This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927
312
This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927
312Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252097614 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 08/30/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 312 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
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This is Not Dixie
Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861â"1927
By Brent M. S. Campney
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09761-4
CHAPTER 1
"Light Is Bursting upon the World!"
"A nigger hunt came off in [Doniphan] County, on Tuesday," reported the Kansas Chief in July 1861. Alerted to the flight of four fugitive slaves from Missouri and insensitive to their plight, a party of whites from Wathena set out in pursuit, capturing them west of town. After one of the whites was slashed, the others fatally shot the offending slave in the first known lynching in Kansas during the Civil War period. They then returned the remaining fugitives to bondage in Missouri. Reflecting on these events, the Kansas Chief asked: "Is Kansas still to be made a negro hunting ground?" White Kansans eager to impose white supremacy in the young state would soon answer this question in the affirmative.
During the 1850s individual slaves had fled Missouri surreptitiously for Kansas. With the onset of the Civil War in April 1861 and the resultant guerrilla conflict in the border region, they took advantage of the turmoil and absconded in much larger numbers. In 1862 the Leavenworth Daily Times reported a "stampede" so general that portions of Missouri were "almost denuded" of blacks: "Slaves are leaving by day and by night. Few owners pretend to stay the exodus. Many pack up their 'duds' and walk boldly off in broad day, while others quietly retire in the night. Should the flight continue at the present rate, by the time 1866 rolls around, the slaves of the State will scarcely be worth counting."
So many slaves poured into Kansas that the black population surged from 627 in 1860 to 12,641 (constituting 8.9 percent of the state total) in 1865. As a result, white Kansans soon found themselves living in close quarters with a substantial free black population. "At the present rate of emigration," worried the Kansas Chief, "our State will soon be on a par with South Carolina — more niggers than white persons." In the midst of this "nigger invasion," white Kansans volunteered views that shortly would become commonplace. "Almost every day hundreds of our negro population may be seen idling their time away without any visible means of support," asserted one. In his estimate, blacks were lazy and shortsighted, devoid of the "ambition [required] to provide for the future" and "guilty of many petty crimes" which, compared to those of whites, "stand in the ratio of fifty to one." So petrified were whites about the long-term implications of this influx that as early as 1863 they wondered: "What will be done with them when the war is over?"
Some white Kansans resorted to intimidation and violence to stanch the 'invasion,' as the 'nigger hunt' in Doniphan County suggested. Generally, however, they restrained themselves, recognizing that the aggressive subordination of blacks would distract them from the more pressing objective of winning the war. The Oskaloosa Independent articulated this conviction in 1863. "Men will do harm by throwing these needless questions into politics," it warned. "Put down the rebellion first, so that we may know whether we have a country to live in at all, and if so what kind of a one." Whites could assert their control over the migrants later: "Kill off the rebels and then it will be time enough to discuss side issues."
The Independent subscribed to a widely held belief that an all-white state could best be realized by vanquishing the Confederacy, destroying the peculiar institution, and thereby ending or reversing black flight from the South. "As long as they remain in slavery we are sure to have them with us," it noted, "but if that accursed system is abolished, then we can give the negro a place to himself, and open new fields for white labor. Or, if it is found best to keep the negroes in the South to raise cotton," then that could be done as well. The Kansas Chief republished an Illinois editorial reinforcing that belief with another. "What climate does the negro prefer?" it asked. "The tropics.... If, then, slavery were abolished all over the Union, and the negroes allowed to choose the places where they would live, where would they be likely to fix their homes? In the Gulf States."
Although many ordinary whites in the North and their political representatives remained skeptical about the eventual return of the fugitive slaves to the South, those in Kansas both tolerated and encouraged the influx throughout the war. Pro-Union guerrillas called Jayhawkers conducted destructive raids into Missouri in 1861 and "'liberated' hundreds of slaves in the name of suppressing rebellion." By the end of this campaign, the Kansas troops "were accompanied by hundreds of Negroes, many of whom were serving as teamsters, cooks, and even soldiers."
Some historians have interpreted this active support of the fugitive influx as evidence that white Kansans now favored rights for the blacks. They "welcomed the runaways," argued Nicole Etcheson, and "were at the forefront of pushing for black rights." Averring that whites were driven by "complex" motivations, she asserted that most underwent a profound transformation. In a shift that had been "unthinkable only a few years earlier," white Kansans "now accepted the new population." During their political struggles of the 1850s, she added, they "had gradually broadened their definition of liberty to include more rights for blacks." Similarly, Robert G. Athearn concluded that white residents expressed no "noticeable resentment over the arrival of Negroes."
This book challenges this sanguine interpretation of racial progress. It posits instead that most white Kansans tolerated the black influx owing to naked self-interest: blacks were indispensable to the war effort. By encouraging slaves to flee Missouri, Unionists, "even negrophobic ones," recognized that "depriving enemies of their labor force would injure them economically and psychologically." Reporting on the flight of slaves, the Leavenworth Daily Times took vindictive pleasure in the losses endured in Missouri: "We hope the people 'over there' are satisfied with the result of the secession experiment they inaugurated in 1861; and that they have found their rights." Moreover, white Kansans understood that by employing the "contraband" denied to the enemy, they could offset their own war-related labor shortages. A farmer reported that "many farms are not cultivated ... for want of working men." He added that it "would be a great blessing ... if more darkies would ... come to our aid."
Because black labor was so critical to the war effort, white Kansans and Missourians struggled fiercely to control it. When, therefore, the Freedom's Champion learned that whites in Monrovia were threatening to "[run] out the negroes" from that Kansas town in 1862, it issued a blunt warning to the malcontents: "They no doubt hold very sound and conservative doctrine, according to Jeff. Davis' standard, but it won't go down in Kansas — our people will not swallow it, unfortunately being disinclined to aid slaveholders, even if they make the loudest possible professions of loyalty when a negro is at stake. The less of such kind of conservatism we have in Kansas, the better." In addition, white Kansans organized to prevent Missouri slave hunters from reclaiming their much-needed black labor force. "We warn all those having negroes in their employ, to keep the strictest watch," wrote the Champion. Many responded aggressively, with some taking extraordinary measures. "Kidnapping negroes and carrying them back to Missouri is becoming frequent," noted the Kansas Chief. "The people are arming to put a stop to the game; and the negroes are also being armed."
Nonetheless, slave hunters, the so-called hell-hounds of slavery, continued to roam Kansas during the first two years of the war in a determined effort to capture and return the chattel of aggrieved Missouri masters — although in practice they routinely kidnapped free blacks, disregarded their status, and treated them as fugitive slaves. In January 1863, however, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which ultimately spelled the end of slavery. In August of that year General Thomas Ewing Jr., in response to the burning of Lawrence and the murder of 150 men there by Missouri guerillas, signed General Order No. 11, which resulted in the large-scale evacuation and destruction of four Missouri border counties. With the issuance of the Proclamation and, in particular, the implementation of the order, slave hunting evidently came to an abrupt halt in the late summer of 1863.
Some white Kansans quickly realized that they could employ fugitives as soldiers to supplement their forces. In the summer of 1862, Kansas senator and Union general James Lane formed the First Kansas Colored Volunteers. Critics questioned the practice. One objected that it would be "a terrible outrage to fight rebels with negroes"; another bluntly warned Lane to "keep [the black soldiers] away from the 'Kansas troops in the field,' for 'with one exception, there is not a Kansas regiment from which they would not have as much to fear as from the rebels.'"
Yet with a succession of defeats in the East, a continuous flow of young white Kansans into battle, the negative impact of the war on the local economy, and a growing sense of despair across the state, many eventually accepted Lane's assertion that blacks might "just as well become food for powder" as whites. In soothing the apprehensions of opponents, the Oskaloosa Independent espoused pragmatism. "What shall be done with the negroes? is a question that is asked by the timid," it declared. "The answer is plain. Put arms into their hands and let them shoot rebels." It concluded that "he is either a fool or a traitor who would not employ such material to put down the rebellion, when it is furnished ready to hand, and in such abundance."
Once convinced, whites demanded that blacks enlist. In June 1864 the Leavenworth Evening Bulletin reported the opening of a local recruiting office "to fill up the colored regiments" and then justified the need: "The regiments raised in this State have seen much hard service. Their ranks have become decimated and must be filled up." By October, it simply stated that "every colored man should be ordered to join.... They owe it." Lane was no less demanding: "We don't want to threaten, but we have been saying that you would fight, and if you won't fight we will make you." Albert Castel has adroitly summarized the volte-face and the motives behind it: "If ... the willingness of Kansans to have Negroes serve in the army had 'wonderfully increased' by the summer of 1862, it was ... not out of any Garrisonian zeal to 'elevate' the colored man by putting a musket in his hands."
Thereafter, military officials recruited ruthlessly. "A farmer informs us," noted the Kansas Chief, "that a recruiting officer solicited a negro whom he had employed, to volunteer, but the negro replied that he did not want to. The officer told him he would make him do so, and the next day sent two men who forcibly took the negro away." Despite the earnest desire of newly freed black men to forge the stable households denied them under slavery, the military hardly gave "a farthing to the poor negroes, who, in many instances had been pressed into the service without a moment's warning, or an opportunity to make any provision for their families."
By the summer of 1864 the authorities were employing brutal coercion. "Colored men have been forced at the point of the bayonet to leave their employment and their homes, and compelled to volunteer," noted the Leavenworth Evening Bulletin. "In some cases men have been held up by their thumbs and thus tortured till they have consented." Black recruiters were no more sympathetic. When they shot a black 'recruit,' they told a reporter that they had "orders to arrest every colored man who would make a good soldier." In evaluating these recruiting tactics, historian Dudley Taylor Cornish wryly noted: "Perhaps the word 'volunteers' in the name of the Kansas Negro regiment was slightly inaccurate."
Several newspapers admitted discomfort concerning these tactics. "In a free country," mused the Oskaloosa Independent, "this thing of forcing men to enlist will not work." The Kansas Chief questioned the hypocrisy involved. "Is not this act downright kidnapping, the same as if they were carried away to work for their masters?" Many, however, agreed with the Bulletin: "It ... is a species of slavery and involuntary servitude only one remove from the system practiced on the cotton plantations of the South," but "we shall not complain. It is negro enslaving negro, under the sanction of the military authorities, acquiesced in by our neighbors."
White Kansans protected black fugitives during the war because they benefited from their manual labor and their military service. They did not protect them because they had altered their racial attitudes, as the gap between their rhetoric and their behavior towards slave hunters attested. In such newspapers as Freedom's Champion white Kansans condemned "nigger catching" as the "most despicable [business] in which a free white man can be employed" and declared that "nothing but cold lead will atone for their crimes, and if we do not greatly mistake the temper of the people of Kansas, they will get it." In practice, they showed unwavering mercy for slave hunters. Those in Wyandotte revealed this in 1863 when they prevented the lynching of an alleged hell-hound in the custody of a black mob. The following day, whites set out to deliver him to military officials in Leavenworth but failed in their mission. "Less than ten miles from this city," explained the Wyandotte Commercial Gazette, "through their leniency or his own agility, he made his escape."
The Freedom's Champion recognized this inconsistency. Thieves of other kinds "have been punished, and justly too, with unsparing vengeance," but vigilantes took no "notice of negro thieves. While it has been considered a crime of the greatest magnitude to steal a horse, negro stealing has not ... called forth a murmur of disapprobation." In fact, white mobs lynched at least thirty-nine white men during the war, thirty-three of them for alleged property crimes (usually horse theft) and the others for murder or attempted murder. None were lynched for slave hunting.
As indicated by their almost congenital unwillingness to lynch those accused of slave hunting, many white Kansans considered the whiteness of these men inviolable, irrespective of their crimes against blacks. Brian R. Dirck has written about the "sense of white racial solidarity" that bound white northerners and southerners together over such issues as the Emancipation Proclamation. "Even though the weariness and ugliness of the war had hardened a great many white Northerners into supporters of emancipation as an effective military weapon," he noted, "others hesitated to embrace it because it seemed a bit too nasty, a bit too extreme a measure to inflict upon fellow white people — even rebels." Similarly, Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel observed that "the northern faction may have 'won' the battle in ... Kansas, but ultimately, whiteness won the war."
When the Civil War ended, President Andrew Johnson took a conservative approach to the restructuring of the South, favoring a restoration of white supremacy, endorsing the passage of the Black Codes, aimed at the resubordination of the blacks, and issuing wholesale pardons to former Confederates. As a result, Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in 1866 and took over Reconstruction. Committed to racial equality, the radicals undertook to impose on the vanquished South a new social order defined by full participation by blacks in civil and political life, a free-labor economy, and a dominant Republican Party.
Within the devastated South, whites and blacks set about the task of establishing new social relations on the wreckage of slavery. To reestablish their dominance in "a society suddenly turned bottomside up," white mobs employed unrelenting violence on a grand scale. Steven Hahn concluded evocatively that "political power in the Reconstruction South grew out of the barrel of a gun."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from This is Not Dixie by Brent M. S. Campney. Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
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