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Busy in the cause : Iowa, the free-state struggle in the west, and the prelude to the Civil War
\"Despite the immense body of literature about the American Civil War and its causes, the nation's western involvement in the approaching conflict often gets short shrift. Slavery was the catalyst for fiery rhetoric on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line and conflicts on the western edges of the nation. Driven by questions regarding the place of slavery in westward expansion and by the increasing influence of evangelical Protestant faiths that viewed the institution as inherently sinful, political debates about slavery took on a radicalized, uncompromising fervor in states and territories west of the Mississippi River. Busy in the Cause explores the role of the Midwest in shaping national politics concerning slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. In 1856 Iowa aided parties of abolitionists desperate to reach Kansas Territory to vote against the expansion of slavery, and evangelical Iowans assisted runaway slaves through Underground Railroad routes in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Lowell J. Soike's narrative illuminates Iowa's role in the stirring western events that formed the prelude to the Civil War. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Necessary Courage
During the 1850s and early 1860s, Iowa, the westernmost free state bordering a slave state, stood as a bulwark of antislavery sentiment while the decades-long struggle over slavery shifted westward. On its southern border lay Missouri, the northernmost slaveholding state. To its west was the Kansas-Nebraska Territory, where proslavery and antislavery militias battled. Missouri slaves fled to Iowa seeking freedom, finding opponents of slavery who risked their lives and livelihoods to help them, as well as bounty hunters who forced them back into bondage. When opponents of slavery streamed west across the state's broad prairies to prevent slaveholders from dominating Kansas, Iowans fed, housed, and armed the antislavery settlers. Not a few young Iowa men also took up arms.
InNecessary Courage, historian Lowell J. Soike details long-forgotten stories of determined runaways and the courageous Iowans who acted as conductors on this most dangerous of railroads-the underground railroad. Alexander Clark, an African American businessman in Muscatine, hid a young fugitive in his house to protect him from slavecatchers while he fought for his freedom in the courts. While keeping antislavery newspapers fully apprised of the battle against human bondage in western Iowa, Elvira Gaston Platt drove a wagon full of fugitives to the next safe house under the noses of her proslavery neighbors. John Brown, fleeing across Iowa with a price on his head for the murders of proslavery Kansas settlers, relied on Iowans like Josiah Grinnell and William Penn Clarke to keep him, his men, and the twelve Missouri slaves they had liberated hidden from the authorities. Several young Iowans went on to fight alongside Brown at Harpers Ferry. These stories and many more are told here.
A suspenseful and often heartbreaking tale of desperation, courage, cunning, and betrayal, this book reveals the critical role that Iowans played in the struggle against slavery and the coming of the Civil War.
eBook
Busy in the Cause
Despite the immense body of literature about the American Civil War and its causes, the nation's western involvement in the approaching conflict often gets short shrift. Slavery was the catalyst for fiery rhetoric on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line and fiery conflicts on the western edges of the nation. Driven by questions regarding the place of slavery in westward expansion and by the increasing influence of evangelical Protestant faiths that viewed the institution as inherently sinful, political debates about slavery took on a radicalized, uncompromising fervor in states and territories west of the Mississippi River.
Busy in the Causeexplores the role of the Midwest in shaping national politics concerning slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. In 1856 Iowa aided parties of abolitionists desperate to reach Kansas Territory to vote against the expansion of slavery, and evangelical Iowans assisted runaway slaves through Underground Railroad routes in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Lowell J. Soike's detailed and entertaining narrative illuminates Iowa's role in the stirring western events that formed the prelude to the Civil War.
eBook
Scramble to Freedom
As the hold of proslavery men over the Kansas Territory loosened and Free-State settlement grew, Lawrence and other Free-State communities became home or temporary refuge to escapees from Missouri slavery. Odds of continuing north to Free States were yet slim, however; runaways had to cross vast empty stretches of prairie with little chance to find food or shelter when needed.
Ira D. Blanchard in southwest Iowa saw these impediments could be overcome by converting the emigrant trail running from Kansas through Nebraska and across Iowa to the Underground Railroad’s use.¹ No sooner did the last emigrant caravan leave Iowa for
Book Chapter
Prairie, Dust, and Wind
If proslavery leaders worried about controlling Kansas in the early months of 1856, Free-State settlers constantly worried that border raiders might appear any day. Moreover, until their numbers grew, Free-State leaders counseled that they keep a defensive posture and avoid any aggressive contact with U.S. troops that would give President Franklin Pierce’s slavery-friendly national government an excuse to send troops against them. After all, on January 24 the president’s special message to Congress on the Kansas Territory’s troubles had warned that “organized resistance by force” to federal law and general government authority would be considered “treasonable insurrection,” and it would
Book Chapter
Heaven Sent
Back in Kansas, John Brown and a few of the men—George Gill, Aaron Stevens, John Kagi, and Charles Tidd—briefly stayed around Lawrence and in early July moved on to southeast Kansas, where they hung about into the fall. These southeastern counties lay below the big bend in the Missouri River where no natural boundaries separated Missouri and Kansas. The area was still in turmoil, having been relatively untouched by Free-State successes in 1856.¹
The situation was especially unsettled in Linn and Bourbon Counties, which bordered on Missouri. After proslavery guerrilla bands had driven them out earlier, Free-State settlers
Book Chapter
Uncertainty Rising
Political compromise on the national level was becoming impossible by the late 1840s. Though holding onto its national power, the South felt its slavery system increasingly threatened by rising antislavery sentiments in the North. Conversely, the North saw the levers of national government firmly in the hands of the “slave power.” While the American Antislavery Society under William Lloyd Garrison’s leadership had poked and prodded slavery’s protectors since 1830, challenging the “peculiar institution” by trying to change public sentiment, a broader force against slavery was emerging.
A series of religious revivals began in the early 1800s and reached its peak
Book Chapter
Raising the Stakes
As numerous Free-State parties moved across Iowa toward Kansas in 1856, two young men from Springdale, Iowa, had joined the emigrants. George B. Gill and seventeen-year-old Barclay Coppoc climbed aboard the first major Kansas-bound wagon train from Iowa City led by Shalor Eldridge, trail coordinator for Free-State overland operations.
A lean twenty-four-year-old of freethinking bent, Gill had already worked on a whaling ship in the Pacific and now was joining the Free-State cause in Kansas. In late August 1856 he and a friend happened to be in the vicinity of the Osawatomie battle and joined the fight against a large
Book Chapter
Do Come and Help Us. Come On through Iowa
The growing dread among proslavery Missourians that northern arrivals might soon outnumber southern emigrants in the Kansas Territory reached a tipping point in the spring of 1856. Facing these doubts about the months ahead, the moment—for slavery’s sake—seemed to call for greater force. Proslavery leaders grimly turned the screws tighter.
The arrival of southern help had buoyed their spirits. To the joy of theAtchison Squatter SovereignandLeavenworth Kansas Weekly Herald, southern recruits began arriving in the Kansas Territory during 1856.¹ ANew York Tribunecorrespondent in Tennessee wrote, “There is not a train of cars that
Book Chapter