And published articles and reviews on various history topics. One of his primary interests as chief historian and superintendent at manassas was heeding the emphasis on expanding the interpretation of the civil war for the centennial. He is assisting Commission Staff in developing interpretive programs to commemorate the centennial of world war i and currently working on a book on world war i aimed at middle school children. He has continued teaching and teaches courses in the john hopkins Senior Adult Program on the world west and will be on the viking Ocean Cruises as well. He has written a book published by sky horse publishing in august, 2017. Ers he and his son, lee, are editing an autobiography written by his father and lees grandfather. With that, i would like to introduce mr. Robert k. Sutton. Good morning. Good morning. I cant tell you how excited i am to be here. This is i mean im sitting here with goosebumps while im hearing the names of the victims of quantrels raid and you actually hear about them in this setting, its actually quite moving. I have, before i get going here, my wife and my son came with me, theyre in the back row, and two of my oldest, oldest friends from california, and im 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 greatgrandfather and my great grandfather immigrated to kansas in 1855. And my great great greatgrandmother lived to be 89 here in kansas. And my great grandfather was in the kansas cavalry and fought in the civil war. So i have a special attachment to kansas. With that, let me get going here, on may 24th an africanamerican american man by the name of Anthony Burns was arrested on his way home from work. He worked in a Mens 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 at gunpoint and he had not run a stoplight. 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 wasnt a hearing, because there wasnt 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 2nd, if youre keeping track of this, 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 wasnt much they could do. Because they werent 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 and 100,000 in 1854 money. To add insult to injury, on may 30th, when all this was going on with Anthony Burns, president Franklin Pierce signed the kansasnebraska act that i bet 99. 4 know would have happened. The people of kansas and nebraska got to decide whether they wanted slavery. That was the kansasnebraska act. Theres a possibility at least one, maybe two slave states would be added to the union. Now, boston was really a hotbed of antislavery active at the time. 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 oldfashioned 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 theyre also very generous with their money. His uncle, amoss uncle abbott lawrence, gave 50,000 dollars to harvard to establish a science and engineering school. At that time it was the largest donation that was made to any school in the country. And his father who also was named amos, retired early and spent most of his time doing philanthropy, so that was something that amos the soon took over. At one point in his diary he wrote that he hoped he would make enough money in his businesses to continue to support all the programs that were important to him. With his newfound stark mad abolitionism, youre 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. In the Antislavery Movement in kansas. But mostly to make it as easy as portable for people from new england to migrate to 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. 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 arrived here august 1, 1854. So if youre 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 town and they were deciding of all kinds of names, boston, wakarusa, because that was a nearby river. They decided to name it lawrence after Amos Lawrence because everybody knew how much money he put into it. One of the local residents had a cute quote. The name sounded good and it didnt 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 youre 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 businesses being established. Actually it developed so quickly it almost was filled up before they knew what to do with all the people that came. Well, as you remember, from the kansasnebraska 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 . Missouris 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 didnt 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 either scared away or so intimidated, most of the native can sans, 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. The vote was held shortly there after. But 6,307 voted. Now, obviously they probably missed a few, you know, you cant catch everybody, but not 4,000. To give you another a little bit more specifics here. Lawrence, according to the census had 369 males eligible to vote but 1,034 voted. Well we talk about youve heard all kinds of things. You dont have to be even too savvy to look at the news to realize theres all kinds of talk about fraudulent election, rigged elections, Voter Suppression, blah, blah well this is a real thing. No doubt about this. So what happened was the Territorial Legislature was made up of missourians. They had no intention of ever living in kansas. In fact, they moved the first, the First Capital to Shawnee Mission almost 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 rebellion, it was punishable by death. The kansasnebraska act clearly stated the territorial election would be elected by the territory, so the election 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 pro slavery legislature. Continue now the free state kansasans, they decided they werent 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 federal government. The other is not. But theyre both illegal. President Franklin 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 thats 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 on the outskirts of lawrence, ready to attack. They quickly realized 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 whats interesting and whats 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. Who joined their husbands and defying the pro slavery forces. In the wakarusa war, they took a wagon through missouri pro slavery lines to a cache of weapons and ammunition outside of lawrence. They loaded on the wagon, came back through town so they provided all these goodies for their husbands. Antislavery husbands. But whats 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 ill get it here in a minute. Kansas, its interior and exterior life. Wrote it in 1856. 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. She worked with Amos Lawrence to get her husband and the rest of these captives released. She had a 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 and Horace Greeley and others in the east in acquiring the called sharks rifles. They shipped them to kansas in interesting ways. They called them bibles and books. They would take them apart and put them back together when they got to kansas. The other person who helped raise money for this was the ref rend Henry Ward Beecher from new york. A lot of these were 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 sheriffs rifle 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 theyre wrong. So its 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 the presses through all 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 of the antislavery approach was not working too well. So he was not a resident of lawrence, 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. Pro and antislavery militias attacked each other in open warfare. One free state militia called the lawrence stubs. Isnt that great . I love that name. 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 they only had 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. Thats 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 take sides and was not going be 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 lawrence yet again for a third time. 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 wasnt 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 didnt