blaKC (2/5)
The University of Kansas Jayhawk mascot, Big Jay, is a caricature that pays homage to the abolitionists in the Kansas Territory. PHOTO CREDIT: LeAnn Sarah Photography
Published February 8, 2021
A NOTE FROM THE WRITER: This particular edition of “flashbaKC”, in celebration of Black History Month, is the second chapter of a weekly, five-part series that explores some of the stories of the amazing black men, women, and entities that shaped our city, and overall society. Chapter I can be read HERE. Writers write for a handful of reasons. For the month of February, I have chosen to just tell stories. Whether you are entertained, persuaded, or informed? Well, that’s up to you.
Please, be mindful that due to COVID-19 concerns, some of the places recommended in this article may not be open to the public, or have limited hours and capacity.
Chapter II: Bleeding Kansas
When it was announced that “The Border War” (the annual rivalry games between the University of Kansas Jayhawks and the University of Missouri Tigers) would resume in 2021, many in Kansas City rejoiced. For the past century, that’s what The Border War has meant. It has been about chants of “Rock Chalk!” and “M-I-Z” drowing one another out. It has been about crimson and blue versus the black and gold. In a city split by an arbitrary border, The Border War has been an exercise in pageantry and athletic competition with bragging rights at stake.
“Over Kansas’ lovely plains,
Widely desolation reigns;
Dark her soil with many stains,
Stains from freeman’s blood!
He who scorns to own a slave,
Finds, full soon a bloody grave;
Death and ruin meet the brave,
Scorn and hate, the good.”
However, that border has not always been so arbitrary. Stateline has not always been just a road. It once truly divided this city. For those that lived through the actual Border Wars, there was so much more at stake than bragging rights.
Under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Missouri entered The Union as a slave state. In 1854, Kansas was a territory and its status was still up for debate. The recent passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act superseded the Missouri Compromise’s precedent. It established that the residents of a territory would determine whether or not they would join the United States as a slave state, or free state. All eyes were on Kansas and Nebraska.
In Kansas, the “Free Soil Towns”, towns where slavery was abolished, of Lawrence and Topeka were founded to the dismay of those in the region who supported slavery. For the latter half of the 1850s, Kansas City became the battleground in the unofficial prequel to the American Civil War. For those few years, a series of raids and skirmishes broke out along the border between the abolitionist Kansan Jayhawkers and the pro-slavery Ruffians from Missouri. The fight to keep slavery from expanding west past Kansas City was so brutal that this period became known as “Bleeding Kansas”.
It was at the height of this hostility, that the port of Quindaro, Kansas was established on the Missouri River.
Located minutes from downtown, the Quindaro Overlook in Wyandotte County, Kansas honors the tradition, and preserves the ruins, of the Quindaro Townsite. Visible from the overlook is the Quindaro Bend of the Missouri River and the façade of the town’s brewery.
Strength In Numbers
Quindaro, Kansas (1856 - 1862)
The Town of Kansas (now Kansas City, Missouri) was first settled in the 1830s when John McCoy established a steamboat port on the Missouri River at the present-day intersection of Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. The opening of Westport Landing led to the emergence of further ports on the western bank of the Missouri. Kansas Citians would recognize many of those Kansas settlements today; the most significant of these ports is the one you likely have never heard of.
Quindaro, Kansas was established in 1856 on land that had previously belonged to the Wyandot tribe. When the Wyandots disbanded, the land was divided among tribe members who chose to stay behind and become United States citizens. One Wyandot member, Nancy Quindaro Guthrie, convinced the tribe to sell some of the land to her husband Abelard.
Located on a bend of the Missouri River with a prominent natural rock ledge, Quindaro was a natural landing spot for passing steamboats. The fertile land that surrounded the bend, made it a great place for a settlement. Abelard Guthrie took his wife’s Wyandot name, meaning “strength in numbers”, as the name for his unique town.
Unlike nearby ports at Westport, Leavenworth, and Atchison, Quindaro was founded as a free state port. In other words, Quindaro did not recognize and actively opposed the institution of slavery. Guthrie, an abolitionist, conceived his port to be a safe point of entry to the Kansas Territory for freed slaves.
Being a free port created many challenges for Quindaro. They faced hostility with nearby pro-slavery towns and were a target for Ruffian raids. The majority of steamboats were owned and operated by Missourians who refused to acknowledge that Quindaro even existed. Despite these challenges, Quindaro quickly grew.
The unlikely partnership of white abolitionists, freed and escaped slaves, and Wyandot natives created a flourishing town. Within a year of founding, Quindaro had over 100 buildings and the largest sawmill in all of Kansas. Roads were constructed to connect Quindaro to nearby Topeka and Lawrence as well as to the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails. When the port first opened, they welcomed six steamboats per week to their wharf. A year later, they were docking that number daily. Adding to the growth, the New England Emigrant Aid Society sent over 1,200 people to Quindaro with the goal of securing Kansas for the United States as a free territory. Thousands of white and freed black settlers followed.
Quindaro quickly earned a reputation as a breeding ground for abolitionism. The local newspaper was highly critical of the Fugitive Slave Act. The town boasted a burgeoning African American community. Quindaro residents were known for refusing to cooperate with slave catchers and for providing food and shelter to fugitives. Not surprisingly, the port became a major station on the Underground Railroad that connected escaped slaves with multiple routes.
An oft overlooked landmark, Western University students raised money to commission the first ever statue of abolitionist John Brown. Today, it marks the site of Western University’s campus.
As the 1860s began, Kansas had been won over as a free territory. Quindaro had been a key battleground in that fight. However, the boomtown began to dwindle. Now that every Kansas port was free, Quindaro succumbed to the economic pressures of competition from nearby, larger ports. In 1862, six years after Quindaro was founded, the State of Kansas revoked the town’s charter.
That is not where the story ends. The Quindaro Freedman’s School was one of the first black high schools in the country. Even though the town had died, the school would prosper in the 1860s due to the mass emigration of freed black men and women from the South into Kansas. In 1881, the school became Western University, the first college for African Americans west of the Mississippi River, and the only such college in Kansas. For the next sixty years, Western University boasted one of the best music programs in the nation and graduated several notable men and women.
While Quindaro is gone, it should never be forgotten. At a time when the epidemic of slavery plagued our nation, a tiny port on the Missouri River had the courage to declare themselves free soil. Kansas’s status as a free territory, and later state, halted the westward spread of slavery. Many found freedom because the most unlikely cast of characters banded together, found a communal strength, and stood their ground in the fight for equality.
So, What Do I Do Now? Just over the river from Kansas City, Missouri, you can visit the Quindaro Overlook which allows you to see some of the ruins of the former free state port and the Quindaro riverbend. As you approach the overlook, you will find a statue of abolitionist John Brown, the first ever erected, which was purchased by Western University students and placed on the campus in the early 1900s. The nearby Quindaro Underground Railroad Museum houses a number of artifacts from the town.
Captain William D. Matthews was one of the first black commissioned officers in the history of the United States military. PHOTO COURTESY OF: Kansas Historical Society
First In Combat
William D. Matthews & Company D (1862 - 1863)
About the same time that Quindaro was founded, William D. Matthews made his way to Kansas. William Dominick Matthews was born a free man in Maryland in 1827. As a teenager, he moved to Baltimore where he worked as a sailor commuting the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. In 1854, Matthews had enough to buy his own boat. However, discriminatory laws in place prevented him from making a living, and within two years he headed west.
In Leavenworth, Kansas, Matthews found opportunities he could have only dreamed of in Baltimore. He opened Waverly House, a successful restaurant and boarding house. With the assistance of Leavenworth Times publisher Daniel Anthony (brother of famed suffragette Susan B. Anthony), Waverly House soon became an important stop on the Underground Railroad as escaped slaves from Missouri and Arkansas made their way north. Knowing that his business was an attractive target for Border Ruffians, Matthews assembled nearly one hundred black men to defend the Waverly House.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Matthews offered his men to the federal government but was refused because blacks were prohibited from enlisting. In 1862, the United States Congress passed The Militia Act which opened the doors for black men to serve, but the government did not act on it. President Lincoln was especially fearful that allowing black men to enlist could be the final straw that led border states, like Missouri, to secede and tip the scales in the Confederacy’s favor.
In Kansas however, United State Senator James H. Lane took passage of The Militia Act as a blessing by the United State Government to recruit black men to serve in the Union Army. William Matthews encouraged a number of former and fugitive slaves to enlist and formed his own company. He was made Captain of Company D of the First Kansas Colored Infantry. Based out of Fort Leavenworth, the all-black regiment was a militia for the newly formed State of Kansas. Captain William D. Matthews was one of the first black men in United States military history to be a commissioned officer.
At that time, the bordering counties of Jackson and Bates in Missouri were a hotbed of bushwhacker activity. Bushwhackers were Missouri residents, such as the former Ruffians, who sympathized with the Confederacy and used guerrilla tactics to terrorize blacks and those who sided with the Union. In October of 1862, the First Kansas Colored Infantry was deployed across the border into Bates County in response to bushwhacker aggression on Hog Island which bordered Kansas.
When Matthews and his men arrived, they found they were vastly outnumbered, as many as five to one by some accounts, and proceeded to the farm of Rebel sympathizer Enoch John Toothman. The Infantry quickly took control of the farm. They dug trenches and set up temporary fortifications and dubbed their new home “Fort Africa”.
The following day, the bushwhackers, commanded by Sidney Jackman of Battle of Westport fame, set prairie fires to clear out the all-black militia. Matthews responded by having his men backburn the grass surrounding Fort Africa to keep them safe. The bushwhacker cavalry charged and the Colored Infantry responded with a volley. Soon it devolved into an all-out melee. When the dust settled later that day, the First Kansas Colored Infantry had overcome the odds and won.
The skirmish, which became known as the Battle of Island Mound, was relatively minor in terms of the war itself but significant in that it marked the first time that black soldiers engaged in combat during the Civil War. Reports of the events in The New York Times and Harper’s Weekly increased the profile of Island Mound. By one bushwhacker’s account, the black soldiers “fought like tigers”. Matthews and his men had proved their mettle. Senator Lane showcased the victory as proof that black men could organize and that they could fight for the Union.
When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the First Kansas Colored Infantry was among the first group of black soldiers accepted into the Union Army as part of the United States Colored Troops. Regrettably, this marked the end of Matthews’ captaincy. Black troops were not permitted to be commanded by black officers. Matthews left the company. In 1864, when there was an opportunity to join a Kansas state regiment that allowed for black commissioned officers, Matthews rejoined the fight. He saw combat as a First Lieutenant during Price’s Raid and helped deal a blow to the Confederacy that permanently forced them east of the Mississippi River. After the war ended, Matthews ran as the Republican nominee for the State Senate, which he lost. He was not deterred and continued to be an advocate for the advancement of African Americans until his death in 1906.
“I was deprived of my commission for no other reason than that I was a colored man.”
Over the course of the American Civil War, 186,000 African American men would take up arms against the South to fight for their right to be free. Many believe that the psychological victory of Lincoln signing The Emancipation Proclamation, and the infusion of black soldiers that followed, turned the tide in the Union’s favor. It all started with a group of former slaves who fought with, what The New York Times described as, “desperate bravery” at the Battle of Island Mound in Bates County, Missouri.
Who knows where this country would be today without the First Kansas Colored Infantry and their captain who refused to settle for anything less than equality?
So, What Do I Do Now? Take a trip to Butler, Missouri and visit The Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site, which marks the battleground where William D. Matthews and his men became the first black soldiers to take up arms against The Confederate States of America.
This image, depicting The Battle of Island Mound, appeared in the March 14, 1863 edition of Harper’s Weekly.
The American Civil War has always been described as , “brother against brother”. There is nowhere that this was more evident than in, and around, Kansas City. Some of the northernmost and westernmost battles of the Civil War were fought in Kansas City’s yard. More than that, the fighting to make men free began here, long before Fort Sumter was fired upon.
There are those who will tell you that the American Civil War was not about slavery. Many will paint a romantic picture of “states’ rights”, “economics”, and “heritage”. The brutality of the Jayhawkers and Ruffians, that set the stage for the war between the states, shows us this is not true.
The only heritage that was battled over was a misguided, melanin-based caste system. The primary states’ right up for debate, was the supposed right to commit human rights violations and own people like livestock. And the economics at play? Well, southern plantation owners did find that profit margins on “King Cotton” were much larger when the bulk of their workforce was unpaid.
Today, Kansas City, and the country, are still engaged in the pursuit of realizing this nation’s highest creed. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal.” The American Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Movement; they are just a part of the story. The barbaric battlefields of Bleeding Kansas; they were the spark.
Join me next week, as we continue our exploration of Kansas City’s history through the stories of influential black men, women, and entities. Subscribe at the bottom of disKCovery’s home page to be the first to know when Chapter III drops.
Have a favorite story? Have one you want to hear? Let me hear it in the comments!
Many thanks to my mother, Janell Dignan, for proofreading and editing these stories. I could not have done this without you!
