The Battle Cry of Freedom: The New England Emigrant Aid Company in the Kansas Crusade (review)

96ClVILWAR HISTORY (Missouri) Rifles, the Kickapoo Rangers, the recently arrived Southern emigrants , and other units — all under the notorious Border Ruffians. It was now John Brown's turn. Although too late to ride to the rescue of Lawrence, he struck back at Osawatomie Creek, and this pattern of violence was repeated in the months ahead with Kansas nights red with barn burning, dry gulching, and ambushing. Brown's raids were preludes to the full-scale warfare which erupted after the fall of Fort Sumter. The Battle of Carthage, the Battle of Wilson's Creek, the fall of Lexington, the Battle of Pea Ridge, the Battle of Prairie Grove, and the Battle of Westport were hard-fought, bloody encounters. Locales such as Baxter Springs, Cabin Creek, Pilot Knob, and Centralia flared into the news as settings for brief but violent brushes with bands of bushwhackers like Quantrill's guerrillas. Although teeming with a complexity of names, places, and frontier politics, Mr. Monaghan's book hews to the main line of development and presents a dramatic part of America's rich, varied pattern of growth. His style is forceful , and his canvas is vivid; each detail stands in sharp relief and in proper sequence. This is an exciting as well as informative book. Arnold Gates Garden City, New York The Battle Cry of Freedom: The New England Emigrant Aid Company in the Kansas Crusade. By Samuel A. Johnson. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. 1954. Pp. 357. $5.00.) the centennial anniversary year, 1954, of the creation of the KansasNebraska Territory brought forth several books and essays concerning the territorial era. Some of these works were scholarly, while others treated the events in a popular manner. Samuel A. Johnson has presented a study of one active organization and the role it played in the development of the Kansas Territory, and thus has filled a gap in American history with his well-balanced, scholarly work. At the same time that Stephen A. Douglas was pushing the KansasNebraska bill through Congress, Eli Thayer was making plans to save Kansas for Freedom, and to block forever the further expansion of slavery. To Thayer, squatter's sovereignty was a challenge and an opportunity, as it offered a chance to fill Kansas Territory with a free-labor population and to beat the South at its own game. Accordingly, the New England Emigrant Aid Company was organized, securing its first charter from the Massachusetts legislature in 1854 and a second charter in the following year, taking the form of a private-stock company which spent almost $200,000 on its Kansas venture. Many prominent New Englanders enlisted to support Thayer. Edward Everett Hale was one of the first to join, and business men contributed large amounts of capital to aid the cause of freedom. John Williams, Amos Lawrence, Samuel Howe, Thomas Webb, William Shooner, John Lowell, John Carter Brown, and Samuel Cabot were among those taking an active part. Their purposes were to promote migration, secure reduced transportation rates, Book Reviews97 provide organized traveling groups, and ease the problems of the settlers in the new territory. Hotels, mills, schools, churches, and other facilities were to be built by the Company, and agents were sent to Kansas to further this work. It was the hope of the founders that some financial return would come to the Company from donated lands and from the operation of newly acquired businesses. Their stake in the enterprise was basically financial rather than ideological; although they hoped for "free-state" supporters, no emigrant was bound to support the idea of a free territory, and most of the Company's members were hostile to the Garrisonian abolitionists. The march of events, however, changed this emphasis considerably. The towns established by the Company became lively centers of "free-state" activity, and as the political tension increased, the Company speeded up its financial and political activities, including the dispatch of both Bibles and weapons to support the "free-state" leaders. The New England Emigrant Aid Company was never a financial success. Its agents were reckless with provided funds, and too often the business enterprises were not carefully supervised. Its success lay in other fields. Mr. Johnson has soundly...