so conspicuously silent in the previous year's debate on the pill, that 91 percent of the women students surveyed said they believed premarital sex to be "ethically or morally wrong" -all this is strong evidence that it Beth Bailey 229 wasn't only the prescriptive voices of adults denying the legitimacy of the culture of youth. Even within student culture, there was a gulf between public claims and private behaviors.42 For the women of KU were having sex. And they were, in increasing numbers, on the pill. The Kansan had followed up the initial set of letters about sex and birth control (1966) with a series on the pill, both locally and nationally, including articles tided: "The Pill: A Social Phenomenon''; "Pill Hard to Get in Lawrence"; and "The Pill and How to Get It." The news was largely discouraging. One article quoted Dr. Margaret Clark, a private physician in Lawrence, who said, "I give prescriptions to married women and to girls who come in and show me they are getting married. But to unmarried women? Heavens no!" She told the Kan- san reporter that three or four unmarried women asked her for birth control pills every week, but she always turned them down. 43 Doctors at the · KU Medical Center in Kansas City were more willing to offer the pill, though several anonymous women testified that a doctor had simply handed them samples and said to return for a prescription when they turned twenty-one. One woman told the story of a doctor who gave her the pills, but "stress[ed] the dangers of promiscuity." As this anony- mous "coed" explained to the UDK reporter, the doctor told her about a patient of his who had gotten the pill because. she was "going out with this one guy so steadily and hadn't even thought about him telling anyone else." But he told someone he worked with that "his girl was taking pills," and the other man took her out. When she wouldn't go to bed with him, he beat her up.44 The Kansan articles were generally straightforward, presenting the problem of "getting the pill" in a factual but generally supportive manner. But woven throughout is the subtext of danger, of difficulty. It would take time before a story like that one was greeted with anger rather than reported as, essentially, a possible side effect of the pill. Town, Gown, and Counterculture: The Forces of Change Information about birth control was increasingly available in mainstream, official publica- tions like the Lawrence Journal-World and the University Daily Kansan. And as time passed, there were other sorts of sources. Alternative newspapers sprang up in Lawrence along with a growing counterculture, which only partially overlapped with the University. The first of the underground papers (appearing in 1965) was Screw ("a twisted device for holding things to- gether"). Most were products of the late sixties and early seventies: UJrtex was the joint Lawrence Kansas City venture; The Oread Daily centered on the Hill, at the fringes of the University; there were also more short-lived papers, such as the River City Headhunter. Lawrence High School students published the Students' Free Press and Freedspeak. Ranging widely across a spec- trum of political and cultural radicalism, all offered alternative positionings and sources of information-increasingly, as time passed, including sex and contraceptives.45 By the late 1960s, the counterculture was extremely visible in Lawrence. Some people had trouble with the idea that there could be hippies in Kansas: the Topeka Capital-journals 1968 feature on the "Kansas hippie, a sociological phenomenon that is growing in Lawrence," cen- tered around the questions, "Are Kansas hippies really hippies? Or are they just outside agita- tors?" Lawrence did indeed serve as a magnet, but its pull was as likely to be from Garden City or Wichita as from the "outside."46 The Lawrence counterculture was, however, tied into a national movement. In Lawrence, as was true throughout the nation, underground papers ran material adopted or adapted from other cities' underground papers, including a widely published sex-advice column. Lawrence itself was both a sort of regional center and an oasis for those passing through on the long drive between the coasts. The famous and the not-famous spent time in Lawrence (though Abbie Hoffman, heckled by a crowd fed up with his behavior, made the legendary [in Lawrence] comment: "This place is a drag"). Members of the Lawrence community also circulated-out to San Francisco, up to Omaha, or to Madison. The "Kansas hippies" were participating in a Total Year Patients 1968 2408 1969 3281 1970 4898+ 1971 8503 1972 8529 1973* 5238 1974 3746 1975 4108 1976 4325 1977 4892 230 Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland New national community and a national culture. They listened to the same music, adopted the same styles, read each others' papers and manifestoes. They shared: ideas, dreams, sex, dope. 47 Members of the Lawrence counterculture, in their assorted manifestoes and acts, claimed the right to sexual freedom. In terms of the discourse on the pill, they had little use for the reigning models of morality and little interest in debates over the population problem. They saw the pill, instead, as enabling sexual freedom. Though often misogynistic, the voices of the counterculture offered a revolutiQnary alternative to the other debates. But the revolutionary rhetoric of the counterculture, calling on the virtues of "fucking in the streets" as a liberating act, was not enough alone to produce significant, widespread, and lasting social change. In- stead, the power of the "sexual revolution" lay in the joining of revolutionary claim (from the counterculture and then a very different sort from the women's movement) to the sorts of evolutionary and structural changes that were taking place in the society at large. The rise of the counterculture and, somewhat later, the women's movement in Lawrence would change the frame of the debate and the meaning of actions. But the fact remains that, no matter how revolutionary the language or the lifestyle of any segment of the Lawrence population, access to the pill was controlled by doctors. Whether to "coed" or "hippie chick," the pill had to be prescribed. And it was to Dr. Clinton that most unmarried women in Lawrence turned. The first year for which health department birth control statistics are avail- able is 1968. As shown in Figure l, the number of women obtaining oral contraceptives through the health department grew dramatically from year to year. The vast majority of the new patients each year were KU students, as witnessed both by Dr. Clinton's public statements ilnd by seasonal patterns in the patient load, which closely followed the academic year. For ex- ample, in 1971, clinic records show a low of 44 new patients in August, with a jump to 300 . . s b 48 new patients m eptem er. Figure 1 Lawrence Health Department Birth Control Statistics Pap Months of Pills Months of Pills Pregnancy Patients Smear Exam IUD Diaphragm Dispensed Prescribed Tests 720 -97- nl nl 1,338 nl nl 976 40 91 68 nl 10,509 10,382 nl 1649+ 97 68 187 nl 15,273+ 10,359+ nl 2400 -147- 96 nl 31,247 4,420 90 2100 12 115 43 nl 35,874 2,056 387 680 436 nl 30 9 19,786 nl nl 372 1505 nl 18 32 9,938 nl nl 531 1300 nl 53 56 8,399 nl 614 430 1166 nl 79 93 8,037 nl 877 890 1366 nl 109 134 7,580 nl 1261 + Numbers are missing for May 1970, so all figures are low. I estimate the corrected figures to be roughly 5306 total patients and 1786 new patients. nl Not listed in original records. From 1974 on, numbers of pap smears and exams are probably equivalent. no clear distinction between exam and pap smear in these years. * Clinton resigns and department is without full-time physician. Kay Kent takes over in July; from July on KU students are referred to Watkins student health center. Beth Bailey 231 Such high numbers of birth control patients are amazing at a clinic with a single physi- cian, especially since he also served as director of the entire county health department. Dr. Clinton was proud of his clinic's efficiency, referring to it as a "low-cost, high-volume opera- tion."49 These numbers, however, are very much dependent on the specific form of birth con- trol distributed: the pill. If you believed, as Dr. Clinton did, that gynecological examinations were a necessary component of general health care but not a precondition for using oral con- traceptives, the prescription (or the pills themselves) could be handed across a desk after a few basic questions. Unlike the diaphragm, which several Lawrence doctors considered inconve- nient and "messy" to fit, the pill could be prescribed without ever encountering a patient's reproductive organs. so And (again unlike the diaphragm) women did not have to be shown how to use the pills. No time-consuming practice was required; the time the doctor spent on education could be minimal. The pill was a wonder drug not simply because of its effective- ness for women, but because of its convenience for those who prescribed it. The Planned Parenthood clinic had, of course, taken a very different approach from the health department clinic. Prescription of the pill was contingent upon not only a physical examination, but also a time-consuming process of education and counseling. These proce- dures necessarily limited the number of women the all-volunteer bimonthly clinic could serve. Since opening in early 1967, it had gradually been overwhelmed by demand. The clinic closed its doors permanently on the first day of 1970. Though it had been founded to serve low- income residents of Lawrence, the group's president explained, it had been used almost exclu- sively by KU coeds. Many of the volunteers were frustrated by what they saw as a misdirection of resources from poor women to middle-class coeds, and upon closing the clinic the directors sent a letter to Dr. Schwegler at the student health service and to the Chancellor arguing that the University should provide for its students' birth control needs.51 Proposals to that end had been on the table at KU for several years. In the fall of 1967, the Independent Student Party (comprised partially of KU SOS members) had raised the issue as part of a broad program once again stressing "student responsibility." "Contraceptive Infor- mation" did appear as a line item on the agenda (titled "Campus Problems for Consideration") of the Committee on Student Affairs in late 1967, but no action was taken. In 1970, follow- ing the closing of the Planned Parenthood clinic, the Inter-residence Council (IRC, the women's organization representing those in campus housing) approached top-level administrators about the student health service's birth control policies. The administrators responded sympatheti- cally, promising that two upcoming vacancies at Watkins would. be filled with doctors who would prescribe the pill without using marital status or "morality" as criteria. This never hap- pened, though another issue raised by the IRC-an educational program on Human Sexual- ity-was implemented in 1970 with strong administrative support.52 At that time, the Dean of Women's Office began offering birth control information-and information about where to obtain contraceptives-to women students.53 Also in 1970, faculty and graduate students in the biology department played key roles in founding a Lawrence chapter of the national organization Zero Population Growth. It drew membership throughout the community, and was quite active in sponsoring talks and in local/state political lobbying. On the University campus, it sponsored a birth control information line that was run out of the biology department. 54 Thus far, we have a story of elite-managed, gradualist change. Young women accelerated the rate of change through action-by seeking out and using the pill-but their impact was lessened because private actions were rarely matched by public claims. The Lawrence counter- culture, in the 1960s, began to challenge the existing paradigms of population control or morality through assaults both on established authorities and on "traditional" sexual mores. But members of the counterculture were not focusing on issues of birth control and were not interested in institutional change. There was no effective challenge to existing paradigms until the early 1970s, when the Lawrence women's movement began to make demands. 232 Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland The February Sisters were a group of about seventy-five participants who occupied the East Asian Building on the KU campus on February 3, 1972, and issued a set of demands, including free day care, an autonomous Womens Studies Department, appointment of a woman as vice-chancellor, a womens health program, and an end to unfa ir employment practices. When they emerged the next morning, they had won commitments from the University administration on several of their demands. Struggle III: The February Sisters and the University In the early 1970s the women's movement-in Lawrence, as elsewhere, embedded in the larger set of cultural and political changes that were sweeping the country-would capture the pill, both in its symbolic and physical manifestations. Women in Lawrence would interrupt this gradual change within existing paradigms, and in the process would make revolutionary claims about gender equality and cultural authority. By 1972, when this new set of struggles erupted, any woman in Lawrence-married or unmarried-could obtain birth control pills, free if necessary. This had been true, and widely known, for at least five years. But it wasn't simply access to the pill that was at stake. It was the sort of access, and the meaning attributed to that access. In 1972, two different groups of women in Lawrence challenged the men who controlled access to the pill. In both cases, though they used different methods and different languages (fittingly, as they represented dif- ferent generations), the women made claims based on the rights and needs of women. In so doing, they stepped outside the discourses of morality and of the population problem and centered the pill in a discourse on women, rights, and freedom. The women's movement in Lawrence was multi-centered, and groups varied in nature and purpose. Participants were highly aware of the national scope of the movement, and situated themselves in different strands, sometimes with official or semi-official national affiliations. A Women's Liberation Front was formed in mid-1968, but seems to have been mostly a meeting group. KU's dean of women, Emily Taylor, was a NOW-style feminist who would leave her position in Kansas in 1975 to head the Office of Women in Education of the American Council of Education in Washington D.C. Her office had supported a form of liberal femi- nism on campus, and had been a center of action for some women students and administra- tors. 55 Within Lawrence's varied counterculture, women had begun to draw the connections between the oppression of minorities and oppression of women that was fueling another strand of the women's movement. The women of Vortex (the most important underground paper) published a women's issue in 1970, and soon afterward the Lavender Luminary, a lesbian pa- per, appeared. W.I.T.C.H. (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) appeared briefly as a local group. Consciousness raising groups formed. And on campus, within the framework of federal mandates on affirmative action, the University administration was (sig- nificantly without seeking the input of women faculty, administrators, employees, or students) developing the antidiscrimination plan newly required by the Department of Health, Educa- tion, and Welfare. 56 On the evening of February 2, 1972, feminist author and activist Robin Morgan spoke at KU. 57 It wasn't anything in particular that Morgan did or said, but instead the open forum following her talk that precipitated action. Women voiced their dissatisfactions and needs with a sense of urgency that led a group of about seventy-five participants to occupy a campus building and issue a set of demands. Calling themselves the February Sisters, twenty women entered the East Asian building (chosen because it seemed suitable for a child care center and be- cause one of the women had access to a key) at 6:30 p.m. February 3rd. Members of the group who remained outside the building distributed leaflets, which detailed six demands, including an Affirmative Action program "designed and di- rected" by women appointed by the February Sis- ters; free day care; an autonomous Department of Women's Studies, controlled by women; the appointment of a woman to the vacant post of Vice-Chancellor; an end to unfair employment practices; and a women's health program. Beth Bailey 233 The Chancellor was informed of the occupation by an anonymous phone call (to his bridge party); he initially ignored the call, but by 8:00 p.m. the University Senate Executive Committee was meeting and it was clear the occupation was being taken seriously. Negotia- tions continued through the night, with the Sisters receiving strong support from some key women faculty and administrators. When the Sisters emerged from the building early the next morning, they had won commitments from the administration on a substantial portion of their demands, including the ~omen's health program. The February Sisters followed up their demands . with carefully researched proposals. In their document on health care, while they drew heavily on the authority of the national Ameri- can College Health Association's 1970 report on birth control, they also couched their argu- ment in language invoking the American tradition of rights and freedoms. "We, the February Sisters," their proposal for a Human Sexuality Clinic began. Arguing that "control of her reproductive functions is a fundamental right of every woman," the Sisters insisted: "The Uni- versity cannot view the action proposal ... as a request for additional privileges, but rather as a demand to recognize right [sic] which have been neglected."58 The Sisters claimed legitimacy through a language of inalienable rights, fueled by outrage at continuing transgressions. By not covering pap smears in the student health insurance, the University was refusing co acknowledge women's sexual and reproductive organs as legitimate parts of their bodies. Women who requested gynecological exams at Watkins were sometimes refused and often lectured on "morality''; women who sought birth control were frequently subjected to "morality lectures," even when presenting themselves as seeking "premarital" ex- · ams; even a married woman might have to see three or four doctors before finding one willing to give her contraceptives. Fundamentally, they argued, women were not treated with respect. This, the Sisters stated in their st~ongest language, "we consider . . . co be dehumanizing and an affront to the dignity of the woman involved."59 Once again: it was not simply the right to access they claimed. Women had developed a network of information, and with a little resourcefulness, expense, or persistence a woman could provide for her gynecological and contraceptive needs. Here, more importantly, · women were challenging paradigms chat constructed birch control primarily within the frameworks of either morality or population control. While the morality lectures denied women's autonomy and dignity, the efforts of population control groups like ZPG were "dangerous" (a February Sister argued in the Kansan) in "trying to subvert Women's Liberation to its own ends." Birch control was not about population, but instead "a woman's issue involved with the concept of a free woman."60 And finally, these women understood, both the population control and the morality framework allowed a comment like the one made by the irritated director of Student Health, Dr. Schwegler, that he did so many pelvic exams he sometimes felt like he worked in a whorehouse. 61 The Sisters meant to re-center the pill in a larger discourse on and of women- one that had no room for this infinitely revealing analogy. Watkins' student health center officially began prescribing the pill to unmarried women in February 1972. Somewhat ironically, in March, the Supreme Court ruled that women could not be denied contraceptives on the basis of marital status.62 Struggle IY. The Health Department, the State, and Petey Cerf The struggles over the pill in Lawrence were not yet over, however. The health depart- ment continued to be the key source for the pill in Lawrence, and most of the health department's clientele were still KU students. Birth control was second only to salaries in the department's budget. In the fiscal year 1971-72, the health department spent $16,916.43 for contraceptives. Slightly less than half of that sum was supplied by the state.63 But in August 1972, the Kansas State Department of Health cut off funding for Lawrence's birth control program. 64 The state agency received its funding from HEW, and it came with federal mandates. Doctors were to follow a specified procedure in prescribing the pill, which 234 Petey Cerf who had a Long history of activism in Lawrence, challenged Dr. Dale Clinton, director of the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department, for his failure to provide safeguards in prescribing birth controls for women. As a result of her efforts, Clinton resigned and the health department was reorganized along a new model. Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland included performing a complete physical exam, pap smear, visual exam for cancer, tuberculin test, hemoglobin, and urinalysis. Clinton refused to follow the guidelines, and E. D. Lyman, the state director of Public Health, cut his funding. Lyman explained: "We accepted funds from the Federal Government on certain terms. They are more than just guidelines, they are contractual terms.65 Clinton argued his position in the September meeting of the Lawrence Board of Health: "The 'guidelines' name many irrelevant procedures which the patient must endure before she is given her birth control supplies .... The 'comprehensive services' appear to be simply a mecha- nism for diverting birth control funds into other activities, using birth control as a carrot (or whip)."66 Referring to the procedures elsewhere as "roadblocks" and "hassles," Clinton argued that HEW was attempting, through the state departments of health, to convert local public health departments into free comprehensive clinics. Comprehensive medical service for the indi- gent was not his mandate, he insisted, and he would continue to provide birth control as before, funding it through donations from birth control patients, not to exceed $1 per woman each month. The board of health backed Clinton, and though the local clinic lost a $12,000 federal grant, it was soon running a $10,000 surplus from donations by birth control patients. 67 HEW not having provided a sufficient carrot or whip to move this local institution, the health department returned to its former balance of supply and demand. If there was no philosophical agreement between provider (who addressed the population problem) and con- sumers (who overwhelmingly wanted free or inexpensive birth control pills without accompa- nying lectures on morality, even if in the guise of "counseling"), there was a remarkable effi- ciency in their transactions. But here, again, the existing paradigms of population control and morality would be challenged by a woman's voice. In this case the challenge was not ideological or even fully coherent. Following the cutoff of state funds for birth control, Lawrence resident Petey Cerf launched an attack against Dr. Clinton. Birth control policy was at the center of the ensuing fight, but was not the only issue or even Cerf's primary motive. More than anything else, it seems, she was angry at his arro- gance. 68 In this struggle, participants divided by gender and argued, as subtext, about male power and authority. Petey Cerf's attack would turn the health department inside out, revealing the fault lines of gender and class. Cerf was not acting as an avowed feminist. She was of an earlier genera- tion of women, extraordinarily competent, involved in public affairs, with a long history of activism in Lawrence. But her campaign against Clinton, coming as it did in the early seven- ties, was a challenge to male authority. And because this small local struggle intersected with changes on the national level, as a direct result of her efforts the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department was completely remade along another model. Mrs. Cerf had been involved in the run-in between Clinton and the Dou- glas County Family Planning Association in 1966. Following that confrontation, she had written a letter of protest to the president of the board of health, but had received no answer. This time she made her letter public, sending it to the journal-World and to the Kansan. In this letter Cerf criticized Clinton's "omis- sion" of "certain safeguards" in prescribing the pill, and suggested that women might have died as a result. Cerf also wrote to the University of Kansas Board of Regents, warning that Clinton was endangering the health of KU's women students by prescribing the pill without performing the necessary tests. 69 Clinton, who participated regularly in national conferences on birth control, in fact believed that the pill was absolutely safe. From 1962, when the thalido- mide tragedy had raised fears about analogous problems with the new pill, Clinton had rejected all medical cautions. Even in 1972, after the links to blood clotting had been widely discussed in both professional journals and mass market maga- zines, Clinton insisted that one reason he did not intend to perform "irrelevant" tests was because they "falsely implied that birth control was dangerous." The Bech Bailey 235 health department was obliged, he explained to a special meeting of the board of health called in che wake of Cerf's charges, "as part of its educational function, to debunk medical falla- cies." Clinton's assertions did not mesh wich what Lawrence citizens were reading in national publications. 70 By December Mrs. Cerf had compiled a detailed report, "One Woman's Evaluation of the Douglas County Health Department Program," which she presented at che December meeting of the board of health. The room was crowded, as eighty or more "critics and defenders" of Clinton "clashed" (the journal-Worlds terms) for over two hours."71 With continued publicity, Lawrence officials and citizens · took sides. There was a clear gender divide. Most (male) physicians, including Dr. Schwegler, supported Clinton. The League of Women Voters, which had been sending an observer to board of health meetings every month for decades, gave advice and support to Cerf. The women who ran Penn House, a private group offering services to Lawrence's poor, distributed a statement agreeing with Cerf's evaluation and criticizing the board of health: "We were astounded," they wrote of the earlier meeting, "to see supposedly well educated intelligent gentlemen rise to take a very defensive and non-constructive position.72 And finally, a long letter to the editor from a woman with no connection to either Cerf or Clinton appeared in the journal-World. She told of asking two physicians in town their opinions of the health department. Each had offered, instead, "a verbal lambasting of Mrs. Cerf's audacity." This woman said she saw it as her "duty" to point out that "Mrs. Cerf is not an idle housewife who seeks to irresponsibly stir up trouble. The woman has done her homework on this matter." The language, particularly "audacity" and "idle housewife," suggests the role of gender in this struggle, as does the fact that Cerf's public support came overwhelmingly from women and Clinton's from men.73 Though he still had significant support in Lawrence, Clinton announced his resignation on March 8, 1973-with no further comment. Dr. Schwegler, speaking on the record, named Mrs. Cerf as proximate cause, noting that "the pressure of a handful has forced us [the Board] into a very ugly situation.74 And indeed it had, for without Clinton the health department lacked nor only a director, but a physician. Its operations were at a standstill. At the board meeting following soon after Clinton's resignation, a group of Lawrence doctors pushed to re-hire Clinton. One had canvassed fifteen local doctors, and had found not one willing to consider the job. All agreed that replacing Clinton would be quite expensive; Clinton had been making $21,372 a year. The doctors proposed offering him up to $50,000 to return to the post. "Clinton was the hardest working health officer we've had in Douglas County in 50 years," one said. "I don't think we can ever find one man to do the job that Dr. Clinton did. "75 Overall, the meeting was primarily notable for its gender divisions. Several male doctors made slighting comments and jokes about Cerf and her supporters, prompting a series of women to rise and rebut the criticisms. The female city commissioner told the male doctors it was "unfair" to characterize the health department critics as "troublemakers." Dr. Schwegler then summed up the crisis at the health department with yet another telling figure of speech: ''.At the moment we're trying to hold our pants up with the belt buckle broken.76 In die end, the doctor who predicted they couldn't find one man to replace Clinton was right. The board of health, with much internal and external dissension, took on two women. Mrs. Kay Kent, hired as administrator of the department at a salary of $15,948, had a master's degree with an emphasis on community health from Boston University School of Nursing. Dr. , Ginny Levene, who was hired as half-time physician for $9,200, held a masters and doctorate of public health from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.77 Under the leadership of Kay Kent, the health department instituted the procedures man- dated by federal guidelines and regained federal funds. Dr. Clinton's efficient birth control operation became a comprehensive family planning clinic, more generally concerned with women's reproductive health. In 197 4, the first full year of Kent's administration, birth control patients dropped from the 8,528 of Clinton's final year to 3,746. The number of pap smears done rose from Clinton's 12 to 1,505. New patients from KU were referred to Watkins, where 236 Prescribing the Pill· Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland Schwegler refused to compile statistics. And by 1978, there was an average wait of four weeks for an appointment at the health department's birth control clinic.78 Cerf had successfully challenged the authority of the male doctors. The changes that re- sulted, though prompted more by economics than ideology, would significantly alter the insti- tutional structure and function of the health department's birth control clinic. Here, again, though, the story does not take place only on the local level. It was the existence of federal funding and associated guidelines for prescribing oral contraceptives that provided Cerf with her opening to challenge Clinton. After Clinton's resignation, it was only possible to hire Dr. Levine and Mrs. Kent because of large-scale changes that brought more women into the pro- fessions; significantly, both had been trained in highly respected private universities that drew national student bodies. It would be a mistake, however, to read this story simply as the triumph of women over male authority. Clinton was a complex figure, and the politics of birth control were equally complex. He displayed a marked indifference to the reproductive health of individual women. His passion was population control but because of that passion he provided birth control pills to a very large number of young women. He gave the pill straightforwardly, without lectures on the dangers of promiscuity or comments on the patient's moral character. Marital status, he said, is not "one of the medical criteria."79 · Young women who took the pill Clinton prescribed had sex without fear of pregnancy. They obtained the pill simply by request, without the demeaning act of lying about an im- pending marriage or the purchase of a cheap gold ring at a drugstore. They were, by and large, grateful. By prescribing the pill, Dr. Clinton had-inadvertently or not-enabled the sexual revolution in Lawrence. Conclusion The pill played an important role in the sexual revolution. It gave women vastly increased control over their sexual-reproductive lives, and thus helped to change the experfonce and meaning of sex both inside and outside marriage. However, it is crucial to understand that the pill was introduced, in the early 1960s, into a society that publicly denounced sex outside marriage. The pill was not freely available, but rather ·controlled by physicians who did not stand above or outside the mores of the larger society. The birth control pill originally became available to unmarried women on a large scale due to federal initiatives, which were motivated by concern about the twinned issues of population control and poverty. Since the decision to prescribe the pill was made by individual doctors, the role ·of federal incentives and national cultures were mediated-powerfully-by local situations. But in Lawrence, the bureaucratic efforts of federal agencies (the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare), and national organizations (Planned Parenthood, Inc., Zero Population Growth, the American College Health Association, and the American Public Health Association) were crucial in creating the institutional structures that allowed the pill to be prescribed to unmar- ried women despite the continued strength of "moral" opposition. Those origins, because they decentered the woman herself and allowed continuation of a fundamentally misogynist dis- course, constrained the "revolutionary" potential of oral contraceptives. But the availability of the pill-on whatever grounds-did change young women's experi- ence in sex. And · the pill intersected with larger social changes including the gradual willing- ness of young people to publicly claim sex as right and the rise of a women's movement that was strong enough to challenge existing paradigms of cultural authority. Eventually, in Lawrence, the meaning of the pill was contested and reconfigured through the paradigm of gender. In the end, while one must acknowledge the importance of radical action centered in the cities of East and West Coasts, this article demonstrates the limit of that version of the making of the "sexual revolution." First, struggles were joined throughout the United States, in locally grounded and mediated embodiments of national culture. The polemics and actions of the Beth Bailey 237 most visible actors entered into a national culture that was jointly created as national by many other geographically diverse participants. Had the sexual revolution been only a phenomenon of Greenwich Village or of Haight-Ashbury, the invention of the birth control pill, for ex- ample, would have made little difference to most single women. And, finally, in the struggles that constitute the sexual revolution, there were never simply two sides. There were multiple sites of power, multiple discourses, multiple claims. Intention was frequently uncoupled from function or outcome, and it is often difficult to say who were the "good guys" and who were "bad." While one can tell a tale of freedom challenging the forces of repression, such heroic narratives obscure the ~ires of change, languages of negotia- tion, and the critical structural changes that created the ground on which these confrontations and negotiations took place. In Lawrence, Kansas, while battles over the pill were fought lo- cally, they were decided on national grounds. Feminist Research Institute Albuquerque, NM 87131 Notes 1. For examples of 1960s articles noting the relationship between "morality" and the pill, see: Andrew Hacker, "The Pill and Morality," New York Times Magazine, November 21, 1965, 32+; "The Pill: How It Is Affect-. ing U.S. Morals, Family Life," U. S. News and World Report, July 11, 1966, 3; Gloria Steinem, "The Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed," Esquire, September 1962, 97 ff; "The Second Sexual Revolution," Time, Janu- ary 24, 1964, 54-59. 2. For example, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, in Campus Lift (New York, 1987) handles changes in sexual be- havior among college students with the brief statement: "Many young people coming of age in the 1960s, with access to the Pill, demanded complete sexual freedom'' (228). The development of the birth control pill is well-chronicled in Bernard Asbell's recent book, The Pill: A Biography of the Drug That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 1995), which also analyzes Roman Catholic responses to the pill. The classic and key works on · the history of birth control in America are Jam es Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society since 1830 (New York: Basic Books, 1978) and Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York: Grossman, 1976). Reed writes from a pro-population control perspective; Gordon is strongly opposed to population control programs as anti-feminist. Neither author discusses the introduction of birth control pills in signifi- cant detail. I have been asked whether this study is in fact nothing more than an elaboration of Linda Gordon's argument in Woman's Body, Woman's Right. On the contrary, Gordon's social control model does not explain the introduction and use of the birth control pill. First, while the pill was made more widely available to the American public because of the efforts of some of the organizations Gordon studies-specifically Planned Parenthood, federal and state governments, and various population control groups-her historical, empirical analysis ends in the 1950s. One cannot simply assume that the organizations remained the same over de- cades of dramatic social change-in politics or in function. Furthermore, Gordon's blanket condemnation of "population control" as anti-feminist is an orthodoxy of one strand of 1970s radical feminism. She does not offer empirical or historical analysis, and this section of her book should be read as a primary, rather than a secondary, source. (This same criticism of population control appears in Lawrence's feminist community in 1972 and I discuss it in this article; for a useful analysis of/entry into this ongoing debate, see James Reed, "Public Policy on Human Reproduction and the Historian," journal of Social History [Spring 1985]: 383- 98.) Likewise, Gordon's discussion of "Sexuality, Feminism, and Birth Control Today" is polemic, not his- torical analysis. Finally, Gordon does not analyze the introduction of the birth control pill; it is mentioned- and only mentioned-on four pages in a 418-page book. In the larger picture, I reject the totalizing version of Gordon's 1970 marxist-feminist thought, which renders virtually everything short of revolution as social control and applies a historically specific model of feminism as virtual litmus test. While works such as this were vitally important for bringing gender to the forefront of historical analysis and making generations of historians rethink the role of "public" power in "private" life, these 1970s social control models have outlasted their historiographical utility. They need to be reexamined, using more contemporary understandings of power and gender. In the struggles over the birth control pill, there were multiple sites of power, multiple discourses, multiple claims. Models of central- ized power and courageous resistance simply do not describe the process. 3. Joyce M. Ray and F G. Gosling, ''American Physicians and Birth Control, 1936-1947," journal of Social History (Spring 1985): 399-411, discuss the earlier role of physicians in determining who had access to contraceptives. 4. There is not much historical analysis of the sexual revolution yet, but what exists tends to focus on radicals, activists, and movements, especially those located in East and West Coast cities and university towns. This 238 Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland is partly because discussion of the sixties' sexual revolution is frequently woven through works on social change or radical movements; see, for example, Todd Gitlin's The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987) and Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). Much of the good work on the subject focuses on strands of the sexual revolution that were not heterosexual, especially gay liberation movements. Synthetic works, such as the excellent social history presented by Estelle Freedman and John D'Emilio in Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), show the lack of monographic literature in relatively brief treatments of the early heterosexual strand of the "revolution." Linda Grant's Sexing the Millennium (New York: Grove Press, 1994), is the most· clearly historical book-length work to focus on the sexual revolution. Originally intended as a social history of the pill, this work instead emerged as a portrait of the author's generation and its struggles with sexuality. Re-making Love: The Feminization of Sex (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986), the interesting but highly idiosyncratic set of essays by Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs, while not activist-focused, is more invested in the question, "who won the sexual revolution?" than in tracing the process of social change. Other impor- tant works include Steven Seidman's sociological analysis in Romantic Longings: Love in America, 1830-1980 (New York: Routledge, 1991), which is useful for his attention to discourse, but is most effective in his provocative argument about casual sex and community formation in gay culture. David J. Garrow, in Liberty and Sexuality (New York: Scribner, 1994), offers a densely researched account of the legal battles and deci- sions that were central to a postwar "sexual revolution." See also Beth Bailey, "Sexual Revolution(s)," in David Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to History (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). For discussions of earlier changes in sexual mores, see Elaine May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful· American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); and Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). 5. See note number 2. 6. The demographic portrait of Lawrence is culled from U. S. Bureau of the Census reports for 1950, 1960, 1970, and 1980. Two works focusing on Lawrence are Clifford S. Griffin, The University of Kansas: A His- tory (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1974) and David Ohle, Roger Martin, and Susan Brosseau, eds., Cows Are Freaky When They Look at You (Wichita, Kans.: Watermark Press, 1991). In 1959-60, KU had 11,783 students, 72.1 percent of whom were from Kansas; 14.5 percent from adjacent states. Approxi- mately 24 percent were in graduate or professional school. By 1966 there were almost 15,000 students enrolled (Griffin, 617-18, 635). 7. Vicki Phillips, "Politics Plays Role in Birth Control," University Daily Kansan (UDK), January 8, 1970, 6, describes the role of Patricia Schloesser, head of the State Division of Maternal and Child Services, in passing this bill. See also Senate and House Journals: Proceedings of the Legislature of the State of Kansas (To- peka, Kans.: State Printer, 1963). 8. "Minutes," Lawrence-Douglas County Board of Health (BOH), 13 May 1963, 1955-65 Records, Douglas County Health Department (HD). Dr. Clinton, who was originally from Kansas, had served as a public health official in both Florida and Pennsylvania before assuming directorship of this health department in 1960. He was very much involved professionally in birth control possibilities, and traveled to conferences sponsored by drug companies and by the Rockefeller-funded Population Council several times during the 1960s ("Minutes," BOH, HD, November 8, 1965,June 13, 1966, February 12, 1968). 9. Donald Harting and Leslie Corsa, "The American Public Health Association and the Population Problem," American Journal of Public Health 59 (October 1969): 1927-29. James Reed, in From Private Vice to Public Virtue, provides a history of population control initiatives, beginning with the Population Council, an orga- nization founded by John D. Rockefeller III in 1952. Prompted by an internationalist concern about the problems of population growth in "developing economies," the Council funded demographic research it intended to influence government policy (Reed, 286-88). 10. This was a dramatic shift. In 1959 President Eisenhower had said that he could not "imagine anything more emphatically a subject that is not a proper political or governmental activity or function or responsibil- ity." Eisenhower is quoted by Reed in Private Vice, 304; the Journal of the American Public Health Association also quoted Eisenhower on birth control in an overview article (Harting and Corsa, 1929). Nixon made an even stronger statement about the international and domestic population problem on July 21, 1969. Text is contained in "Family Planning Services," Hearing before the Subcommittee on Public Health and Welfare of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Serial No. 91-70 (Wash- ington, 1970), 68-76. 11. See Leslie Corsa, "Public Health Programs in Family Planning," American Journal of Public Health 56 (Janu- ary 1966, supplement); Office of Economic Opportunity funding cited in Reed, Private Vice, 378; For con- gressional attention to the issues of population growth, domestic poverty and contraception, see "Family Planning Services" Hearing, especially 190-93. Statistics on federally supported family planning projects are included in the hearing material. Frequently cited in the policy debate is Lee Rainwater, And the Poor Get Children: Sex, Contraception, and Family Planning in the Working Class (Chicago: ~adrangle Books, 1960). 12. James Reed makes a similar point, to a different end, in "Public Policy." 13. On the politics of this era, see David Farber, The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994); Allen J. Matusow, The Unravelling of America (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), and a brief biography of Lyndon Johnson: Bruce J. Schulman, Lyndon Johnson and American Liberalism (New York: St. Martin, 1995). Beth Bailey 239 14. Qyote from Mary Calderone, "Health Education for. Responsible Parenthood: Preliminary Considerations," American journal of Public Health (A]PI-1) (January 1964): 1735-40. Calderone was former director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., World Population Emergency Campaign. The bulk of her article concerned strategy-the need to "sell" people (most particularly those in the "lowest income or dependent groups") on birth control. Calling on the "broadly democratic principles of equal opportunity to all," she argued: "Only with such a philosophy will people begin to understand that we are not advocating the dimi- nution of any one social or racial group-rather we are letting them in on a good thing that up until now the well-to-do have apparently been content to reserve for themselves as a special privilege." Such discus- sions were common in the AjPH throughout the decade, as the profession struggled with its mission to "take a central role" in population control and at the same time manage the policy implications of state- and federally sponsored programs. See, for example, Frederick S. Jaile, "A Strategy for Implementing Family Planning Services in the United States," AJPH 58 (April 1968): 713-25; John C. Snyder," The Education of Health Experts for the 1970s," AjPH (January 1966): 67-69; Ruth M. White, Matthew Taubeck, and Susan Hetherington, "Family Planning as Part of Maternal Health Services in a Metropolitan Health De- partment,'' AjPH 56 (August 1966): 1226-29. The American Medical Association and the American Public Welfare Association both endorsed the availability of contraceptives for the "economically deprived." De- spite the careful language of these professionals, many Americans drew connections between birth control and anti-poverty programs that were exactly what government agencies had tried to avoid. For example, when Good Housekeeping sampled its 20,000 member "consumer panel" in 1967 on the question, "Should Birth Control Be Available to Unmarried Women?" editors discovered that the negative responses (signifi- cantly, a strong majority) were based on moral arguments, while the affirmative responses were "practical." An Arizona woman wrote: "It would eliminate many dollars in child-welfare payments." A more vehement response came from the Midwest: "I deeply resent having to deprive my family of privileges I cannot afford because I have to pay support for others not of my choosing." Good Housekeeping 164 (February 1967), 14. 15. Senate and House journals: Proceedings of the Legislature of the State of Kansas (Topeka, Kans.: Robert R. Sand- ers, State Printer, 1965), (Senate) 260, 277; (House) 404-05. For the directive: "Memo RE: Family Plan- ning," from Marvin E. Larson, state director of Social Welfare, June 29, 1965, HD Archives. 16. Corsa, "Public Health Programs," 3. 17. Two memos are especially relevant: "Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department," June 21, 1965; "Gen- eral Information on Health Department," April 1969, both in Health Department Archives. Both contain statements of philosophy. The 1969 statement is clearer, employing the contrast between regulation and service, but the earlier statement makes an explicit statement about the distinction between "individual medical care" and public health, and stresses the regulatory and legal role of the Department. 18. Dr. Hermes, telephone interview, Lawrence, Kansas, July 1992. 19. "Medical Estimates in City Conflict on Use of Enovid," Lawrence Daily journal-World U'W), August 8, 1962, Health Department Scrapbook, HD. By 1967, seven years after the pill was approved for use in the U. S., 5 million American women were "ori' the pill. There were approximately 39 million women "capable of motherhood" in 1967; of white women using any form of contraceptive, about 24 percent used the pill (the rate was slightly, but not significantly, lower among African Americans). Statistics from "Freedom from Fear," Time, April 7, 1967, 8. 20. U. S. Census, 1960, 18-164, Table 33; 18-222, Table 78. The median income for Lawrence's 501 "non- white" families was $3,832, contrasted with an overall family median income of $5,427. Racial categories do not provide a complete breakdown for income in the 1960 census, but the 1970 census records a total population of 45,698, of which 8.3 percent are "Negro and Other Races." That percentage includes 2,029 African Americans and 1,213 Native Americans (of which many were students at Haskell Indian Junior College and thus not counted as family units). U. S. Census, 1970, 18-55, Table 16. Racial data were never recorded in relation to health department services, so it is impossible to draw any conclusions about differ- ences in use among the different groups. 21. In 1961, there were 2,986 undergraduate women, of whom 10.2 percent were married. There were also 3,425 women in graduate programs, of whom 13.9 percent were married. The percentages of married stu- dents would decline through the decade, with enrollments rising rapidly. Statistics from letter from Director of Admissions to Director of Dormitories, April 3, 1962, University of Kansas, in papers of the Dean of Women (DOW), Records Group 5310 Box 1, folder 61/62, and "University of Kansas Housing Survey for Spring 1961," DOW 53/0/11, folder 1956-57-1970-71; more information contained in Admissions and Records Enrollment Statistics, 14/0/1. All are in the University of Kansas Archives (KUA). 22. "Birth Control Now Is Becoming a Fact of Life," jW, August 5, 1967. 23. The account that follows is based on interviews with Mary Lou Wright (Sherman), former president of Douglas County Planned Parenthood, telephone interview, December 7, 1992; Sandra Wolf, former social worker with Planned Parenthood, telephone interview, December 7, 1992; Richard Hermes, M.D., Lawrence physician, telephone interview, July 1992; Minutes of the Board of the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department, December 12, 1966; and articles from the Lawrence journal-World in the scrapbooks of the health department. Specific · quotations are credited in separate endnotes. The women discussed here com- monly signed public correspondence and documents as Mrs. [husband's given name] [surname]. I have pre- served that form in the initial introduction, as it gives a clearer sense of the historical milieu and the gendered nature of cultural authority. 24. "Planned Parent Group Will Ask for New Clinic," ]W, December 10, 1966, in Health Department Scrap- book, HD. 240 Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland 25. "Minutes," 12 December 1966, BOH, HD. The minutes of the meeting also record the board's hesitation about "sponsoring, endorsing, or in some manner subsidizing a private organization engaged in medical clinic activities which were not under the supervision of the Board's medical director." 26. Melanie Morgan, "Conflicts Cause Birth of Parenthood Clinic," Sunday Outlook, Lawrence Daily Journal- World, January 15, 1967, in Health Department Scrapbook. 27. A geographical note: for those still relying on stereotypes or distant memories of an endless cross-country drive, I should point out that eastern Kansas is not flat. A piece of KU humor, stretching back generations, is that one can tell a senior from a freshman by the size of her calf muscles. The "Hill" is also called Mount Oread. 28. The preceding account is from Will Hardesty, "Birth Control Practices Debated," UDK, November 4, 1966, 5. 29. Local SDS organizations worked only very loosely with the national organization; local initiative, not na- tional policy, structured SDS. The "Student Responsibility Movement" was a specific local initiative, but members of Lawrence's SDS did use (publish and distribute) articles obtained through the national office of SDS (located in Chicago). 30. Lee Ellis, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, November 8, 1966, 2. 31. J. Dennis. Nauman, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, November 14, 1966, 2. 32. James Prentice, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, November 10, 1966, 2; for Midwestern coed line, Robert Hugh Garner, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, November 14, 1966, 2; James Prentice, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, November 16, 1966, 2. 33. Only one writer, a graduate student from Lawrence, inverted the moral hierarchy, rejecting the "artificial hangups" of guilt and the dictates of a society outside the University (''All they want to do is go to war"). J. Gary Brown, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, November 14, 1966, 2. 34. Mr. and Mrs. James Cooley, Mr. and Mrs. Angus Wright, Richard Lobdell, and John Mason, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, November 10, 1966, 2. 35. "Should Birth Control Be Available to Unmarried Women?" Good Housekeeping (February 1967), 14. 36. Willard Dalrymple, M.D., "A Doctor Speaks of College Students and Sex," Journal of the American College Health Association (]ACHA} 15 (February 1967). This article originally appeared in University: A Princeton Quarterly, but without the section on contraceptives. See also "Sexual B\:!havior of College Girls," School and Society 93 (April 3, 1965): 208. 37. W. Roy Mason, Jr., M.D., "Problems of Married College Students: Health Education Implications," JACHA 14 (April 1966): 273-74. 38. Frances K. Harding, M.D., "The College Unmarried Population Explosion," Journal of School Health 35 (December 1965): 450-57. 39. "Associated Women Students Survey for 'Roles of Women' Committee," 1964, KUA; "Survey of Women's Morals Grew from Study at Michigan State," UDK, May 4, 1964; Lee Stone, "Senior, Freshman Women Vote Same on Sex," UDK, May 4, 1964. The survey garnered 1900 responses; those of the seniors and freshmen were tabulated and presented to an audience of approximately 200 women students and a panel of four university and community leaders. One of the panelists made the point (speaking about the "sex items") that many women may have responded as "she felt others should respond, not how she actually feels" (Stone, "Vote Same"). For the record, on the race item 64 percent of freshmen and 65 percent of seniors answered negatively; on short shorts, 11 percent of freshmen and 10 percent of seniors found it "right" or "accept- able"; disrespect was condemned (90 percent freshmen, 83 percent seniors), while anger was acceptable (86 percent freshmen, 87 percent seniors). Significantly higher percentages of students believed it was morally or ethically wrong to engage in "mixed swimming parties in the nude" than to use an exam "which has been illegally obtained." 40. Unsigned, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, 30 November 1967, 2; "'Free Love' Panelist Bargains on St. Paul," UDK, November 29, 1967; "Panel Will Discuss Free Love Tonight," UDK, November 28, 1967. The Cam- pus Crusade for Christ had been very active on the KU campus in the 1960s. Material from this group is in the Kansas Collection at the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas (KU); newspaper accounts include Dan Austin, "Humanists Discuss Basis for Sex Ethic," UDK, September 30, 1966, 1; Monte Mace, "In 'Crusade for Christ' Speech: Braun Lays Sex on Line," UDK, December 6, 1967, 1. 41. Unsigned, "Letter to the Editor," UDK, November 30, 1967, 2. 42. For discussion of the gulf between "public" and "private," see Beth Bailey, "Sexual Revolution(s)." 43. The series in the UDK begins on November 16, 1966; Dr. Clark is quoted in Barbara Phillips and Eric Morgenthaler, "Pills Hard to Get in Lawrence," UDK, November 17, 1966, 2. See also Judy Browder, "Women's Decade of History,'' in Women's Studies Archives, University of Kansas, for commentary. Oddly enough, in these Kansan articles there is no mention of either Dr. Clinton or of the family planning group. But when the Lawrence Daily Journal-World picked up the articles in the series, it ran a sidebar on Dr. Clinton. And the UDK, in May 1967, ran a feature article ori the Douglas County Family Planning clinic, now a branch of the national Planned Parenthood Federation. Mrs. Bell (the dean's wife) said that they saw very few students, and she believed it was because so many of those involved were university personnel and their wives. But the group kept no records, she said, and the unmarried KU coed is "just another woman to us." The woman who wrote the anonymous letter to the Kansan in 1967 noted that "Dr. Clinton in the free clinic downtown is exceptionally helpful and understanding." Even the Nebraska sophomore who strongly opposed premarital sex commented, in an aside, that Watkins hospital was not the only source for the pill. 44. Story included in Barbara Phillips and Eric Morgenthaler, "The Pill and How to Get It," UDK, November 18, 1966, 2. Beth Bailey 241 45. The University of Kansas Archives has collections of all these papers. On counterculture newspapers in general, see Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York: Pan- theon Books, 1985). One example of the availability of information about birth control is the entry in the Lawrence High School Freedspeak: "NEED BIRTH CONTROL PILLS?? See Dr. Clinton at Douglas County Health Clinic at 7th and New Hampshire," Issue 2, 5, KUA. 46. Dick Russell, ''A Visit to Kansas Hippieland," Midway (Topeka Capital-journal Sunday magazine), March 17, 1968, 3M-6M. For more, see Ohle et al., eds., Cows. 47. Ohle et al., in Cows, recreate the era in this excellent collection of oral histories with a foreword by William S. Burroughs. They portray the sense of "vague menace" that clung to much of Lawrence's hip community, quoting Wayne Propst: "The love-and-flowers angle of the Haight-Ashbury didn't ever happen here. Kansas hippies came from places like Hugoton, Bird City, Tonganoxie and Ulysses. Just two years before they'd been driving the square in those towns and fighting. They might have been the nastiest guy in Garden City or somewhere. They were not lightweights. Creeps, but not lightweights," but go on to say that " few were rugged or nasty" ("Preface," n.p.). One participant in the book talks about Lawrence's role as "the geo- graphical matrix" of the drug trade: "The city was on the Silk Route for drugs. Large amounts passed through from both coasts and came up from Mexico ... " (Preface, n.p.). The Kansas Hippies received (largely unwelcome) national attention as the subject of a Sixty Minutes show, "The Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers," in 1970. Police records show that the local department monitored "hippie" vehicles with out-of-state license plates (Lawrence Police Department Archives). 48. Statistics on birth control clinic are contained in the archives of the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department. 49. Toby Macintosh, "Low Cost Public Health Is Goal," JW, February 8, 1973. 50. "Contraception Clinic Is Not Planned at KU," UDK, September 17, 1970, 10. 51. "Over-Interest Closes County Clinic," UDK, February 3, 1970; "Birth Control Clinic Closes," UDK, 5 February 1970; Telephone interview with Wright (Sherman). 52. The IRC action was in conjunction with the Dean of Women's Office-sponsored Commission on the Status of Women at KU. Information in this section comes from February Sisters, "February Sisters Position State- ment on a Health Care Program for Women," Addendum 11, in Lorna Zimmer personal files, Lawrence, Kansas; "Women-February First Movement," in Women's Studies Archives (WS), University of Kansas; Judy Browder, "Women's Decade of History," 5, WS; "Campus Problems for Consideration," Council on Student Affairs, 67/12/AWS, KU Archives. 53. Emily Taylor, Interview, Lawrence, Kansas, June 1991; Julie Thatcher, "Dean Taylor Discusses Sex, the Pill and the New Morality," UDK, January 9, 1970, 19; "Birth Control" (Information chart) in DOW 531011, 1970, KU Archives. 54. Records in University of Kansas Archive~, 67/127/Zero Population Growth, and in the Spencer Library Kansas Collection, University of Kansas. ZPG was founded in the late 1960s. The Lawrence branch is a relatively early one; at the time of its founding, there were only 3000 ZPG members nationwide. The Lawrence group was quite active, and in contact with the national organization. Its coordinator was Profes- sor Kenneth Armitage, chair of the KU Biology Department. Dr. Clinton ran for the office of member-at- large in 1971. 55. Taylor served as dean of women at KU from 1956 through 1974. At KU she founded and moderated a radio program, "A Feminist Perspective," on the university-sited public radio station. "News from the Uni- versity of Kansas Division of Information," in "Taylor, Emily," KUA. For an earlier statement of her femi- nism, see Jan Goodison, "Women's Liberation Not a New Fight," UDK, October 27, 1970. 56. Sources include: On women's groups: Browder, "Women's Decade"; copies of Vortex and Lavender Luminary in KU Archives; interviews with Jon Moritz, Ken Irby, Mary Coral, and Jim Cooley; On affirmative action: "A History of the Seizure and Occupation of the East Asian Studies Building by the February Sisters, Or, What It Takes to Make Men Move," February 7, 1972, WS, KU. For the history of the women's movement in this era, see Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75 (Minneapolis: Univer- sity of Minnesota Press, 1989); Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979); and Chapter 10 of Ellen Herman's The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 57. The following account is compiled from the original documents issued by the February Sisters, collected in the files of the Women's Studies Department, of Lorna Zimmer, and "Student Activities-Women's Move- ment" files, series 71/18, KU archives; Margaret Greer, "The February Sisters History," five-page typescript in Women's Studies files; interviews with Mary Coral and Jim Cooley, Lawrence, December 1992; Tran- script from reunion of Lawrence Feminists, WS, KU; Personal notes from February Sisters twenty-year commemoration, KU, December 1992, and assorted newspaper accounts. 58. "February Sisters Position Statement on a Health Care Program for Women," in Zimmer files. Portions of the American College Health Association, "Position Statement on Population and Family Planning," 1970, appear as Addendum III. Another document, "Health Services for Women: What Should the University Provide?" by the Project on the Status and Education of Women of the Association of American Colleges, June 1972, in the file, "Health Services for Women," Dean of Women papers, 53/0, KU Archives, cites the Lawrence situation in several places. According to this report, in 1970, 53 percent of college health services did not offer GYN care; 72 percent did not prescribe contraceptives. · 59. "February Sisters Position Statement," 6-7. 242 Prescribing the Pill· Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland 60. The opposition to "morality lectures" is clearly stated in the position paper; the opposition to the population control argument is implicit there, but explicit in comments made to the Kansan on ZPG. Judy Henry, "Groups Urge Birth Control," UDK, April 4, 1972. Feminist opposition to ZPG is strongly stated in Birth Control Handbook: Medicine far the People (Montreal, Canada: Montreal Health Press, 1973), which was used by a Women's Self Help Clinic in Lawrence in 1973, and which is included in the materials Judy Browder donated to the Women's Studies Department Archives. 61. Browder, "Women's Decade." 62. David Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, 541; Jim Kendall, "Women Urged to Utilize Watkins," UDK, August 23, 1973. The Supreme Court case, Eisenstadt v. Baird, was heard in November 1971 but not decided until March of the following year. 63. In 1972, the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department recorded visits by 8,529 women seeking birth controL Of these, 2,100 were new patients, down only 300 from the previous year, before Watkins' policy changed. The health department clinic dispensed, free of charge, 35,874 months' worth of pills and pre- scribed an additional 2,056 months. Statistics are from HD Archives. 64. This account is compiled from the minutes of the meetings of the Board of the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department (HD Archives); articles in the UDK and JW; interviews with Petey Cerf, Dale Clinton, and Raymond Schwegler. Specific quotations are cited. 65. "Birth Control Funding Possible," JW, 27 September 1972. 66. "Minutes," 11 September 1972, BOH, HD (taken by Dr. Dale Clinton). 67. "State Drops Birth Control Funding Here," JW, September 22, 1972; "Birth Control Funding Possible," JW, 27 September 1972; on funding and donations, see Tim Pryor, "Health Agency Says Changes Due," ]W, January 10, 1973; Toby Macintosh, "Policy on Pills Is Controversial," JW, 9 February 1973. 68. This account is compiled from articles in the Journal-World and UDK; interviews with Mrs. Cerf (by tele- phone, June 1992), Dr. Clinton (Lawrence, Kansas, July 1992), and Dr. Schwegler (Lawrence, Kansas, June 1991); and minutes from the Health Department Board Meetings. 69. Mrs. Raymond Cerf, "Letter to the Editor," JW, September 25, 1972; UDK, 19 October 1972. 70. "Minutes," 30 October 1972, BOH, HD (these minutes were recorded by Clinton, as secretary). For ex- amples of popular articles questioning the safety of the pill, see "Perils of the Pill," Newsweek 71 (May 13, 1968): 66; Dr. Louis Lasagna, "If Not the Pill-What?" Vogue 154 (October 15, 1969): 102-103; "Birth Control: An Up-to-Date Summary of Contraceptive Methods," Good Housekeeping 164 (January 1967): 144- 45. Journalist Barbara Seaman's influential book, The Doctor's Case against the Pill, was published in 1969. Clinton, in a letter to the editor of the journal-World on January 16, 1970, says there is "not one scrap of hard evidence that the pills . . . have any discernible effect of cancer, blood clots, or any serious illness," concluding: "Perhaps we should take pregnancy off the market until all the known and presumed hazards have been more thoroughly investigated." 71. "Addendum to the Minutes of the Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health Committee for Meeting held 12 December 1972," with Health Department Board Minutes, December 12, 1972; HD; Toby Macintosh, "Health Services Debated," JW, 12 December 1972; Interview with Mrs. Cerf, 1992. The health department minutes stick closely to the comments by those on the board. The journal-World article goes for color: Mrs. Cerf called Dr. Clinton's policies "eccentric"; he replied: "If I'm eccentric then thank you." What neither source reports is what Petey Cerf recalls years later. She says she stood up in that meeting, shaking, and asked Clinton: ''Are you doing [illegal] abortions at the Health Clinic?" She says that he answered, simply, "No" (Cerf, Interview). A three-part story on the controversy appeared in the journal-World. Toby Macintosh, "Policy on Pills Is Controversial," JW, February 9, 1973. 72. "County Health Controversy," February 1973, Penn House document in Health Department Scrapbook. The statement concludes with a comment that points to the class element of the struggle. Cerf, in inter- view, cites the support of the League of Women Voters. The league maintained observers on the board of health, and in 1965 had devoted a year to a comprehensive study of the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department. Records are in the Kansas Collection, Spencer Research Library, KU. 73. Carolyn S. Black, "Letter to the Editor," JW, March 10, 1973. 74. "Dr. Clinton Qyitting," ]W, March 8, 1973. 75. Toby Macintosh, "Doctors at Health Meeting Offer Support for Clinton," JW, March 13, 1973; "Minutes," 12 March 1973, BOH, HD. 76. Account drawn from "Minutes," March 12, 1973, BOH, HD; Toby Macintosh, "Doctors at Health Meet- ing Offer Support for Clinton," ]W, March 13, 1973. 77. "Two Women Chosen for Positions with County Health Department," JW, May 22, 1973; Schwegler quote from "Health Department Sets New Hours for Clinics," JW, May 2, 1973. 78. Statistics from Health Department Archives. 79. "County Providing Free Pills," JW, June 14 [either 1969 or 1970-n.d. on clipping], HD Archives. Picking Hemp in Douglas County Louie Louis Lawrence, Kansas, 1968, was quite the scene. I know because I also lived in Columbia, Missouri, that year where the whole hippy thing would have fit into a VW van. A highlights film of University of Missouri radical political action in spring '68 would have been about a minute long. Our march against the war was woefully puny. We didn't even own a bullhorn. Taking part in that march wasn't really political, either, at least not for me. I didn't care if America was butting into a southeast Asia civil war where it didn't belong. (It was their war, the argument went, and we should stay out of it.) My only thought was a firm hippy conviction that if my ass was owned by some sergeant with a Sluggo haircut, I was toast. Our march was a protest against the annual ROTC review. The ROTC dudes did their thing on the grassy commons near Jessie Hall, the administration building. While they circled in one direction, five or six or eight or thirteen of us protesters-the number escapes me-circled in the opposite direction on the sidewalk that bordered the grass. Wheels within wheels, just like old Ezekiel's vision. He must have been a stoner, too. At the end of that summer I took the Greyhound bus to Lawrence. I didn't own a car and generally preferred to thumb, but I wanted to arrive in style. I came to town shorn, in mild-mannered-graduate-student drag. At that point, I didn't realize I was a hippy. Most people who were hippies flat denied it and even made fun of hippies. But it was just like in the movie Alien: Something new and foreign was brewing inside us and was about to blow clean out. As the Mothers of Invention said, Who would have thought you could freak out in Kansas? Lawrence was 'a friendly place for wayward freaks, ... like the Oregon trail for hippies, " one street person noted The block-long strip of Oread Boulevard between the Gaslight Tavern and the Rock Chalk Cafe attracted a motley crowd of students and hangers-on. 243 244 Picking Hemp in Douglas County That summer, sleepy old downtown Lawrence could hardly have been more different from life up on Mount Oread. A Tale of Two Cities thing. As far as hippy commerce dowtown, there was a head shop called Strawberry Fields. Sometime or other, a secondhand clothing store called Bokonon came in; another store, Primarily Leather, should have been called Primarily Hippies. Meanwhile, up on the hogback ridge where the university sat (it's no "mount," despite its name) was this BIG evolved scene. It was anchored by 3.2 beer bars, in between which sat an alternative bookstore, the Abington, chockablock with poetry mono- graphs published by houses small to unknown. There was an art-supply store, too, and some ratty student housing. The bars were crucial, though. I'm talking about the Rock Chalk Cafe, at the T intersection of Twelfth and Oread, and the Gaslight Tavern, close to Thirteenth and Oread. The sidewalk between the two was well-worn. The Gaslight, run by a couple of black guys-Harold, the older, and Reggie, the younger-was a mixed-race deal; the Rock Chalk, run by a straight-looking white man named Virgil, who eventually took to smoking hashish with his clientele, had a motley crew of customers: high I.Q. no-fit-ins, returning Vietnam-vets-turned-heads, motorcyclists, yee-haw-screaming-frisbee-fli pping-shirtless-Coors-drinking-hemp-picking longhairs who gen- erally landed more than one toke over the line. A big, strong, scary Dutch guy named Pim parked his butt outside the door of the cafe, growling like Cerberus at passing freaks: "Focking hippies." (Unlike the mythic dog, he didn't have three heads, but his managed to look three· times the normal size, especially when you were tripping.) As you entered, you were also likely to be hit up by a mournful- looking female panhandler with a freckled face the color of white roses: "Spare change?" I came here to Lawrence to be an academic. I was one of the timid, tight, high-1.Q. nerds at the Chalk. But, as I say, I'd caught the hippy virus. Before I'd even walked into my first bibliography class, I was already destined to drop out of graduate school. It took me a few months to sense the undertow of my life and where it was taking me. Reality has always had a hard time tracking me down, and vice-versa. You needed that if you were going to be a hippy. At that time, the Greyhound station was up at the north end of Massachusetts Street, where the Free State Brewing Company is today. There was no Brewery then, just a gap between buildings where buses pulled in to idle and generally smell nasty. I walked south on Massachusetts, a big blue duffel bag slung over my shoulder. The street was wider then. No sawtooth curbs or kitchenware shops or historic Lawrence crap. Back then, the town was just old, not precious. Lots of home-owned joints like Earl's, a pizza parlor, and Keim's, where I stopped for a greasy $2.45 chicken plate. And then farther down the street Duck's Seafood, where the seafood was not fresh daily, and then Woolworth's, which had one of those lunch counters it was famous for. Not far from the courthouse was an A & P grocery store that sold frozen seafood to Duck's. Lot of bad food in Lawrence back then. The restaurants couldn't sell liquor was the reason you'd hear; a town couldn't have fine dining till the restaurants could gouge people for hooch. One of the nice things about living in Lawrence in 1968 was that it was impos- sible to have any pretenses. In the absence of cheap house chardonnay, it's hard for pre- tenses to take root. Anyway, I walked along Massachusetts to Thirteenth Street and then turned right, up the hill. When I reached Thirteenth and Louisiana, I looked up toward a great big ram- shackle dump on the northwest corner. A friendly looking guy was hanging out on the porch, as if he were just waiting for me, waiting to be the first human being I'd make acquaintance with in Lawrence. I said, "Do you know any landlords?" He grinned. "Come on up." Even at that distance, I could see the dope in his eyes. Louie Louis 245 So we go inside his clapboard castle. Now before I tell you what happened next, let me just say this: Missouri was a slave state and Columbia was a southern town, but Kansas was a free state and Lawrence definitely had a Western feeling. Things were wide open, loose as a caboose. In that wide open spirit, Jim, I'll call him, who was· one of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers, led me to the back porch to show me these several huge garbage sacks full of bad marijuana he'd harvested: aka K(ansas)-pot and ditchweed and headacheweed, though I didn't know any of those names at the time and wouldn't for a while. K-pot, which grew wild, was harvested in haste at night from the fringes of perfectly respectable fields of perfectly respectable farmers. The loosely confederated bad-weed-harvest- ing industry in town and the surrounding countryside, known as the Kaw Valley Hemp Pick- ers, was featured in a segment of CBS TV's 60 Minutes show. We all got to tune in the night it ran and watch a few of the hemp pickers harvesting low-grade pot in the dark and know who they were when the squares in town presumably didn't. I remember an interview with one particular picker who wore a cowboy hat and kept his head lowered the entire time as he fiddled with his gun. The Western thing again-or perhaps I should say mock Western. This guy was no cowpoke. He was far too intellectual. He was just playing to media notions about Kansas, that's all. All over town, hippy chests swelled with pride. Now if you were a hippy here, you smoked that bad weed at some time or other. You just pinched off the buds and dried 'em and smoked 'em and you'd get ever-so-slightly, what ... dizzy? ... for three minutes, maybe, and then a headache'd hit you. It was slightly better than oregano, not as good as nutmeg. You usually made the mistake of smoking it only once. Or, if you got burned on a dope deal where you mistakenly bought K-pot, you might obstinately smoke a few joints. Hey, I think I feel something. How about you? Mostly, thank heavens, this weed was shipped to the coast, where it was used to step on high-quality weed. That was the Kaw Valley's contribution to the counterculture. As I say, it was hard to have pretenses. So Jim tore off a dried bud and stuck it into a little hash pipe and it turned out better than most hemp. Right according to script, I felt sleepy and dizzy. I asked to lie down, and Jim said OK. I napped for maybe ten minutes in this dark room in a house made claustro- phobic by the baking heat of Kansas August. And when I woke up, or whatever you want to call my resurrection from this daze I'd fallen into, I asked my question again, "Who do I call if I want to rent a house?" "Ling," he says. "Ling?" I say. "Dan Ling," he says. "He's a professor and he owns a lot of places." Ling owned so many places that, like the woman who lived in the shoe, he didn't know what to do. He let so many rooms and · apartments, and he . kept such poor track of his ten- ants, that, it was known, · any hippy could get a Ling place, pay him a month's rent, stay free for a few more, then split without ever getting caught. And people did that. To be a bonafide hippy, you had to do some ripping off. It might be ripping off Ling or shoplifting at the ill- guarded KU bookstore or boosting plywood from the lumberyard. It might be selling someone K-pot in a room lit with a red bulb and the Butterfield Blues "East-West" album jacked up to 8 in order to jive the person into the idea that he or she might be getting high. So I got a Ling place at 1228 Ohio, but of course in my own mind I wasn't a hippy and I proved it to myself by paying the rent. I repeat: Nobody I knew wanted to be called "hippy." Lucky for us, there were people around who were typecast hippies, like the men and women who actually changed their names, people who decided to call themselves St. Louis or Panta Ray or BooRock. Because you didn't change your name, or wear bells, or drop 20 hits of acid all at once, you figured you were safe. The label couldn't stick to you. · At 1228, I lived above Pat and Lynn. Lynn wore thigh-high leather boots. I watched in amazement one night at the Chalk as she began a hair-pulling fight with another woman. She was a pretty good egg, though, most of the time. Had a couple of kids. An artist. Abstract expressionism. Huge canvases. 246 Picking Hemp in Douglas County Pat, a Vietnam vet, liked to drop acid. Lots and lots of it, and then tell you how many hits, and look at you, his pupils as big as light bulbs, and it was scary. Sometimes, lying in my bed trying to sleep, I'd hear a whip cracking downstairs, screams and threats. I guess they were into bondage and discipline. They took turns. After the kids were asleep, I guess. The morning I knew I'd better move was the one that I woke to the sounds of "This Is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius," from the soundtrack to Hair. Pat was playing it over and over, occasionally scratching the record as he dragged the phonograph arm back to the start of the song. His eyes were all glittery with LSD when he responded to my knock. He had a bottle of champagne and wanted to pour me a glass. He and Lynn had gotten married down at the courthouse. Did I want to drop? Lynn's preadolescent son was taking his first acid trip that morning, Pat said. Would I join them? "Have to study," I said. Years later, Pat would sometimes call me after midnight from the wing of an unnamed loony bin. "You know," he'd say, "you're one of the perfect masters of the age." "How do you know that, Pat?" "Because I am too." When he'd try to tell me how far-out the street lights below his window looked, I didn't ask for details. After three or four calls, I got an unlisted number. I fell in with dope-smoking graduate students that semester, several brilliant fellows who took teaching jobs in Missouri to escape the draft, or else ran away to Canada. I did well in school, even as the ligaments that had bound me to school all my life were starting to tear. I liked to go up to the Chalk about 10, after I'd studied. There, I could hear Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" or "Magic Carpet Ride" playing at any time, day or night; at the Gaslight (where I wound up tending bar and skimming the till for quarters a couple of years later) "I Heard It through the Grapevine" was on tap. If you waited at the Chalk long enough, it'd all come around to you. One time, Evange- lists in a UPS-style van hung out for a couple of days, drinking cokes, trying to talk people into going into the van with 'em to be prayed over. They weren't faring well, and I felt a little sorry for them, so I finally consented. I hoped to feel something as they vocalized loud pleadings for my conversion and salva- tion. All I managed to feel was anxious-about feeling nothing at all. More than likely, those guys were all shooting heroin in six months-or had been shooting it six months before I met them. In those days, people just drifted from one consciousness-altering experience to the next. Every night after the Chalk closed there were parties. One in north Lawrence went on for years. Head of household: a man who drove in professional car races. The Lawrence ·hipster scene had a roughneck edge. Sure, you could go hang out in the Prairie Room of the KU Student Union and eventually meet Jane, who laid Tarot cards and drew astrological charts, or Jamie, who'd show you how to cast the I Ching or how to play what he called leaky faucet music on the banjo. Jane and Jamie were tender, sweet, dewy. But the roughneck element colored the scene's most public face. Its perfect emblem was the wild motorcyclist who would come screaming up Twelfth Street from the east side of the hill, using its incline and his speed to catapult him into long rainbow arcs in front of the Chalk. A charismatic guy named Robbie and his gang incarnated the spirit: They'd buy a keg after the Chalk closed, drag it up to a parking lot on the west side of Oread between the Chalk and Gaslight, pile up a few railroad ties, douse 'em with gasoline, light 'em and drink. They'd leap through the flames till the firetrucks came. Louie Louis 247 The same spirit was present at the Big Eat, the annual hippy picnic. Three days of drunk- enness and acid dropping and hash smoking (the black hash was always better than the blond) and opium using and psilocybin mushroom eating and, of course, pot smoking-and music. Chicken roasted on bedsprings and served medium rare, bad beans warmed, tepidly, in a bath- tub: that kind of affair. Hippy chicks in Indian print dresses, dudes stripped to the waist wearing blue jeans, hip huggers, shoeless. One year a woman said to have escaped from a nut hatch in Topeka got up on stage with the musicians. She took off her dress and did an exotic dance entirely nude. Must be acid, people whispered as they watched. Then she actually dumbfounded Wayne, the most famous talker and taleteller in the his- tory of Larry (as the town was affectionately known) by crouching and peeing on the stage as she smiled at the crowd. I know this because I was standing beside Wayne, and it was one of his rare moments of silence. When the inevitable hippy dog wandered up to her, she encour- aged its nose in the direction of her crotch. Continued to smile chis huge druggy smile. Personifying the freakerie was George, the gun-toting hippy who ran for sheriff in one of the all-time mean campaigns. He ran against a longtime incumbent, Sheriff Rex, who'd treated the hippies decently. Rex had but one good arm, so George's slogan was "Douglas County needs a two-fisted sheriff." Peace and love weren't George's style. He lost in a landslide. George bummed a lot of money off a lot of people and wrote a porno book for bucks (feminism and Gloria Steinem hadn't arrived, and hippies were often sexist). He wrote for . Vortex, an underground newspaper that had replaced an earlier one called Reconstruction. He was into cop baiting, and it was always fascist pigs this and fascist pigs that. On that Vortex side were some very politically committed people, like Wayne (not the storyteller), who still works in Lawrence on social · issues-right now on reducing delinquency in schools-and Lance, who went south to ·cake on racism. But there was plenty of playful puckishness in the pols, here, too: One day a guy named Bill handed me a "Free Charles Manson" button and asked for a donation. There's no doubt that compared with Columb.ia, Missouri, Lawrence was a true counterculcural scene, a wheatbelt Berkeley. People split for the coasts, of course; pilgrimages east and west were strongly encouraged. But among hippies, an often-enunciated myth about Lawrence was that though you might leave, you were destined to return. The place had a magic. And so people did come back. After one semester in graduate school and of mau-mauing English professors about the irrelevance to my life of Piers Plowman, I dropped out. I got my draft notice just before school ended that semester. To prepare, I took speed and stayed awake three days to jack up my blood pressure. That took less guts than the guy I knew who dropped acid before the physical. When they handed him the pee cup to secure a sample, he showered the wall instead, howling gales of laughter. They took him directly to the shrink. Once out of school, I quickly split from Lawrence. Went to Los Angeles, Berkeley. Spent 1969 thumbing back and forth from Lawrence to the coast, working on my hippy vitae. I washed dishes at Thee Experience, a rock 'n' roll nightclub in L.A.; sold the Barb and the Tribe, underground newspapers in Berkeley; sold draws at the Gaslight; did construction work out at Kansas Power and Light, listening to an old guy talk about how they oughta shoot those radicals and string 'em along Oread Boulevard, like you'd hang out dead coyotes on a fence if you wanted other coyotes to stay away; worked as a social welfare caseworker in St. Louis, as an addiction counselor, when, in fact, I was grooming addictions of my own. In good countercultural style, I was having a careen, not a career. Enough already. Eventually, I straightened out, sort of. Lawrence in 1968 thrilled me-but cowed me, too. I felt intimidated by the town's lead- ing hippies, our local equivalents to Ken Kesey and Wavy Gravy and Stewart Brand. Around them, I often felt well short of hip. Ours was a subtly competitive culture-or perhaps that's a strand I recognized in it because I arrived here with a not-so-subtly competitive edge to me- 248 Picking Hemp in Douglas County and I found out that I could not or would not outdrink, outsmoke, outdrop, outrave or outdiss the heavyweights around here. One of my most painful memories of those days is the bad sex: anonymous, mechanical sex with women I barely knew; numb sex with women when both of us were deep in our cups; guilty sex with married women whose husbands were sleeping with other men's wives, in an endless daisy chain of concupiscence and rippling anxiety. Those were the days when you might stumble at 3 a.m. into someone who was crashing at the commune for the night, someone who, like you, was innocently headed for the bathroom, and wind up making love to her on the cold linoleum. What went down was often, for me, a sorry shadow of what sex can actually be. The near-mandatory quality of hippy sex, coupled with a denial that it meant much of anything, was exciting, befuddling, and disconcerting. Truth to tell, I was both a lousy lay and too immature to speak candidly with my lovers about the anxiety that made this so. As for drugs, I took the standards: LSD, mescaline (which often was acid in mescaline drag, I fear), magic mushrooms, marijuana, hashish, opium, megadoses of niacin (for the heat rush). I dropped a little speed, but was scared of how good I felt behind it. I eschewed co- caine, heroin, needles. A Lawrence legislator, Mike Glover, won a local fame during the '70s when he admitted that "marijuana is my cocktail" to a Kansas City Star reporter. It was mine, too. In retrospect, I see I was using pot to medicate my anxiety and depression. Today, my cocktail is a brew of Zoloft and ritalin. I buy them at the drugstore. As to jobs, I can say only that there were too many to count and that for a couple of years, I simply did not know what to do with myself. You can take the boy out of graduate school, but you can't take the competitiveness, the need for achievement, out of the boy. This fact guaranteed my return to school, where I would dribble away the 1970s in a cloud of unknowing about what my work should be. I speak about being a hippy in Lawrence with doubt that the prepositional phrase "in Lawrence" means much. Being a hippy had less to do with Lawrence than with connecting to my own kind wherever they were. You were no longer a Kansan or a Missourian; you were a freak, and another member of your freak community was just as likely to be found in a car passing you as you thumbed rides across Utah as to be living next door. (Sadly, a time came when you really couldn't trust your fellow freaks-after Charles Manson, after the rock 'n' roll disaster at Altamont.) The transcultural meaning of freakdown was the shattering of America's meat-and-pota- toes lifestyle. Under the freak flag, we rejected patriotism, religion, materialism, need for secu- rity in career and relationship, fears of drugs. We hanged them all, watching as they twisted, slowly, slowly in the wind. We dissed our families. I taunted my father with an ever-burgeon- ing beard. The same week in 1983 that he died, I shaved, and I've never since had a beard. It wasn't all negative, though. For me, being a hippy meant taking time out from a life that had been far too earnestly lived and much too busy. It meant living more in my body, my senses, the moment. It meant embracing the Dionysian, rejecting the Apollonian, reverencing tricksters. In theory, at least, it meant giving up self for the collective. All this was a well-intentioned correction to business as usual in these United States. But there was the problem of baggage, of all us old dogs dragging along our duffel bags of old tricks. Every one of the three communes I lived in suffered from the problem of dirty dishes, evidence that people had trouble giving up much self when it came to the commonplace responsibilities of life. The hippy dream of unconditional love was fantasyland; adult love is always conditional. And somebody's got to wash the damn dishes. Some of those who chose the hippy road have been forced to consider, with the passing years, which elements of a conventional life, and which of hip life, might be worth preserving. We continue to work out our accommodation with this oddball nation we live in. I have some regrets-most of all about the years I wasted smoking reefer and about the feckless sex. But on balance I'm glad I was a hippy. It has meant, in my maturity, imagining more options. Jt's also meant being a lifelong doubter of mainstream values. Besides1 the acid was dynamite. Lawrence in the 1970s: Recollections of a Mayor Barkley Clark The 1970s was an exciting decade for Lawrence, and I am glad I was able to play a part in it. I came to KU just before the beginning of the decade, in the summer of 1969. My mentor in city government, Buford Watson, arrived to take over the city manager job at the beginning of 1970. It was a time of high tension, with the student union going up in flames in April 1970. I remember standing next to Danforth Chapel chat night, watching the flames leap 150 feet into the air. The next night, I and other law school faculty and students slept in sleeping bags on the floor of old Green Hall, on the theory that our presence would somehow deter a Molotov Cocktail from being thrown through the window. At about the same time, two people-a black teenager and a white ROTC supporter-were killed by gunfire. It was the height of town-gown tension, with radical students taking pot shots at city fire and police vehicles. I thought it ironic that I had gone to KU to enjoy the "ivory tower" atmosphere of an idyllic university town but instead had arrived in Hell. That's the violent way the 1970s started in Lawrence. The last outburst occurred in the fall of 1971, when a bomb went off in Summerfield Hall. Then the draft was ended and the air went out of that balloon [Vietnam] immediately. For the rest of the decade, violence was transformed into attacks by "The Society of Pieface Assassins" and "streaking" at football games. I was elected to the city commission in the spring of 1973, and my tenure fortunately coincided with a period of peace and prosperity in our town. Massachusetts Street before and after downtown improvements. In 1971 Mayor Nancy Hambleton and City Commissioner jack Rose traveled to Washington to obtain a $300, 000 urban renewal grant to revitalize the downtown. Parallel parking was replaced with saw-tooth curb cuts allowing diagonal parking. This arrangement reduced the right-of way width and enabled the planting of trees, shrubs, and ground cover. New street lighting was also installed. 249 250 Lawrence in the 1970s 1971 was the year that the prior city commission took Lawrence's first trip to get federal grant funds for downtown. The decision was made then that we had to improve the infra- structure along Massachusetts Street to keep the economic core strong. So Nancy Hambleton and Jack Rose went to Washington and obtained funds for the "sawtooth curbs," plantings, and special lighting along Massachusetts. Combined with the new off-street parking system, these amenities emphasized the city's investment in downtown, a theme that was to last the entire decade. In fact, I have always thought that the battle against the dreaded "cornfield mall" was the single most important public policy decision made by the Lawrence City Com- mission during the decade. We didn't want to have "main street" sucked dry by a big enclosed mall on the outskirts of town, as happened to Champaign, Illinois, and a number of other comparable college communities. We spent years negotiating with developers to place a modi- fied enclosed mall downtown, but nobody could ever come up with a configuration that worked. We engaged in "exclusionary zoning" to keep a mall out of the "cornfield," even though we were on shaky legal ground. But it was a noble battle, fought with one consistent voice through- out the decade. Lawrence still has no "cornfield mall," though it has plenty of huge free- standing stores on the outskirts of town. Although the riverfront mall has had economic prob- lems, it should endure after some reshaping. Another big issue during the 1970s was how to spend other federal grant-in-aid money. Federal "revenue sharing" was enacted by Congress in 1972, and both Lawrence and Douglas County got big checks each year to spend with no strings attached. How to spend the money? The city commission decided to allocate about two-thirds for capital projects and one-third for "people programs." For the first time in history, the city government sat as a "United Way Board," determining which social programs deserved to be funded. We gave money to the Lawrence Arts Center, Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, the battered women's organization, and many other worthy causes. We sat with the county commission in making these decisions, so that the funds could be targeted in the most coordinated way. Because of general revenue sharing, and "block grants" like Community Development, it was the heyday of public projects going beyond traditional fire stations, schools, parks, streets, and sewers. We had funds to do the Riverfront Park, the renovation of the old police station into the senior center, various neighborhood community centers, modification of the old Carnegie Library into an arts center, and many other projects. The grandaddy of them all was the Clinton Parkway/Clinton Lake project, which led us on many "porkbarrel" trips to the shores of the Potomac. On those trips, I had the pleasure of getting to know great people from the county commission such as Art Heck and Walt Cragan. It was a time of great cooperation between city and county government. All of this cooperation occurred against a background of federal grants-in-aid, an ever-growing property tax base that led to higher taxes without raising mill levies, and some selected sales tax levies. We were lucky. Another theme of the 1970s was the growth of neighborhood associations. Prior to that decade, only Old West Lawrence got together formally as a neighborhood association. But then came the Pinckney Neighborhood Association, East Lawrence, North Lawrence, Oread, and others. These associations tended to form in the older parts of the city. They saw them- selves as a counterbalance to the vigorous growth of the city to the west, particularly Alvamar. They constantly lobbied for grants and political support in rehabilitating old houses and mak- ing other important neighborhood improvements. By the end of the decade they asserted great political power, and city commission candidates had to be responsive. The issue that I spent most time on was the building of a new city hall on the north end of downtown. It seemed to me that we had a great "anchor" on the south end of downtown, in the form of South Park, the county government complex, and the museum. What we needed was an anchor on the north end, tying into the river. So when it became apparent that we needed a new city hall (we had been leasing space at the First National Bank building), we worked out a deal to clear many of the silos and other structures next to the river, and to link the new city hall with the new Riverfront Park. To finance this effort, we borrowed against expected revenue-sharing money, with the full faith and credit of the city backing the bonds. Barkley Clark 251 This was a unique form of financing, and it worked. The north end of downtown is now strong, and even North Second Street is finally getting spruced up as one of the major en- trances to the city. All during my tenure in city government in the 1970s, the philosophical issue that was upmost in my mind was how to balance the two competing theories of representative govern- ment. Under the Jeffersonian view, elected officials should vote as a reflection of their con- stituents. Under the Burkeian view, elected officials are put there by the voters to exercise their independent judgment. Since I tended toward pragmatic compromise on many governmental decisions, I also felt that I should strive for some middle ground between the two poles of Jefferson and Burke, with a little favoritism toward Burke. When you're in city government, you wrestle with this dilemma all the time. My final recollection is of the man who served as city manager throughout my ten-year tenure on the city commission. Buford Watson was a wonderful city manager. He developed a good staff and was always loyal to them. In a gentle way, he sought to keep the city commis- sioners on the . track of establishing policy guidelines, not micromanaging. He tried hard to keep the city commission well informed on issues that were to be discussed at various meet- ings; his staff prepared extensive reports that were (almost) always helpful. He and his family were great KU supporters. He believed fervently in the· city manager form of government, and he rose to become the president of the International City Managers Association. He got us involved in the Big Eight league of cities. He was always accessible. In my mind, he was the ideal city manager. Being a part of Lawrence city government during the 1970s was one of the highlights of my life. It was a great time. William S. Burroughs: Did Lawrence Matter? Jaines Grauerholz "\V!illiam Burroughs lived in Lawrence, Kansas, from late 1981 until his death in August 1997-nearly sixte n W years. Lawrence was his longest continuous place of residence as an adult. He turned sixty-eight soon after he arrived here, and he was eighty-three when he moved on from here to another world. He wrote two major novels while living in Lawrence-The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands-as well as shorter books, such as My Education: A Book of Dreams and Ghost of Chance. In the 1980s he continued traveling in the United tates and Europe for reading performances, although by 1990 he had tired of the rigors of travel, and for the most part he stayed home thereafter. William's presence in Lawrence was a magnet that drew hundreds of visitors over the years, from the great and famous, to the young and unknown. Often, artists or writers or musicians brought here by the University of Kansas, or by local promoters, would seek him out for a personal audience. By the end of his life-despite some half-hearted attempts by his close associates to cut down on the pilgrim traffic, and the honorable silence and indirection usually given by his friends to strangers, for his protection-this trickle of visitors had become a steady, rushing stream. William was unfailingly kind, polite, and receptive to these visitors, even when, as occasionally happened, they were nut cases. One fan came by bus one night and camped in his backyard, explaining to William the next day that his "father, James Joyce," had commanded him to seek Burroughs out and reveal to him that Joyce was still living, and wanted to meet him. The young man had a crumpled sheaf of photocopies from Ulysses that "illustrated" these theories. Somehow William convinced him that what he ought to do was get back on the bus and return to the place from whence he came-and give his best regards to Joyce. Again and again, William was asked: "Why Lawrence?" Often the ques- tion was posed in a faintly incredulous tone, as if to say, "Why would you live in such a middle-of-nowhere little town, when you could reside in one of the capitals of the world?" William sometimes had difficulty controlling his irrita- tion at these attitudes, which were more narrow-minded and "provincial" than what you might find in Lawrence, after all. But the question is nevertheless a reasonable one, and the answer is that he liked Lawrence. He liked the climate and the architecture, which reminded him of his hometown, St. Louis; he liked William S. Burroughs holding a Smith & Wesson . 44 Special on the banks of the Wakarusa River, March 1994. © Jon Blumb, 1994. 253 254 Williams S. Burroughs: Did Lawrence Matter? the circle of friends he had here, men and women of all ages; and he liked being able to have a big yard for his beloved cats to roam in. Here he could gee out of town in just a few minutes to a place where he could indulge his lifelong pastime of target shooting. There is another reason, however, and to explain it requires that I introduce myself. I was born in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1952, and I remember visiting Lawrence with my father in the mid- l 960s. le was here, at the Abingdon Bookshop on Oread Avenue, chat I first encountered the work of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others. I was interested in poetry, and I was drawn to the stark cover designs of the City Lights "Pocket Poets" series of books, including Howl, which I bought at the Abingdon. At about that same time, a perceptive lesbian English teacher at my high school gave me a copy of Francis Parkinson's Casebook on the Beat, and a fellow student gave me his older brother's copy of Naked Lunch, which-in 1966-had only recently been cleared of obscenity charges and be- come available from Grove Press, in the "Black Cat" edition. In retrospect, my exposure to these works seems fateful; at the time, though, I was simply exhilarated to make contact with these poets and writers through their books. They provided me a vision of "a life in the world" that seemed much more interesting and "real" than my own life as a high school student in Coffeyville. And this vision was tied to my impressions of the bohe- mian scene around the University in those years. So I was only too happy to move to Lawrence at age sixteen, to attend the University of Kansas, where I was enrolled from 1969 to 1973. Those were eventful years, in Lawrence and elsewhere in the United States and the world; the Vietnam War was at its height, and likewise the anti-war protest movement, rooted in the "hippy" culture that, in turn, grew out of the intellectual and social effects of the "Beat" writers and their followers. Lawrence was an oasis of hipness in an otherwise dull Midwestern state. The Rock Chalk Bar at the north end of Oread Avenue, a block from campus, was the watering hole for a motley assortment of characters: poets, bikers, hemp pickers, acid dealers, drunks, and wild men and women, generally. Although I wasn't. eighteen and of legal age to drink Kansas' quaint "3.2 beer" until the winter of 1970, I began to frequent the Rock Chalk and immerse myself in the subculture of what was known as "River City." At the University I studied Eastern philosophy, and I rook a creative-writing course with Professor Ed Wolfe, where I met Wayne Propst. Actually I met Wayne, and David Ohle, at a "Free University'' class session held in the downtown apartment of Bill Knief, a poet and former editor of the Cottonwood Review, the University's student-run literary magazine. Knief had interviewed Allen Ginsberg when Allen visited Lawrence in 1966, an event that galvanized the local hipsters. The editor of Cottonwood was Jim Schmidt, and under his guidance Cotton- wood published a number of "chapbooks" by local writers such as Propst and the poet Jim McCrary. A former Cottonwood editor was Ken Irving, who-with his wife, Lee Chapman- later took over the editing of American Astrology magazine. When George Kimball-now an eminent Boston spores writer, but at that time a certifi- able one-eyed wild-man-launched his Yippie-style campaign for sheriff of Douglas County, Jim McCrary was his "campaign manager." There is a good vignette of their partnership in Some Business Recently Transacted in the White World, a book of Edward Dom's short pieces. Kimball was running against a popular, one-armed, long-term sheriff (who, incidentally, took an enlightened laissez-faire approach to the enforcement of laws against marijuana growing, etc., and was therefore respected, even by the criminals). Kimball's run for the sheriff's office failed, as expected. When the smoke cleared, it turned out that a hippy named Phil Hill had accidentally been elected justice of the peace. The new J.P. favored long, granny-style dresses; immediately after taking office, he began performing gay marriages-until some straight offi- cials found a way to retroactively eliminate his position. The "Kaw Valley Hemp-pickers' Association" was a. half-serious amalgamation of pot deal- ers and their friends. In those days, marijuana was not so much cultivated as harvested, and it grew in wild profusion on the creek banks and roadsides of northeast Kansas. This low-strength weed was exported to other cities by the bushel. LSD and other psychedelics were readily available, and regional "underground newspapers," such as VtJrtex and the Oread Daily (Lawrence) James Grauerholz 255 and Screw (Kansas City), carried sidebars rating the quality and prices of the current drug market, as well as revolutionary articles and bulletins from Liberation News Service edited in New York by Tom Forcade, the founder of High Times magazine. Highly publicized "raids" were carried out by the politically ambitious attorney general, Vern Miller, but these sweeps netted only a few bewildered students and hippies. In the wake of the "Stonewall riots" in New York in 1969, gay liberation began to be taken seriously, and in Lawrence there were many gay pioneers. I still remember my first exposure to what was then called "gender-fuck," or the deliberate confusion of sexual stereo- types: in the Kansas Union one day, I saw a man with a beard wearing a floral-print party dress. I was stunned, and impressed by his courage. A gay students' organization was formed- the Gay Activists' Alliance-and obtained certification as a tuition-funded student group, thanks to certain enlightened members of the student government. When the University sought to overturn this certification, the G.A.A. brought suit and was successfully defended by the late, great William Kunstler. Although I did not really "come out" at that time, these goings-on made a lasting impression on me. There were frequent marches and "demos" on campus in those days; in the spring of 1970, after Nixon mined the Haiphong Harbor and four students were shot down at a rally in Kent, Ohio, the Student Mobilization group shut down the university and took over the ad- ministration building for a short time. Classes were suspended, and a university-wide convoca- tion was held in the football stadium. There was action in the streets, and random violence: bombs went off at the computer center and the R.0.T.C. building, the Kansas Union was torched by an arsonist, and that summer, a young Kansas City man was fatally shot during "riots" on Oread Avenue and died inside the Gaslight Tavern-another watering hole slightly more disreputable than the Rock Chalk. The "Black Student Union" was active at the univer- sity, and at Lawrence High School, a young black man was shot down in an alley by the authorities. Although Lawrence was long way from San Francisco and New York, these mani- festations linked us to the political unrest of the . times. After launching a failed coup against the faculty-oversight structure of the Cottonwood Review, I tried to start my own poetry mag. In 1972, David Ohle, Roger Martin, and I initi- ated The City Moon, an occasional tabloid filled with "processed news," that is, weird stories, cut-up and falsified, with "doctored" graphics. The Moon appeared for several years. By then, I was playing guitar in the Almighty Buck Band, a forgettable group chat toured a bit in the region, and I often attended shows at the Red Dog Inn (today's Liberty Hall), where the "horn-band" sound was born, with such groups as the Red Dogs, the Blue Things, the Fabu- lous Flippers, and many others. I wrote two fan letters, to Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, and miraculously, I received answers from each of them. Burroughs told me he was not interested in my notion of writing his biography, but I was welcome to visit him-if I could make it to London. Ginsberg likewise invited me to come see him, in New York, and gave me his phone number. In spring 1973 I made a road trip to New York with two friends, Ron Pollett and John Myers, and I met Allen for the first time, at his apartment on the Lower East Side. After my return, I had a little legal problem with a kilo of hashish that mysteriously arrived at my Lawrence address, mailed from Paris. The story of "The Great Hash Toss" is told in the oral history of the "River City" years: Cows Are Freaky When They Look at You, edited by David Ohle, Susan Brosseau, and Roger Martin. In 1974, aged twenty-one, I went to New York again, this time to live there; Allen had made me welcome, and Andreas Brown, of the Gotham Book Mart, had offered me a job. William Burroughs had come from London to New York for a one-semester teaching resi- dency at CCNY, set up by Allen. When I contacted Allen on my arrival, he gave me William's number at the loft he was subletting on lower Broadway, and that is how I met William Burroughs. Within a short time I became William's roommate and personal secretary. For five years we were based in New York (and Boulder, Colorado) and made frequent tours around the country for William's new career as a performer, reading from his works. 256 Williams S. Burroughs: Did Lawrence Matter? I have talked at this length about myself, and about Lawrence, because the friendships I formed during my college years turned out to have a decisive impact on my later life, and consequently on Burroughs' life. He first visited Lawrence in 1976, invited by the English Department for a four-day residency. He stayed in the downtown apartment of my architect friend, the late John Lee, and was the guest of honor at a wild party thrown by Professor Paul Stephen Lim, featuring a naked boy on the hors d' oeuvres table, and a knockout punch that Paul dubbed "the Fallen Angel." William met my friends here, and he liked them. On another reading trip, to Austin, Texas, William met David Ohle, who was teaching writing at the University of Texas at that time. In 1979 I pulled up stakes in New York and moved back to Lawrence, bringing with me William's and my "archives" and establishing a bank account here, to carry on the manage- ment of his business as "William Burroughs Communications." William was living in New York, in "The Bunker," his legendary windowless concrete loft in the ·middle of an old YMCA building on the Bowery. I often traveled back to New York, and together we continued to hit the road for reading tours. In 1980, I brought William and Allen to Lawrence for a reading at the Opera House-as Liberty Hall was called in those years. In 1981, William's son, Bill Jr., died after a long illness, at about the time that William's major novel, Cities of the Red Night, was published. After an intensive "Red Night tour," William spent the month of June in a sublet apartment across the · street from the old Rock Chalk (by then known as The Crossing). Back in those days, sum- mertime in Lawrence was still noticeably different from the school year: the. exodus of the students left the town quiet and idyllic. William spent time with me and my friend Bill Rich, among others, and he clearly enjoyed the life that he found here. At the end of 1981, William decided to give up The Bunker and move to Lawrence, and I set him up in a rented stone house south of town. There he could shoot his guns daily and work on his next novel, The Place of Dead Roads (published in 1984). At the Stone House his deep connection with cats was born, as they came to his door every day for food. He lived in the Stone House until the fall of 1982, when he bought the little house on Learnard Avenue where he lived the rest of his days. In the 1980s, William was often seen around town. He bought himself a little car and renewed his driver's license; fortunately, he did not do much driving. He was a regular visitor at gun stores and book shops and often went out to dinner at friends' houses and sometimes Lawrence restaurants. Allen Ginsberg visited him several times; in the summer of 1987, they took part in the annual hippy gathering known as the "Lobster Feed," successor to the "Big Eat," a tradition begun in the late 1960s. Allen suggested that I might line up a teaching residency for him. As I pursued this with Professor George Wedge of the KU English Department, the project grew and became the "River City Reunion." My partners in this venture were Professor Wedge and Bill Rich, and we invited a long list of poets and writers, painters and musicians, to come to Lawrence for a five-day blowout in early September 1987. The event energized what remained of the old hipster crowd, bringing many of them "home" from other places for this reunion, and it inspired a generation of undergraduates at KU, who were involved in a parallel reading series at the time. The Lawrence City Commission awarded commemorative plaques to the organiz- ers of the reunion in appreciation of our work. Later that year, the third book in William's "Red Night trilogy," The Wt-stern Lands, was published. Written entirely in Kansas, and drawing on his everyday life here, this novel hinted at a retreat from writing, to the painting activity that he had begun at the Stone House. A group of his artworks were exhibited in New York that winter, marking the debut of his painting career, which he kept up for three or four years, often traveling to exhibitions in cities in North America and Europe. Robert Wilson and Tom Waits came to town to work with William on The Black Rider, a postmodern opera that premiered to resounding success in Hamburg in 1990. And David Cronenberg was at work on his film version of Naked Lunch, which was released in 1992. James Grauerholz 257 While on a publicity trip to Toronto for the movie project in spring 1991, William expe- rienced crippling chest pains. On his return, he was diagnosed with coronary arteriosclerosis. He underwent a triple bypass operation in Topeka that summer, and after a long convales- cence at home, he enjoyed renewed vigor and health for several years. But the early 1990s were overshadowed, for us, by the tragic death of my partner, Michael Emerton, by suicide at age twenty-six, in late 1992. William made a few more trips out of town: to his last major gallery show, in New York in early 1993; again to New York for a meeting with Paul Bowles in fall 1995; and to Los Angeles, for a museum retrospective of his career, in summer 1996. "Pores of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts" was curated by Robert Sobieszek at the Los Angeles County Mu- seum of Art, and the show was brought to the Spencer Museum of Art at KU in November 1996. Jackie Davis, head of the newly built Lied Center, and a team of volunteers within the University brought together support from the Hall Center and the English and Film Depart- ments for a symposium in early November, featuring Allen Ginsberg, Kathy Acker, Richard Hell, Legs McNeil, and Robert Sobieszek. At the end of November, the Lied Center was filled to capacity for the "Nova Convention Revisited," a reunion of most of the surviving artists who had participated in the original Nova Convention in New York in 1978: Patti Smith (joined by Michael Stipe), Debbie Harry and Blondie, John Giorno, Ed Sanders, Laurie Anderson, and Philip Glass. William watched from his opera box and took the stage at the intermission to address the audience and thank . them for coming. The event was a love fest in both directions: the Lawrence community thanked William for being among us and gracing us with his presence for so many years, and William thanked Lawrence for adopting him as one of "the family." And "family" is exactly why William Burroughs moved to Lawrence and lived here for the last sixteen years of his life. His parents were both dead by 1970; his last lover, Ian Sommerville, died in 1976; his son died in 1981; his only brother, Mortimer, died in 1983; and his soul brother since 1958, Brion Gysin, died in Paris in 1986. At the end of his life, William was supported by the love of a "family" of old friends-mostly people whom I have known since my college days at KU-and by the appreciation and gratitude of many members of the community. Lawrence did matter to William. Here, in this community, he found a quiet, productive retirement, in the bosom of a family of friends who shared his life-not as the celebrated, notorious William Burroughs, but as an elderly man whom they cherished, with his inexhaust- ible fund of stories and aphorisms, his dependable Old World courtliness, and gentlemanly manners. When he died in August 1997, he was mourned around the world, but his friends in Lawrence mourned the loss of something unique to them: "the Old Man" had been a fixture of our everyday lives for many years. William did matter to Lawrence. William's presence here affected the lives of two genera- tions of Lawrence citizens, and a dozen matriculating classes at the University of Kansas. In avant-garde circles across the country and the world, Lawrence was known as "the little town in Kansas where William Burroughs lives." People came from all over to see him, interesting people, some of whom stayed on to live here. Now that he is gone-and Allen Ginsberg gone too, just four months before William-an era has ended. And Lawrence has changed so much in the past few years. Within a few more years, the city will have become unrecognizable to old-timers like me and my friends. Waves of immigra- tion from Kansas City and Topeka have been encouraged by the city's leadership, in the name of "progress" (and profits). West Lawrence is growing like a cancer, the ticky-tack cookie-cutter houses and apartment complexes proliferating at a dizzying pace. To the south and southeast, the city is gobbling up farmland like a Pac-Man. The east side, one of Lawrence's most his- tory-rich neighborhoods, struggles to hold off the expansion of the downtown business district into its front yards. Once a Democratic stronghold, Lawrence is now largely Republican, but these chamber of commerce Republicans do not belong to che party of Abraham Lincoln and the East Coast abolitionists who founded Lawrence. Our intellectual city fathers like the great biologist Frank Snow would have been as appalled as we are today by the degeneration of a 258 Williams S. Burroughs: Did Lawrence Matter? state school system that tries to legitimize the teaching of so~called "creationism" in science classes. Truly, the barbarians are at the gates. The old "River City'' that we knew is fading away; maybe William's presence helped ex- tend its life by a decade or so, but it is going now, and our best hope is that somewhere up on the Hill, hidden amongst the legions of today's clean-cut, preppy, conformist kids, there are still some youthful seeds of dissent and free thought, nurturing the postcybernetic vision that will be needed by America, more than ever, in the new century. Perhaps we can be reassured by the knowledge that the best minds of their generation will be nurtured by the ideals and principles for which Allen and William lived and died: honesty, personal truthfulness, open- ness, sexual frankness, playfulness, open-heartedness, and above all, compassion for the endless suffering of all sentient beings. William S. Burroughs Jim McCrary "\Vlhen I came to Lawrence in 1965, there were several public "characters" living here, like ocher small towns of W the Midwest. Times have changed. Lawrence has outgrown its characters. In the past the eccentrics stood our: The Blue Lady; George, the Pipe-guy; Cardboard Johnson; the East Indian man who walked; Leo Buerman; and before that, the Recluse .Who Lived in a Tree. Today there are simply the eccentric homeless. We're all aware of them-on every street, in every city, on TV. Not that William Burroughs was eccentric. Yee many of the hipster crowd probably thought it quite eccentric for him to leave New York City to live in .Lawrence. "How uncool," they might say, not realizing in the end how very cool it was for him to make the move. William did not need to be surrounded by his peers. He moved to Lawrence and "moved into" his new place. He changed the way he dressed. He no longer wore a three-piece suit, tie, homburg hat. Now he wore bluejeans, khaki shirt, fatigue army jacket and seed cap. That's what some folks wore out here; that was one of the ways to fie in. City to country. I suspect more people in Germany, for instance, than in Lawrence knew William lived here. It said so in his biography, on the back of his books, and in the interviews and endless profiles. And there was always the question from the fans, the journalists, the film crews: "Why do you live in Lawrence?" What they really were asking was, "How CAN you live in Lawrence?" There were many answers and most often, William, in his manner, would answer: "New York City was too expensive, too dangerous; it lacked privacy." Lawrence was quiet, a Johnson place (people minded their own business). "They leave me alone." And he was left alone. He chose his new friends. He met them at the pistol range in the basement of the community center. People gravitated toward him. He was self- sufficient-always was-in many ways and didn't need to bring old friends co his new residence. If you read the opening paragraph of Burroughs' The western Lands, there it is: The old writer living in a boxcar on the river bank. And then you see it . in the field, on the road to Lone Star Lake, close to the Wakarusa. What is real? Nothing is real. And everything is permitted. William didn't live in that box car but rather in a Sears Roebuck prefab house on Learnard Street. It came from Chicago on a rail car. And the cats. Where else could you have six or seven cats and let them live in the yard and basement with open access to the house and bury them in the side yard with a tombstone in peace? Try that in New York City. And the possums and the raccoons, leaving, as he did, the cat doors open. He took his dinner leftovers out for them every night. They woke him up in the middle of the night scrounging through the kitchen, knocking over and eating the dry cat food. He invited them for god's sake! He complained somewhat with that Burroughs' giggle. He bought a summer cabin at [Lone Star Lake] full of mice with a derelict dock and tiny row boat. Someplace to go, something to do. Row the boat. Drink a couple of vodkas. Sit on the porch. Smoke a joint. Drive back to town. Once he dreamed of walking down train cracks and picking up a rail spike. And when he woke up, that is just what he did to make the dream become reality on the train tracks a block from his home on Learnard. Where else could you turn the old garage into a studio, paint in it, and paint it as well. Turn the old three-piece garage door into a triptych, only one of the hundreds of paintings he created in Lawrence. Most on paper, many on 259 260 William S. Burroughs canvas, more on plywood (scraps from construction sites), and doors, windows, cedar shingles, tin, metal, old signs, chairs, and asphalt roof shingles. He bought scrapbooks and filled. them with paintings and· then painted the boxes they came in. He painted dozens of file folders and kept his papers in them. He painted 100 paper targets (the hundred most wanted-mostly cops). When someone gave him photos of his paintings, he cut up the photos and glued them to new paintings. Paintings on paintings. Obsessed? Or perhaps just the pleasure of creation-and not the demand for recognition. He used anything but brushes. ('Tm not a painter.") Plungers, mushrooms, suction cups, spatulas from the kitchen, big bristle toilet brushes-anything but the artist's "tools." To go shooting-Not Hunting-target shooting at a friend's place up in Jefferson County. It was always a real "outing," a gathering as well. Phone calls placed, rides lined up, stop at the pawn shop for ammo, don't forget the vodka! It could well be the hottest day of August and was. Shooting a variety of weapons (pistols) into paper targets or, to celebrate the harvest, pumpkins. Shoot a while and go inside to have cocktails and caviar and talk it over. Why not? All of the above and more is simply what William Burroughs did with his time in Lawrence. I could go on. Others have and will for some time. There is no question that William's life in Lawrence will be a major part of the continued intellectual dialogue on one of the twentieth- century's most important writers. And yet in the end perhaps it was the community of "fellow travelers" that did make a difference in and to Lawrence. In the community William's biggest influence was what his living here kept active in a larger group of people. One of the few cross- cultural communities within Lawrence formed around William-academics; students; musicians; artists; house painters; trades people; professional people; alternative persons; yes, street people; business people-all felt a closeness to William. He was a important part of their community. Those who knew who he was and what he had done. Read his books. Thought about his ideas and, in many cases, put them to use. By living in Lawrence, William kept alive an alternative community of libertarianism that always made room and stood aside for younger members. Did it matter that he lived in Lawrence? To William it certainly did. He lived in Lawrence longer than anywhere else in his life, including St. Louis, Chicago, Florida, Mexico, Tangier, and New York City. What he found in Lawrence was a comfortable place where he was al- lowed to be himself, to live quietly and gracefully. And he did. Like "Tl B . oe 'f ue Lad: " a " inveterate h1 i,,,,. ' ry nd. Tan Ma n "tv~ n rrte ion · ' wayne rro p · celebrates t.h e . ' rg- tzme colleauu e ol'1vr·1z· st ts one of Lawren~ ' znternat · I 0 ~ 'J wzi,zam s B .es man ,t:; zona great r eunion of th e Be~t :,rrough~, and punk artistry ~~oRr~ettable charac ters an I veneratz h . HIS lVer c· D ' on t. at gath ered in L tty LT.eunion T-sh . awrence in 1.987. trt 261 Water in Willow Springs Township Dennis Domer A fter eighty-three years of living in the same house and working the same place, Leslie Churchbaugh moved to ..r\..saldwin City from his farm on the eastern edge of Willow Springs Township in southern Douglas County, Kansas. He had a sale and just about everything was on the auction block, except a miniature windmill and pump. When the auctioneer came to them, Les waved him on and decided to take them to town. The windmill and pump would no doubt remind him of his old home in Willow Springs, of washing off the dirt from a morning's work, of hauling water, of filling the stock tank, of drinking from a jug at the end of the field while the horses rested, of carrying water from the creek at High Prairie School when he was a boy, and of that haunting sound the windmill makes when it turns in the wind. Windmills and pumps stand in many front yards in Willow Springs, and they are part of the highly developed water landscape that runs shallow and deep. This landscape binds all people in Willow Springs, and it is a defining element in the overall landscape that people have been making here incessantly for centuries. People identify so closely with their landscape that it makes and remakes them in what Dell Upton calls "the fusion of the physical with the imaginative structures that all inhabitants of the landscape use in constructing and construing it." 1 From this fusion arise common landscape patterns and ways that reveal themselves through cultural forms and processes that differentiate us as people and make the physical landscape understandable, transferable, ubiquitous, and endur- ing in human life. Les's windmill and pump are so commonly understood and powerful symbolically that they do not need water to play their role. J.B. Jackson calls the landscape the "infrastructure or background of our collective existence."2 A landscape is not just the natural environment, topography, or scenery, although all are components of a landscape. Rather, a landscape is the natural environment shaped and shared by humans over time for specific purposes. Landscape includes not only those changes made in the land, such as the creation of roads, ditches, and terraces, but also objects placed on the land, such as churches, schools, houses, barns, sheds, telephone poles, fences, wells, windmills, and water systems. Cities are intensely developed landscapes. As the background of our col- lective existence, the landscape and all its objects also have psychological and social aspects. Every landscape has spatiality that affects human perception through topography and the dis- Henry Flory at Willow Springs, 1995. I Dennis Domer, "Water in Willow Springs Township," Kansas History 19, no. 1 (spring 1996): 64-80. Reprinted with permission of Kansas History and Dennis Domer. 263 ~ter sources were central to the Kansas oral tradition. In 264 an 1882 interview with J 0. Dorsey thirty-five years after they had last seen these parts of Kansas, tribal elders were able to name dozens of tributaries over a 300-mile area. Their information helped Dorsey construct this map. Wtzter in Willow Springs Township tance one can see. In every landscape there lie deep maps of our social existence, especially in the structures of community life. 3 The importance of water in the landscape cannot be underestimated. The 1989 dust storm, the first to roll into Douglas County in more than fifty years, made this perfectly clear.4 How to find water, keep it, and ensure its adequacy in the future are eternal questions whose an- swers are written on the landscape. Today's citizens of Willow Springs, many of whom experi- enced the big dusters of the 1930s, have answered these questions by building an intricate pressurized water system of underground PVC pipe, pump houses, and standpipes, and con- necting it to a gigantic reservoir. This new infrastructure is layered on top of older, still necessary, water systems such as ditches, sloughs, creeks, ponds, wells, cisterns, windmills, and tanks. In the layers of this complex hydrosystem it is possible to understand the importance of water, read the local knowledge of water over time, learn how people change to deliver the precious fluid through a landscape that is changing, and consider how people prepare for their water futures. An oral history of water in the landscape also has developed. 5 When listening in a rural place, one hears a rich variety of tales about water from the people who have lived there all their lives. In Willow Springs Township, many elderly people relate the sick feelings they expe- rienced when they did not find water or the jubilation when they did. They remember when they did not have much of it and where they hauled it from. These experiences taught them a frugal and careful ethic about water. Stories about water vary from generation to generation, leaving a trail of changing values and attitudes that sometimes is astounding. Young people in Willow Springs Township, for example, never talk about digging a well. They talk of turning on the tap, taking long showers, or building swimming pools. Their ethic about water is carefree. The water landscape, along with its infrastructure and lore, leads to important political ques- tions, such as questions of power that Don Worster outlines in Rivers of Empire. Worster demon- strates that Karl Wittfogel's hydraulic society thesis applies to the American West, a thesis that states the bigger the waterworks the more power is wielded by a centralized water bureaucracy. 6 Wittfogel's thesis about water power also applies in the contemporary water landscape of Willow Springs Township. Control of water has devolved from decentralized and private power within the township to centralized and public power in nearby Lawrence. A small-scale and entirely local water system in Willow Springs-woven by tradition, mystery, myth, and belief about wa- ter and controlled by those who lived in the landscape-in the late 1960s developed into a centralized water system that was designed by professionals and regulated by bureaucratic elites who do not live in the landscape. The power to decide how many water rights to grant in Rural Water District No. 2 has significant economic implications in the township, which is under great development pressure. The number of water rights and the extent of the water systems through- out the township determines how fast, how far, and in which directions the emerging exurb will go. Today water evokes power and politics as well as memories in Willow Springs. Water in Willow Springs had a different power among the Kansa Indians, their related Siouxian tribes, and to most Native Americans in North America. To the Kansa tribe the Great Spirit, Wau-con-dah, was a water god and was the first among all gods in a polytheis- tic belief system made up of re- ligious entities the Kansas as- sociated with various aspects of Dennis Domer 265 the natural environment.7 The Kansas frequently traveled a great distance from their villages along the Missouri and Kansas Rivers to a salt spring on the Solomon River to gather Ne Wohkondaga-"Spirit water"-for use in their daily prayer songs to Wau-con-dah. Drinking sacred water before taking meals invoked Wau-con-dah. 8 In addition to its daily religious uses, water ran through the creation myths of many North American tribes, including the Kansa lndians.9 Among the Kansas creation myths is the story of their home on "the sea of the rising sun," which they left, taking with them the sacred shells of the tribe. 10 They followed the Ohio River west until they came to the Missis- sippi where they separated into the "down-stream" people and the "up-stream" people. The up- stream people, including the Kansas, reached the Missouri River that took them west above the confluence of another river, the Kanzas, where they established their first village. I I When Lewis and Clark found them on June 26, 1804, the Kansa tribe had moved to its second village on the Kanzas, abandoning its first village to the spirits of the dead. I2 The Kansas situated, abandoned their villages to spirit villages, and resituated new villages along the Kansas River from about 1800 until 1848. Their Willow Springs period covered roughly the first twenty-five years. Rivers and tributaries determined where the Kansa tribe members, who were frequently on the move, made their camps, planted their crops, buried their dead, and established their sacred meeting spaces. Rivers had made up the religious geog- raphy in their migration story, and rivers directed their specific travels on the Kansas prairie. As late as 1978, 130 years after the Kansas were removed to a reservation along the Neosho River near Council Grove and then forced to leave Kansas in 1873, Jesse Mehojah, a Kansa elder, remembered the significance of rivers and tributaries in Kansas from which they took their sacred water. 13 These rivers and tributaries were so central in the Kansa oral tradition that in an interview with J.O. Dorsey about 1882, the elders were able to name dozens of tributaries and events associated with them from the mouth of the Kansas River all the way up to the end of the Saline River, a stretch of about three hundred miles, as well as tributaries along the Neosho and Arkansas Rivers. This was nearly thirty-five years after they had last seen these parts of Kansas. Dorsey's unpublished drawings of these rivers and tributaries reveal the extensive navigational system of the Kansa tribe on vast, rolling grasslands with few trees or distinguishing topological characteristics.I4 This hydrography from Kansas City to Lawrence included tributaries named Ga-hin' -ge was-da'-yifi-ga i-ku' -ya ga-pa, "the stream of the friend of saucy Chief"; Zan-dje' ga-djin, "a tributary of the Kansas River on the south"; U-ki.i'-tce siifi-'ga, "a tributary of the Kansas River on the north"; Ga-qa' ni-bii'-ze, "the stream dry of water"; Ni-chu'-chi-tci-'be, "where swallows dwell"; Was-ja'-je pa', "here was the fifth village occupied by the Kansa after they left Man-daqpye"; and Was-qule yi.i-ze, "the stream where they took the Wakarusa." Through repeated stories the Kansas used their hydrological and navigational map to pass on the history of their tribe from generation to generation. Many Indian trails along the tributaries of the Wakarusa River led south from the Kansas River into the land around Willow Springs. IS These paths were ancient but the Kansas claimed them and the land of Willow Springs in 1821 when they permitted the Santa Fe Trail to cross through the center of what later became Willow Springs Township. I6 The Kansas hunted and trapped in Willow Springs, an area they ceded as a part of the eighteen million-acre "gift" to the federal government in 1825.I? This cession too was defined by water. "Beginning at the entrance of the Kansas River ... Westwardly to the Nodewa River, thirty miles from its entrance of the big Nemahaw River into the Missouri .. ·. from thence, on the ridge dividing the waters" and so forth. IS From 1825 to 1854 Willow Springs was part of the Shawnee Indian reservation, and white settlers' stories about these and other native Americans who inhabited Willow Springs during that time confirm the importance of water in their lives. About one hundred rods from Sutton Cemetery at a bend in Tauy Creek was an Indian garden where the Shawnee and Osage tribes also camped. A circular Indian garden inside a timber area near Tauy Creek also has been re- ported. I9 Old timers tell stories of an Indian burial ground where Indians had a garden in an oxbow of Tauy Creek in section 34 on the old Ezra Barnhardt place.20 However, the mystery of 266 IBtter in Willow Springs Township water and its ability to create common space for everyone, including Native Americans and the later European immigrants, perhaps never was more powerful than at Hole-in-the-Rock. Hole-in-the-Rock was a large pool of water, perhaps 150 feet wide and "bottomless," in the southeastern part of Willow Springs Township on Ottawa Creek. It is a source of stories about Indian pony races; diving contests; a legend about Kansa Indians that describes a love triangle between Grey Wolf, Red Fox, and Laughing Waters; and tales about an Indian who drowned in its murky waters. This mysterious hole in the rock was so powerful that even members of the Ottawa tribe, who were transplanted to Willow Springs about 1846, created a myth about the origin of its waters.21 They believed the water that poured from the oblong hole in the large pool came from the tears of a giant imprisoned in a dungeon behind the Ireland sandstone.22 Nor could the new Americans and Europeans who came to Willow Springs just before and just after the Civil War resist giving Hole-in-the-Rock a significant place in their early history. By the 1870s they used this three-hundred-million-year-old formation for profane and sacred activities such as turkey and chicken roasts, diving exhibitions, Sunday wrestling matches, Easter sunrise services, Baker University's Epworth League picnics, and ro- mance. Margaret Hill McCarter in her 1912 book A IBtll of Men devotes an entire chapter to this landmark on the Santa Fe Trail and describes it as an ugly, black, still thing which lay so darkly shadowed, it might almost have escaped the eye of a stranger. Once seen, however, it was not easily forgotten. It was full thirty feet deep, and cruelly smooth, reminding one of nothing else so much as the lidless eye of a motionless snake watching its victim. 23 Not everyone was so intimidated by its dark waters. It remained a favorite swimming hole into the 1930s. During the 1960s Hole-in-the-Rock was still an important place in Willow Springs Township that drew Baker University students who questioned the mysteries of its waters while they drank and read the thousands of names carved into stone surfaces surrounding this fa- mous place.24 Now this great hole is silted in from the runoff of surrounding fields, and no one visits anymore. Without water, Hole-in-the-Rock has lost its mystery. For everyone in the nineteenth century, Native American and European immigrant alike, water and watersheds determined the routes of trails and later roads, where one could drink, cross streams, and successfully settle. Early explorers on the Santa Fe Trail understood that travelers west needed water-a need that determined the general direction and many stopping places along the Santa Fe Trail. In his field notes Joseph C. Brown, leader of the United States Surveying Expedition of 1825, dutifully marked the route from creek to creek and commented on the water wherever he found it. He noted Hungry Creek, Dove Creek, Gooseberry Creek, and Grindstone Creek-all head branches of Coal Creek, which flows north away from the northeast corner of Willow· Springs. All these places had good water and easy fords for the thousands of pioneers who followed the Santa Fe Trail.25 Immigrants named the township after one of those important water places on the Santa Fe Trail, a place where springs were surrounded by black willows. It is almost in the middle of the township near the ghost town of Willow Springs. Frank Horrell, a well-known teacher in the township, speculated that a grove of willow trees in a ravine containing several springs just east of the town of Willow Springs accounts for the name.26 This water hole on the prairie really was an oasis, a perfect place for people to come together in the shade and drink from the water of an underground stream that surfaced there.27 Wayne Flory, of the Dunker faith and now in his late seventies, retells the story of pioneers on the Santa Fe Trail who tried to reach the place called Willow Springs. "If they could only reach Willow Springs," he said, "then they would always find plenty of water and shade and rest before they journeyed on. The holes were so big at Willow Springs that you could drive a covered wagon into them."28 A deep rut carved by many wagons, which today appears to be nothing more than a wide indentation of the land, leads to this place. Wilson Hobbs, a medical missionary to the Shawnee tribe from 1850 to 1852, noted that Willow Springs "was a distinguished watering place on Dennis Domer 267 the road, but marked only by the fountain of water."29 If this fountain was anything like the one at Hole-in-the-Rock, it was a gushing stream. Longtime resident Henry Flory notes that the springs east of his house even today always run water. The Willow Springs old city well also is still full of water. The big spring northwest of the Old German Baptist Church is "everlasting" and displays the typical trail of heavy prairie grasses that grow around and especially downhill from a deep spring running to the surface of the earth. E. H. Van Hoesen used this well for his large cattle business at the turn of the century, and in dry years the surrounding farm community also used it to water animals. This well alone provided enough water for Van Hoesen's personal use, but he also operated the Willow Springs hotel, a six-room, two-story structure to accommodate the daily crowd of thirsty passersby. Next to the hotel's old foundation is a good well where many weary travelers once exercised their usufructuary rights and drank their fill. 30 Water is seemingly endless at Willow Springs. West of the Old German Baptist Church is another well, and yet another where the old creamery stood. A large well also was dug at the south end of Willow Springs near Lee Duncan's old blacksmith shop. It, like many other nineteenth-century wells in Wil- low Springs, is five feet in diameter, lined with limestone, and filled with water that constantly moves. Because these wells were full, even in the driest years, their water became common property from which everyone and their animals coming along the Santa Fe Trail could par- take. Droughts were frequent, and the common right to water for human and animal use, which were considered reasonable uses in common law, was unquestionably exercised. This common right still exists, and in Willow Springs Township today common wells at Baldwin Junction are available from which anyone can draw for reasonable uses. The abundance of water the pioneers found just below the surface of the prairie in much of Willow Springs Township was neither everlasting nor even adequate for the number of people who bought 80 to 320 acres of land in the burgeoning farm landscape after the Civil War. By 1885, 1,536 people lived in the township that was well defined by fences, roads, cattle in pastures and in roadsides, fields of corn and wheat, churches, schools, and country stores. All this required more water than the native prairie held, and with plowing, the farm landscape lost an important element in the recovery and retention of water near the surface. Spring plowing created erosion in the wet years and dust in the dry years, and the shallow wells that provided water to early pioneers went dry. So farmers dug deep for water, and their attempts to tap the underground water system-wherever it was-and fulfill the water needs of their developed farmscapes gave water witchers and well diggers much to do.31 When well diggers found that precious liquid at 150 feet or more down in the fountain of the deep, the problem of pumping it up to the surface was solved by a relatively small investment in a steel windmill. These usually four-legged, galvanized windcatchers still stand throughout the township, although few are used to pump water in a now fully electronic landscape. Ten to twenty feet tall, most of them .have been standing as long as anyone can remember. Aermotor of Chicago, which is the windmill most farmers in Willow Springs and the rest of the United States seem to have bought between 1888 and 1970, dominates.32 Although magical when they make a woeful wail with the wheels turning to take the wind, the air machines shipped to Willow Springs were not based in magic. They had been perfected in a long history of scientific experimentation. Men like Alfred Wolff, who wrote The Wind- mill as a Prime Mover in 1885, fine tuned their machines for the most efficient transfer of wind power to pumping power. They had data charts to show average movements of wind in different regions of the country, wind pressures, "impulses of wind on windmill blades," fric- tion effects in windmill mechanics and in water pipes, pumping capacities, irrigation capabili- ties, proper pipe dimensions, costs, and returns on investment.33 With less than one hundred dollars in normal times and sometimes less than fifteen dollars in hard times, farmers in Wil- low Springs hoped to purchase a wind machine that guaranteed water for a lifetime. The Aermotors indeed were long lasting-so long lasting that . they became obsolete long before falling apart. Often they outlasted the water or the need for it at a particular place in a changing farm landscape in which gasoline engines on tractors pulled a new array of farm 268 Wttter in Willow Springs Township implements so efficiently that fewer farmers were needed. The success of the industrial revolu- tion, the boom and bust cycles of an unregulated market economy, and· drought drove the population of Willow Springs precipitously down after 1885 to a low of 739 in 1970, leaving many windmills abandoned along with all their associated objects in the water landscape. The windmill and a water system composed of decentralized wells, cisterns, and other surface springs and run-off eventually proved to be inadequate even to the survivors in the farm landscape, whose success after years of intensive dirt farming also had lowered the water table significantly, especially during dry years. Eastern Kansas has always had dry years, and during those years farmers had to haul water from community wells near Baldwin Junction or, like Leslie Churchbaugh, hire water haulers from places like Baldwin City to bring water for the empty wells. Wayne Flory remembers his neighbors, whose well went dry in the 1930s, hauling water from his dad's well with two fifty-gallon barrels in a wagon pulled by two horses. Their voices, the strain of the horses, and the amount of labor they expended every day to complete this essential task still haunts him. Flory also hauled water in his adult years from the Baldwin Junction wells because he had dairy cattle, and his well and cistern near the house could not keep his family and his cows in water. He ·got up in the middle of the night to fill his truck, and if someone was already at the well, he had to wait.34 Waiting for water made no sense when Flory could travel to Baldwin in fifteen minutes, call Kansas City in seconds, and listen to agribusiness market reports from around the world instantaneously. But Wayne Flory and the rest of the water community in Willow Springs Township had no alternative until the late 1960s. He tried to sink a well in 1954, but the water witcher he hired found his water exactly where Flory wanted to build a dairy barn.35 Taking a chance, Flory asked the driller to make an attempt farther away. The driller went down 383 feet and did not find a drop, so Flory hauled water for thirteen more years, a time- consuming and costly job for a busy farmer. Flory's fellow farmers particularly felt the pinch- men like Bob Bigsby, who also had a dairy, and John Metsker, who had a large hog operation. They never had enough water on their property to keep a farm business going, which ·caused tremendous inefficiency in their farming practices. They were smart, resourceful, and prudent, but without an adequate water supply they were stymied. Too much work, too little profit. Besides, they wanted indoor toilets and more than the traditional weekly tub _bath. Water technologies simply were not synchronized with other systems and technologies in the larger landscape that had been transformed by the automobile, the telephone, and electricity. By the 1960s attaining water for farm animals and a hot shower at night, without hauling it, was achieved by creating a scientifically engineered water system in the community. Both the federal and state governments had recognized the severe limitations of the old water land- scape and sought to remove them through government-farmer partnerships. The State of Kan- sas created the Rural Water Supply District Law in 1941 and the authorization to receive funding from Washington through the Rural Water District Act of 1957.36 Rural water dis- tricts were designed "primarily to provide a safe and more dependable water supply for farm families and stock during periods of drought conditions and secondarily to improve farm liv- ing standards."37 With local, state, and federal backing, farmers could organize, gather the necessary initial investment for a rural water system through loans and grants guaranteed by the federal government, and amortize and maintain that system over a period of years through water right payments and monthly charges. Willow Springs farmers had long worked with the government, and by the dry days of the 1960s it seemed astute to do so again in the face of an ever-pressing need to stabilize, upgrade, and ensure their water future. These farmers could build a water community with a distributive pressure system through scientific planning, fi- nancial far-sightedness, social organization, and modern management practices. They found few disadvantages in the beginning, and for the most part they would find few in comparison to the advantages and the dynamic changes in life an engineered water system would bring to Willow Springs Township. At county fair time in 1963, Wayne Flory cornered a friend, Robert Bigsby, about the need for a water district. That summer had been particularly dry; along the backbone of Willow Dennis Domer 269 Springs Township householders were pressed to conserve, and animals were stressed. Nor did the produce at the fair look good, but nothing could be done without rain. Bigsby, with his big dairy farm, was game, and he agreed to chair a steering committee that met in Township Hall to form a district. Wayne Flory was the vice chair. John Metsker, with all his hogs, was easily persuaded to be secretary, and Arley Flory, who had a diversified farm and no good wells, be- came the treasurer. Don Churchbaugh, who to this day manages a robust grain and cattle farm, was the member at large. Three original members, Wayne Flory, John Metsker and Don Churchbaugh, still serve on the board, and this kind of longevity is typical of rural water district board members in Douglas County. The people who established rural water districts have closely watched, sometimes for more than thirty years, the biggest community enterprise of their lives. To build a rural water district with government backing, Bigsby and his water men had to find wells that could pump enough water to fill a water system and meet the needs of rela- tively few customers. Although easy in the beginning, this task became increasingly difficult over the years as the number of customers on extended lines grew. The steering committee found three good wells near Baldwin Junction, not far from Hole-in-the-Rock, near the com- munity well where many of them had drawn their water in dry years. Between 1963 and 1983 the water district continued its search for new wells and used from three to ten wells to fill the system. The water in these wells often was plentiful but some wells played out in dry years, and customers were advised to conserve water when no rain had fallen for six weeks. In addi- tion to uncertainty about the adequacy of water, some of the water district's wells contained too much iron. Water had to be pumped first into a thirty-thousand-gallon, concrete Calgon pit to reduce the iron content and then sent through the system. A final continual concern ~as the cost of pumping. It was cheap in the beginning but the energy crunch of the early 1970s drove the cost of electricity for pumping up to twenty-eight hundred dollars a month. In spite of these initial and continuing problems, Bigsby and his committee were confident in 1963 that enough good water was available in Willow Springs and that it was feasible to pump it through a well-designed system. The steering committee needed a civil engineer with hydrology experience to design this pressure system, and it hired Kelly Veets of Chad Veets Engineers in Kansas City to find all the elevations and design a system of standpipes, shutoff values, air values, and pumps inter- connected with an affordable and durable pipe from which potential customers in the pro- posed district could draw water on demand. This was not easy because no affordable, semi- rigid pipe was available. A "trinkle system" with soft rolled pipe was rejected because it could not withstand the pressure necessary to move water throughout the system, and it would re- quire each customer to have a holding system. With the invention of PVC pipe in the mid- 1960s, Veets redesigned the system which the Loncarich Construction Company of Wheaton, Missouri, said it could build for $125,056. This price included digging thirty miles of trenches; laying the pipe; erecting a 115-foot-high, 12-foot-diameter standpipe that holds one hundred thousand gallons of water; erecting an 80-foot-high, 4-foot-diameter standpipe that holds six thousand gallons; installing the values and pumps; and testing the system. With a seventy-five- thousand-dollar loan from Lawrence National Bank, guaranteed by the Farmers Home Admin- istration, and a sixty-thousand-dollar federal grant, Robert Bigsby and hi_s committee autho- rized construction and began to sell water rights. These rights were worth every penny because the system "has worked beautifully," according to Wayne Flory. If financial circumstances are any indication, Flory is right. The board has paid off the original mortgage, maintained the system, enlarged pipe, replaced valves, and added standpipes during the past thirty years and still had accumulated $241,624 in cash by December 31, 1992. In the beginning, however, the board naturally was anxious. about the largest debt it had ever seen, especially on those days when its members came home without selling a single water right. When the initial cost of the water right at $140 failed to bring sales, the board an- nounced that it would raise the price to $250 after a certain date. This marketing technique made the original price look like a bargain, and eventually about seventy farmers and their families took advantage of this bargain to hook up to a water system at the edge of the road. 270 Map showing the location and hydrography of Willow Springs Township. "Water in Willow Springs Township Many Willow Springs farmers, however, decided to remain independent, or at least ini- tially did not join the water community. Leslie Churchbaugh, for example, was hauling water from Baldwin City during the late 1960s at exactly the time when Bigsby and Flory were building their interdependent water community, but he did not join them. Instead he jury- rigged a line down to the windmill and well in the pasture that his father had drilled, and he pumped water from it for his cattle. He used the well and pump near his house for domestic use only. Churchbaugh had few water problems after that, but when he retired to Baldwin City he was doubtful that the water he had drunk for eighty-three years could pass a govern- ment inspection. The need to satisfy ever-rising water standards set by the government ensured that most people who moved to Willow Springs, unlike Les Churchbaugh who lived their all -1K11ometer - Highways - Paved roads ; Small Ponds (leas than 2 acres) his life, would buy a water right from a water district. That water right in Rural Water District No. 2 today costs four thousand dollars when available. The demand for these rights has not come from new farmers mov- ing into Willow Springs Township, even though rural water districts were set up specifically to promote domestic and farm needs. In the early 1970s the new availability of water throughout Douglas County increasingly brought city dwellers to the country, and that trend con- tinues. As Donna Luckey has concluded, "there is a significant relation- ship between the increased availability of water due to the formation of these districts and the conversion of agricultural land to residential use in rural Douglas County." She calculates this relationship of rural water lines to residential development to be 99 percent and estimates the re- duction of agricultural land to be about 12 percent between 1976 and 1989. 38 Since 1989 this conversion rate has increased, and all but one of the rural water districts in Douglas County have grown dramatically since their inceptions. New exurban tracts in Willow Springs Township strained the pres- surized rural water system in a number of ways. Wayne Flory remem- bers that "water got complicated when we had some housing projects come in like Timberline Acres." After Timberline came Chut Valley with fifteen to twenty people all at once, and then many others bought dozens of houses in Pleasant Grove Estates and Quantrill Acres. To serve these new city people the board extended the water system's lines from thirty to fifty-four miles. "They all helped us pay our debts off," Flory argues, which was an advantage to a point. However, paying off the loan in this way did not fit the policies of the Farmers Horne Ad- ministration when it first made the loan. "The FHA finally said we couldn't sell more than two units at a time because the system was built first of all for farmers. " In spite of this bureaucratic restriction, Rural Water District No. 2 managed to sell sixteen "benefit units" from 1991 to 1992.39 According to Flory, one of the great disadvantages of opening rural water districts to city people is that they "want city living in the coun- try." By the late 1970s Flory and other water board members found themselves dealing increasingly with irate customers who insisted that watering the lawn in a dry summer had priority over watering cattle and other farm animals. "They thought that I should shut off the water to the livestock," Flory recalled. At one point this agitation brought about eighty "city" people to a board meet- ing in which Dennis Flory, the water engineer, was taken off the board and replaced with an exurbanite. In response several members of the board resigned, including Wayne Flory and Michael Flory. Finally, the exurbanite also resigned, and several days after the meeting the Dennis Domer 271 remaining members of the board reappointed Wayne and Dennis. It was a battle but the original board finally reasserted its control over this rural water system designed for agricul- tural purposes and unintentionally for exurban development. Board members in the other nine water districts that serve Douglas County did not expe- rience the standoff over water that occurred in Willow Springs, but the general histories of these water districts are similar to Rural Water District No. 2. The individuals who established the districts, many of whom still serve on district boards or in administrative positions, all faced problems of drought, and they took advantage of government programs that helped change their water landscapes. Most districts have grown dramatically since their inceptions and have extended and improved their lines. Only Rural Water District No. 6 has remained at about its original size, primarily because of an exurban development failure and stingy. water contracts with Lawrence. Not all rural water districts in Douglas County are free of debt, but all have built up tremendous equities in their systems, and several have significant cash re- serves. Rural Water Districts Nos. 2 and 4, for example, are debt free, but Rural Water Dis- trict No. 3 is indebted for its Clinton Lake sedimentation and filtration plant that cost five million dollars. Regardless of debt, the value of these systems is high, and the cost of a water right has steadily risen in all water districts: Douglas County (DG) 1 ($2,000); DG 2 ($4,000); DG 3 ($3,000); DG 4 ($4,000); DG 5 ($4,000); DG 6 ($2,000); Jefferson County 13 ($4,150); Franklin County 5 ($3,000); Osage County 5 ($2,500); and Johnson County 6 ($5,725).40 All districts expect growth and are making plans for an expansive future. This expansive future was ensured by a monumental change in the water landscape that came in 1980 when Clinton Lake, a pool of seven thousand surface acres built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1971 to 1977 for fifty-five million dollars, was ready for use. This gigantic water landscape is one of twenty-six similar reservoirs built in Kansas for "flood control, water supply, fish and wildlife and recreational purposes."41 By damming the Wakarusa River, Clinton Lake drains water from 367 square miles. Its rolled earthfill dam is 1.75 miles long, stands 114 feet above the stream, and is 850 feet wide at the base. When full, this dam can hold back 12,800 surface acres of water and discharge 7,290 cubic feet of water per sec- ond through its spillway. This water covers the small towns of Sigel, Bloomington, New Belvoir, and Richland and nearly one hundred Native American sites along Elk Creek, Rock Creek, Coon Creek, Dry Creek, Deer Creek, and the Wakarusa River.42 All this water-in wet and in dry years-has put an end to the psychology of frugality that once lay deep in the water consciousness of Douglas County. Lawrence has a contract for 14 million gallons daily, and the rural water districts can receive up to 4.41 million gallons daily from this great pool. How- ever, this much water has never been needed, even on peak days. In addition to an apparent abundance of water, this darn gives flood protection to 156 square miles of the Wakarusa valley, which has reduced considerably the risk of development, created a boom psychology, and con- tributed significantly to population growth in one of the fastest-growing regions in Kansas.43 For Willow Springs Township the abundance of water came none too soon. By the early 1980s the original system had hit capacity. Wayne Flory explains that "we were just about to the point of being absorbed because we couldn't get enough water in a stressed time through that three-inch pipe from Baldwin Junction." So the board jumped at the chance to put in a six-inch line to Lawrence and buy the soft water from Clinton Lake that was sent first through the Lawrence water treatment plant and then to the water district. This cut electricity costs in half and increased the capacity of the water system tremendously. With the addition and re- placement of standpipes and the installation of three-inch instead of two-inch lines, the water pressure and the amount of water reaching the faucet also improved. Wayne Flory points out that Lawrence is only required to furnish twenty pounds of pressure, and Rural Water District No. 2 routinely furnishes sixty pounds of pressure at the faucet. The water pressure is strong, and Clinton Lake has assured an abundance of water for the foreseeable future, but who can have water when and where is an unresolved battle in a hy- draulic society. The controversy between farmers and exurbanites for water control in Willow Springs Township ended fifteen years ago. However, a protracted political and legal wrangle 272 Wliter in Willow Springs Township between farmers and city leaders about how much Clinton Lake water can be made available to the rural water districts in Douglas County continues to frustrate water men like Wayne Flory. Rural Water District No. 2 has a contract for more Clinton Lake water than it needs every year, but without a filtration plant of its own, the water district also must contract with the City of Lawrence to certify the potability of that water. In this way, Lawrence controls not only the water of Willow Springs Township but also the rate of development in Willow Springs Township. Lawrence determines· how much water it will purify for the districts and this con- trols the number of water rights a district may sell. "Lawrence done one thing to us," accord- ing to Wayne Flory. "They wanted us not to go too much bigger than 350 members and that's about where we are now. We can put on four new members a year." Water is not the problem. It is money in the form of taxes that Lawrence cannot collect if people live in the county. Lawrence restricts growth in the township through a tight water purification contract that permits only a 1 percent increase in the number of water rights each year. Rural Water District No. 3, in cooperation with three other water districts in Douglas County and Shawnee County to the west, got around Lawrence by investing in a filtration plant. Arthur Worthington, who quit farming to manage that district, is not worried about water or any restriction on growth since his district has a contract for 720 million gallons of water a year from Clinton Lake. He predicts that the filtration plant on Clinton will double in capacity during the next five years to meet the demand for water in his district.44 Mark Buhler, Douglas County commissioner, encouraged Lawrence to increase its water purification con- tracts in the rural countryside, if county citizens-principally farmers who own the land- would agree to platting and other land development tools so that growth could be planned.45 The farmers resisted any restrictions on their private property and insisted that water should not be used to plan the county. Consequently Rural Water Districts Nos. 2, 4, 5, and 6 are considering investing in a sedimentation-filtration plant that could cost as much as ten million dollars. That investment is a big risk in the battle to wrest control of water from Lawrence, but it is a risk many rural water people consider worth taking. As Don Fuston of Rural Water District No. 6 explained, "if Lawrence doesn't give us the water, we'll build the plant because in the next thirty years water will be the most important commodity in the county."46 Once the farmers of Willow Springs Township and other townships in the county had only to deal with the finicky nature of water, but now they are concerned with the whims of an urban water bureaucracy enmeshed in the politics of exurban development and wrapped in a big financial package of outside money. In spite of these new problems in the water land- scape, Wayne Flory can look on his work in the water community in Willow Springs Town- ship with satisfaction. "We did a great service to the community, and it's often been a thank- less task, but I'll tell you, many people have shown so much appreciation. We have seen the value that the water district has added to the area. We have seen how much better living is, how the people's livelihood is better now than the old timers even."47 There is no doubt about this claim. Without Wayne Flory and his water board everyone would be pumping water or hauling it, but few nonfarmers would live in rural Willow Springs if they did not have this convenient water landscape. . For all this success, however, Wayne Flory and others who live in Willow Springs Town- ship find themselves in a· landscape largely out of their control when it comes to water. The new water landscape is far too big, complex, and increasingly problematic in an exurbanizing period for any person or group in Willow Springs to control. For example, the most signifi- cant emerging problem in the Willow Springs water landscape, a problem that connects to a worldwide dilemma, is the widespread, nonpoint source pollution of surface water and wells. The test well in the middle of Willow Springs Township, one of many across the state in- cluded in the Kansas Groundwater Quality Monitoring Network, contains alachlor, atrazine, chlordane, and toxaphene along with many other pesticides.48 Pesticide, herbicide, and insecti- cide pollution is a general problem in northeast Kansas, according to a study recently issued by the Kansas Natural Resource Council, which reported atrazine in 100 percent of the tap water samples taken in June 1995 in Topeka, Lawrence, Johnson County, and Kansas City, Dennis Domer 273 Kansas.49 The sedimentation-filtration plant that Rural Water District No. 2 and others may someday own in their efforts to take control from the city will not be capable of taking out all these contaminants. Consequently many people in Willow Springs Township avoid drinking the water from the faucet and prefer instead to haul water from grocery stores that is cleaned by reverse osmosis and other purifying processes. This does not bode an easy water future, and history will tell whether the citizens of Willow Springs will someday join in the ancient mariner's complaint of "Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. "50 For centuries water has been an enduring issue everywhere in Willow Springs, and human attempts to address it have deposited layer after layer of cultural sediment. The significance of the remembered hydrography of the Kansa Indians, Hole-in-the-Rock, the fountain of water on the Santa Fe Trail,· and windmills that stand by the dozens in Willow Springs Township results from the interaction between objective water places or processes and subjective, mytho- logical, nonrational or symbolic belief systems, and scientific ideas that have built up around those objective places and processes. Parts of the early water la~dscape such as the Kansa hydrography and Hole-in-the-Rock have been obliterated, even though they still exist in the landscape memory of older people or in documents. Windmills still exist, either as ruins or in a different reality-such as the two homemade ones Henry Flory rigged up in his backyard in the old town of Willow Springs twenty years ago, or the one Leslie Churchbaugh refused to sell and took away to Baldwin City. Our current water landscape, which incorporates these ancient and recent water places and processes, was created by a rapidly growing number of people with gasoline engines, electricity, water engineering, telephones, computers, the infor- mation highway, and Clinton Lake. This layer of water culture one day will be covered with yet another layer, for as we solve water problems in the future, so shall we forever construe our landscape and our lives in Willow Springs Township. The author is grateful to Dr. Robert Rankin, professor of linguistics at the University of Kansas for sharing J.O. Dorsey's linguistic drawings and discussing the Kansa language and its place-names associated with water. Notes 1. Dell Upton, ':Architectural History or Landscape History?" journal of Architectural Education 44 (August 1991): 198. 2. John Brinkerhoff Jackson, "The Word Itself," in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 1984), 8. 3. William Least Heat-Moon has written a "deep map" of Chase County, Kansas, in his PrairyErth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1991). For a deep map of the community life of Willow Springs, see Dennis Domer, "Commons on the Prairie" (master's thesis, George Washington University, 1990). 4. Rex Buchanan, "There's a Hole in the Bucket," Kansas Alumni 88 (September 1989): 2. 5. For an annotated overview of some of the written literature about water, see Barre Toelken, "The Folklore of Water in the Mormon West," Northwest Folklore 7 (1989): 2-26; Arthur Gribben, Holy Wells and Sacred Water Sources in Britain and Ireland (New York: Garland Press, 1992). 6. Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity & the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985). Worster explains the essence of the thesis: "Where the scale of water control escalated in the ancient desert world, he [Wittfogel] maintained, where larger and larger dams and more and more elaborate canal networks were built, political power came to rest in the hands of an elite, typically a ruling class of bureaucrats." 7. The Kansa word for water is "ne" [ni]. Water, thunder, wind, stars, buffalo, deer, elk, and peculiar geological phenomena, such as a twenty-ton rock left forty thousand years ago near Topeka by the receding glacier, and just about everything else in the natural world all were sacred to the Kansas. For the tragic and damning landscape story about the great red sacred prayer rock now on display in Robinson Park in Lawrence, see George Morehouse, "Religion of the Indians, Especially of the Kansa or Kaws," in Kansas State Historical Society, Twenty-seventh Biennial Report, 1928-1930 (Topeka, Kans.: State Printing Office, 1931), 40-50; "Plays Historic Role," Topeka Daily Capital, September 18, 1929; "Lawrence Grabs That Shunganunga Boulder," ibid.; "Huge Boulder Faces Still More Trouble," ibid., September 21, 1929; "Huge Boulder Is Brought to City," Lawrence Daily ]ournal- World, September 19, 1929; "Shunganunga Boulder Is the Earliest Settler in Kansas ... ," ibid., September 20, 1929; "Folklore Offers Insights about Kanza Indians," ibid., November 8, 1976. 8. William E. Unrau, "Indian Water Rights to the Middle Arkansas: The Case of the Kaws," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 5 (Spring 1982): 53-54. 274 Wtzter in Willow Springs Township 9. William Beck, "Hydromythology and Ethnohydrology in the New World," Water Resources Research 17 (April 1981): 262-67. 10. The sacred shell of the Kansas was called Waska' Ha'ga or Waska' waxo'be. The people of the sacred shell were called Waska' waxo'be onikkasinga of the Ibache clan, whose responsibility it was to light the sacred pipe. 11. George P. Morehouse, The Kanza or Kaw Indians and Their History, and The Story of Padilla (Topeka, Kans.: State Printing Office, 1908), 5. 12. David I. Bushnell Jr., Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 77 (Washington, D.C.: Government Print- ing Office, 1922) 89-90. 13. Unrau, "Indian Water Rights to the Middle Arkansas," 54. 14. James Owen Dorsey Papers, boxes 241, 252, 1882, Department of Anthropology, National Anthropological Archives, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 15. "All Things Are Connected" (typescript response to the 3pt Street alignment of the South Lawrence Traf- ficway, Federal Highway Administration, Topeka, Kans., December 23, 1994), 10. 16. The Kansa Indians claimed a vast territory that covered most of modern Kansas. According to notes made by Auguste Chouteau and George C. Sibley from 1816 to 1818, the Kansas's domain stretched south from the Kansas River to the Neosho River, northeast from the Kansas River across Missouri and into Iowa, and as far west as the confluence of the Republican and Solomon Rivers. Their hunting grounds, which they used twice each year, went west as far as the Colorado state line; see William E. Unrau, The Kansa Indians: A History of the Wind People, 1673-1873 (Norman. Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 98. Before the Kansas came to this territory, native people who lived here as far back as 20,000 B. C. claimed the land around Lawrence and the Wakarusa valley. For a summary of many Indian sites on this land, see Mary Elizabeth Chambers and Sally Kress Tompkins, The Cultural Resources of Clinton Lake, Kansas: An Inventory of Archaeol- ogy, History and Architecture (Fairfax, Va.: Iroquois Research Institute, 1977). 17. The Kansas's cession was reciprocated by the federal government. "For this vast domain the Kansas were promised $2,000 worth of cloth, vermilion, guns, ammunition, kettles, hoes, axes, knives, flints, awls, and tobacco, to be issued each September for an indefinite period; a blacksmith was also promised-to keep their guns and implements in good repair." See Unrau, The Kansa Indians, 103. 18. Ibid., 107. 19. Frank Horrell, "Hole-in-the-Rock," Lawrence Outlook (December 28, 1961): 20; Matilda Jackson, "Hole-in- the-Rock" (manuscript, Elizabeth M. Watkins Museum, Lawrence, Kans.). 20. Karl Niebrugge, interview by Dennis Domer, January 23, 1989; Lester Schwarz, interview by Dennis Domer, July 15, 1989. 21. Loren Litteer, "The Legendary Hole in the Rock," Baldwin Ledger, August 26, 1976; "Hole-in-the-Rock," Lawrence Daily journal-World, January 26, 1986; Homer E. Socolofsky and Huber Self, Historical Atlas of Kansas (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 11-13. For a discussion of the turmoil that resulted in Kansas when eastern tribes were moved in after the U.S. government negotiated a land cession with Kansa, Osage, and Pawnee Indians, see H. Craig Miner and William E. Unrau, The End of Indian Kansas: A Study of Cultural Revolution, 1854-1871 (Lawrence, Kans.: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978). 22. "Hole-in-the-Rock" Lawrence Daily Journal-World, January 26, 1986. 23. Margaret Hill McCarter,A Wall of Men (Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Co., 1912), 14. 24. Ibid., chapter 1. 25. William E. Connelley, History of Kansas, State and People, vol. 1 (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1928), 100. The Kansas State Historical Society retains two copies of Brown's original notes on the trail. Travelers may roughly follow the Santa Fe Trail in Willow Springs with Marc Simmons, Following the Santa Fe Trail: A Guide far Modern Travelers (Santa Fe, N.M.: Ancient City Press, 1984) and Hobart E. Stocking, The Road to Santa Fe (New York: Hastings House, 1971). An accurate route of the trail through Willow Springs Township appears in Adam Waits, Map of Historic Douglas County Kansas (Lawrence, Kans.: Douglas County Historical Society, 1984). 26. Frank Horrell, "Willow Springs" (manuscript, Elizabeth M. Watkins Museum). 27. Black willows are hearty in eastern Kansas and grow in "any moist area, stream banks, lake shores, pastures, sloughs, and roadside ditches; rich loam, rocky or sandy soil." See H.A. Stephens,· Woody Plants of the North Central Plains (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1973), 48-49. 28. Wayne Flory, interview by Dennis Domer, April 8, 1993. 29. Wilson E. Hobbs, "The Friends Establishment in Kansas Territory," Kansas Historical Collections, 1903-1904 8 (1904): 257. 30. A usufructuary right is "the legal right of using and enjoying the fruits or profits of something belonging to another," according to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. 31. Virgil Shoemaker, interview by Dennis Domer, July 24, 1989. Shoemaker (1909-1991), a lifelong resident of Willow Springs Township, was full of water-finding stories. He also was a successful water witcher who used two pieces of number nine wire as his witching rods. Arthur J. Ellis provides a bibliography of more than fifteen hundred citations on water witching. See Arthur J. Ellis, The Divining Rod: A History of Water Witching, U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 416 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938). 32. For detailed histories of windmills, including their marketing and sale, see T. Lindsay Baker, A Field Guide to American Windmills (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985) and Volta Torrey, Wind-Catchers: American Windmills ofYesterday and Tomorrow (Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Greene Press, 1976). Dennis Domer 275 33. Alfred E. Wolff, The Windmill as a Prime Mover, 2d ed. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1888). 34. Wayne Flory interview, April 14, 1993. 35. Ellis, The Divining Rod; Shoemaker interview. Charles C. Howes, This Place Called Kansas (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952), 198-99, notes that "many water witches once made a substantial stipend by going about the country water witching for a fee, but others who had the 'power' performed their services as a friendly and neighborly act in their community." People born in Willow Springs Township during the early twentieth century talk about witching (or divining) water with profound belief. The most frequent water witching tool is a forked branch of a willow, peach, or preferably hazel tree, but almost anything will do if you have the power. No one has an explanation for this ability, and the ideology of science does everything it can to discount this deep-seated belief system. But an old tradition is not easily washed away. Wayne Flory and the other Florys named in this essay are Dunkers, Old German Baptists, whose religion does not permit them to listen to the radio or watch television. The St. John's and Worden Germans did not have these restrictions. All these religious groups, however, place baptism, a water rite, at the heart of their faith. Baptism symbolizes salvation in the Christian community, and baptismal variations defined the religious landscapes in Willow Springs Township, where the settlers had different beliefs about baptism. Baptism sepa- rated them into different churches, and the churches separated them into different neighborhoods around these churches. Regarding the various doctrinal beliefs respecting baptism, see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972). 36. Kansas General Statutes, Supplement (1963), 600-13; see also Earl B. Shurtz, Kansas Water Law (Topeka, Kans.: Kansas Water Resources Board, 1967), 39-41; Special Water Districts in Kansas (Topeka, Kans.: Kan- sas Water Resources Board, 1967), 23-24; Rural Water Districts in Kansas, Bulletin 18 (Topeka, Kans.: Kan- sas Water Resources Board, 1975), 1-4. 37. Kansas General Statutes, Supplement (1963), 600-13. 38. Donna Luckey, "The Impact of Rural Water Districts on the Conversion of Agricultural Land in Douglas County, Kansas," Journal of Soil & U'ater Conservation 44 (May-June 1989): 252-53. 39. Michael J. Hickman, Douglas County Rural Water District No. 2 Lawrence, Kansas, Exhibit E (1993), 2 (Rural Water District Office, Baldwin, Kans.). 40. For a more detailed summation of important aspects in the histories of water districts in Douglas County, see Donna Luckey, "The Impact of Rural Water Districts," 253-55. 41. Master Plan far Clinton Lake, Kansas River Basin, Wakarusa River, Kansas, Multiple-Purpose Project (Kansas City, Mo.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1985), I-1. 42. For information on the nine communities that Clinton Lake affected directly, see Martha Parker and Betty Laird, Soil of Our Souls: Histories of the Clinton Lake Area Communities (Lawrence, Kans.: Parker-Laird Enter- prises, 1980). For locations of the Native American sites, see Chambers and Tompkins, The Cultural Resources of Clinton Lake, Kansas, 45. 43. Clinton Dam: The Heart of the Lake (n.p.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District, n.d.); Master Plan far Clinton Lake, II-2. In 1985 the corps made a population study of its "area of influence," which shows that the greatest population growth in the region is nearest Clinton Lake. The counties with the highest growth rates were Douglas (16.8 percent), Jefferson (27.3 percent), Johnson (24.2 percent), Miami (12.3 per- cent), and Osage (14.7 percent). 44. Arthur Worthington, interview by Dennis Domer, December 21, 1995. 45. Mark Buhler, interview by Dennis Domer, December 14, 1995. 46. Don Fuston, interview by Dennis Domer, December 22, 1995. 47. Wayne Flory interview, April 14, 1993. 48. Bryan A. Bain, "Groundwater Qyality Monitoring Network, 1992 Annual Report," (Topeka, Kans.: Kansas Department of Health and Environment, 1994). 49. Kansas Rural Center, "Rural Papers," no. 122 (September 1995), 1. 50. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," in The College Survey of English Literature, ed. B.J. Whiting et al. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1951), 79. Building Community Power Structures, 1984-1998: The Rise of Grassroots Neighborhood Influence Steve Lopes Lawrence, Kansas, residents enjoy a benefit that any American city would envy: everyone loves it. That's the good news, but it's also the bad news. Lawrence may at first appear as simply another bland, colorless, unexciting but comfortable Midwest place name to those from the East and West Coasts who might be driving through Kansas at night. To those of us who stopped, Lawrence is one fine place to settle, and, perchance, to grow ... , and grow ... , and grow. To quote the theme from the October 26, 1991, Lawrence League of Women Voters bus tour, "Larry, Larry, How Does Your City Grow?" The answer is: Bigger and bigger, reaching a population of 72,000 in 19991; Lawrence is a fast-growing city. Some of us folks, however, don't think bigger is necessarily better ... or brighter. Unlike dying rust-belt cities courting any employer, no matter how sullied, Lawrence is attractive and-some feel-too easy. Many in the "in-group" of establishment moneyed interests advocate unfettered growth, along with unlimited profits. The "out-group" challenges this easy virtue and advocates consideration of long-term consequences for the community. University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis characterizes Lawrence politics as an informal bipolar model. 2 On one side are traditional, establishment, mostly conservative interests best represented by the Chamber of Commerce, the media empire, and development cartel (real estate, banking, construction, etc.). At the other pole gathers a motley aggregation of single interest groups with tangential or occasionally intersecting collabo- rations. These neighborhood activists, preservationists, environmentalists, growth resistors, artists, civil and human rights advocates, and others, congeal as common issues arise. The clashes between these opposing forces swing back and forth in cycles with one group holding a tentative majority while the other plays defense. This discussion of the building of community power structures in the last two decades of the twentieth century will attempt to document the impact of perceived "out-groups" on Lawrence politics. I have not attempted to be objective in this analysis: my sympathy rests solidly with the grassroots community groups aligned to maintain and promote a collective quality of life. The 1981 Rising City politics in 1979 were salad days for the solid establishment majority supporting city manager Buford Watson's agenda for an ever-expanding Lawrence. City commissioners Don Binns, Ed Carter, .. Bob Schumm, and Barkley Clark tolerated the continuing objections from spunky new commissioner marci francisco. But in the 1981 election, what candidate Mike Amyx called an "undercover coalition," was elected to join francisco. Amyx complained that candidates "Shontz and Gleason ... had been charged with being delegates of the 'no growth' coalition in town."3 In protest, Amyx withdrew from the race. 277 278 Building Community Power Structures 1984-1998: The Rise of Grassroots Neighborhood Influence l1~BADGEI\ by~ In" C.ro.fure Thcit A~ Lllvrentel The Cre~ture a.ttemrts to blo.nket the city with full·poje, new.spo.per Cl~s ... NO, YES, NO. Nancy Shontz topped the ballot, followed by incumbent Barkley Clark and Tom Gleason. Incumbents Schumm and Carter, both strongly endorsed by Lawrence Homebuilders Associa- tion and the Lawrence Labor Council, were ousted. On April 5, 1981, the day before the election, a full page Journal-World ad, disguised as supporting Amyx' withdrawal, actually attacked Gleason and Shontz by name. This divisive elec~ion was characterized as "neighborhoods vs. the community'' in the media, and was the first time an overtly pro-neighborhood majority was elected to the Lawrence city commission. Although Gleason and Shontz won, the pro-growth establishment, like the Empire, would soon strike back. In the next two years, Gleason had to beat back a nasty recall election and the city com- mission majority denied Shontz her term as mayor. In each biennial election, three city com- missioners are elected. The two top voter gatherers win four-year terms, while the third high- est is seated for two years. It had been a tradition for four-year term winners to be elected to the largely ceremonial position of mayor. In 1983, the growth group helped elect David Longhurst, Mike Amyx, and Ernest Angina. This majority elected newcomer David Longhurst mayor instead of Nancy Shontz. From 1984 to 1987, the pro-growth Empire held a solid majority on the city commission and was on the verge of erecting an imposing monument in the heart of downtown Lawrence. Godzilla's Footprint: Citizens for a Better Downtown (CBD) vs. the JVJ Mall Lawrence has one of the few remaining viable and charming downtown commercial dis- tricts in the country, but it has been a political battleground. The 1964 comprehensive city plan called "Guide for Growth," suggested closing Massachusetts Street to create a pedestrian mall. This was followed by a 197 4 retail, hotel, and office complex proposal suggested for the 600 Massachusetts block. In 1978, a "cornfield mall" plan threatened downtown and several other downtown proposals were rejected. In the early 1980s the Sizler development dueled with Town Center Venture Corporation (TCVC) for reconfiguring downtown. On October 27, 1986, Cleveland, Ohio, developers Jacobs, Visconsi, Jacobs QVJ) and Town Center Venture Corp (TCVC) arrogantly pre- sented the city with a mall proposal that would cover a downtown footprint from Kentucky to New Hampshire and Sixth to Seventh Streets OVJ was the developer of record that had threatened to build the 1978 cornfield mall).4 The audacity of this take-it-or-leave-it plan hit a nerve with the community. Imagine no Liberty Hall, no Free State Brewery, and no 600 block Massachusetts Street. Imagine the backside of a stacked parking garage facing our train park. But worst of all, JVJ and TCVC's agents Dave Evans and Duane Schwada felt their mall deserved to own the heart of our downtown and said so in many full page newspaper ads. Lawrence was the larg- est city in America without a mall, and they made this sound like a serious liability. Resistance was swift and fierce. In my role as Old West Lawrence president, I said, "It will create serious traffic problems around our homes. We've been worried about the fringes of our neighborhood especially with development on Sixth and Ninth and now with the mall on the east, we're beginning to feel like a fortress neighborhood."5 This mall initiative became a clarion call to many Lawrence citizens. By January 1987, Pat Kedhe and Phil Minkin resurrected Citizens for a Better Downtown (CBD)6 as a grassroots effort to stop the pro- posed 360,000 square foot JVJ development project. CBD called a meeting at the Lawrence Public Library February 3, 1987, to an over- Steve Lopes 279 flow community response.7 In the next nine days, CBD volunteers collected 4,430 signatures (2,263 were needed) on a petition drafted to thwart the mall project once and for all. CBD accepted considerable pro bono advice from Lawrence attorneys on how best to make the wording on the petition clear and most binding. The petition citizens signed asked: "Shall the following be adopted?(sic) Massachusetts Street and Vermont Street shall not be closed or vacated from Sixth Street to Eleventh Street?" A yes vote would favor the ordinance.8 Kedhe and Minkin presented a package of petition signatures to the county clerk on February 13, tied with a big red bow. "It may be Friday the 13th for somebody, but it's the day before Valentine's Day for us," said Phil Minkin.9 The sitting commission unwisely divided this populist concern into three confusing ballot questions, which infuriated even more citizens. 10 1. Massachusetts Street and Vermont Street shall not be closed or vacated from Sixth Street to Eleventh Street. 2. The City of Lawrence, Kansas, shall spend public funds, be they State, federal or local, for the purpose of assisting in the building of an enclosed shopping mall in the central business district of Lawrence, Kansas. 3. None of the streets in the central business district of Lawrence, Kansas, shall be vacated for the purpose of constructing an enclosed mall. 11 ]VJ ran daily full-page ads (at $758.62 each) urging a "No, Yes, No" vote while opponents decided on the bumper sticker "Keep Mass. St. Open: Vote Yes on #1." The Old West Lawrence Neighborhood Association president urged, "Let's get a new commission in there. I say vote 'no' on three incumbents; not on three questions."12 Tim Miller, editor of Plumber's Friend, was more succinct: "The incumbent commission has ... told 4430 citizens to go jump in the lake. Those 4430 persons have had their rights trampled by the commission's jackboots."13 On election day, the people spoke. In all thirty-two polling precincts, the contrived ballot questions were voted down 3-1, validating citizen disapproval of the JVJ proposal and the incumbents. More importantly, the idealistic petition carriers joined forces with the more prac- tical Old West Lawrence Political Action Committee (OWL-PAC) to enter hardball electoral politics. All agreed in the end that what was needed were three friendly new faces on a reconfigured city commission, regardless of the referenda outcome. OWL-PAC: The First Neighborhood Political Action Committee in Kansas Mary Thomas, a mild-mannered but politically savvy University Place neighborhood resi- dent invited neighborhood activists to her Indiana Street home on January 29, 1987, to meet her preferred candidates for the upcoming city commission election. She tried to convince the organized neighborhood association leaders to back a slate of pro-neighborhood/anti-mall can- didates in the April elections. Most of the neighborhood leaders knew that their constituents were not ready for such a risky stand, but after spirited debate, they divided the question. Those neighborhood leaders who were politically inclined gravitated to what would be- come the Old West Lawrence Political Action Committee (OWL-PAC). There was also inter- est among the organized neighborhoods to meet for what would eventually become the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods (LAN). The parallel evolution of LAN will be discussed below. OWL-PAC Is Hatched The Old West Lawrence (OWL) neighborhood is well known for outward charm and inward feistiness. After the Civil War and William Clarke Quantrill's version of urban renewal, the merchant class built fine Gilded Age Victorian homes that anchor the Old West Lawrence 280 Building Community Power Structures 1984-1998: The Rise of Grassroots Neighborhood Influence O\'?'L-PAC logo I National Historic District. Modest bungalows and cottages along with compatible ·infill have promoted diversity and community. With commercial threats along the north (Sixth Street), south (Ninth Street) and along its eastern border with the central business district, OWL has a long history of defending its tur£ Rebounding from near-slum status in the 1960s, OWL has been rehabilitated into what House Beautiful magazine has described as "one of the finest resi- dential neighborhoods in America." 14 In late 1986, the OWL eastern front was threatened. The neighborhood was confronted with the possibility of facing the ugly backside of the proposed JVJ mall along the 600 Ken- tucky block and with a controversial city commission decision to rezone the residential 800 block between Kentucky and Tennessee Streets. This action would allow the Douglas County Bank to build a new parking lot after destroying eight homes and reducing the OWL neigh- borhood by a full city block (see Historic Preservation Comes of Age, below). OWL-PAC started when beloved Old West Lawrence curmudgeon John Jennings stated in frustration at the January 28, 1987, Old West Lawrence meeting, "Well, hell, let's just start a PAC!" Many OWL members, annoyed with the pending JV] Mall project, felt the CBD petition drive would be ignored by city officials. To John's surprise, Phil Minkin, Michel and Burdett Loomis, and other OWL activists saw considerable wisdom in his lament. They met at John's home on Sunday, January 31, 1987, to found OWL-PAC, the first neighborhood political action committee in Kansas. "We wanted to give the neighborhoods some clout so the candidates and the commission will have to listen to our concerns."15 The mission statement was to the point: "The purpose of the PAC is to promote neigh- borhood issues, apprise candidates of neighborhood concerns and assess candidates in light of neighborhood issues. Membership is open to any Lawrence resident supportive of our posi- tions." 16 The OWL president noted, "We are at a crucial juncture and we have the ability to take control of our collective destiny in Lawrence politics .... What we do by April 7 will be with us for a very long time." 17 OWL-PAC guided the CBD anti-mall protesters toward a more effective outcome, that of electing friends to the city commission. It expended over $4,000 in small donations for candi- date media exposure and endorsement advertisements. OWL-PAC also sponsored candidate forums on February 22 and April 2, 1987, which allowed PAC members to ask each candidate pointed questions. After each forum, dues-paying members (minimum $25 contribution) met and voted on endorsements. In the primary, OWL-PAC endorsed Dennis Constance, Henry Johns, Mike Rundle, and Bob Schumm from the ten primary candidates. On primary election night, Bob Schumm, incumbent Ernest Angino, and Dennis Constance topped the ticket, followed by Mike Rundle, Howard Hill, and Ellis Hayden (who eliminated incumbent David Longhurst by five votes). The March 4, 1987, Journal-World noted that the top three primary winners had always been the winners in every general election since 1975 and anticipated no change. 18 The edito- rial noted, "Three of the four people endorsed by the newly formed Old West Lawrence Po- G ~@fl@l2J(D litical Action Committee made the finals, re-establishing the clout which neighborhood ~~ '©~ units can exert when they organize and concentrate on given issues."19 e