civil war. >> good morning, everyone, and welcome to the watkins, it's my distinct pleasure and honor to welcome our speaker today, mr. robert k. sutton. mr. sutton retired from the national parks service after serving for nine years. he became the superintendent of the national battlefield park. he has published a number of articles and reviews on various history topics. as a part of his job was leading the emphasize on expanding the -- currently serving as a consultant to the american battle monuments commission, assisting commission staff in developing interpretive programs to commemorate the centennial of world war i, and he's currently working on a book on world war i aimed at middle school children. dr. sutton has continued teaching, he teaches courses in the johns hopkins program on the civil war in the american west. dr. sutton also has written a book on the civil war era in kansas, published in august of 2017. he and his son lee are editing an auto biography written by his father and lee's grandfather. with that i would like to introduce mr. robert k. sutton. >> thank you. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> i can't tell you how excited i am to be here. this is -- i mean i'm sitting here with goose bumps while i'm hearing the names of the victims of quantrel's raid and you actually hear about them in this setting, it's actually quite moving. i have, before i get going here, my wife and my son came with me, they're in the back row, and two of my oldest, oldest friends from california, and i'm going to tell you, we were all like 5 years old when we got acquainted, sitting here on the second row, gary colter and rick anderson. so this is a very special day for me. one of the things that interested me in this topic, was that my great, i got to say -- sometimes you have trouble keeping track of the great, great, greats, but my great, great, great grandmother, my great, great grandmother and my great grandfather immigrated to kansas? 1 in 1865. and my great grandmother lived to be 89. and my great grandfather was part of the cavalry and fought in the city every civil war. so i have a great connection to kansas. with that, let me get going here, on that 24may 24th an african-american american man was arrested on his way home from work. he worked in a men's clothing store in boston. he had not murdered anyone, he had not assaulted anyone, he had not embezzled money from his company he had not robbed anyone and he had not retuun a stoplig. he was arrested for theft, but not theft as we think of it today. he had stolen himself. this was 1854, and he was a fugitive slave from virginia. his owner had tracked him down to boston, he was captured, he was thrown into jail, because in 1854, a fugitive slave, either leaving or being taken away from his plantation was a serious crime. the reaction to the citizens of boston was instantaneous and violent. two days office he was arrested, 7,000 bostonians broke into the jail to try to release him, and in the melee, one u.s. marshall was killed and a number were injured. on may 27, three days after burns was arrested. he was brought before the federal magistrate by his owner for what amounted to a hearing. it really wasn't a hearing, because there wasn't much anybody could do under the fugitive slave law to return a slave to slavery. so the magistrate made the determination that he was a slave and ordered him returned to slavery. on june 2, just a few days later, 2,000 soldiers, u.s. soldiers and marines escorted anthony burns to boston harbor to a ship to return into slavery. 50,000 bostonians turned out. there wasn't much they could do. because they weren't going to take on the army. but they were -- as you might imagine, very, very upset about the whole thing. the cost to the federal government to return one slave to bondage was somewhere between 40,000 an$40,000 and $100,000 i money. to add insult to injury, on tma 30th, when all this was going on with anthony burns, admiral pierce signed the kansas city act. t the people of kansas and nebraska got to decide whether they wanted slavery. that was the kansas-nebraska slavery act. for the most part, the conservative businessmen sort of were on the sidelines during this whole debate over slavery. but with the capture of anthony burns, one particular bostonian businessman by the name of amos adams lawrence, does that name sound familiar? he was so upset by the whole affair, that he wrote a letter to his uncle. and in the letter, he said, we went to bed old-fashioned conservative compromised union wigs and waked up stark mad abolitionists. and from that moment on, adams put much of his energy and his money into ending slavery. now he came from a very wealthy family. his father and his uncle were very successful textile merchants in boston. so they made a lot of money. but they're also very generous with their money. his uncle, am orkoamos's uncle lawyer republicans gave his money to harvard to establish an engineering school. at that time it was the largest donation that was made to anybody in the country. and his father who also was named amos, spent most of his time doing philanthropy, so that was something that amos the soon to took over. he sa he wrote in his diary that he hoped he could continue to support all the programs that were important to him. with his new found stark mad abolitionism, you're probably wondering where that comes from, he quickly had an opportunity to put his money from his mouth was, because a gentleman from massachusetts by the name of eli theyer, who was a member of the massachusetts legislature had just created the immigrant aid company and the purpose was to have interest in kansas. theyer was a really good idea person, not so much a good business person, and the company was sort of teetering when a mutual acquaintance introduced theyer and lawrence, and so they connected in a partnership in which theyer had the good ideas, lawrence had the money, and all of a sudden was very successful. lawy lawrence realized that what was really important at this early stage was to have -- was to get people to kansas as quickly as possible. so he underwrote a survey party to go to kansas. and then he made a commitment to invest as much money as was necessary to make the trip to kansas as easy as possible, and then to make it as easy as possible for the people who got there to make a living. so he sent a scouting party, and the scouting party reported back and very quickly, the first immigrant party went to kansas city, arrived here august 1, 1854. so if you're looking at the timeline, you know, the thing with anthony burns was may, he was returned to slavery in june. so in a very short time, actually less than two months, they had the first immigrant party going to kansas. well, a number of immigrant parties followed this first one. they decided about when the second one arrived, they decided to name their towns, and they were deciding of all kinds of names, boston, wakarusa, because that was a nearby river. they decided to name it lawrence river because of the money he had put into it. one of the residents had a cute quote, the name sounded good, and it didn't have a bad odor anywhere in the union. so they decided to stick with the name lawrence. very early, almost right as soon as the town was founded, there were three newspapers. and from the herald of freedom, which lasted longer than any of the first three, and which is by the way, online, if you're interested in looking at it, i did. you can really get a sense of how quickly lawrence developed, it had a number of ads in the paper, there were -- he talked about bidsbusinesses being established. actually it developed so quickly before they knew what to do with all the people that came. well, as you remember, from the kansas-nebraska act, it was up to the people of kansas, whether they wanted to have slavery or not. the pro slavery side, from missouri, was almost certain that the state would be a slave state. why not? missouri's right next door, the strongest slavery plantations were right next door. so they assumed it was going to become a slave state. so they were kind of alarmed when they saw all of these anti slavery people coming into kansas. now, the pro slavery people of missouri actually wanted to make the state a slave state, but they didn't even mind playing dirty, in fact they were looking forward to playing dirty. so the first territorial governor, by the name of anthony reeder. one of his first jobs was to take a census of the territory and the purpose of that was to elect a territorial legislature shortly that have. so when they had the territorial election, people from missouri, hoards of people from missouri, flooded across the border, east ev -- either scared away or intimidated most of the native kansans, that they won the election, to give you a sense of how overwhelming this was, according to the 1885 census, 2,378 males were eligible to vote in kansas. but 6,307 voted. now, obviously they probably missed a few, you know, you but not 4,000. and to give you more specifics here, in lawrence, according to the census, have 369 males eligible to vote, but 1,034 voteded. we talk about, you've heard all kinds of things. you don't have to be even too savvy to look at the news to realize there's all kinds of talk about fraudulent election, rigged elections, voter suppression, blah, blah well this is a real thing. no doubt about this. so the territorial legislature was made up of missourians. they had no intention of ever living kansas. in fact, they moved the first, the first capital to shawnee mission, right on the missouri border. so they could come across and do their business. the first thing they did was to pass one of the harshest slave codes in american history. to give you an example, if anyone tried to incite a slave rell be rebelli rebellion, it was punishable by death. they stated the election would be by the residents. so it was clearly illegal. but president pierce, who was a northerner, decided to side with the south and with the pro slavery side and declared the pro slavery legislature was legal. so the power of the federal government was behind this illegal but legal proslavery legislature. now the free state kansasans, they decided they weren't going to sit around and let this happen. so they created their own government. they elected a legislature and a governor. this also was illegal. so we have two illegal territorial legislatures. one is backed by fraederal government. the other is not. but they're both illegal. president pierce as i said, sided with the pro slavery legislature. and he decided that the free state legislature was not only illegal, but it was treasonous. so he had all the leaders of this free state party arrested and thrown in jail for treason. now the leader of the free state party had been the main business man in kansas for the company. his name was charles robinson. that name might be familiar to a lot of you, but he was the leader of the free state movement. so charles robinson and i think six other kansasans were arrested for treason. the grand jury that indicted robinson and the others, they also indicted the free state hotel and the newspapers. now how in the world could you say that a newspaper and a hotel is treason? well, they did. and that's become significant later on. well to the pro slavery folks in missouri, lawrence was sort of like a scab that needed to be picked. lawrence became the, the center of attack for these missourians. in 1855, the missourians lined up the outskirts ready to attack. they didn't realize the people of lawrence were well train and well armed. so the missourians backed off and the wakarusa war was a war this i wish all wars were. no bloodshed. actually, a free state man was killed on his way to lawrence. he became a martyr. the chapter in my book, i call it the almost bloodless war. they backed off. but what's interesting and what's an interesting thing about the i think the kansas at this time, especially the free state side of kansas, was the role of women. there were two free state women. margaret wood and lois brown. they defined the pro slavery forces. in the wakarusa war, they took a a a wagon to a cash of weapons and ammunition outside of lawrence. they put loaded it op the wagon. came back through town so they provided all these goodies for their husbands. antislavery husbands. but what's interesting is that these two women and a number of other women were equal partners to their husbands in the antislavery moment. something unusual at the time. one woman who i really sort of got attached to through this whole thing is sarah robinson. the wife of charles robinson. in 1856, she wrote a book that was called the -- i'll get it here in a minute. kansas, it's interior and e exterior life. she beautifully chronicled the life in kansas and it became very influential in the east. people in the east read it. recognized what was going on in the east and lawrence and kansas and she had a very important role in the early history of kansas. also when her husband was being held for treason. she went to boston. very important role. now the people of lawrence recognized they were targets and had to defend themselves and they were very successful in working with amos lawrence in the east in acquire iing the cad shark's rifles. they shipped them to kansas. they called them books. when they got to kansas. the other person who helped raise money for this from new york. the weapons for called beechers bibles. and someone asked him why he did this as a christian minister, why did he raise the money for these bibles. he said one sharp's rival had more power with pro slavery folks than 100 bibles. and he said you might as well read bibles to buffaloes as try to convince these folks that they're wrong. so it's kind of a, kind of a fun story. but while the, while charles robinson and some of the others were being held in prison, the pro slavery missourians again attacked lawrence. this time, they had the federal government behind them. the army behind them. it was called a sack of lawrence. the free state hotel was blown up and burned. we actually stayed overnight at the ellsworth hotel, which is i think the third it ration of the free state hotel last night. so the free state hotel was burned. the newspapers were, they were not burned, but they scattered, ruined ed the presses through al of the type and the river and scattered around. number of houses were burned. so even though folks in lawrence were armed to the teeth with the finest weapons available, lawrence and robinson warned a people of kansas not to become violent. they felt it was important not to become violent. but one in kansas, gentleman by the name of john brown, decided that the generally passive approach was thnot really worki too well. so he was not a resident of lawrence u. he lived in a number of miles south of lawrence. but he, his sons and others murdered five pro slavery settlers here potowamie creek which touched off attacks and counterattacks for months. it was called bleeding kansas. they ta tacked each other in open warfare. one free state militia called the lawrence stubs. i love that game. lawrence stubs. attacked pro slavery strongholds in and around lawrence. they acquired a cannon that would been confiscated from them in the sack of lawrence, but om had only had a handful of cannon balls, so they got the people to collect the type from the herald of freedom that had been scattered around and molded this into cannon balls. so the next time they attacked the fort, the cannonier as he fired one of the shots off, said here is the edition of the herald freedom. i love that. that's one of my favorite things from the whole story. well the violence nearly stopped in 1856 when the new governor by the name of john geary became the territorial governor. he made it clear he was not going to be pro slave and free state. so he made it very clear, but also put his money where his mouth was. so the missourians were all ready to attack again. he sent the army down overnight and they stopped the third, what would have been the third attack on lawrence. but also, as the soldiers were marching back to lee compton, territorial capital, lawrence stubbs were coming back from an attack on b a pro slavery stronghold, he arrested them as well. so he made it clear he wasn't going to side with the pro slavery or antislavery sides. in 1857, things began to change because there was a new election for a territorial legislature and this time, the missourians didn't cross the border and abolitionists final won an election fair and square. the new free state territorial legislature tore down and built up new laws for kansas the first thing was to rescind the pro slavery laws. but before they became the state, the territorial legislature, the prosls slavery legislature called for a constitutional convention, the lee compton constitution. this gets really confusion. i should have a black board to write this stuff up here. the free state legislature had written a constitution in 1856. and they sent it to congress. a constitution for the, for the state of kansas. it didn't pass congress. really didn't have much of chance to pass, so the lee compton constitution was the second constitution. it was prepared by the pro slavery side. sent to congress. they had a vote in kansas, but the antislavery folks boycotted the election, so it won, but just by a tiny fraction of residents in kansas. now the new president at the time, james buchanan, woanted kansas to be admitted as a slave state. so he did everything he could to get the lee compton constitution through congress. congress refused to pass it. sent it back. the kansas voted it down. the new legislature actually, the new territorial actually wrote two new constitutions. so are you keepi ining track? three, one, two, three. four, actually, had a chance of passing was because the constitutional convention had a very balanced membership to write the constitution. it had really no chance of passing because the congress was so horribly divided. how about the term dysfunctional? they really couldn't pass any significant legislation, but as soon as the south succeeded a e the legislators, the congress people from the north, the south, left with their states that succeeded, now there was enough votes for kansas to be admitted so kansas was admitted to union on eve of the civil war. now when the civil war started, there was no state in the country probably more prepared for the civil war than kansas. because they had been through all this bleeding kansas. and what's interesting is that kansas provided more soldiers per capita and has more casualties per capita than any other northern state. and it was a you know, just a really, really, they were just admitted. they decided to play their part. what's interesting about lawrence, one of the things i find really fascinating, not only was it a stronghold of the free party and abolition iists kans kansas, it was very, very welcoming to african-americans. before the civil war, fugitives primarily from missouri would come to lawrence. they knew they had a chance to be rescued if they could find their way to lawrence. but a lot of free african-americans also came to lawrence, what's interest iing that there are some of the folks in lawrence had a real, they were really conflicted with this issue of fugitive slaves because all they knew slavery was wrong. they knew to try to do something to end slavery. they knew they were breaking the law. they knew they would be thrown in jail if they were caught trying to r hharbor a fugitive slave. one person, richard cordly. he wrote two wonderful histories of lawrence. he wrote in one of his books that he was, when he was a student at andover seminary in the east, the fugitive slave law was passed and he said that when he saw it, he decided it was the sum of all vil anies. he said if he had a chance to do something about it, he would do whatever he could to help slaves that escaped edescaped. when he was confronted to put his money where his mouth was, he said it's easy to talk bravely from 1,000 miles away, but it's very difficult to make a decision about this when you have the opportunity. one of his parishioners came to him and asked if he and his wife, they didn't have any children, would keep an escape ed slave woman by the name of lizzie in their house. he said there's only one thing to do. so he kept her in their house for a period of time until she was able, they were actually able to sneak her out of the state into canada. so some of the people were conflicted, but some had no problem at all trying to help slaves escape. so there's one of my favorite people in this story was a man by the name of dr. john doy. he listed his profession as a hydro pathic doctor. i think if you transit that, it probably means quack. but any way, one of the things he did, he was a close associate of john brown. he would go into missouri to try to not only accept slaves escape, he would go in and try to steal them from their openers in missouri. he wrote an autobiography, you can get it onhein. it's kind of cool. actually, there's a youtube, the story i'll get to in a minute. of him that you can pull up very easily. if i can do it, you can do it. any way, he in 1859, this is really kind of interesting. the people of lawrence asked him if he would help 12 free blacks leave lawrence and go to canada. i don't know how many dozen fugitive slaves escaped, but now, being asked to take free african-americans out of lawrence. he agrees to do it. he gets a few miles out of town and is arrested by missourians. this is kind of like, i'm sure you heard about al capone, but he was arrested for income tax evasion. john doy helped slaves escape, but when he was trying to help free blacks -- slave catchers could come in and try to kidnap them. he gets 12 miles out of town. he's arrested. taken to missouri. tried, convicted. he's convicted to five years of hard labor. in one of the really, really interesting stories is ten men from lawrence went to where he was being held. they broke him out of the jail. they took him back to lawrence. there's a wonderful picturpictu. they're called a immortal ten. where he's heroed. well. what happened during the civil war was that kansas, there were gorillas in kansas called the jay hawkers. if you never heard the word jay hawkers, there is something wrong here. but the jay hawkerers were gor l las on the union said. they tried to control them. on the con rat side, they were not only legal, but encouraged pi the federal government. in 1862, the confederate government passed a partisan ranger act of 1826. what it said they would not only be legal, but could be paid by the government. they could have their officers and so forth. so one young man by the name of william clark kwantrel became a gorilla leader. i have a little problem call in him a gorilla. to me, he's really a thug. by the time he finished, he had some of the nastiest people you could imagine in his band. bloody bill anderson was part of his band. toward the end, people who were around him said that every time he was beginning to think of killing people, he'd literally start foaming at the mouth. cole younger was part of the game. frank james. and later, his kid brother, jesse james. were a part of this whole thing. everything came to a head. a tragic head in august 1863 and you know all about that. because you've heard the names of the people that were killed. in 1863. there were about 400 gorillas that took part in the raid. they were dreked to kill every man and every boy about 200 were killed. there are some we're not even sure about. so 200 more or less were killed. the descriptions of some of the killings are just make you sick when you read them. so i'm not going to read those. but there were also a number of remarkable escapes. so one african-american man, he knew he was probably a target so he took off and started running. ran for four miles to the river. climbed up in a tree. thought he was safe only to realize a couple of hours later than when the army left, they literally marched under the tree that he was in. but he was safe. he was not attacked. another story that i think is s kind of interesting is the night before the raid, a gentleman by the name of mr. winchel that worked for the union pacific railroad was working for the new railroad that was going to come to lawrence. when the raid happened, he rab into the house of the episcopal minister. the wife helped him shave his beard, put dresses on him, wrapped him in blankets so when the men came in, they said please don't bother poor aunt bessie. we don't know how much longer she's going to be with us. and he was saved. one of the major targets were politicians and ministers. and so the minister of the meth methodist church was in the house. the men knew he was in the house so they decided they were going to whatever they were going to do, they were going to kill him. they couldn't find him so they set the house on fire. well, reverend fisher's wife helped him crawl out of the cellar, the payment basement. she covered him with rugs and furniture while the house was burning and he was saved. so there's some remarkable saves as well. now before quauntrel's raid, this is kind of hard to do transition because it's, it makes sense, but it doesn't. a few months before the raid, the legislature in kansas made the decision that the university of kansas would be in lawrence. part of the deal was that they had to come up with $15,000 to the state legislature for that to happen. in order to get the, the university ain their town, joe sigh miller, who had been editor of one of the first thups in town, sort of in and out of lawrence. josiah miller bribed the state legislators, gave them each $5, to vote for lawrence. when the vote came, he realized he had missed two. he snuck over, he didn't have enough to give them each five, but he gave them four. and they voted for lawrence to have the, the state university. well of course with quauntrel's raid, come up with $15,000 was a big deal because every penny they had, every amount of energy they had, was going toward rebuilding their town. so ta didnhey didn't have that. so charles robinson contacted our friend, amos lawrence, and asked him if he would contribute 15,000 so they could have the university. he had already contributed, gosh, i couldn't keep track. i'm not good at math, but everything i was able to add up, it looks like they gave about $50,000 to lawrence and to kansas. that's in 1850 money. but he gave them $10,000 u. they were able to come up with the rest of the money to have the university of kansas loek d located in lawrence. now what's interesting is i've read several things that said that lawrence, his name was attached to the town, but he never came here. well, actually, he did. in 1884, amos lawrence, his wife, his daughter and the mayor of boston came to kansas. and to lawrence. they rolled out the red carpet. had all kinds of things planned over several weeks for them. but lawrence was a very private man. he really did not like the limelight so after about two or three days, he just didn't want to be here anymore. so he got back on the train and went back to boston, but he did visit here. and so that's, that is, i think this is amazing. but after, with lawrence's money, with the railroad, there were actually two railroads that came through lawrence shortly after the war. there was a new bridge built across the kansas river. so lawrence actually recovered very quickly and very successfully. with all of these economic features and with the university. and became a thriving town. very quickly after quauntrel's raid. now in my mind, history really doesn't have a whole lot of value unless it can inform the present. i think kansas really provides a wonderful opportunity for us to do that. american politicians today talk about voter fraud, voter se precious and so forth, but the terror tor rall election in kansas in 1855, there is no question that this was a prime example of voter fraud. i think the most important, most critical piece for a democratic republic to function properly is for the participation of the populous in selecting its representatives. and anything that undermines that process compromises the entire system. so i think that's one lesson we learned that blatant voter fraud just does not work. this past week, we came to realize that hatred, bigotry, racism faced by the people of lawrence over 150 years ago, has reared its ugly face in charlottesville, virginia. i think the people of lawrence and kansas refused to tolerate bigotry and racism in the 1850s and '60s and were willing to go to great lengths to eradicate that. and i think that's another lesson that we have ha people were literally willing to give their lives to eradicate hatred and bigotry in the 1850s. but i think the most important lesson from this story is that many americans were so passionate about ending slavery, people like amos lawrence poured a fortune of his own money toward ensuring that kansas would become a free state. others were willing to immigrate to an unfamiliar area of the country without any assurances of financial success to make kansas a free state. and finally, americans in the north were willing to fight a civil war to preserve is union and to end the institution of slavery. maybe we can learn from their example and recognize that eradicating evil benefits all. thank you. [applause] i'm very happy to take questions. so. >> i have a question. >> yes, ma'am. >> you mentioned that gorilla banding together were somewhat -- by the government. in fact, paid. >> by the con ffederates. by the south. that is correct. >> oh, by the south. >> not by the north. he was actually was a captain. in the confederate army. theoretically. he was able to have an actually, he was very wup set. he thought he was so cool. he traled to richmond and te mohannaded be made a colonel. how u bloodthirsty he was and didn't give him that title. so just to keep it straight, the confederates recognized, in some ways, i look at this as domestic terrorism. they're sanctioned by the government being paid by the government. on the north, they tried to control the jayhawkers. had some success, but they were, they were encouraged to go on their own as gorillas. in fact, they tried to control them with varying degrees of success. mostly unsuccess. yes. let me catch this young lady here on the front. i'll try to repeat the question. >> i would like to know if you in your studies had run across the name of james monroe. >> i don't recall that name. but if you look at the index in my book, there are about 1,000, not 1,000, a lot of names. i might have come across, but i don't recall. sorry. >> it's okay. he had -- >> okay, i'm sorry, yes, i did remember that. when you threw the middle name in, i didn't catch it. was it the first colored regiment? yes. first colored kansas. i do remember that. i'm sorry. i can't remember names. sorry. fantastic. you hear that? so the leader of the first, of the first kansas infantry regiment colored at ft. scott was her great uncle. correct? wonderful. yes, sir. >> dr. sutton, i'm particularly interested in your perspective as a historian, sort of unrelated, but related, to your lecture today with regard to the confederate monuments. so -- >> this is, i'm sorry to laugh. but we were swrjust talking bef. i said i bet the first question i get. yes, it took three. >> so particularly, is is it your viewpoint we should leave those up as a reminder of our past r or should they be removened and if they should be removed, what is the try krooi tier area for deciding what one should be removed? >> that's a good question. it's supposed to be yes or not though. to me, it's a complicated issue. i've been thinking about it for quite a while and i have been thinking of it in the context of the con ffederate flag. so the confederate battle flag, the st. andrews cross. the battle flag. to me, it has no place at all in our country. i don't care what anybody says. and the reason is because it essentially disappeared from the public. entirely. until a civil rights movement. and the confederate battle flag became the symbol of the anticivil rights movement. so it should be done away with and that's my feeling about that. but about confederate monuments, my personal view is that they should not be taken down. they're part of our culculture. like it or not. what i would like to see is what richmond actually proposed early on. now i think they've sort of changeded the view of this. but to leave the monuments in place and put ininterpretertive markers there to interpret what happened. we did that in the parks service. there was a monument in harper's farery to hayward sheppard. a free black man. the first person killed in john brown's raid. and the daughters of the confederacy put a monument up to him. said he was a nice guy. essentially an uncle tom, right? and so the park didn't know what to do with so for a while, they built a wooden box to put over this monument so the sons and daughters of the confederacy were upset. naacp was upset because they didn't take it and throw it in the river. eventually what they did was to put an ininterpretertive marker. take off the box and put a marker. so that seems to work well. i think for the most part, that's what i would do with confederate monuments. now there are exceptions and i think they're important. i just saw that lexington, kentucky has confederate monuments but they are on the site of a former slave market. and they did it for a reason. there was good reason why they did that. not a good reason, but the reason they did that. so i think they should be removed. taken away from a slave market because that is now i think sacred ground that does not deserve to have a confederate monument, so they should be taken away. then there's some particularly in my mind, a greengs individuals that should not have monuments and i would just as soon as see them gone completely. like nathan bedford forest. he murdered hundreds of african-american soldiers who had surrendered at ft. pillow then he became the founding member of the ku klux klan. from what i understand, i don't know this for a fact, but i've heard it from several people, that there are more monuments to nathan bedford forest in tennessee than all the three presidents from tennessee combined. in my mind, you take away all the nathan bedford forest monuments and that's fine. what's also interesting is is that robert e. lee said e he didn't want any monuments. he didn't think it was appropriate to build them after the civil war. so that's what he said. it's complicated and so that's kind of my, but i got to tell you, my views are sort of evolving. i hope others are, too. so that's my take on that. yes, sir. >> you didn't mention john brown very much. was he a -- what did he do to help? >> he didn't do much to help kansas to be honest. >> i didn't think so. but the people -- >> he was a real debtriment to kansas. by killing the pro slavery people in potawami creek, he started bleeding kansas. that was the trigger that started bleeding kansas. he came back later and actually worked with this, my buddy john doy, dr. john doy. doctor, in quotes. john doy. to go steel slaves in missouri. in my mind, he was more of a debtriment than a help. he had an interesting relationship with amos lawrence. he had sold wool to amos lawrence years before, i don't remember exactly when, but years before the this whole story of kansas. and when he went to kansas, he went to see his buddy, amos lawrence, who had essentially wrote a letter of introduction to him then came back again not long before he went to harper's ferry. and met with lawrence again and asked lawrence to help him with this project and lawrence of course refused. and he said, you know, i've given a lot of money to kansas to this issue already. which he had. but when john brown asked him the if he would take care of his family, if anything happened to him, lawrence agreed to do that. and he did. he actually took care of his family and he wrote a letter to the governor of virginia. hoping that they would give him a fair trial. which they did. so that's, there's more connections. but it didn't really, there's not a whole lot that fits with the story because he triggered things, but then kind of left. >> the good people of kansas find that the civil war started there and i think they kind of looked at mr. brown as a -- and i've always kind of disagreed with that just a little bit. >> there's so much debate over john brourng was he completely insane or just a zealot. i've tried to stay out of u that debate. was he insane or a zealot. i have no idea. anyone else? yes, sir. >> you asked about supporting -- -- [ inaudiblenaud yes. part of the deal with the partisan ranger act was that they were supposed to if they were requested by the confederate commanders to join up, that was supposed to be their role. they could call on them. and so theer et icaloretically supposed to be scouts, cover, retreats and that sort of thing. they were supposed to be available when called upon and sometimes, they were in quauntrel's were twice called upon. but bloody bill anderson, he kind of went his own way. i read about him and i just go goodness gracious. i have a picture of him looks like a swash buckle ining hero. another picture, he's dead. yep. >> he didn't dress like his profession was. >> i can go on forever about quauntrel. he was a schoolteacher. he was a schoolteacher. apparently, a real smart guy. what's interesting is later after he's dead, people said he was a real scoundrel. someone said as a boy, he was such a nasty boy, he would pull the wings off of flies and that sort of thing. people who knew him said no, he was very feud yous. you would never in a million years guessed what he would have been like later. when he was a dangteenager, he taught school. went to indiana and illinois to teach school. his father died when he was young so he was sort of the bread wwinner for the family. he was from ohio. so he went back to his home in ohio then went to kansas with a dpro group of folks from his town. they settled there. the folks in this group from the town it's called -- dover canal i think was the name of the town. now it's called dover, ohio. notice ed things were missed. they eventually caught him red handed stealing thing frs this group. they told him to leave. he did leave. but he taught school in kansas, also. and then he went west, went to pike's peak. came back the lawrence and lived under the name of william clark, i think. that's, is that -- i can't remember names. william clark. and he -- william clark, he and that's when he really turned into what he became later because he became a horse thief. you can make a lot of money stealing horses. he was also a slave stealer. he would go to missouri and steal slaves and come back and then take the slaves back to missouri to get the reward for capturing the slaves. at one point, he and five quakers went on a mission to try to capture slaves at a big plantation. they went there. he said when they arrived, he said i'm going to go scout out the situation so we can go do our deal tonight. so what we did was he went and found the son of the slave owner. said this is what's going to happen tonight. these five quakers are going to attack. why don't you get someone to counterattack. they did. so he stayed out of the picture. they shot, they killed one quaker. two escaped. back to, back to lawrence. two of them were injured. he went out with the son of this slave owner. shot the two quakers who had left and that really was sort of the turning point. in his life. he then joined a confederate army and became a -- so you get a sense of he wasn't really a nice guy. he really wasn't. he after the raid in lawrence, he and his band went down to i think to texas area. the army, the confederate army was getting kind of disgusted with these gorillas. they didn't really like them very much. so they reorganized. quauntrel was sort of voted out as a leader. he was underground for a while then eventually, he went to kentucky. took his band to kentucky and again called himself william clark. he had him dressed in union uniforms. part of the fifth union missouri saville cavalry. eventually he was shot. what's interesting, he was shot after the war was over. he was shot in the back. he lingered for a couple of days. he became a, he, the report is that he became a very devout catholic. just before he died. he was buried and then it really gets bizarre because he was buried in lexington, kentucky, but a friend of his took some of the bones to dover where he was from. someone kept his head. and then about 15 years ago, the sons of confederate veterans took some of the bones, buried them in missouri. so if you want to try to find everything that belongs to william clark quauntrel, be my guest, but he was really a pretty, as far as i can tell, pretty nasty person. anything else? all right. thank you. 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