Download Kansas, Missouri, and the Civil War, 1854-1865

Kansas, Missouri, and the Civil War, 1854-1865
July 11 – 15, 2011
Monday July 11
8:30 – 9:00 - Breakfast
9:00 – 9:30 - Welcome and Introductions
Mark Adams, Truman Library & Museum
9:30 – 10:30
Unbridled Violence Along the Missouri-Kansas Border, 1854-1861
Donald Gilmore
The war began in 1854 after the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which formed two new
territories, Kansas and Nebraska. In a period when the South and North feuded about the status of slavery, it
was thought that the new bill would provide a peaceful solution; the new settlers of the area would simply
decide the issue in a democratic election. But what occurred was the igniting of a war between organized
abolitionists, known as free staters, who arrived in Kansas Territory from the East, and Missouri settlers, who
crossed the border into Kansas and supported slavery. A war over property rights and control of the territorial
government broke out that lasted for seven years until Kansas became a state. When the Civil War broke out
in 1861, Kansas abolitionist guerrilla leaders, Charles Jennison and James Montgomery, who had been
pillaging and stealing slaves in a three-county area across the border in Missouri from 1858 to 1861, were
appointed colonels in General James Lane's brigade. Under Lane's leadership, they now led large invading
regiments across the Missouri border, where they plundered, burned, and destroyed farms and towns in
Missouri in a spree extending 100 miles from Osceola to Kansas City.
10:45 – 12:00
Bleeding Kansas
Nicole Etcheson, Alexander M. Bracken Professor of American History at Ball State University
The Kansas-Nebraska Act removed the prohibition on slavery in Kansas Territory and replaced it with
popular sovereignty, allowing the settlers to decide whether to have slavery. The legislation’s author, Illinois
Senator Stephen A. Douglas, called popular sovereignty “the great principle of self-government.” Despite this
grand pronouncement, territorial elections were marked with fraud, territorial politics were contentious, and
settlers resorted to arms to decide the slavery issue. Popular sovereignty led to violence because of the
settlers’ competing ideologies. Southern settlers believed they had a constitutional right to slavery in Kansas.
Northern settlers felt that southern actions violated political liberties. The few abolitionist settlers did not see
slavery as an issue to be decided at the ballot box. When settlement groups with radically different
interpretations of popular sovereignty came into contact in the territory, Kansas bled.
12:00 – 1:00
Lunch
1:00 – 2:15
Painting, Power and Propaganda: George Caleb Bingham and the Civil War
Joan Stack, Curator of Art Collections, The State Historical Society of Missouri
Missouri painter George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) was a nationally recognized American artist in the
1850s and 1860s who was also active in Missouri politics. His party affiliation shifted during the Civil War
from Whig to Republican, and although he was a staunch Unionist against the extension of slavery, he was
also an avid defender of civil liberties who strongly objected to some Union army practices related to the
treatment of prisoners and civilians. This presentation will examine how Bingham’s paintings reflect the
political climate in Missouri before and during the Civil War. Special emphasis will be placed on the artist’s
portrayal of politics and on his famed Civil War painting, General Order No. 11, which represents the forced
evacuation of Missouri citizens from several counties bordering Kansas. These artworks provide powerful
teaching tools that give students “windows” into the world of the nineteenth century. Many students respond
particularly well to the visual and emotional power of paintings, and by learning to “read” the images, all
viewers achieve a special kind of historical understanding that written texts cannot provide.
2:30 – 4:30
Research Panel
Lucinda Adams. Missouri Valley Special Collections; Marcia Fox, Kansas Historical Society; Jake Ersland &
Mickey Ebert, National Archives-Kansas City
Tuesday July 12
8:30 – 9:00 Breakfast
9:00 – 10:15
Lincoln and Kansas: Partnership for Freedom
Carol Ayres, Author of Lincoln and Kansas
One cannot overstate the importance of Kansas coming into the Union as a free state. This accomplishment
did not happen without the sacrifice and bloodshed of its citizens who took a strong stand against slavery
before it was required of them by their government. The Civil War actually began right here along the border
of Kansas and Missouri. Bloody Kansas had “won the war” and decided to come into the Union as a free
state before the war officially started at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Lincoln’s oft quoted statement in the
Lincoln Douglas Debates “Kansas Must be Free” was his political position in a nutshell and the reason he
chose to come to Kansas to give his first campaign speech for the Presidency.
10:30 – 11:45
The Impact of the Civil War on Harry Truman’s Family
Jeff Gall, Truman State University
A knock on the door in the middle of the night struck terror into the hearts of any Missouri family during the
Civil War. Who was on the other side of that door? Were they really whom they said they were? What if the
strangers asked for information about their enemies? Why was it virtually impossible for Missouri families to
stay neutral? While Harry Truman was born 19 years after the last shots of the Civil War were fired,
recollections of the period, and especially the events along the Missouri-Kansas border were deeply
ingrained in the memories of the family that raised Truman. How did Truman’s family experience the Civil
War in Missouri, and what impact did those years have on their world-view? How did the experiences of the
Truman family compare to those of other families caught up in the guerrilla warfare that characterized the
conflict in Missouri – particularly the experiences of civilian men, women and children?
11:45 – 12:30
Lunch
12:30 – 1:15
Lunch Speaker:
Borderland Families
Rose Ann Findlen
The Missouri-Kansas border in the mid-1850s was a heated area ripe with guerrilla warfare and martial law
that continued during the Civil War. Among thousands of affected families living on the edge of 'civilization'
were those of the Lykins, Peerys and Heiskells. Discover what their lives were like, and how Missourians and
Kansans relationships were forever changed by these tumultuous events.
1:15 – 2:00
Research
2:00 – 3:15
Role of women in the Civil War
LeeAnn Whites, University of Missouri
Professor Whites specializes in the areas of gender and sexuality studies. Her current research projects
include coediting an anthology with Alecia Long, entitled, Occupied Women: Protection, Violation and the
Sexual Politics of the Union Military and a book project, Civil War Women, which considers the experience of
women in the Civil War through the lens of their correspondence with their men in the field.
3:15 – 4:45
Missouri Divides: The 1860 Presidential Election in Missouri
Silvana R. Siddali, St. Louis University
The 1860 election threatened to tear the nation apart. In late 1860 and early 1861, eleven southern states
seceded from the Union in response to Abraham Lincoln’s election to the Presidency. In border states like
Missouri, however, the election also revealed the deep internal rifts that divided the state’s population. Prof.
Siddali’s presentation will focus on the popular and political debates over the 1860 presidential contest in
Missouri. Newspaper editorials, election returns, and letters will be used to illustrate public opinion for and
against the various candidates, as well as reactions to President Lincoln’s election.
Wednesday July 13
8:30 – 9:00
Breakfast
9:00 – Noon
Tour of Civil War Sites
Mike Calvert, President, The Civil War Round Table of Western Missouri
Mike will lead the group on a bus tour of Kansas City Civil war sites.
Noon – 1:00
Lunch at Truman Library
1:00 – 5:00
Tour continues
.
Thursday July 14
8:30 – 9:00
Breakfast
9:00 – 10:15
Executive Power in Wartime
Jennifer Weber, University of Kansas
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln claimed unprecedented powers for the president in a time of war.
He suspended habeas corpus and then declared martial law across the country, imposed the nation's first
income tax, and instituted the first military draft in American history. His most sweeping action, of course,
was to eradicate slavery through much of the South. We laud the Emancipation Proclamation today, but it
was very controversial at the time, in part because it struck at the property rights of thousands of slave
owners. Lincoln's use of authority has been cited by later presidents in their own efforts to prosecute wars.
Professor Weber compares Lincoln's use of presidential power with that of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt and explains why historians have not been more critical of Lincoln on the subject of
executive power while their judgments of Wilson and FDR have been so harsh.
10:30 – 11:45
Battle at the River of Death
Edwin Kennedy and Tom Chychota, US Army Command and General Staff College
In September 1863 the Confederacy was on the strategic defensive. Suffering a double-blow at Vicksburg
and Gettysburg in the first week of July, the situation for the Confederacy was serious. Embolden by these
actions, Major General William Rosecrans put his Army of the Tennessee on the road towards Atlanta. In an
operational coup, he was poised along the Tennessee River at Chattanooga by September, ready to strike
towards Atlanta. The Confederates appeared to be unable to stop the Federal forces. However, in the war’s
longest and largest movement of forces by rail, the Confederates moved General Longstreet’s corps from
Virginia to Georgia to stem the tide. Chickamauga was one of the worst defeats suffered by the Union Army
and when it was over, the Federals were besieged in Chattanooga and Rosecrans relieved.
11:45 – 12:45 Lunch
12:45 – 2:00
Research
2:00 – 3:15
Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865
Ethan Rafuse, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
On the morning of May 3, 1863, Gen. Robert E. Lee rode forward to a crossroads clearing at which sat the
Chancellor House. All around him, smoke mixing with the scent and sight of hundreds of dead and wounded
men to create a scene of horror almost beyond description. Nonetheless, the mood of the Confederate army
around Chancellorsville was electric, for they were on the verge of pulling off one of the most incredible
tactical victories in American military history. As Lee rode among his men they greeted him with cheer after
cheer. "The scene is one that can never be effaced from the minds of those who witnessed it," one of Lee's
staff officers later wrote, "as I looked upon him in the complete fruition of the success which his genius,
courage, and confidence in his army had won, I thought that it must have been from such a scene that men
in ancient days rose to the dignity of the gods." This presentation will explain how Lee and the Confederate
cause went from that moment of triumph at Chancellorsville to complete defeat in 1865. It will consider the
strategic and operational factors that shaped Lee's generalship in such campaigns as Gettysburg, Bristoe
Station, Spotsylvania, Petersburg, and Appomattox. No explanation of Confederate defeat can ignore the
fact, though, that, as one Confederate division commander later remarked in a conversation about
Gettysburg, "the Union Army had something to do with it". Thus, this presentation will take the time to not
only consider matters on the Confederate side, but the Union side as well.
3:30 – 4:30
Common Union Soldier in the Civil War
Greg Higginbotham
Friday July 15
8:30 – 9:00
Breakfast
9:00 – 10:30
Carol Anderson, Emory University
From Civil War to Civil Rights
Carol Anderson is an Associate Professor of African American Studies. She received A.B. degrees in
Political Science and History and an M.A. in Political Science/International Relations from Miami University.
She earned her Ph.D. in History from Ohio State University. She will trace the history of the Civil Rights
movements from the post-Civil War period to the 1960s and the Civil Rights movement. Professor
Anderson’s research focuses on international and domestic politics and their effect on human rights and
racial equality.
10:45 – 11:45
Teachers share lesson plan ideas in small groups
11:45 – 12:00
Evaluation and wrap up