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Then it was June 2, 1856. Then it was on. [1]

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Date: 2023-06-02

Part 2 of a four-part series on the Border War :

Shortly before dawn on June 2, 1856, approximately 30 no-slaves-in-Kansas men surprised and defeated approximately 50 proslavery men in the Battle of Black Jack, the first armed action in which two forces of comparable strength and determination met and fought over slavery. The combatants consisted of two no-slaves-in-Kansas militias —John Brown’s Pottawatomie Rifles, and my cousin Samuel Shore’s Prairie City Rifles— and one pro-slavery/at least quasi-governmental militia acting as a posse, the Westport Sharpshooters, a.k.a. Shannon‘s Sharpshooters. The Sharpshooters were ramrodded by deputy U.S. Marshall Henry Clay Pate, and were in hot pursuit of Brown, who had just dismembered five non-resisting fellow pioneer Kansans, Brown’s fairly nearby neighbors. Brown said they were pro-slavery.

I would add that the posse was called “‘Shannon’s’ Sharpshooters,” because territorial Kansas’ then-Governor was Wilson Shannon, and the Sharpshooters had come to be to assist Shannon in his efforts to move slavery into Kansas... with the blessings of President Franklin Pierce and his Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis.

There are quite a few accounts of what happened that day. For illustrative purposes, Daniel W. Wilder’s 1886 chronological history of Kansas from the first European contact (1541) to 1885 reports that Pate encamped “on a stream called Black Jack, near Hickory Point, in the southeast corner of Douglas county. Monday morning Capt. Brown with, nine men and Capt. Shore with nineteen men left Prairie City, and marched to Black Jack, five miles distant. Pate had fifty men: The fight was opened by Shore and lasted about three hours, and ended in Pate's surrender.”

Thus: The first real battle of the American Civil War. With all due respect to Gen. Beauregard, he did not bombard Fort Sumter until April 12, 1861. By then a hot war had raged for almost five years along the Santa Fe Trail and along the Kansas River and in nearby communities in Kansas and Missouri.

About a week ago, I submitted Bones Rattling on an Uneasy 167th Anniversary, a diary about the Pottawatomie Massacre. In that diary I extensively quoted The Devil Knows How To Ride—The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders by Edward E. Lesser to tell the story. Of the Battle of Black Jack, Lesser wrote: “Brown, leading twenty-six volunteers, launched a pre-dawn surprise attack against Pate’s camp, killing four and wounding several others. Pate approached Brown under a flag of truce to negotiate; however, Brown demanded his company’s unconditional surrender. When Pate asked for fifteen minutes, presumably to talk it over with his men, Brown drew his revolver, and his followers drew a bead on Pate with their rifles.

”’You can’t do this!’ Pate cried. ‘I’m under a white flag. You’re violating the articles of war!’

“’You are my prisoner,’ Brown simply replied, the barrel of his pistol speaking volumes about his intent.

”’I had no alternative, but to submit or be shot.’ Pate commented subsequently, adding, ‘Had I known who I was fighting, I would not have trusted to a white flag.’”

[grim’s incredulous aside to Pate: “Had I known who I was fighting, I would not have trusted to a white flag?” Could that possibly be because of Brown’s then extremely recent history of dismembering men who were not resisting?]

There are a lot of versions of how the Battle occurred. This is another example. This. And this. But I will tell you the story as I understand it. I have visited the site, and have spoken with its keepers. I am very influenced by a letter John Brown wrote to his wife very soon after the Battle describing the Battle.

At the outset, some of Shore’s men fled more or less the moment bullets began to fly. Both sides took cover behind facing creek banks . Pate had numbers on the Brown and Shore men, but he and his men mistakenly believed themselves to be outnumbered. So Pate seemed paralyzed by the Free-Staters and was unable to rouse his men to maneuver to rout Brown.

Brown got that Pate believed very incorrectly that he was outnumbered. Brown had more rifles than he had men. So he had the men lay all the rifles along their creek bank pointed toward Pate’s men and then continue to move surreptitiously from rifle to rifle, popping up here or there to fire. Pate and his men thought there were a lot of abolitionists.

The battle continued for about three hours until Pate put up a white flag to negotiate with the Free-Staters. Brown did not play by the rules, though, and he took Pate hostage. About then Brown’s men started shooting Pate’s men’s horses. Pate and his men all knew that walking from Black Jack Creek in Douglas County diagonally across enormous and very abolitionist-thick Johnson County, Kansas, all the way to safety in Kansas City, Missouri, carrying any necessary provisions and weaponry would be a death sentence.

They surrendered unconditionally.

Bigger stories can be told. The murders at Pottawatomie Creek is a big one. The bona fides Pate and his men had as law enforcement officers on a law enforcement mission is observable. But in the end… HAPPY JUNE 2nd! On this day 167 years ago a couple of handfuls of quite courageous men defeated a much larger force that had been dispatched by President Franklin Pierce and his Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and their appointed Kansas Territorial Governor Wilson Shannon, which larger force was led by their deputy U.S. Marshall, Pate.

This is our day. 167 years ago today David slew Goliath.

In this very, very backwater place; and the institution of slavery began to bleed.

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A word about the illustration coupled with this diary. I urge you in the strongest possible terms to surveil it closely. Until you are sure you understand it. It is some tiny white men messing with a much larger white man. Stuffing a not-resisting tiny black man down the larger man’s throat. I take the much larger white man to be a black law man. The tiny white men to be pro-slavery men. The tiny black man to represent slavery.

Largely because of the presence of my ancestors, I have studied the time plenty. In the vicinity were many natives and many enslaved blacks and some blacks who were not enslaved. Women, too! Women were around, although sidelined. And it was not long after hostilities got underway in earnest that everybody was in it.

Still, at the very, very outset it was at one level a snit between entitled white men. On the one hand were men like Franklin Pierce, Jefferson Davis, Wilson Shannon, and Henry Pate —all of whom championed the institution of slavery. On the other hand were men like Abraham Lincoln, James Lane, John Brown, and my cousin Samuel T. Shore— all of whom opposed slavery in Kansas. The extent to which this rift involved privileged white men of the era fairly removed from the larger human community in their own time and space can be seen by reference to Lane and Shore. They were “black law men,” as opposed to “abolitionists.” Black law men opposed slavery in Kansas. They wanted Kansas admitted to the Union as a “‘free’ state.” But as a free state that by law no black human being could ever so much as enter.

Of course not all leading abolitionists were white men. Frederick Douglas and Harriet Beecher Stowe come to mind. But the teapot that blew at Black Jack —and the combatants on both sides— amounted to little more than three or four score of extraordinarily privileged white men who did not agree on how their extraordinary privilege should be parsed.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/2/2144688/-Then-it-was-June-2-1856-Then-it-was-on

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