Missouri 2008 Official Vacation Planner - (Page 31) Cutaway siding reveals the original logs of the Jesse James farm home in Kearney. Osawatomie. So the Border War started and so it went, a guerrilla conflict of cross-border raids, abductions, thievery, house and barn burnings and murder. In late 1856, federal troops arrived to stave off chaos, but real peace never broke out. Newspapers across the country called it “Bleeding Kansas.” der War had already taught Missouri and Kansas: normal politics was no match for the slavery issue and Americans had no better answer than war. Of course, Missouri “Bushwhackers” and Kansas “Jayhawkers,” who had learned their deadly trade during the Border War, M U C H O F N E VA D A , A M I S S O U R I B O R D E R T O W N R E P U T E D T O B E T H E B U S H W H A C K E R “ C A P I TA L . ” resumed full hostilities during the Civil War. Historic sites in western Missouri and eastern Kansas remind visitors of the savage 10year period when Missourians and Kansans were murderous enemies. While war prevailed, pro- and antislavery factions in Kansas could find no political solution. “Popular sovereignty,” the idea that the slavery issue could be resolved by ballot, was dead. Only in January 1861, after several states in the South had left the Union, was there a congressional majority for admitting Kansas as a free state. Three months later, America’s Civil War began and the nation learned what the BorOUR TOWN TOMORROW I N 1 8 6 3 , U N I O N L O YA L I S T S T O R C H E D Missouri Border War Sites Jesse James, Civil War Bushwhacker and postwar outlaw, was killed in his St. Joseph home in 1882; the crime scene continues to fascinate. At least some remains of William Quantrill, the notorious Bushwhacker who led the 1863 Lawrence massacre, are buried at the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in Higginsville. The family home of Jesse and Frank James is open near Kearney. A marker at Fourth and Delaware in Kansas City stands near the spot where Union Gen. Thomas Ewing issued his infamous Order Number 11. An effort to deprive Bushwhackers of cover and support, the order forced thousands of Missourians to abandon their homes along the MissouriKansas border. In 1863, Union loyalists torched much of Nevada, a Vernon County border town reputed to be the Bushwhacker “capital.” Nevadans call their worthy museum the “Bushwhacker.” Among the many tragedies of the border raids was that suffered by young George Washington Carver, whose mother was abducted by Confederate guerrillas. The Carver National Monument near Diamond, in Newton County, tells the great scientist’s story. Kansas Border War Sites In 1857, New England abolitionists founded the Beecher Bible and Rifle Church in Wabaunsee. Members believed, with famous preacher Henry Ward Beecher, that both gun and scripture served their cause. Their 1862 church building survives south of Wamego in Wabaunsee County. John Steuart Curry depicted a wild-eyed Opposite page: A museum and cemetery now occupy the quiet battlefield at Lone Jack. Left: A flashy mural in Ironton depicts the 1864 Battle of Pilot Knob. www.VisitMO.com 31 http://www.VisitMO.com
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