1863 Commemorate Lawrence

this year marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of one of the defining moments in the history of this area one trolls reda and the sacking of lawrence in eighteen sixty three i'm kate mcintyre and today on k pr present we mark the beginning of the year is activities highlighting the history of warren's and the surrounding area later this hour we'll hear about that eating sixty three raid from a panel of historians who spoke recently at the lawrence arts center but first as part of the yearlong eighteen sixty three commemorate lawrence project pulitzer prize winning author tony horwitz is speaking at liberty hall in downtown lawrence this thursday april fourth mr horwitz is the author of several bestselling books including his most recent midnight rising john brown and the raid that spark the civil war he's taught at historic liberty hall in downtown lawrence is sponsored by the lawrence public library foundation and will be moderated by university of kansas history professor jonathan earle himself an author and a noted expert

on john brown and the civil war to me where woods joined us by telephone from his home in massachusetts thanks for taking the time to talk with us today so much has already been written about john brown his timing kansas and his attack on harpers ferry how do you find a fresh angle for this story god forbid question there been a number by pretty thin and we're going back really asked than fifty years i wanted to focus only on writing music festival narrative for a non academic audience so i don't get into a debate among historians or any of that i try and keep the action mostly in the aching fifteenth and i try and reconstruct instead accurately and vividly as i can tell what actually happened and wants let's go back to eighteen fifty five and specifically the spring and eighteen

fifty five john brown is at that point a new old and new york is not come to kansas yet but a number of his sons are living in kansas to tell us how they had a drawn here ryan whether with something that period are called him to favor campus that had recently been opened for settlement and with a combination of one of economic factors most of the browns a grown son lived in ohio which has been struck by a drought and also the desire to go out art and defend free if they can think again the encroachment of flavor it with a mix of economic and political forces that are brought to cut funds out there for them then he followed and i didn't just drown in one of the letters that one of them sent home we often think of those early free staters as being really brave and hardy felt that he describes them as a bunch of cowards

well and a tough guy and nothing up for it infuriated him more than what he felt was the creepiness in the faith of work bullying on to what i think knows this and and rights to his father saying that your fellow but they're prepared to fight against slavery but others there are cowering before the border ralph fiennes and then the pro slavery forces are you know i don't we don't entirely true up but not everyone with that willie brown to take up arms again flavors so in the fall of eighteen fifty five john brown moves to kansas to set the stage for us as far as what they're territorial legislature has been up to in cans is an end i'm answering a feel for what was happening then at that time rather ride them in the fall of eighteen fifty five up roughly three fourth who

really have the upper hand in cannes they've more left the ball in an early election there are forty or audience which with before a derogatory term for a pro slavery forces coming across with lori with us in candidate sometimes kill free faith that were armed and so really at that point it doesn't look terribly promising for the free they cause by putting a brown that ripen and forget is the family situation squared away because they are having a very hard time there anything can build at home and getting federal grand isle one pt get that's where the way it lived on immediately start taking a strong stance i got the feeling from your narrative dead and they don't really have it all that squared away that there's still a living out of tents now you know yet squared away that they

crafted that a faction of they were living in a very primitive fashion they were very thick you know they were having a very hard time of it up i think around with with more focused really on on the politics that he was you know making a good living there in kansas and he had a family never did when i think about john brown is not only is he unlike a lot of the other abolitionists in terms of being willing to take up arms but he also the parts on them rather dramatically in terms of what he wants for the african americans that a lot of free staters one in kansas to be a free state but they wanted it to be a white free state it actually are i think you we kind of the land we turn from jonathan the conversation of free staters the engine slavery people abolition of their really art of the camp and brown even among abolitionists you were a small minority

within the northern community up with exceptional an image you have of black people and many abolitionists i hated slavery wanted it to end immediately attracted with sort of you know leave it like people to do the job they viewed black rafael alba incapable of of fighting for their own freedom brown really took a very different view he treated black people he recruited them to his cause he thought the support of other prominent black white frederick douglass and harriet tubman and he felt it was really a moral and a practical necessity that black and white fight together and flavor if i really do think he was quite remarkable in that regard and also a lot of the politicians of the time really advocated a m e get rid of even if we get rid of slavery and let's send them back to africa and he thought that abraham lincoln was in

that camp since with the school byrd noted colonization had been around for decades the basic notion was that a black could never live an equal to whites in the country that freed slaves should be colonized with the word that really an offensive name deported to either africa or later the liberian africa but later on that with talk of love finding a colony from where in the caribbean and latin america and lincoln clung to this notion that really i think that the civil war for the fifth this idea died hard but blacks were generally are very opposed to it as work abolition let's jump ahead to made of eighteen to fifty six now most of us in lawrence think of the sacking of lawrence and we think of william kwan trial and eighteen sixty three but actually there was a sacking of wars that took place in at fifty sex yep in may of eighteen

fifty six there had been tension from for a month than three article i guess you would think they're reaching between a free state and then pro slavery up for through and then finally a really a full scale you know attack by the complete report on warrant which would you did you really have that the camorra you know i can get by by promptly reported the woods yet ventura prepaid an abolitionist really different and it's really what drop brown into the fight yet march toward previously went with threatened and he's on his way there oh when he learned fifth in fact and that leads to his famous attack on ottawa to a creek okay so may twenty four it eighteen fifty six walk us through that night and that pot a lot in the massacre in

order to lead the most of a controversial episode in john brown's career arc and there is a lot of debate about what exactly happened and why aren't buttons that we can determine a brown and a small party composed of some of the fun and a couple of other allied head off to the pro slavery feldman along pot a wad of a creek that we've known and that kind of bastion of pro slavery sentiment and quite close to where the ground had settled on there had been a threat the end and you know that relations between the two already autumn brown and the men go cap in the cabin and the court for the night our dragon five men out and happened to death we've brought forth on and this really shocking act

really a rooftop or you know get more trouble and help and part of what your bike or bike and can't really after that and that number that the territory become known in reading again so that really marked a turning point for kansas and kansas's history none of certainly marked a very dramatic turning point and in brown's career he had been planning and active an abolitionist activity for you know fifteen twenty years but this was really coming out they had the militant violence abolitionist and you really you know mark him to the grave and beyond with the old debated today about you know whether we can be in any fans embrace a man who who committed that kind of did in your

book midnight calling you detail than events of that night the witcher does grisly why such a brutal attack got to look at it in the context of what was going on in the territory it was already a low grade a guerrilla war and almost all the violence that point having committed by the approach where three fourths of that they didn't come out of but nowhere it on then i think it will be a combination of things for brown really a rage that has been building up for years and a feeling that the anti slavery for who had the hit back and the violin with violence for brown slavery and felt with the state of war ii and i think he saw that attack in that contract so it's time that that the heavy price that was paid because of that event in terms of his family there are a couple that were really a

terribly off guard psychologically by participating in them and others have infants who weren't there with him we're kind of on the run the ground that became a target that they were pursued by marshall divide proclaim free for through a couple of the fun for it captured one of the really odd and finally never recovered john brown jr i think that it had a somewhat fragile fight the goal of road years later about filthy owing guard by that experience i think a combination of really a shock of what his father had done but also the terror and reprisals the brown for properties were burned that women and children were forced to flee our focus was there with the devil you have a price and in the fighting that summer that followed one of brown's gone

badly wounded on the mall and thoughtful shot and then one of his son frederick hill tom barrett the battle blackjack in june of eighteen fifty six it's right on the heels of the pot a lot in the massacre capture the pot a lot in the magic or brown eventually elk goat into hiding in the bush and die within our life and he meets up with another on a grill abandoned the attack at a much larger crow flavor your fourth at blackjack on that by the standards of what's going to come and for the war the other a really a skirmish brown and an invalid prevail but the i think what's interesting about it for me and obviously people in kansas know about that history but that coming from the clothes thing and talking to a lot of people outside get that are often surprised when i tell them let us five years before the opening shot the civil war at fort sumter northerners and thaw the nurse on killing

each other over slavery and can't with a thump on in the open field combat it would not getting cannon heard it i think it's possible to argue that really the beginning of the civil war on or certainly up a preview of it and and black jacket a small battle but one of the one of the really one in this cycle of violence that escalated all through the summer of eight in fifty six and you note that they're pro slavery forces and they were tricked into thinking they were outnumbered by john brown in his and his men how did that happen yeah there are various that i count the senate without a kind of confused dervishes many folks were were very experienced them militarily and they reported that one of the road around behind them and it and they surrender then and i don't

remember the exact quote of the commander of the pro slavery forces letters that you know i went to get brown and he got the senate fell short of the record and they got their weapons an orifice so without you know without at that favored striking a trial the northerners i think any flavor northerners were used to being kind of pushed around by southerners not not in contact with a really hadn't been any of that even in a congress where you had the famous painting of an abolitionist senator a number of instances in which i felt interesting to be able to kind of you don't push around northerners and for brownout you know offered a strong counter example as one put it a good show that the yankees will find and fight again they did just a month later in an artist pro slavery is attacked the free staters at us a lot of me

all round legend really in the anti slavery circle are this would be of any anti slavery sentiment of a lot of the and actually was where members of the brown family had felt authentic with attacks by the much larger and better equipped fourth armed and proclaim three fourth is actually triumph in the battle but brown fight really quite a relic of a rear guard action are the rumors that he told his son frederick you've killed it just before the battle begins there and thereafter he goes by many of alias and the nickname for over the years but it is most commonly known as awful lot of ground a which is really up to the temple of the month is defiant stance and also of his sacrifice one of his fans what our most

interesting things about your book i think is how at that point john brown becomes kind about public relations machine well and after that he read that i can't have a number of the fun for the intruders thick they don't really have anywhere to live brown and felt very thick and in the fall of love eighteen fifty think he leave leave campaign and really try to parlay to a new camp that fame into a financial support because he's got much bigger plans to negotiate a really failed on a public relations for thinking about can you know you can carry the night that he captured at blackjack former wow the rather abolitionists of new england who are very impressed by this you know for cross

well ian warrior returning from the frontier public upcoming out a motive in early at fifty seven in in new england and new york two years later he would lead his famous assault on the armory at harpers ferry how do you get from a us what i'm a brown to harpers ferry that wont of a winding path that leads us another place to get back to camp the iowa and canada i did that the men to travel a great deal and he had a hard time pulling off a grand plan i think for him can really help warm up act and he had always heard nurtured this plan of really are taking the war to the flavor they are and making up a pole to strike that he felt would topple the institution of slavery

and ultimately he chooses to do that at harpers ferry virginia but it does it take him a couple of years to get the money out of the man and everything in place for that he can launch this attack is really a living underground during this period because he's wanted by state and federal authorities to one point he goes into victorian three eighth plague at gunpoint so he continued to be out a public figure and an inventory of one of the committee american art film he's you know quietly are laying the groundwork for this attack john burnett's obviously a man of really strong convictions and many of those came out of his religious faith and you describe him as being really influenced by by a calvinist beliefs of his family and i love you characterize him as being kind of an old testament guy know turn the other cheek for him the

theology was a very religious man and schooled in the fourteenth old school i can't live you know in some ways not entirely unlike the belief system of the puritans who came from new england in the seventeenth century and now keith all the world you know in rather black and white curve and i think strongly identified in particular with the warriors and in different stages of his life he would write it all about beauty and blowing trumpet he would feel selfish for the lead in a small pen begin the evildoers another point that he identified with motive reading when you write a lot about death and even thought i

think it's pulling down the pillars of play pretend and dying in the ruins ah don't you don't make allusions to the new testament the critically when he thought that improvement and approaching his martyrdom on the scaffold up with a generally speaking he's using old testament cox is you do a research for this book what surprised you the most about john brown one thing that surprised me in the tiki come to a radical abolition of them quite late mid point while he's up activity in a small way he governed first on for the national fame until even in the fifties which typically in that that we've concluded that they just often called the old man on what they get from so we can forget the vu meter long and rather checkered career that they add up to that point you with a struggling man and family man he fathered twenty

children aloft and first wife was eight of these children before they reached the age of ten he went bankrupt very difficult you know our first birth of fifty years in many respects but he was a tremendously resilient and kept out feedback from our fat back that i think would crush most of ours do you think maybe his professional failures and some of the hardships he went through in his personal life shaped him in a way for our quote unquote higher purpose he thought if the flow one of the questions that people interested in brown that constantly you know debate no i don't know and perhaps the alienated him more than he might otherwise at the end from the sort of american mainstream and as one writer put it with an american and they could never made it ours but i

don't think it explained is war and slavery as i really think part of the reason he knew what a couple of the businessman unfit op he would often occupied by planning plots that the overthrow of slavery i'm thinking in a way that was more important to him he wanted to support his family obviously but his heart wasn't really in the business that he went up pursuing fighting it's also possible to argue that if he'd had some think that he might have launched the new plan even earlier ad that was he really struggled for years just through our support his large families mr harwood secret and five other books and this one is in many respects it's quite a departure for you how did you come to not just this story but this style of writing

the mother both have tended to mix history with journalism on the journalist by training and i'm very interested in the contemporary thin and and how we remember history from another book that tended to we've caught between past and private at the time i quit without that i had been flooded quite quickly that i really wanted to keep the story in the end the nineteenth century on one because the chariot and i think that's where the story i didn't want to break that ballot the narrative fiat accompli you know a cutting away a twenty first century also a number of people have everything quite well i think about memory of brown in all the debates about how he should be remembered and i felt maybe an area that needed more attention was just a very up close and detailed focus on what actually happened and characters apart

from brown is not the only player in this story by any me and i think many of the people around him his family and supporters those who fight alongside him are also looking narrative more attention right by the thought that there were more than enough to work with my thinking through the history alone and leaving out the young journalism in trouble the fire so what's so you know i don't know i don't know the writing that you think you can or your phone in you either played history related topic and i've been doing a lot of reading but i have a stake in the league get a book into a big event climate your life really and i think you have to be a topic that really you know and the higher ground really an injection well for a number of years and the problem though in recovery

from the us well don't get there too fast as we're really looking forward to hearing you on april fourth at lawrence at liberty hall thank you so much for joining us today that's pulitzer prize winning author tony horwitz he's coming to town as part of the eighteen sixty three commemorate lawrence project the project kicked off last november with a talk at the lawrence arts center one of the panelists at that event was fred convoy executive director of freedoms front hear what i want to start off with is just to let you know that the city of lawrence is going to be investing in eighteen eighteen sixty three yearlong commemoration project not so much as a celebration because that word is not really appropriate but a commemoration and what i like to say about that is that koch roles raid was that transformational moment in the city's history but it was really following that that the character of florence was galvanized the

determination resilience they all the things that we know of lawrence today and it was that continually battering ram of blood that was spelled l a sense kansas became a territory up through the beginning of statehood that galvanized that it was a once you know that it was that they stood up again and again and again so what we're doing is commemorating that character of florence and right away steve know that has been my primary partner in this so far to bring together the lawrence arts center hall center for humanity's downtown warrants the spencer special collections library cahill so forth and so on so just a moment that freedom center in an alternate mike back over to do you guys i represent an organization which was established in two thousand and six called freedom's frontier national heritage area and originally freedoms frontier was they suggested calling it bleeding kansas national heritage area a chicken

see the problem with calling something bleeding kansas national heritage iridescent really have the same sexiness or attractiveness so they thought further about how to do this and they enjoy and several counties in in western missouri along with several counties in eastern kansas so there are now forty one partners in this to tell the stories about the enduring struggle for freedom and injury struggle for freedom has a number of faces we don't have to get and all the tonight but the principal ones that are manifest an idea things like the underground railroad in slavery women's suffrage all of those kinds of things so what is interesting about this is when we originally approach congress to approve the freedom structure left eritrea they turned us down because we had not told the whole story of the truth which can only be told by telling both sides of the border and this is really one of jeremy's principle is he's the real experts garon this but eventually it was and today we have over a hundred and

fifty partners including members like steve at the watkins community museum who are exploring with us the stories many of which have been buried for a long long time i won't steal jeremy standard that maybe he'll talk about ireland mound as one example of something that is an amazing event in in our history in any of that i'm here tonight to just share with you that news that we have a very active group of people and forty one counties hundred and fifty partners who are working to rediscover our history our heritage and principle among those stories is are those are the themes are connected with quadros raid some of the best stories that relate to quadros rate are really the stories that come from the people who survived it steve novak is executive director of the watkins community museum of history in downtown lawrence maybe i'll go back just a moment to at sixty one and kansas have kind of crossed a threshold then and that issue of what they'd be a slave state a free state was was

resolved that was an issue that for the for the prior in nearly ten years and it had gotten a lot of people worked up it was the source of a lot of violence that inspired lots of people to come to kansas territory and make a life and stand up for what they believed in and out that issue got resolved right at the beginning of the civil war and kansas was plunged into the union's side of a conflict that kind of carried on the conflict that they had been dealing with for the prior six number of years it's a problem and it didn't go away but talk a hot it kind of took on a different scope and that kansas became embattled in a much larger national battle oh what's quite interesting about kansas and douglas county and laurence in particular is that because of that time that the kansas territory a period in the pleading kansas period people were used to kind of people nationally were used to looking

at activist county kansas lawrence we were in the national spotlight quite a bit and our own when kwan trolls raid happened in eating sixty three it was a major national event it was covered in the new york times on things that you you might not think about a people kind of focusing on kansas now it wasn't like that then if this was a place where people were looking to to really follow current events and felt like what was going on here was us was setting the course for where the nation would go and so on the morning of august twenty first at sixty three on trial and m and a gang of about four hundred raiders head across the border through from misery throughout eastern kansas and headed to lawrence just about the time that the sun is rising they broke from the south and split up into groups and head of each of the major streets of vermont massachusetts and and new hampshire they were here in town for about four

hours and then in the course of that four hours about two hundred men were killed arm and as a result of that eighty five women were left as widows and two hundred and fifty children left fatherless they set fire to most of downtown leaving pretty much smouldering ruins hundred and eighty five private homes were burned and and as a result of that well there was a lot of attention drawn to the drawn towards nationally it was it was considered a massacre significant and and really horrible of that but it wasn't kind of a down point for the city of lawrence certainly the residents here were in mourning for their for their own their lost loved ones or certainly grieving and and upset about the year the damage to their city the economic setbacks such destruction would create but it also created an incredible sense of determination and that's where this image of the phoenix rising from the ashes comes from

it really inspired lawrence to go on and to come back better than ever and a couple of quotes that i that i brought in shed some light on that end of the first is by tom reverend richard courtly who had survived ended up being a chronicler of the history of lawrence and was certainly involved in the founding and the hair and the establishment of lawrence itself and he simply said the better sentiment of the people never settled upon but one conclusion lawrence must be rebuilt at all hazards and rebuilt at once and that rebuilding really did start right away we have photos in the museum of of downtown lawrence just a year later at sixty four most of downtown has already been rebuilt you could see little spots along the street where they're still piles of rubble from destroyed buildings umm el at a newspaper man james spirit shared this reflecting back on on lawrence wright after the raid

lawrence is not to wait out we have a glorious record and the destiny we're to be one of the largest cities west of the missouri there is no possibility of mistaking that i'm jim speirs it was big booster of lawrence but i think it expresses the kind of optimism that people could feel even in the sense of that destruction and their sense of destiny too go on to become something even bigger and even greater and finally i will share a quote i'm from peter right now or who was a businessman who lost his business end of who's a partner was injured in the raid and they too decided that they would stay in lawrence and what he said was i studied the situation and came to the conclusion that we must start again and did not know of any place more favorable why should lawrence not be rebuilt and why should we not share in the burden and the prophets end up right now and baker were back in business within within the week of of the raid and they were lucky enough to have supplies in the warehouse and lawrence are illicitly in leavenworth which they could have

shipped down to lawrence and go back into business with that stock i'm so in it really did not take very long and lawrence was on the road to recovery and i think turning that that image of be a phoenix rising from the ashes steve novick is executive director of the watkins community museum of history in downtown lawrence jeremy neely is professor of history at missouri state university in springfield missouri i sent out about a dozen years ago on on some research about the legacy of the border war on both sides of the state line what i found during graduate school was that lots of folks have written that the history in kansas a lot of folks have written a history of missouri but there wasn't a lot of communication between the two and nobody had really told those stories together and it is as was i thought to be done and so when i set out to do was to try to do tell the story in my book the border between them it's a

story of the state line from settlements and the displacement of the osage indians through the struggle for kansas territory and then going into the border war that's really the pivotal events of of that law i know a note of the syrian the nineteenth century and then what i was really interested in to begin with was the legacy of the border war for the people who survived out because elsewhere and american soldiers and at sixty five lay down their arms and then go back home often hundreds of miles away but what happens here is that the war is a major still living side by side and how people move forward in an in light of something like the lord's massacre in the missouri side how do they move forward in light of order number eleven which which falls hard on the heels of the worst massacre in which the union army which has struggled to eliminate role of violence in western missouri finally just there is a us arms and depardieu it's much as three counties

so i'm interested in both sides of the state line because i don't think you can tell the stories and apparently it's part of one large or a messy interesting a narrative thats really it begins as the first act of the civil war and i think that's what makes this place so what happens here so special because these people recognize they were engaged in a fight over that the fate of the west and indeed the fate of america and i'm really happy to be a part of this not because i think more so as a special history and i mean it's it's tremendously so many people are here recognizing again jeremy neely is professor of history at missouri state university and the other of the border between them rigged avril is artistic director of performing arts at the lawrence arts center and moderated this event we think we might want to talk about on trump himself that he's been treated and in the movies a lot of ways the apache

problem that the most interesting scholarship about him that has come out in the past ten to twenty years wouldn't you say there may be some of the most interesting stuff it in hollywood always took the tact that that there's got to be a reason for this guy coming back to burn lawrence and almost always at it the hollywood there was a woman involved a lot of the times like that there was a movie called dark command which was one of john wayne's first movie in spite of that was about his second or third western and john wayne actually played a good guy who at this there's a girl and lawrence who falls in love with a schoolteacher then she finds out is dark dark secret that he's really a spy for the year of the missouri teens and he's also he's a spy for anybody to work for him but he's just got to get all that money himself he's played by walter pidgeon so n and its name is changed to wilt and trail and will control at the end of a john wayne and the school teacher and roy rogers who happens to be in that many

people remember roy rogers see how all those are ok the deal is a singing cowboy that you didn't sing in this one he played a good guy in that by the end of the movie john wayne's in love with one feels girl and they're riding back and lawrence had gone to war and lawrence that controlled raiders are coming there to extract a bloody vengeance and then there was another one another movie called controls raiders that was out in the fifties with no memorable actors in it but it was just this kind of a messy very convoluted piece about again a schoolteacher was in love with a girl or somebody's was in love with her and then i then they figured out that they traded sides of that it's extremely complicated plot that it was all a hollywood trying to get ahold of how they could do this massacre and portray quattro with anything other than you know and get the story had to be back so when i like the threat to you guys a little bit has said who is this guy and what

god has goat and what made him attack what i found in and studied history the borders that no matter what you say on any subject you're liable to make somebody's unhappy on the opposite side and so i say that part of the alps again jeremy neely professor of history at missouri state university quattro i think he is is someone who becomes shrouded in in notoriety and i think that obscures what would he was really here for waddle was not a representative of missouri and he he comes from a while any goes to kansas briefly and then returned them goes to missouri and again says grillo and activities of their head and so as i study this area at he doesn't fit the larger society he doesn't he's a representative of what i found but where the secession and the existing tensions including kansas all these missouri start falling because he becomes a symbol of the resistance to get to the yankees into that the federals end

so they come to to lawrence end and they re going to kansas for myriad reasons other political ideological at their heart about slavery and about secession up but i my argument is that there's very much in the sort of thirst for vengeance the missouri is that when you read their accounts after the war though explain the attack on moretz as retribution for the burning of a seal and the fall at sixty one when layman ways jr cruz a racer the us italian bread a number of towns and they killed nine men are those children retreat retreat back in kansas that that that was the pretext and that because kansans had taken with them untold thousands of dollars of goods of missouri's it was stashed in lawrence in there and come back towards america get the salute and then settle the score that way up i i i don't know how much of

that is after the facts were trying to excuse what they did but tip to get to the store was their love interest not that i know up to a bum i think there was still resist by at sixty three years of girl of violence that brought things on the border to such at a state of chaos and sort of bloodthirsty vengeance that that something like like course became possible and within that i don't know any other overriding motif that field and retribution yet what the jailhouse and why about counting well talk about that a little in august of eighteen sixty three in order to quell grow a while scott thomas you in the union commander of the district of the border which included eastern kansas and western missouri i decided that the only way to stop the grows under my quattro was to eliminate their base of support which were their wives their mothers or sisters

who were providing them with with shelter and food and fresh horses and information about where union troops were and so they were function as spies and so they decided we're going to bump around these women up in him to come out and a number of these women are rounded up and put in jails around kansas city are a few dozen of them were put in a jail on gray and then grant yeah the word was prisoners down there but a car light district today ends in mid august one of these makeshift jails collapses and about five women are killed in the joke lives and our reach missouri's what chores that you lean and up other union officers were complicit they put these women and their knowing full well that this was a dangerous place it was likely to fall down and sort of want this to happen and so that becomes what the immediate catalyst for lawrence i haven't really think i'm going to suggest that they'd be really again steve know that from

the watkins community museum when you think about the world the rate in the motivations well they beat say just a word or two about one job but really the raid was enacted by a large group of people and there were a lot of motivations behind that and it and some of them may have had really pure personal connections the things that happened to them or their own families jr parades and the misery many of their family felt the effect of that and that motivated them others were were fighting for union cause him and maybe felt a little bit deceived by kontra little ray turned out the way it did and they felt that they were going to kansas for a more legitimate kind of military action on rather than this kind of surprise attack the quadrille and i think it's especially hard to speak about his motivations as if you look at what kansas storylines say about him he's everything from sort of a shady horse thief to work you know the embodiment of pure evil but he seems to be in reality this kind of person and they show up in history you know every so often that doesnt really fit anywhere and he didn't seem particularly to embody anything about the misery

caused own but seemed just kind of rise because of the circumstances he was in and his ability to get people to follow him and it's hard to identify if he had a particular personal vendetta against on laurence we can guarantee that it didn't have anything to do with a woman at least it appears not to she never shows up anywhere but it's hard to know exactly what you know lead him to take such a drastic step because you know he wasn't particularly invested in the slate culture which motivated some and he you know had kind of guy babel life experiences in the end of the day in kansas he was basically failed schoolteacher and it may be some of that was you know and you know kind of coming back to exactly revenge for that that this that the events that ended up seems you know far out of proportion to any kind of wrong he may have felt so it really prepared to put a pin on on not what might've actually be motivating him you know from what i've read and some of history's there are those that think one troll

actually behave somewhat decently when he came to lawrence because he spared the whitney house on the other side of the river were it live it one time or on the banks of the car he did not burn their house and that he did not kill any women he did not be spared them and so we had a heart no not on and the decisions but there was that tender side when he came to lawrence another time he had just come back from salt lake city utah where you lived and the reputation that followed him from just from salt lake city had murdered somebody in salt lake and that that reputation of murder cloak his character and then he changed his name so when one changes their identity after supposedly allegedly committing murder you raise your eyebrows quarterly has a phrase that is is a wonderful description of all this he talks about one troll up until lawrence his motivation was plunder he would go over and he would raid farms he would steal food

livestock sometimes contraband sometimes slaves so that he could sell them back and so that he didn't necessarily murder people and he made assaults on always operate they all are baxter springs her he did in fact were a hundred union soldiers but what i'm getting at is it wasn't until lawrence that it like truman capote he's in cold blood he did this in cold blood the motive was murder the order was to slaughter not apply under plunder was not even a motive really and so it was accorded that now in payroll others a story that he along with four of his brigands for his fellow moral degenerate went over to a slave owner in the missouri side but kwon troll betrayed them ended up killing one of his friends and the other three were shot by the slave owner quarter went to the payola

jail but was later sprung from that jail by the sympathizers on the missouri side he later came back to destroy a part of payola so again you have a split personality care if we had a burnt match community mental health center back then at we would've said what're your anger issues and having to resolve them and through that until the seizures but yeah if we just headed that the notes from his therapist about and then he lived on a bluff at the confluence of the i think it's the cia river that isn't a big blow he lived in a place that was really hard for even ago to get up it was killian rocky and wooded he had great protection but the people protecting him were also these jane is headed pro slavery people in missouri and i'm not saying that disparagingly just descriptive the way but they were providing him food providing him shelter and shield so that he could build his girl army behind in the words nobody would go in there because it was too dangerous and then when the

time was right he had this is army had swollen meantime he's held a sucker he's had the benefit of food and being sustained and so he had really he was doing a lot of those were for protection and then finally one of the things that i have learned is that happen of that during that same year nineteen sixty three we talk about why he did what he did and there's some who say that as lawrence became more prosperous and these abolitionists who were spearheading the free state movement coming from new england in vermont a new yorker smith and so forth we had a very we have a lot of intelligence in london educated community coming to this town remember too that the university of kansas the state university was approved by the state legislature in march of the same and eighteen sixty one and so education was a big part of florence's history as word of the farming committees but what i'm getting at is on trial as i've heard some say became increasingly resentful of these idealists and educated people coming in to

lawrence and and that he was absolutely not cut from that cloth he was not wanting to be so he he resented that and eighty when his own course now having said that there was also a period of time right before his assault on lawrence or lawrence became complacent they actually had assembled some union troops here but they were dismissed because they said he's not gonna come this far into lawrence forty miles over the border fifteen miles maybe that forty know so they kind of got complacent build a comparable they were prepared and when he came into town that morning those are the first people he killed eighteen of twenty two or something like that of the union soldier so to be quite honest with you for us was not guarding there back side they got complacent so i think that for all those reasons quattro had an easy time of it but even reverend ct place mulatto made recorded that when she had worked for a

slave owner in the missouri side and she was serving food and she also had her ear trained on the conversations and heard well before the raid that the raid was being plotted and so she had that information was available as was that the officer nero ways that you saw them come over the border before they raided so all kinds of signals were going off but lawrence kidnapped because they didn't think they needed to it's one of the mysteries about how can four hundred men sprinted across cass county missouri into my mechanic is not going to go on now at a stand and that's what the the big reasons that thomas ewing faces so much heat after the lord's massacres how did you let this happen you had men stationed all along the state line and yet you could intercept these men ends the pressure they faced was the inevitable reprisal back into missouri is a number of kansans were saying well we must have been chosen so we

will strike and the missouri and so that's that's one of the factors the least order number eleven which is really just an expansion of that previous order in which the wives and sisters are thrown in jail instead nineties kick everybody out on one of the this is always been the missouri kind kansas is never easy given the prison has explained quantico this isn't awkward active best one of the things that fascinated me in that i don't have a good explanation for the purpose of research are about after mine my book came out it is the men who ride with quattro on any at night is will begin to hold these reunions each summer are and tells war stories and on that they they hold these reunions not coincidentally on almost on the exact anniversary of the lord's ragged ends of the fact they do this really really sticks a craw of people here ed but one of the things and that these reviews the comes up it

is shocking here is really surprised me was the fact that in contraband they had three african american men slaves to who served as a spice and one of them and i can't i think it was john noell and had actually been in lawrence the weeks leading up as they were planning the raid and had sort of moved about the town it's oregon a feel for the differences in its its vulnerabilities i think and they came back and told on trauma and some of them wrote with him back into lawrence and so it's a on the missouri side after the war you'll have confederates coming out of the woodwork claiming that they ride with quattro because he becomes a symbol and he's there certainly were a lot of men did but it's it's an event that that spawns all sorts of of stories and i don't know how much of that story of these elderly african american leadership these reunions in their sixties and seventies how much of that is true but something else curious yet some of you may have seen me at the movie ride with the devil which was based on a book called woe to

live on and it's a fascinating book and anna barry a good movie by ang lee and of course it gives him quite an interesting portrait of cointreau a lot of naturalization in different places but it is a book that takes a look at the event about from the point of view of a young bush walker who winds up writing with and he becomes one of the ones to listen to him when he realizes that although there to do is to to feel that it's just that as a massacre and i have a question about that but its case you haven't noticed i hope you do when you walk across to the parking garage there's a there's a plaque with the names of some of the soldiers were killed and that was their shapes may be floating around you right now because it was in this block where they were kept so we were the first places hit that's rick ever all of the lawrence arts center along with professor jeremy neely of missouri state university steve now back of the watkins community museum of history and fred convoy of freedoms frontier

talking about william kwan trolls reda and the eighteen sixty three commemorate lawrence project for more information about this years events including tony horwitz is talk at liberty hall on april fourth visit debbie you debbie debbie you that eighteen sixty three lawrence dot com that's daddy daddy daddy you'd that eighteen sixty three lawrence dot com if you'd like a chance to win a copy of tony horwitz is book midnight calling drop me a line at kate mcintyre at k u that edu that's k n c i n t y r e a k u that leave eu kbr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas was a moment in the body

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