The Border between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line (review)

To a significant extent, in The Border between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line, Jeremy Neely has written a history of the Kansas-Missouri state line itself. He traces the multiple meanings inscribed on the border—which signified, at various times, the northwestern boundary of slavery's expansion, the line between Indian territory and land available to white settlement, "an explosive political fault line" in the struggle over slavery in the territories, and finally a roughly homogenous region of agrarian capitalism (3). The death of slavery and the priorities of postwar economic development, embedded in a national trend toward sectional reconciliation, Neely argues, did much to dissolve the prior economic and political significance of the state line but ultimately were not sufficient to expunge painful memories of a decade of military and extra-military violence.

An early chapter deals briefly with the federal government's failed attempt to contain white settlement behind Missouri's western border and thus solve the problem of Osage-Anglo coexistence. The meat of the book, however, consists of a narrative history of the shifting meanings of the border vis-à-vis slavery. Relying on census data, manuscripts, and select secondary sources, Neely briefly addresses the economic and social significance of slavery in early Missouri. His discussion of Bleeding Kansas, the undeclared shooting war between proslavery and free-state forces that followed in the wake of the opening of the Kansas territory for settlement, stresses broad demographic trends as well as the experiences of ordinary settlers. In the late 1850s, he argues, immigration patterns shifted. Settlers tended to come from the lower Midwest rather than the upper South, thus swelling the free-state population and posing a serious threat to the seemingly unlimited future of western slaveholding which many had foreseen.

Neely's treatment of the Civil War itself stresses the vengeance-driven cycle of guerrilla violence. The war, he argues, exacerbated the border conflict, furthering "an ongoing . . . struggle waged by familiar foes" but also overwhelming the region in a "more complex, all-encompassing crisis" (98). Questions of loyalty and patriotism were superimposed onto the matter of slavery and Free-Soil. Using the Official Records series and the personal papers of several commanding officers, Neely gives a vivid portrayal of the frustrations plaguing federal authorities as they sought to suppress the Confederate insurgency, protect Unionist citizens, and intervene in the escalating cycle of violent retribution. His analysis of slavery's role in this conflict also yields some interesting insights. His observation that in many cases guerrilla activity could be correlated with slave-owning and relatively high socioeconomic status, in particular, suggests the utility of further work on guerrilla violence as a means of forestalling abolition.

Neely's narrative continues well beyond the war itself, relying on contemporary newspapers, census data, and manuscript collections to argue that in the years following emancipation and the cessation of formal hostilities, the Kansas-Missouri border lost much of its former significance. On both sides of the line, citizens confronted similar issues, often in similar ways. The prospect of African American male suffrage, for example, required both Missourians and Kansans to renegotiate the ideological boundaries of their public spheres, grappling along the way with the propriety of women's, as well as ex-Confederates', political rights. The expansion of the railroad drew many farmers into capitalist production, dramatically restructuring the "market hinterland" of the region (184). Despite prevalent fears of corruption and resistance to heightened taxation, the end result in both states was the adoption of "a mixed-farming strategy" geared toward market production of staple crops, particularly corn (201).

In extending the history of the Kansas-Missouri line both back to the days of early settlement and Indian removal and forward to the onset of populism and agrarian radicalism, Neely makes his most significant contribution. In so doing, he situates the border conflict in a broader narrative of westward expansion and capitalist economic...