In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

162 seven v Politics and Prosperity As the foregoing letters demonstrate, Kansas’s soldiers had little patience for, as Samuel Ayers put it, the “traitors in our midst.” Ayers was able to find some honor in Southerners who had the courage to openly advocate and fight for their beliefs, but little admiration for those “northern sympathizers” who hid behind professions of loyalty. As he wrote in mid-1863, “of all the low mean and contemptable beings in the world such men are the most base and vile for they have not the manhood to come out as men should and publicly avough their real sentiments but secretly in the dark do all they can to supplant that government that for years has fostered them protected their rights and secured to them every advantage that a good and wholsom government could secure to any nation.”1 For many Northerners, but especially for those willing to sacrifice their lives to defend their country, opponents of the war trod a fine line between honest opposition and treason. Although soldiers like Samuel Ayers wrote of their disgust with the activities of copperheads, opponents of the war had a much quieter presence in the state than in other regions of the Union. There was, however, persecution of Democrats, largely over issues of freedom of the press. In Leavenworth, for example, Daniel R. Anthony killed the editor of the Leavenworth Herald in June 1861 for “printing supposedly unpatriotic remarks.” Eight months later, after another Democratic paper was started in town, a mob attacked the offices of the Leavenworth Daily Inquirer for criticizing the administration of President Lincoln. However, the editor of the Leavenworth Daily Conservative , whose press printed the opposition paper, persuaded the mob not to destroy its offices. In June 1862 the editor of the Daily Inquirer was arrested and released without incident. Other Democrats complained of another type of harassment— intimidation at the polls.2 Issues of loyalty were also tied to economic policies. Many Missourians, for instance, complained that jayhawkers stripped them of their property after accusing them of disloyalty. Similarly, if one suddenly appeared to be too prosperous, it might lead to suspicion that greed was a stronger motivator than the cause. And there was ample opportunity to prosper from the business of war. As the Neosho valley Register noted, “Financially, the existence of the present war has proved a Politics and Prosperity 163 godsend to Kansas. Our farmers now find a ready market for all their surplus produce—money is plenty and business proportionately lifely.”3 And this difference was stark for Kansans. At the time of the 1860 census, Kansas residents had a per capita income of only $84, just slightly more than half that of free residents in the United States.4 However, situated on the frontier, Kansas was an important military supply post both supporting the war effort and facilitating overland trade further west. Heavy government purchasing persuaded many Kansans to move from agriculture to raising stock due to the increased demand for cattle, mules, and horses.5 Towns such as Leavenworth, Atchison, and Fort Scott boomed due to the war, and the war’s effects were astounding. In 1860, Kansas had 1.8 million acres in farms; by 1865, it had 3.5 million acres. In 1860, its farms were valued at $12.3 million dollars; by 1865, their value had soared to $24.8 million. The value of all property in Kansas in 1860 was $31.3 million dollars; by 1865, that value had more than doubled to $72.2 million dollars.6 Indeed, although fraught with fear and terror, wartime nonetheless provided a welcome economic contrast to the drought and hard times of the territorial period. Prosperity was not the only marker of the transition from peace to war. In 1854, when Kansas was organized, the proslavery faction was dominant in the territory. However, with each passing year, the Democratic Party’s fortunes waned as those of the newly formed Republican Party rose. Perhaps the best evidence of Kansas’s ideological affiliation during the war resides in the fact that the two most notorious proslavery Democrats of the territorial period, Sheriff Samuel Jones and Judge Samuel Lecompte, joined the Republican Party.7 As the migration of Jones and Lecompte to the opposition demonstrates, there was little incentive for being a Democrat in Kansas in the 1860s. In truth, the Democratic Party in Kansas simply could not recover from the inept prewar administrations of Presidents Pierce...

Share