The Jayhawkers: A Tale of the border war was published by T.B. Ferguson in Guthrie the year he arrived in Watonga, 1892. It is a novel about the border wars between Free Staters who were abolitionists and pro-slavery forces out of Missouri. The conflict existed primarily from 1854 to 1859. Ferguson was born in 1857 in Iowa but grew up on a farm in Kansas.
The wide-ranging conflict began with the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act in which it was assumed Nebraska would vote to come into the union as an anti-slavery state. The surprise came in Kansas where the issue was heavily debated in various locations. Elections were thrown out when Missourians crossed over the Missouri River to vote, and among various constitutions drafted in locations along the eastwest running Kansas River. Eventually, Kansas was admitted as a free state 1861 when Southern states seceded from the U.S. and Congress allowed the U.S. Senate to accept Kansas as a state. Wikipedia Bleeding Kansas But between1854 and 1859, there was bloody conflict between Missouri Ruffians and Kansas Free Staters on both sides of the Missouri -Kansas border. One estimate is there were 59 political killings, but some estimate up to 200 were killed. John Brown and his sons, abolitionists all, played a major role in Kansas until he left to attempt a raid in Virginia on the Potomac River at Harper’s Ferry (now in West Virginia) in 1859. Brown was apprehended and hanged in Virginia.
The book, The Jayhawkers….by Ferguson is a historical novel about the conflict and finishes with the reenactments after the war, prosperity, and education. The descriptions of the beauty of the skies, land, rivers and valley are unapologetic. The book was reprinted in 1970 by Literature House because of its historical value.
I read the 415-page novel to better understand Ferguson’s attitudes toward African Americans (and Native Americans). There was violence among the White settlers and Missouri Ruffians which spilled over to violence on the floor of the U.S. Senate and eventually across the nation as civil war. Ferguson supplies colorful language among Blacks who are being led by John Brown through the underground railroad to freedom. At least five Native American tribes are mentioned. It appears these tribes assisted the abolitionists though they suffered from the incursion of Whites into their traditional areas.
The westward expansion of the United States that began with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 by Jefferson and Treaty of Guadalupe of 1848 with Mexico that gave the US what would become the great southwest, was fueled by settlers wanting land, railroads wanting to connect the east with California, and both free-staters and pro-slavery forces who wanted Territories to be added according to their beliefs about slavery. Surely living in Kansas as a boy and researching the book influenced Ferguson’s attitudes about African-Americans and Native Americans in Watonga and the Oklahoma Territory for which he served as governor.