Well hey there! I’m Mr. Beat
Many outside of the United States don't realize that there are a lot of states out there that don't like each other.
But state rivalries are a proud tradition here. And it goes much beyond sports.
Cypher from the Cynical Historian and I are putting together a series that sheds light on these state rivalries.
As many of you already know, for most of my life, I have lived in Kansas.
As matter of fact, I was born and raised here.
So it makes sense that that I first look at why Kansas hates Missouri.
Meanwhile, Cypher, who currently lives in New Mexico, will be looking at why New Mexico hates Texas.
So be sure to check out that video after you're done watching this one.
But first
Why does Kansas hate Missouri?
It all started with one of the worst laws in American history- The Kansas-Nebraska Act.
By the 1850s, many Americans were illegally moving to what would become Kansas.
Most of them came for that sweet, cheap, farmland, ignoring the earlier promises to give much of the area to Native Americans who had previously been pushed out of their homes back east.
After talks picked up about building a transcontinental railroad through the area, Congress went to work trying to come up with a law to make Kansas a territory and give it the infrastructure it needed to allow settlement.
It wasn’t easy. You see, there was the slavery issue.
Americans were divided-go figure- about the expansion of slavery out west.
According to the Missouri Compromise, passed back in 1820, any new territory created north of the 36°30’ parallel and west of Missouri couldn’t have slavery.
So Missouri would be the last slave state north of 36-30.
However, pro-slavery folks felt if Kansas was a territory it should also have slavery since they weren’t getting slavery in the desert southwest.
Pro-slavery and anti-slavery members of Congress passionately debated the issue.
Finally, in 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas came up with another compromise, that crappy law I brought up earlier- The Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Congress barely passed it, and President Franklin Pierce signed it into law on May 30, 1854.
It created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
Well duh. It got rid of that 36-30 line of the Missouri Compromise, and it established popular sovereignty in both territories to solve the slavery issue.
In other words, it allowed the settlers to decide whether or not to have slavery in both territories.
I know, what could go wrong, right?
Well a lot went wrong in Kansas.
Remember, Missouri was a slave state.
Within days of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, hundreds of pro-slavery Missourians crossed the border into Kansas territory claiming land.
They organized and plotted ways to politically influence the region.
11 days after the Act passed, Missourians put together a meeting at Salt Creek Valley, just west of Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, creating the Squatter’s Claim Association, and calling for people to sacrifice their lives by settling in Kansas to ensure it became a slave state.
Not to be outdone, the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company organized in uh, yeah, Massachusetts, an abolitionist hotbed, to help settlers move to Kansas to make sure it became a free state.
It sent its first 29 settlers on July 29th, 1854.
I’m standing in Robinson Park in Lawrence, Kansas.
This is Founder’s Rock. Those 29 settlers ended up here.
And now I’m just gonna read this placard that is on this rock.
“To the pioneers of Kansas who in devotion to human freedom came into a wilderness, suffered hardships and faced dangers and death to found this state in righteousness.
These were the first to come under the auspices of the New England Emigrant Act Company.
They founded the City of Lawrence. The first party of twenty-nine men left Massachusetts July 17, 1854 and arrived here August 1, 1854.
And you'll see here that all the names are listed.
And then below...
The second party of one hundred-fourteen left Boston August 29, 1854, and arrived September 15, 1854.”
So there are the original settlers of Lawrence.
Which is probably why the main street that goes downtown is called Massachusetts Street.
The Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company sent hundreds more to Kansas, and other folks who became known as “free-staters” followed them, settling in places like Topeka, Manhattan, and Osawatomie.
When pro-slavery settlers and anti-slavery settlers all rushed in, things were strangely calm for the first few months.
However, that all changed on March 30, 1855.
On that day, a flood of Missourians, known as Border Ruffians, crossed the border into Kansas to illegally vote for a bunch of pro-slavery candidates.
Likely because of that, pro-slavery candidates won across the state, and the Kansas territorial legislature was almost entirely made up of them.
That’s when the violence really took off.
From 1855 to 1858, some of the worst violence the United States has ever seen took place in Kansas territory between proslavery and antislavery groups.
It was so bad, it became known as Bleeding Kansas.
Historians sometimes argue the American Civil War really began in Kansas.
In addition to small skirmishes here and there, some major battles occurred during this time.
On November 21, 1855, a pro-slavery dude named Franklin Coleman shot a free-stater named Charles Dow.
Coleman said he was acting in self-defense, and the county sheriff, Samuel Jones, must have believed him, choosing to arresting Dow’s free-state friend, Jacob Branson, instead.
After a free-state mob broke Brandon out of jail, Jones and a bunch of pro-slavery forces, most of them from Missouri, made their way to Lawrence, preparing to destroy the whole town, since it had become a free-state hub.
Lawrence heard about them coming, and raised a militia of 800 men to defend the city.
The infamous abolitionist John Brown and his sons were among them.
Leaders on both sides were able to sign a peace treaty before any major violence broke out.
However, the next year, someone shot Sheriff Jones as he was attempting to arrest free-state settlers in Lawrence, (but they did not shoot the deputy) and then drove the wounded Jones out of town.
Jones eventually came back with Federal Marshal Israel Donaldson and about 800 pro-slavery dudes, many from out of the state and some from as far away as South Carolina.
As they camped outside of Lawrence, David Rice Atchison, the former Missouri Senator, gave a speech to fire them up.
On May 21, 1856, Jones, Donaldson, and their forces destroyed and looted much of Lawrence, including bringing down the Eldridge Hotel and the printing offices of two Free State newspapers.
This became known as the Sacking of Lawrence.
In retaliation, a few days later John Brown, his sons and a few other abolitionists, murdered five allegedly proslavery settlers camped near Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County.
This became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.
Brown went into hiding, but Captain Henry Pate captured and arrested two of his sons.
On June 2, Brown caught up to Pate and a group of Missourians he was leading near what today is Baldwin City.
After some fighting, Brown and his forces captured 22 of Pate’s men and held them for ransom.
Brown agreed to release them after Pate released his sons. This became known as the Battle of Black Jack.
After this, Brown and his sons went back into hiding, but continuing to lead guerilla attacks in Northeastern Kansas.
On August 16, in what became known as The Battle of Fort Titus, Free Staters attacked the fortress of the pro-slavery dude Henry Titus, near Lecompton.
They captured and imprisoned pro-slavery folks, taking them back to Lawrence.
On August 30, General John William Reid and between 250 and 400 Border Ruffians attacked the Free Stater town of Osawatomie.
Reid had planned on destroying the town, as well doing the same to Topeka and Lawrence later.
John Brown led forces there against Reid, but was unable to defend the town.
After Brown’s forces retreated, Reid and his men looted and burned Osawatomie.
Still, Brown emerged as a hero after that battle.
Today there’s a museum and park there in his honor.
For more context about John Brown, here is the Cynical Historian…
Cynical Historian: Hey, Cypher here. John Brown has often been lionized for his ideals.
I don’t think people nowadays would argue against his cause: complete abolition of slavery.
When he died in 1859, in service to that cause, people sang their praise of him in a familiar tune.
“John Brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grave. His soul is marching on.”
The same tune eventually became the main song for the Union Army during the Civil War, with different lyrics, which was called The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Glory, glory hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
Suffice it to say, he was a martyr for the cause of abolitionism.
But his methods were more akin to terrorism than most would like to admit.
Before becoming a radical, he had suffered many financial hardships, and even failed to become a Unitarian minister.
But when he moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, he turned the place into a hub for the Underground Railroad.
This wasn’t violent yet.
It was his actions during Bleeding Kansas that gave him a reputation for violence on behalf of abolitionism.
He was essentially an insurgent, not unlike those he was fighting.
Once that conflict calmed down, he turned his sights on Virginia.
He gathered forces, and attacked an armory at Harper’s Ferry in the hopes of starting a massive slave revolt, but was pretty quickly defeated by US cavalry under the command of Robert E. Lee, yes that one.
After being captured, he was hanged for treason.
Even before his execution, he was being mythologized as an abolitionist symbol.
He had killed for his cause, but many were accepted that.
Harriet Tubman and Henry David Thoreau even supported the raid on Harper's Ferry.
Thoreau succinctly analogized Brown’s guerrilla tactics with other movements by calling it an “abolition filibuster army.”
Filibusters were slavery expansionists who tried to take more land to the south of the United States by overthrowing governments themselves.
Most famous of which was William Walker, who successfully attacked Nicaragua in 1855 for the purpose of extending slavery there.
So these two were intertwined in Western lore.
As historian Richard Slotkin says, “The cases of Brown and Walker have a definite symmetry.”
These people were mythologized as heros of abolition and slavery, but they were ultimately fighting over the extension of slavery, which would eventually lead to the Civil War.
John Brown became the martyred hero of the Union, despite being executed by that very Union for treason.
Thanks Cypher! Ok, so as the violence raged on back in Kansas, both sides tried to establish governments.
They even set up different capitals of the territory and different constitutions.
There was the Topeka Constitution, which banned slavery, the Lecompton Constitution, which attempted to allow slavery.
While the Lecompton Constitution was being debated, a Free-State legislature was established up in Leavenworth.
The Leavenworth Constitution not only banned slavery, but provided protections for women’s rights.
Honestly, though, it didn’t really matter what was going on with politics.
People were continuing to kill each other, man.
However, things did seem to calm down a bit in 1858.
The last significant event of Bleeding Kansas-until the Civil War broke out anyway- was the Marais des Cygnes massacre.
That was when Charles Hamilton, a proslavery dude from Georgia, crossed the border from Missouri and captured 11 unarmed Free-Staters.
He made them stand out in a field and shot them all, killing five.
After the territory of Kansas banned slavery by adopting the Wyandotte Constitution in 1859, the violence finally went away. For a couple years anyway.
Once the Civil War broke out, things got crazy again.
By this time, those defending Kansas as a free state became known as Jayhawkers, and those in Missouri fleeing Union control and loyal to the South became known as Bushwhackers.
Who comes these names? I love them.
Anyway, on September 23, 1861, some Jayhawkers, led by James Lane, who was a Senator for Kansas and just as radical as John Brown was, stormed the town of Osceola, Missouri, freeing 200 slaves and killing nine local citizens, then plundering and setting fire to the town.
But these Jayhawkers didn’t stop there. They terrorized the western border of Missouri.
In retaliation...yeah that’s retaliation...the cycle of violence just keeps going, alright?
In retaliation for the sacking of Osceola and this terrorizing of the border, among other things, a dude named William Quantrill organized a bunch of Bushwhacker guerrilla soldiers to plan an attack on- you guessed it- Lawrence.
Lawrence was where many of the Jayhawker guerrilla fighters came from.
In particular, it’s where Senator James Lane lived.
On August 21, 1863, Quantrill and 300 fellow Bushwackers invaded Lawrence, killing every man and boy in sight.
They burned down most of the city and destroyed everything in their path.
Remember the Eldridge Hotel, that got burned down during the Sacking of Lawrence? Yeah that got burnt down again.
Here is the Eldridge Hotel today. They rebuilt it yet again.
Quantrill and his crew ended up killing 164 civilians.
It was known as the Lawrence Massacre, or Quantrill’s Raid, and I made a video about it awhile back. You should check it out and stuff.
After the Lawrence Massacre, Union General Thomas Ewing, Jr. determined that Quantrill recruited most of his bushwackers from four Western Missouri counties that all bordered Kansas.
Those four counties were also where Jayhawkers kept invading.
So he decided to order everyone living in the rural areas of those four counties out.
Those who could prove their allegiance to the Union could stay, but had to live on military outposts, and had to completely abandon their farms.
Ewing’s order, called General Order No. 11, sent soldiers to the four counties to force everyone out and burn the place to the ground.
They killed animals, stole stuff, and killed civilians who did not cooperate.
The four counties were burned so much they were nicknamed “The Burnt District.”
It became a wasteland, and to this day, 156 years later, towns in these counties aren’t doing as well economically as in neighboring counties.
After the Civil War ended, things finally calmed down at the border of the two states.
The Kansas City metropolitan area also became an area that neutralized relations between residents of the two states.
But the legacy of the Border War continued for generations, mostly through the rivalry of athletic teams from the two biggest universities in each state- the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri.
In fact, even the mascots reflect the Border War.
The University of Kansas is home of the Jayhawks, named after the Jayhawkers of the Civil War era, and the University of Missouri is home of the Tigers, named after the militia unit that defended western Missouri from the invading Jayhawkers.
Over the years, the rivalry between KU and Mizzou has been one of the most intensely hateful rivalries in all of college sports.
In fact, in the early days of football matchups, Civil War veterans from both sides literally sat in the stands and booed at each other.
Hey, better than shooting at each other, am I right? (awkward laugh)
So anyway that was why Kansas hates Missouri.
Or why Missouri hates Kansas.
Or why they both used to hate each other at least.
Be sure to check out Cypher's video
about why New Mexico hates Texas over on his channel, the Cynical Historian.
Subscribe over there if you haven't already.
You know, Cypher and I, we go way back.
You know back to when we both literally had just a couple hundred subscribers.
Those were simpler times.
Anyway, if you are from Kansas or Missouri I want to hear from you.
Comment below. Talk trash below.
And thank you for watching.
Cynical Historian: John Brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grave. His soul is marching on.