“War! War!”

John Stringfellow

John Stringfellow and Robert Kelley told the readers of their Squatter Sovereign that the settlement of the Wakarusa War meant nothing. The abolitionists might have survived the crisis, but the proslavery men could suffer a disappointment or two and still win the larger struggle. They expressed their commitment to the fight for slavery in Kansas through their admiration of Franklin Pierce’s message to Congress and then made its form explicit in the column adjacent. Stringfellow and Kelley had decamped from Atchison, suspending the paper for the duration, in order to do their part against Lawrence. Now they would do better. Under the headline “War! War!” the Speaker of the Kansas House wrote:

It seems now to be certain that we shall have to give the abolitionists at least one good thrashing before political matters are settled in this Territory. To do so we must have arms; we have the men. I propose to raise funds to furnish Colt’s revolvers and other arms for those who are without them. I propose to do so without taxing any one but myself. I will sell some shares of town stock in the Territory, (as given below,) and bind myself to invest all the money in the above articles, which shall be loaned to such soldiers as are unable to purchase them, and shall remain for such use for the space of one or two years. the arms to be used by the volunteers and militia of Atchison county when in service.

Stringfellow preferred Colt’s revolvers to Sharpe’s rifles, but he had the same idea as the antislavery party had. They, however, had a hostile government and enemies who had used force against them almost from the inception of the territory. The free state men needed to take their safety into their own hands because of men like Stringfellow. Now the Speaker of the House of Kansas, one of the highest officials in the government of the territory, went beyond rhetoric and personal involvement. He asked in public for investors to help him suppress the self-government of his fellow white men. A private propagandist might arouse alarm with such antics, but Stringfellow could not have better embodied antislavery fears short of seizing a white abolitionist and enslaving him.

But you had to do what you had to do. Back the month prior, the proslavery men got arms out of a Missouri state arsenal but that required a trip to Missouri and back, or from Missouri to Kansas at least. Nor could one gamble on the arsenal always proving so accessible. Given Wilson Shannon’s efforts to defuse the situation at Lawrence, Stringfellow may have feared the governor going soft on him as well. An independent, Kansas-based militia with its own arms would hedge against that risk.

That didn’t mean that Stringfellow abjured help from Missouri, of course. He just wanted a local arms cache for a local militia. He wouldn’t turn away Missourians who showed up for a fight. Moreover, he hoped that Missourian dollars would buy his town shares:

The stock I propose to sell will be sold at a far valuation, such as will enable the purchaser to get a good per centage on the investment. I feel assured that the wealthy friends of our cause, in Western Missouri, will be glad of the opportunity to invest.

Wealthy Missourians had paid border ruffian expenses in the past, even if Stringfellow in a separate column promised that the Kansas legislature would foot the latest set of bills. They could do it again. The Blue Lodges sought to protect their members investments, pecuniary and otherwise, in slavery in Missouri by expanding it to Kansas. Surely the prospect of actual profit in Kansas would not alienate them. John Stringfellow had good shares offered up too: two in Lecomtpon, now the capital; two more in Calhoun, seat of its county; and one in Delaware, seat of Leavenworth county. Territory and county business would help grow most of those towns. Proslavery Missourians could help the cause and make a tidy sum for their trouble.