Battle of Black Jack fuels ire
Editor's note: This is the first of a series of accounts about Civil War history as it relates to Vernon County, Mo., and the surrounding area, in honor of the 150th anniversary of the historic conflict. Next week, look for a story about the Battle of Carthage and related upcoming events.
Even today, 151 years after his death, mention John Brown in Kansas or Missouri and you get radically different reactions.
One view is symbolized by the 7-foot-2-inch marble statue of the militant abolitionist in Topeka, Kan., with an inscription saying, "Erected to the Memory of John Brown by a Grateful People."
The other is represented by Missourians, who call Brown a cultist who embraced murder and martyrdom.
Fueled by a debate about whether Kansas would be a "slave state," a series of events in which Brown was involved in 1856 is considered the prelude to the start of the Civil War five years later.
Eight hundred men stormed into Lawrence, Kan., with a "Southern Rights" flag on May 21 that year to burn a hotel and toss two newspaper presses into the Kansas River.
Then Brown and a dozen sword-waving "Free Staters" cut down five members of the pro-slavery Law and Order Party on Pottawatomie Creek, May 24-25, in Franklin County, Kan.
Incensed by the "Pottawatomie Massacre," 75 slavery advocates directed by newspaperman Henry Clay Pate captured two of Brown's sons, Jason and John Jr., and chained them to trees.
That touched off the Battle of Black Jack on the morning of June 2, 1856, when Brown led 40 men including his sons Frederick, Owen, Salmon and Oliver into the fight with troops commanded by Pate and Capt. Samuel T. Shore.
So named because it took place around a grove of black jack oak trees three miles east of Baldwin City, Kan., the battle began when a Missouri sentinel fired at Brown's men a half-mile from Pate's camp.
"To stall, Brown had one of his men shoot Pate's horses and mules," the Lawrence Journal-World reported in 2006, quoting Old Castle Museum Archivist Brenda Day of Baker University.
"It was a good move. For one, it showed there was fight and range in their rifles. For another, it ensured Pate's trip back to Missouri would be a long, hard walk. The firing continued for several hours. The battle ended when Fredrick Brown rode out, waved a sword and yelled, 'Father, we have them surrounded and have cut off their communications!'
"It was a big, fat lie, but Pate believed him. Pate sent someone out with a flag of truce. Brown sent him back, demanding that Pate himself surrender. He appeared. Brown took him prisoner and told Pate to order his men to lay down their arms. They did. Brown fed and sheltered Pate and his men until they were liberated by U.S. Army Col. Edwin 'Bull Head' Sumner."
Day said another flash point had come on May 22, 1856, with U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina's savage cane beating of Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner on the Senate floor in Washington.
Kerry Altenbernd of Baldwin City is a John Brown re-enactor who'll give a fiery speech in Nevada, about 1 p.m., June 11, during Bushwhacker Days. The Black Jack Battlefield will stage re-enactments at 11 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. June 4. Admission is $8 for adults and $1 for children.
"The battle was the first time in history that a group of men, Brown and the Free Staters, fought against another group, Pate and his men, from the dominant slave-holding society in order to abolish slavery," Altenbernd told the Lawrence paper in 2006.
"The battle is internationally important and should be recognized as such."
There were numerous casualties but no fatalities, according to historians.
Reporting afterward for the St. Louis Republican, Pate said famously, "I went to take Old Brown, but Old Brown took me."
Bushwhacker Museum Coordinator Terry Ramsey hosted a May 2 visit by Friends of the Battle of Black Jack to put up an exhibit on the fight, "Bleeding Kansas," Brown, Pate and the Santa Fe Trail, which passed by the battle site.
"Mr. Altenbernd will give a speech as John Brown and I hope we have someone here to oppose him," Ramsey said.
She agrees with Brown's desire to end slavery but says his methods were egregious, including a Dec. 20, 1858, raid into Vernon County that resulted in the death of farmer David Cruise and theft of thousands of dollars of property.
Ramsey said the local raid helped finance Brown's Oct. 16-18, 1859, attack on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., after which he was hanged for treason. Pate, a Confederate lieutenant colonel in the 5th Virginia Cavalry, died May 11, 1864, in the Battle of Yellow Tavern in Henrico County, Va. He was 32 and Brown was 59.
Gary Ayres of Humansville, former commander of the Confederate Col. John T. Coffee Camp of the 6th Missouri Cavalry, said Brown "was in the class of someone like David Koresh."
Referring to the leader of a religious sect who died with 75 followers in an April 1993 fire near Waco, Tex., Ayres said that like Koresh, Brown "was a good speaker with a type of charisma that got a lot of people listening to him and following him to the end."
Ten of Brown's number were killed at Harpers Ferry and six hanged after U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee, who of course later commanded the Confederate Army of Virginia, captured them.
"The Civil War started on the border of Kansas and Missouri in the mid-1850's, precipitated by Free Soilers, Freethinkers, Radical Republicans and immigrants who moved into Kansas to seek land," Ayres said.
"John Brown mixed into it and attacked citizens, Missourians went to Kansas to retaliate and it was all-out war."