In celebration of my birthday
last week, June and I made an overnight trip to Lawrence, Kansas. It was
largely because of recently watching the 1999 Ang Lee movie “Ride with the
Devil” that we decided to make the short trip to Lawrence and to do some
sight-seeing there.
Part of the movie was about the
infamous “Lawrence Massacre,” which occurred 150 years ago tomorrow, on August
21, 1863. That event, also known as “Quantrill’s Raid,” was a guerrilla attack
led by William Quantrill. Between 150 and 200 men and boys were killed in that atrocious
raid.
We re-traced the path of the
guerrillas’ rampage, which began around 5 a.m. on that fateful August morning.
We also visited the Watkins Community
Museum of History, just a block from South Park that was part of the original
layout of Lawrence when it was platted in 1854.
Watkins Museum houses exhibits from Lawrence and Douglas
County—and a new permanent exhibition featuring the events of 1863 officially
opened last Saturday. Fortunately, we were able to get a “peek preview” of that
fine new $300,000 exhibition.
At noon on the fifteenth we dined
in the historic Eldridge hotel. On that site, the Free State Hotel, a well-fortified structure built by the staunch anti-slavery Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society to receive anti-slavery settlers as they arrived from the east, was completed in May 1856--and burned down the same day by the avid pro-slavery sheriff as well as ruffians" from Missouri!
Colonel Shalor Eldridge rebuilt the hotel, naming it Eldridge
House. That building, completed in December 1858, was then destroyed less than
five years later during Quantrill’s Raid. But Eldridge and others built it back
in 1866.
The new Eldridge House was torn down in 1925 and then rebuilt
as The Eldridge. In 1970, though, it was turned into an apartment house. But in
1985 it became a hotel again after the top four floors were completely rebuilt and
the lobby restored to its original elegance.
Before the Civil War started, the guerrilla free-state
fighters were known as “Jayhawkers,” and they often clashed with pro-slavery
groups from Missouri known at the time as “Border Ruffians” or “Bushwhackers.” After
the Civil War, the word “Jayhawker” became synonymous with the people of
Kansas.
In 1890 when the University
of Kansas, located in Lawrence, fielded their first football team they
were called the Jayhawkers. Now the KU sports teams are known as simply the Jayhawks.
After June and I moved to
Liberty in 2005, we became fans of the University of Missouri Tigers basketball
team, and we especially enjoyed the exciting games with the KU Jayhawks. Those
games were sometimes called “border wars,” though.
The more we learned about the
real border wars of the 1850s and ’60s, the more uncomfortable we felt. We were
not particularly happy when MU transferred to the SEC, bringing the MU v. KU
rivalry to an end. But at least we are no longer regularly reminded of those
horrendous days when the deadly border wars were being fought.
Somehow we went through the
Missouri school system not learning much about the appalling conflict between
the Bushwhackers and the Jayhawkers. I don’t know if that wasn’t mentioned much
back then or whether we just weren’t paying attention.
At any rate, although there has
in the past been intense rivalry between the MU and KU sports teams, and while
there is now some economic rivalry between the states especially in the Kansas
City area, at least there is no longer actual fighting with lethal weapons.
Some things, thankfully, have
improved over the last 150 years!
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