- Wakarusa War
The Wakarusa War was a skirmish that took place in
Kansas Territory during November and December1855 as part of theBleeding Kansas violence. It centered aroundLawrence, Kansas , and theWakarusa River Valley.Background
The events that led to the Wakarusa War began on
November 21 ,1855 , when aFree-Stater named Charles Dow was shot by a pro-slavery settler. Violent reprisals on both sides led to escalating tension. OnDecember 1 ,1855 a small army ofMissouri ans, acting under the command ofDouglas County, Kansas SheriffSamuel J. Jones [http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912/j/jones_samuel_j.html] [http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/cgiwrap/imlskto/index.php?SCREEN=bio_sketches/jones_sheriff] , enteredKansas and laid siege to Lawrence.Siege
During the siege, the main body of the invaders were encamped on the Wakarusa bottoms, some six miles (10 km) from Lawrence. The invading army numbered nearly 1,500 men. They were indifferently armed as a whole, although they had broken into the
United States Arsenal atLiberty, Missouri , and stolen guns, cutlasses and cannon, and such munitions of war as they required.In Lawrence, John Brown and
James Lane had mustered Free-State settlers into a defending army and erected barricades. No attack on Lawrence was made. A treaty of peace quelled the disorder, and its provisions were generally accepted. The only fatal casualty occurring during the siege was of a Free-State man namedThomas Barber , who had come to the defense of Lawrence. His death was memorialized in a poem byJohn Greenleaf Whittier titled "Burial of Barber".References
* Cutler, William G. (1883). [http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/ History of the State of Kansas] .
External links
* [http://www.kansashistoryonline.org/ksh/ArticlePage.asp?artid=475 Kansas History Online site]
* [http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912/w/wakarusa_war.html 1912 article on Wakarusa War]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.