Busy in the Cause: Iowa, the Free-State Struggle in the West, and the Prelude to the Civil War

5. Ho! For Kansas

5 Ho! For Kansas I One man especially came to signify the northern land route, both in publicity surrounding its creation and in proslavery portrayals of it as an invasion. The Free-State answer to the Missouri River blockade came in a man of western spirit and with a compelling personality, James Henry Lane. He traveled to Kansas in mid-1855 and became its most respected and admired yet hated leader in territorial and early statehood politics. Lane’s appeal to beleaguered Free-State forces, wrote Rev. Pardee Butler, was that he “alone had military experience , and he alone had the daring, the genius and the personal magnetism of a real leader.”1 Lane was a southern Democrat in Indiana, where, after training in law, he organized and as a colonel ably led an Indiana regiment of volunteers in the Mexican-American War and then entered politics. He served as Indiana’s lieutenant governor, and while serving a term as a Democratic congressman in 1854, he voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Forty-one years old upon arriving in Kansas, Lane—ever the opportunist—initially tried building the Democratic Party through which his political advancement might follow. Stories spread of his willingness to accept slavery if Kansas had good hemp-growing possibilities, and at a speech Ho! For Kansas . . 71 in Westport, Missouri, Lane had evidently stated that “he would as soon buy a negro as a mule.”2 Lane’s party-organizing efforts and promotions of President Franklin Pierce and Senator Stephen Douglas came to nothing, however. David Atchison and proslavery Democratic friends mistrusted them all. Besides, they already knew the proslavery direction they wanted to take and viewed Lane’s national Democratic Party as soft on slavery. “Every National Democrat is an abolitionist in disguise,” declared Benjamin Stringfellow, for “such a one might not steal a nigger himself, but would pat on the back those who do.”3 After all, they concluded, why embrace Lane when their own brand of proslavery men had already won control of the bogus territorial legislature and enacted strong slavery protections. Lane could see that these angry proslavery radicals were driving many Democrats toward the Free-State position. At certain conferences and mass meetings and before an August 14 political convention in Lawrence, Lane voiced moderation and support for a Free-State Party so long as it excluded blacks and black settlement in Kansas. By fall he threw himself into Topeka’s FreeState movement, which amounted to an insurrection against what the members called the bogus proslavery government.4 Proslavery forces feared his shrewd, daring, and persuasive abilities while the Free-State Kansas leadership among New Englanders loathed him. In their eyes Lane bore the odium of having voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Act and amounted to nothing but an opportunistic chameleon and “black-law” Democrat who favored laws to keep Negroes from settling in Kansas. But Lane’s strenuous, intense, and impulsive nature, combined with his military background, attracted western men among Free-State elements while his rival, Dr. Charles Robinson—cool, argumentative , cautious, clearheaded, calculating, and wily—spoke for the antislavery New England contingent.5 72 . . Ho! For Kansas Making full use of his “peculiar, flashing, and exciting oratory ,” Lane was unrivaled in his mesmerizing ability to sway “these men of the prairies.” An 1857 observer wrote that Lane defied “every recognized rule of rhetoric and oratory, at will he made men roar with laughter, or melt into tears, or clench their teeth in passion.”6 “He was at his best,” wrote another, “when he stood before a frontier audience with a cause to proclaim or an opponent to denounce.” Six feet tall and with a lean, wiry build, he wore his restless energy and personal magnetism in shabby attire. “His usual habiliment comprised an old straw hat, cowhide boots, calfskin vest, woolen shirt, grey or butternut brown . . . and a bearskin overcoat.” And “whether in pursuit of border ruffians or public office his attire was the same. His beard was variegated but not luxurious; his hair, like his beard, was usually unkempt. If he wished to disguise himself he had only to acquire a shave and a haircut, and don a regular uniform or a respectable suit, and few recognized him.”7 Thomas Wentworth Higginson witnessed Lane’s captivating character at Nebraska City. After making his way across Iowa, the antislavery organizer rested during one mid-September evening, grumbling...