Border War Tour: A Traveler's Guide to Civil War Sites on the Missouri/Kansas Border

By Jonathan A Jones

The Missouri/Kansas Border is full of sites where Civil War events occurred. Some of these locations are well-known, while others are just spots on the road where key events in the Civil War took place. Border War Tour gives those with an interest in local history a guidebook as to where these

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan A Jones
• Release date: Feb 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781736463352

Jonathan A Jones

Jonathan Jones was born and raised in Harrisonville, Missouri. He graduated from Missouri State University with a BS in Business Education and from Park University, where he earned an MBA in International Business. Jones spent ten years as a teacher and coach in Missouri Schools before moving into the business world where he would spend the next 20+ years working as a Enterprise Architect for IAT Insurance Group. Jones is a lifelong history buff and spends much of his spare time researching history, both in his local area as well as traveling to visit historic sites around the world. Mr. Jones and his wife of 30 plus years, Jill, have three grown children, Zac, Lexi and Nikai and currently reside in Olathe, Kansas.

Book preview

Border War Tour

A Traveler’s Guide to Civil War Sites on the Missouri/Kansas Border

Border War Tour

A Traveler’s Guide to Civil War Sites on the Missouri/Kansas Border

Jonathan A Jones

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Border War Tour:  A Traveler’s Guide to Border War Sites

2022 Edition

©2022 Jonathan Jones, All Rights Reserved

Printed and bound in the United States of American

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by an means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in written form from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, website or newspaper.

For information contact Floating Spark Publishing

1660 N Hunter Dr

Olathe, KS  66061

www.JonathanJonesAuthor.com

[e-mail]

Available in these formats:

ISBN:  978-1-7364633-3-8 (Paperback)

ISBN:  978-1-7364633-4-5 (Kindle)

ISBN:  978-1-7364633-5-2 (E-Book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022901130

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, and omissions, or any inconsistency herein.  Any slights of people, places, or organizations are unintentional.

Books by Jonathan A Jones

Border War Tour

Moonlit Mayhem:  Quantrill’s Raid of Olathe, Kansas

Follow the Border War Tour Blog at:

www.jonathanjonesauthor.com

https://facebook.com/JonathanJonesHistory

This book is dedicated to my wife, Jill Jones, who has been my biggest supporter and best friend for over 30 years.

Acknowledgements

Jill Jones

Jennifer Healy, Editor

Polly Blair, Editor

Advanced Reader

Steve Hitchcock

Matt Brown

Jeff Jones

Table of Contents

How to Use this Guide

Setting the Scene

Pawnee, Kansas

Shawnee Methodist Indian Mission

Fort Scott, Fort Scott, Kansas

Pottawatomie Massacre, Lane, Kansas

Battle of Black Jack

Battle of Osawatomie/John Brown’s Cabin

Quindaro Ruins, Kansas Overlook

Lecompton, Kansas

Marais Des Cygnes Massacre

Why did Missouri Stay in the Union?

The Battle of Carthage, Missouri

Battle of Wilson’s Creek, Springfield, Missouri

Battle of Lexington

The Battle of Morristown

Sacking of Osceola, Missouri

Burning of Humboldt, Kansas

Fun with Flags

Historic Jackson County Jail, Independence

Battle of Island Mound, Butler, Missouri

Battle of Independence

Battle of Lone Jack

Quantrill’s Raid of Olathe, Kansas

First and Second Battles of Newtonia, Missouri

Emancipation Proclamation

Massacre at Drum Creek and Little House on the Prairie

Border War Extra: Get Your Stolen Missouri Goods in Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas

Border War Extra: Order Number 11

Battle of Baxter Springs, Kansas, and the Baxter Springs Massacre

Battle of Centralia, Missouri, and Centralia Massacre

Battle of Westport, Missouri

Battle of Mine Creek, Kansas

Battle of Albany, Missouri (near Orrick)

Confederate Memorial Site, Higginsville, Missouri

Border War Tour Sites Grouped by Location

Kansas City Area

Southwest Missouri

Central Kansas

Southeast Kansas

Bibliography

About the Author

How to Use this Guide

This guide is organized in chronological order.  Ideally, this would be the best way to visit the sites because following the timeline will help a visitor to better understand the situation on the border at the time the event occurred.  Visiting in chronological order is not always the easiest and most efficient way to visit the tour stops.  The events can be widely spread out geographically, even though they occurred in similar time frames.  I have provided maps that group the locations into certain regions, which may be the most efficient and cost-effective way to work through the tour.

The sites in this Border War Tour guide are locations where Border War events actually happened.  Some of these may be National Parks, State Parks, or National Historic Sites.  Others may be places that are recognized by locals as the locations of significant events in the history of their communities. Some of the sites may simply be an intersection, or a farm field, where something significant happened.  There is not always a marker or any public recognition that something of importance took place in a certain spot.  For this book, most of the sites are commemorated by some type of marker or facility.  For those readers who want to dig deeper, I strongly recommend checking out Dick Titterington’s site, http://www.thecivilwarmuse.com/.  On this site, Titterington provides GPS coordinates to historic campsites, river crossings, and other information about Border War events.

Many of the counties and cities in the border region operate museums that hold historic artifacts relating to the Border War.  I have decided not to include those museums in the list of tour stops because in most cases, no historic events took place in those locations.  That said, the local museums are great resources and well worth the visit.  Most of these smaller museums are staffed by volunteers and are often not open on a regular schedule.  I recommend calling ahead to ensure the museums are open. 

Whatever strategy you choose to visit the tour stops, I would recommend the reader look back a few pages from that site and see if there are any Border War Extras leading up to the site you intend to visit.  These Extras provide color to the situation on the border leading up to the event that occurred at the site you plan to visit.

I have also noted which of the stops on the tour are affiliated with the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area.  The National Heritage Areas Program was first signed into law by President Reagan in 1984, with a mission of using public-private partnerships to promote heritage conservation, recreation, and economic development. (Stories, 1) The Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area goes far beyond Civil War sites and includes other historic places and events linked to later civil rights movements and conflicts.  The program's website, http://freedomsfrontier.org/ is a great resource to find other historic locations that you might visit in the Missouri/Kansas border region.  I highly recommend checking it out and reading through the resources that are available on their website.

Please treat each tour stop with respect.  Most of the sites in this book have been developed and maintained by volunteers so that our regional history will be available for generations to come.  Enjoy the places you visit.  In today’s world, none of us know when some of these spots may be determined unacceptable, at which point the history that occurred at these locations may be lost forever. 

Setting the Scene

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The purpose of this guide is to lead the reader to historic sites, locations, and information that led to Bleeding Kansas and eventually to the Border War which erupted on the Missouri/Kansas border between the years of 1854 – 1865.  The trouble began in 1854 when an evenly divided U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  This act of Congress decreed that the Kansas and Nebraska territories could choose for themselves whether they would be free or slave states.  This was a big deal because up to that point, Congress had always ensured that if a new state was being added to the Union, a second state or some other modification would be added in order to keep the number of slave and free states in balance.  At this point in history, the United States was divided into free northern states and pro-slavery southern states.  Slaves were property and comprised a large part of wealthy southerners’ net worth.  The southern slaveholding aristocracy feared government intervention into the issue of slavery.  They felt that if the anti-slavery faction took control of the Congress, the northern politicians would pass legislation that allowed government agents to come and confiscate their property, thus dramatically reducing their wealth.  Many in the north, except for the hard-core abolitionists, did not care much about the issue of slavery.  They did not want the south to take control of the government, and thus minimize their goals of a country focused on industry and manufacturing, rather than large scale farming. 

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Figure 1: 

Map of the western Missouri and Kansas Territory border in 1860.

Given the above situation, it is easy to see that each side had a vested interest in ensuring that one, or both, of the new states, would enter the union on the right side.  It was widely conceded that Nebraska would be a free state given its geographic location, which put Kansas in the crosshairs of southern supporters.  The Kansas-Nebraska Act is often cited as the real reason for the American Civil War.  If congress had simply followed past protocol and made Nebraska a free state and Kansas a slave state, the war may never have happened.  Most scholars think that slavery would have died out on its own due to the invention of modern machinery, but we will never know what might have happened if Congress had taken this path. 

Of course, the Kansas-Nebraska Act did occur, and Kansas became a battleground for determining which side would control the U.S. Government.  This is where our tour starts.  Enjoy!

Pawnee, Kansas

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The first Capital of the Kansas Territory was located in a small town called Pawnee, Kansas. It has been said the events that took place in the building in Pawnee, which still stands today, were the first actions that would eventually lead to the Civil War.  At the time, Pawnee was just outside the boundaries of Fort Riley which had been established as a fort to protect travelers on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, in 1853, from the Native Americans in that area.

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Figure 2: 

The First Territorial State Capitol