The
Wakarusa War was a skirmish that took place in
Kansas TerritoryThe Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Kansas....
during November and December 1855 as part of the
Bleeding KansasBleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a series of violent events, involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of the U.S. state of Missouri roughly between 1854 and 1858...
violence. It centered around
Lawrence, KansasLawrence is the sixth largest city in the U.S. State of Kansas and the county seat of Douglas County. Located in northeastern Kansas, Lawrence is the anchor city of the Lawrence, Kansas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Douglas County...
, and the
Wakarusa RiverThe Wakarusa River is a tributary of the Kansas River, approximately long, in eastern Kansas in the United States. It drains an agricultural area of rolling limestone hills south of Topeka and Lawrence.-Description:...
Valley.
Background
The events that led to the Wakarusa War began on November 21, 1855, when a
Free-StaterFree-Stater was the name given those settlers in Kansas Territory during the Bleeding Kansas era in the 1850s who opposed the extension of slavery to Kansas....
named
Charles DowCharles W. DowSome sources say November 21, 1855 while others say December 20, 1855. Dow's tombstone in Oakwood Cemetery reads December 20, 1855. According to the Lawrence Herald of Freedom newspaper, Dow's obituary says November 21st...
was shot by a pro-slavery settler. Violent reprisals on both sides led to escalating tension. On December 1, 1855 a small army of
MissouriMissouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
ans, acting under the command of
Douglas County, KansasDouglas County is a county located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the county population was 110,826...
Sheriff Samuel J. Jones
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912/j/jones_samuel_j.html http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/cgiwrap/imlskto/index.php?SCREEN=bio_sketches/jones_sheriff, entered
KansasKansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
and laid siege to Lawrence.
Siege
During the siege, the main body of the invaders were encamped on the Wakarusa bottoms, some six miles (10 km) from Lawrence. The invading army numbered nearly 1,500 men. They were indifferently armed as a whole, although they had broken into the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Arsenal at
Liberty, MissouriLiberty is a city in Clay County, Missouri and is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. At the 2007 population estimate, the city population was 29,993...
, and stolen guns, cutlasses and cannon, and such munitions of war as they required.
In Lawrence,
John BrownJohn Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
and James Lane had mustered Free-State settlers into a defending army and erected barricades. No attack on Lawrence was made. A treaty of peace quelled the disorder, and its provisions were generally accepted. The only fatal casualty occurring during the siege was of a Free-State man named Thomas Barber, who had come to the defense of Lawrence. His death was memorialized in a poem by
John Greenleaf WhittierJohn Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...
titled
Burial of Barber.
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