"This is Not Dixie:"
The Imagined South, the Kansas Free State Narrative,
and the Rhetoric of Racist Violence
The Imagined South, the Kansas Free State Narrative,
and the Rhetoric of Racist Violence
Brent M. S. Campney, Emory University
Essay Sections:
Introduction | Racist
Violence | Resistance to Racist Violence | Dissenting
Views |
The Trajectory of the Free State Narrative | Conclusions | Notes | Recommended Resources
The Trajectory of the Free State Narrative | Conclusions | Notes | Recommended Resources
Notes:
1. Tara
McPherson, Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the
Imagined South (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 1-2.
2. Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 5.
3. Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 5; Andrew R. L. Cayton and Susan E. Gray, eds., The American Midwest: Essays on Regional History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 4.
4. Paul A. Gilje, Rioting in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 106.
5. James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. (New York: The New Press, 2005), 198.
6. James R. Shortridge, The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), 28; Wilbur Zelinsky, "Review of The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture." Geographical Review 80 (July 1990): 323.
7. Cayton, The American Midwest, 12.
8. See, for example, Rita Napier, ed., Kansas and the West: New Perspectives (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003); Susan E. Gray, The Yankee West: Community Life on the Michigan Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992); Don Harrison Doyle, The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-1870 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978); Eric Foner, ed., The New American History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987).
9. James H. Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 27, 41-42.
10.. Shortridge, The Middle West, 7, 132-133.
11. Eugene H. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 1-6, 97-122 [quoted passage, 101]; Bill Cecil-Fronsman, "'Advocate the Freedom of White Men, As Well As That of Negroes': The Kansas Free State and Antislavery Westerners in Territorial Kansas," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 20 (Summer 1997): 102-115. On the "Free Labor" concept more generally and its relation to race, see Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), especially 11-39, 261-300.
12. Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 2.
13. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery, 97.
14. Michael Lewis Goldberg, An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 9-17 [quoted passage, 10].
15. Robert Smith Bader, Hayseeds, Moralizers, and Methodists: The Twentieth-Century Image of Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 29-30. For more on territorial Kansas and the Free State narrative, see Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, 1-8, 227-228, 249-253; Kenneth S. Davis, Kansas: A Bicentennial History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976), 37-71; Craig Miner, Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State, 1854-2000 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 49-93. On the historiography of "Bleeding Kansas," see Gunja SenGupta, "Bleeding Kansas," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 24 (Winter 2001): 318-341. On race relations in Kansas more generally, see James N. Leiker, "Race Relations in the Sunflower State," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 25 (Autumn 2002): 214-236.
16. For an analysis of racist violence in Kansas, see Brent MacDonald Stevenson Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas': Racist Violence, Black and White Resistance, Geographical Particularity, and the 'Free State' Narrative in Kansas, 1865 to 1914" (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 2007), 50-126.
17. Lawrence Journal, reprinted in Wyandotte Gazette, June 22, 1867. On the geography of racist violence, see Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 184-251. On Missouri settlement in Kansas in 1865, see James R. Shortridge, Peopling the Plains: Who Settled Where in Frontier Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 19-27.
18. Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 184-251.
19. On Lawrence and racist violence, see Ibid, 206, 269-272 [quoted passage, 206].
20. For a more detailed description of the methodology, see Ibid, 42-49.
21. Leavenworth Times, August 10, 1887; Leavenworth Times, July 31, 1887.
22. Topeka Daily Capital, April 26, 1899. For similar examples, see Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, June 22, 1867; Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, August 5, 1866.
23. Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, October 30, 1867; Leavenworth Times, October 30, 1887; Topeka Daily Capital, July 31, 1909.
24. For the 1867 burning-at-the-stake, see Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 204. For the quoted passage, see Topeka Daily Capital, January 19, 1901. For the 1901 burning-at-the-stake, see Leavenworth Times, January 16, 1901; Leavenworth Times, January 17, 1901.
25. Fort Scott Daily Monitor, October 7, 1883. See also Fort Scott Daily Monitor, October 6, 1883.
26. Wichita Daily Eagle, January 17, 1901. See also Junction City Union, August 25, 1866.
27. Topeka State Journal, December 5, 1906. See also Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, August 19, 1865; Atchison Daily Champion, October 14, 1866; Wyandotte Daily Gazette, December 1, 1887; Topeka Daily Capital, October 27, 1901.
28. Hutchinson Semi-Weekly Gazette, January 21, 1905.
29. Topeka Daily Capital, January 19, 1901. On Tillman's loss of one eye, see Stephen Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 39.
30. Belle Plaine News, June 8, 1911. See also Wellington Journal, June 6, 1911. For the acquittal, see Wellington Journal, January 9, 1912.
31. Leavenworth Times, December 19, 1896; Leavenworth Times, December 22, 1896.
32. Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 127-183.
33. Topeka Daily Capital, January 19, 1901.
34. Leavenworth Times, March 7, 1888.
35. Topeka Daily Capital, July 31, 1909. See also Leavenworth Daily Times, October 5, 1871.
36. Atchison Daily Globe, January 17, 1901.
37. Olathe Mirror, December 31, 1896.
38. Eskridge Star, July 13, 1899.
39. Emporia Times and Emporia Republican, July 14, 1905.
40. Atchison Daily Globe, January 22, 1901; Leavenworth Times, January 25, 1901; Leavenworth Times, January 26, 1901; Leavenworth Times, January 27, 1901.
41. Topeka Daily Capital, January 17, 1901.
42. Pratt Republican, September 8, 1910.
43. Horton Commercial, reprinted in Topeka Plaindealer, January 31, 1902.
44. El Dorado Daily Walnut Valley Times, April 22, 1893. See also Leavenworth Times, August 23, 1893; Lawrence Daily World, reprinted in Leavenworth Times, January 17, 1901.
45. Fort Scott Herald, April 5, 1879; Lawrence Daily Journal, reprinted in Leavenworth Times, January 24, 1901.
46. Leavenworth Daily Conservative, reprinted in Wyandotte Gazette, June 22, 1867; Leavenworth Daily Times, October 5, 1871.
47. Robert G. Athearn, In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80 (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), 40-41.
48. Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 127-183.
49. Junction City Tribune, May 1, 1879.
50. Topeka Daily Capital, November 25, 1911.
51. Numbers calculated from Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 180.
52. This passage is quoted in Wells' important 1892 pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Jacqueline Jones Royster, ed., Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), 62.
53. Christopher Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 7-8.
54. Loewen, Sundown Towns, 4-7, 194-198.
2. Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 5.
3. Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 5; Andrew R. L. Cayton and Susan E. Gray, eds., The American Midwest: Essays on Regional History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 4.
4. Paul A. Gilje, Rioting in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 106.
5. James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. (New York: The New Press, 2005), 198.
6. James R. Shortridge, The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), 28; Wilbur Zelinsky, "Review of The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture." Geographical Review 80 (July 1990): 323.
7. Cayton, The American Midwest, 12.
8. See, for example, Rita Napier, ed., Kansas and the West: New Perspectives (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003); Susan E. Gray, The Yankee West: Community Life on the Michigan Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992); Don Harrison Doyle, The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-1870 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978); Eric Foner, ed., The New American History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987).
9. James H. Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 27, 41-42.
10.. Shortridge, The Middle West, 7, 132-133.
11. Eugene H. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 1-6, 97-122 [quoted passage, 101]; Bill Cecil-Fronsman, "'Advocate the Freedom of White Men, As Well As That of Negroes': The Kansas Free State and Antislavery Westerners in Territorial Kansas," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 20 (Summer 1997): 102-115. On the "Free Labor" concept more generally and its relation to race, see Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), especially 11-39, 261-300.
12. Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 2.
13. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery, 97.
14. Michael Lewis Goldberg, An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 9-17 [quoted passage, 10].
15. Robert Smith Bader, Hayseeds, Moralizers, and Methodists: The Twentieth-Century Image of Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 29-30. For more on territorial Kansas and the Free State narrative, see Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, 1-8, 227-228, 249-253; Kenneth S. Davis, Kansas: A Bicentennial History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976), 37-71; Craig Miner, Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State, 1854-2000 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 49-93. On the historiography of "Bleeding Kansas," see Gunja SenGupta, "Bleeding Kansas," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 24 (Winter 2001): 318-341. On race relations in Kansas more generally, see James N. Leiker, "Race Relations in the Sunflower State," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 25 (Autumn 2002): 214-236.
16. For an analysis of racist violence in Kansas, see Brent MacDonald Stevenson Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas': Racist Violence, Black and White Resistance, Geographical Particularity, and the 'Free State' Narrative in Kansas, 1865 to 1914" (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 2007), 50-126.
17. Lawrence Journal, reprinted in Wyandotte Gazette, June 22, 1867. On the geography of racist violence, see Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 184-251. On Missouri settlement in Kansas in 1865, see James R. Shortridge, Peopling the Plains: Who Settled Where in Frontier Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 19-27.
18. Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 184-251.
19. On Lawrence and racist violence, see Ibid, 206, 269-272 [quoted passage, 206].
20. For a more detailed description of the methodology, see Ibid, 42-49.
21. Leavenworth Times, August 10, 1887; Leavenworth Times, July 31, 1887.
22. Topeka Daily Capital, April 26, 1899. For similar examples, see Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, June 22, 1867; Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, August 5, 1866.
23. Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, October 30, 1867; Leavenworth Times, October 30, 1887; Topeka Daily Capital, July 31, 1909.
24. For the 1867 burning-at-the-stake, see Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 204. For the quoted passage, see Topeka Daily Capital, January 19, 1901. For the 1901 burning-at-the-stake, see Leavenworth Times, January 16, 1901; Leavenworth Times, January 17, 1901.
25. Fort Scott Daily Monitor, October 7, 1883. See also Fort Scott Daily Monitor, October 6, 1883.
26. Wichita Daily Eagle, January 17, 1901. See also Junction City Union, August 25, 1866.
27. Topeka State Journal, December 5, 1906. See also Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, August 19, 1865; Atchison Daily Champion, October 14, 1866; Wyandotte Daily Gazette, December 1, 1887; Topeka Daily Capital, October 27, 1901.
28. Hutchinson Semi-Weekly Gazette, January 21, 1905.
29. Topeka Daily Capital, January 19, 1901. On Tillman's loss of one eye, see Stephen Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 39.
30. Belle Plaine News, June 8, 1911. See also Wellington Journal, June 6, 1911. For the acquittal, see Wellington Journal, January 9, 1912.
31. Leavenworth Times, December 19, 1896; Leavenworth Times, December 22, 1896.
32. Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 127-183.
33. Topeka Daily Capital, January 19, 1901.
34. Leavenworth Times, March 7, 1888.
35. Topeka Daily Capital, July 31, 1909. See also Leavenworth Daily Times, October 5, 1871.
36. Atchison Daily Globe, January 17, 1901.
37. Olathe Mirror, December 31, 1896.
38. Eskridge Star, July 13, 1899.
39. Emporia Times and Emporia Republican, July 14, 1905.
40. Atchison Daily Globe, January 22, 1901; Leavenworth Times, January 25, 1901; Leavenworth Times, January 26, 1901; Leavenworth Times, January 27, 1901.
41. Topeka Daily Capital, January 17, 1901.
42. Pratt Republican, September 8, 1910.
43. Horton Commercial, reprinted in Topeka Plaindealer, January 31, 1902.
44. El Dorado Daily Walnut Valley Times, April 22, 1893. See also Leavenworth Times, August 23, 1893; Lawrence Daily World, reprinted in Leavenworth Times, January 17, 1901.
45. Fort Scott Herald, April 5, 1879; Lawrence Daily Journal, reprinted in Leavenworth Times, January 24, 1901.
46. Leavenworth Daily Conservative, reprinted in Wyandotte Gazette, June 22, 1867; Leavenworth Daily Times, October 5, 1871.
47. Robert G. Athearn, In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80 (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), 40-41.
48. Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 127-183.
49. Junction City Tribune, May 1, 1879.
50. Topeka Daily Capital, November 25, 1911.
51. Numbers calculated from Campney, "'And This in Free Kansas,'" 180.
52. This passage is quoted in Wells' important 1892 pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Jacqueline Jones Royster, ed., Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), 62.
53. Christopher Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 7-8.
54. Loewen, Sundown Towns, 4-7, 194-198.
Essay Sections:
Introduction | Racist
Violence | Resistance to Racist Violence | Dissenting
Views |
The Trajectory of the Free State Narrative | Conclusions | Notes | Recommended Resources
The Trajectory of the Free State Narrative | Conclusions | Notes | Recommended Resources
