Louis S. Warren Read Online Free PDF

slavery in Kansas. Many of them were displaced from the East themselves, and there were many slaveholders among the Cherokees, who had been driven out of Georgia and Tennessee only a generation before. The Civil War would fracture Indian communities as badly as it did those of whites. Independence Day invitations to local Indians may have been an attempt to bring them over to the pro-slavery side. In any case, the theatrics of their dances distracted the children from the gathering neighborhood tensions. 24
    By September, the Salt Creek Squatters Association was denouncing the activities of abolitionists, and questioning whether the Cody family could be allowed to stay in Salt Creek. On September 18, 1854, at a meeting to adjudicate a claim dispute in which Cody was involved, a pro-slavery agitator named Charles Dunn sank a knife in Isaac Cody’s side. 25
    The pro-slavery press exulted in the violence. “A Mr. Cody, a noisy abolitionist, living near Salt Creek, in Kansas Territory, was severely stabbed, while in a dispute about a claim with Mr. Dunn, on Monday last week. Cody is severely hurt, but not enough it is feared to cause his death. The settlers on Salt Creek regret that his wound is not more dangerous, and all sustain Mr. Dunn in the course he took.” 26
    The traumatized family raced Isaac Cody to his brother Elijah’s, across the border in Weston, Missouri. Julia recalled that the family felt “terribul,” and that eight-year-old Will wept and called out, “I wish I was a man; I would just love to kill all of those Bad men that want to kill my Father, and I will when I get big.” The knife had grazed Isaac’s lung. Three weeks passed before he could move about. As Julia remembered, he “was never strong from that day, just able to get around; had to ride as he could not walk any distance.” 27
    The stabbing of Isaac coincided with a regional surge in violence over the slavery issue. William Cody later recalled that his father “shed the first blood in the cause” of a free Kansas, and that with that stabbing came “the beginning of the Kansas troubles.” 28 “From that time the Border War began,” wrote Julia, with pro-slavery partisans pouring “into the Territory by the Hundreds” from Missouri. 29
    Unlike the official violence of the Civil War, with its huge armies under government command, the so-called Bleeding Kansas troubles brought unofficial, paramilitary violence between Free Kansas partisans and advocates of slavery, most of them from Missouri. Both sides perpetrated atrocities. But prior to 1858, when anti-slavery forces consolidated control, pro-slavery Missourians held the upper hand, with frequent raids into Kansas to intimidate and murder anti-slavery settlers. 30
    The Cody home was only one of many to suffer their wrath. Death threats against Isaac Cody began the minute he returned home after the stabbing, and continued for the next two years. One night, “a body of armed men, mounted on horses, rode up to our house and surrounded it,” wrote William Cody. Isaac escaped by dressing in Mary’s clothes and passing between the murderous horsemen on his way out into the cornfield, where he hid for days before escaping to Leavenworth. 31
    Throughout the Bleeding Kansas period, attacking homes was the primary method of waging war. Threats against Isaac were joined by violence against home and farm. In the spring of 1855, the family cut and stacked tons of hay to sell to the army post at Leavenworth. Before Isaac could move the hay, pro-slavery neighbors torched it. Isaac Cody wept, and his daughter Julia was still sorrowful as she recalled the event, many years later. “In less than one hour the 3,000 Ton of Hay was in a Blaze. All we could do was look at it.” 32
    Pro-slavery raiders also stole family livestock, especially their horses, without which settlers could not ride for help, escape the next onslaught,