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This course is crosslisted as follows.
ENGL 495 Directed Study: The Kansas Territorial Experience (1 hr)
HIST 510 Topics In:The Kansas Territorial Experience (1 hr)
AAAS 690 Investigation and Conference: The Kansas Territorial Experience (1 hr)
Introduction
This course examines the issues and characters that defined territorial Kansas. With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, the country, deeply divided on the issue of slavery and states' rights, turned its attention to Kansas. Kansas Territory was formed at that time under the policy of "Popular Sovereignty," which meant that settlers of the new territory could determine for themselves whether Kansas would permit slavery. These unique circumstances led to the tragic set of events known as "Bleeding Kansas," in which zealots on each side of the slavery issue vied for control of the new territory by participating in a guerilla war.
Although not all of the texts selected for this course have a direct bearing on the subject of Kansas, they focus on the issues that dominated the debate over what the territory would eventually become—a free or a slave state. Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852, is a great political novel, sentimentally dramatizing the heartbreaking consequences of the nationally sanctioned (through the institution of the Fugitive Slave Act, which Congress passed in 1850) practice of slavery. In many ways, Kansas Territory was a battleground, and with T.H. Gladstone's The Englishman in Kansas, we have a foreign correspondent's dispatches from the field, his impressions of Kansas as written for his English audience. Prompted by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to explore a period in American history when ideology and violence intersected, Jane Smiley wrote The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, a novel about a young woman's bittersweet and ultimately tragic experiences in Kansas Territory. If there is one emblematic figure for this tumultuous place and period, that person would be John Brown, the subject of Merrill D. Peterson's John Brown: The Legend Revisited, an examination of the influence Brown's career and death has had on American culture.
Required Texts
We recommend completing the books in the order listed below.
Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly, any edition.
Gladstone, The Englishman in Kansas (Available only through Independent Study)
Peterson, John Brown: The Legend Revisited, University of Virginia Press, 2002.
Smiley, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, Fawcett, 1998.
Required Online Readings
For each text, read the Background Information and Session Discussion for the book on this Website. You are also encouraged to explore the Suggested Readings and Websites found in the Readers' Guide and in the Resources section for each book. The session discussions, which are available in streaming audio and print formats, replicate onsite discussions at the Lawrence, Kansas, Public Library. They provide rich information and insights for each of the works read. In addition, these discussions include links to in-depth information about the issues, events, and key individuals of the Territorial period.
Recommended Readings
Ayres, Carol Dark. Lincoln and Kansas: Partnership for Freedom. Manhattan, KS: Sunflower U P, 2001.
Battle of Black Jack site, www.battleofblackjack1856.org
Cecil-Fronsman, Bill. "'Death to All Yankees and Traitors in Kansas': The Squatter Sovereign and the Defense of Slavery in Kansas." In Kansas and the West: New Perspectives, Napier, Rita, editor. Lawrence, KS: U P of Kansas, 2003.
Cohen Stan. John Brown, The Thundering Voice of Jehovah: A Pictorial Heritage. Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1999.
Decaro Jr., Louis A. Fire from the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown. New York: New York U P, 2002.
Feldman, Michael, "Rehearsal for Civil War: Antislavery and Proslavery at the Fighting Point in Kansas, 1854-1856," in Lewis Perry and Michael Feldman, eds., Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), pp. 287-307.
Gridley, Karl. "John Brown and Lawrence, Kansas Territory, 1855-1859: A Militant Abolitionist's Relationship with the Free State Fortress" in Embattled Lawrence: Conflict and Community edited by Dennis Domer and Barbara Watkins. Lawrence, KS: U of Kansas Continuing Education, 2001.
John Brown/Boyd B. Stutler Database, www.wvculture.org/history.
Louis Masur, "Slavery and Abolition," 1831: Year of Eclipse (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002).
Watts, Dale E. "How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas?: Political Killings in Kansas Territory, 1854-1861." Kansas History 18.2 (September 1995): 116-129.
Web Resources
John Brown's Holy War Reading Group Guides Website
Reader's Guide, the Ballantine Publishing Group - Lidie Newton
Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture - University of Virginia
What We've Made of Uncle Tom - The Christian Science Monitor
William Lloyd Garrison's first editorial from The Liberator
Essay Assignment
Kansas Territory was a paradoxical place, where Lidie learned that you could do or say one thing one minute and do or say another thing—the polar opposite thing, even—the next, and both were still true somehow. Kansas Territory was a place where a figure such as John Brown, considered by some a martyr and a saint, by others a murderer and a thief, could emerge as a galvanizing or polarizing influence. Undoubtedly, the source of this paradox lay in one's particular perspective. Depending on one's point of view and politics, an issue or a man could be considered sound or unsound. Two books we have read—Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Englishman in Kansas—were written during the era in which we are studying, and the other two—The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton and John Brown: The Legend Revisited—were written recently. What are the significant differences in terms of authorial intention, thematic choices, point of view and characterization, between the two sets of books? How has a century and a half changed the outlook of writers toward "Bleeding Kansas" and its respective combatants, toward race, toward gender or other relevant issues?
For decades Americans romanticized the frontier as a testing ground for a lone individual, a rugged and independent man, but, of course, this was a myth, false and misleading. As contemporary critics have pointed out, the frontier was not conquered; it was domesticated. By and large, families, not individuals, settled the frontier. As evidenced by these texts, what roles do women and families play in the contest for settling Kansas and defining its laws and customs?
Early settlement of Kansas Territory concentrated in the eastern areas of the state near the Missouri border. This circumstance led to a heightened awareness of differences between the two sides living along the border. From a biological perspective, such borders or edges are rich in diversity. It is a niche where dissimilar life forms often mix. Politically constructed borders also mark the limit of one sphere or society, complete with laws, customs, and peoples, and the beginning of another land with another set of rules and customs. One side of the Kansas-Missouri border contained a fully developed society with established conventions and the other side, thanks to the vagaries of national politics, presented settlers with the opportunity to create and form their own society. This is the Kansas Territory that Gladstone and Smiley describe in their books and the one that John Brown temporarily lived in. And even if Uncle Tom's Cabin is not set in Kansas, the novel begins and revolves around the Shelby plantation in Kentucky, a border state in the middle of the United States, which was divided ideologically and culturally between North and South at the time. In an eight- to ten-page essay, compare and contrast a pair of characters from different texts. By doing so, determine the defining qualities of each. For instance, compare Lorna (All-True) to Cassie (Uncle Tom's Cabin), Lidie Newton to John Brown, Uncle Tom to John Brown, T.H. Gladstone to Lidie Newton, Papa Day to Augustine St. Clare, Thomas Newton to John Brown.
Your essay may be submitted by regular mail or e-mail. Full information on how to submit an assignment is included in the enrollment packet.