This is an edited version of a paper submitted in a college class taken to obtain a social studies teaching license. The paper was significantly over the page limit, so several issues were not addressed. The key issue of why a grand jury sitting in Lecompton, Kansas, would want to respond to the depredations of a posse led by the Douglas County Sheriff against certain property located in Lawrence, Kansas-the possibility offered here, as opposed to the more conventional view that the grand jury had acted first-was not developed. The short version is that the pro-slavery “Law and Order” party in Lecompton was acutely embarrassed by the posse’s action, which could look in the national press as an act of lawless aggression against the Free Staters in Lawrence. The grand jury therefore attempted to provide legal cover for the sheriff’s youthful excess, an excess probably driven by lingering wounds incurred the month prior when he was shot through a tent wall in Lawrence by an unknown assailant. The grand jury produced a presentment asking for abatement of the property in Lawrence, Judge Lecompte dismissed the jury, and the jury’s papers were left in the court’s files without being entered in the record. The judge took no further steps. The effort was enough to create a century-long impression that the grand jury had actually returned indictments against the property destroyed.
- Introduction
On May 21, 1856, a pro-slavery posse rode into the free-state stronghold of Lawrence, located in Douglas County, Kansas Territory, and destroyed in part a hotel and two printing presses. The posse was headed by Samuel J. Jones, the pro-slavery sheriff of Douglas County. Jones allegedly claimed to act under authority from the court of the Hon. Samuel D. Lecompte, a pro-slavery Chief Justice of the territorial Supreme Court and judge of the territory’s First Judicial District. The event is known as the Sack of Lawrence.[1]
Although the issue of Jones’ authority could appear narrow, it was significant for the politics of the day. The administration of President Franklin Pierce had appointed pro-slavery men to high positions in the territorial government, including Wilson Shannon, the sitting governor, and Lecompte, a Marylander with strong sympathies for slavery.[2] Lecompte would in fact write to a later territorial governor, John W. Geary, the following defense against allegations of his judicial bias:
“If it be intended to . . . charge a pro-slavery bias, I am proud too, of this. I am a steady friend of Southern rights under the Constitution of the United States. I have been reared where slavery was recognized by the constitution of my State. I love the institution as entwining around all my early and late associations; because I have seen as much of the nobility of the human heart in the relation of master and servant.”[3]
Jones, for his part, was a Missourian and, although a county sheriff, had also served process for Lecompte as a deputized federal marshal.[4] If Lecompte had in fact ordered the destruction in Lawrence, the order and its accomplishment by Jones would evidence a Slave Power using the federal government against free state forces in the territory.[5] Jones’ alleged claim of authority from Lecompte was important enough to merit debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, followed by public denials from Lecompte, who decades later even prosecuted a libel suit to clear his name.[6]
Two aspects of the event are addressed here. The first is the nature of the action taken by a grand jury which was sitting in Lecompte’s court during May 1856. The second is the timing and effect of the grand jury’s action.
II. The nature of the grand jury’s action
Historians and polemicists alleged for nearly a hundred years that a grand jury in Lecompton, which was then the seat of Douglas County, the capital of the Kansas Territory, and also the home of the eponymous Lecompte, returned an “indictment” or “indictments” respecting the hotel and the printing presses.[7] The late James Malin of the University of Kansas disproved the indictment account in a pair of articles published in 1953.[8] Research located no historian since Malin who has asserted that the grand jury returned an indictment. Some historians nevertheless still allege grand jury influence of one sort or another upon Jones’ action.[9] This section will examine Malin’s analysis and then attempt to go beyond it by identifying the specific sort of grand jury action in question.
It is clear a grand jury was seated in Lecompton in May 1856, that it was investigating activities in Lawrence, and that it had issued indictments. On May 20, 1856, the grand jury indicted several Lawrence residents for treason, and bench warrants were issued for their arrest.[10] On May 21, 1856, federal marshals entered Lawrence, made arrests of those found there, and left.[11]
Controversy almost immediately surrounded the nature of Lecompte’s treason charge to the grand jury, and the matter was made worse by the fact that Lecompte had charged the jury orally without a written record.[12] While the judge’s treason charge and the resulting indictments of the Lawrence residents are related to the present question, they are distinct from any supposed indictment against the hotel and printing presses. The treason charge and the indictments against the Lawrence residents are therefore not considered here.[13]
With respect to an indictment against a hotel and printing presses, the notion is unlikely. A standard legal dictionary published a few decades after the Sack of Lawrence defined an indictment as, “an accusation in writing found and presented by a grand jury . . . to the court in which it is impaneled, charging that a person therein named has done some act, or been guilty of some omission, which, but law, is a public offense, punishable on indictment.”[14] Inanimate objects are of course not persons and cannot commit crimes subject to indictment.[15]
Turning now to the historical record, Malin reviewed the files from Lecompte’s court and identified three documents relevant to the question, hereinafter identified as Documents 1, 2, and 3. Malin thought Document 3 was a copy of Document 1, both written in a clerk’s hand, with Document 1 differing by the inclusion of some marked-out words and by the exclusion of the final line and signature. Document 2 bore only one line and the signature of the jury foreman, both in the foreman’s hand. [16] The court file as it now exists, including the court’s official journal, makes no other mention of the grand jury’s action.
Malin published a photographic copy of Documents 1 and 2. He suggested the documents showed an editing process, which is discussed below. The following is a transcript of Document 1, with its final words crossed out, as they are in the original.
“The Grand Jury, sitting for this [illegible] term of the 1st District Court, in and for the county of Douglas, in the Territory of Kansas, beg leave to report to the Honorable Court, that from Evidence laid before them showing that the newspaper known as the “Herald of Freedom” published at the town of Lawrence, has from time to time issued publications of a most inflammatory and seditious character, denying the legality of the Territorial authorities, and advising and commending forcible resistance to the same, demoralizing the popular mind and rendering life and property unsafe, even to the extent of advising assassination, as a last resort.
“Also that the paper known as the “Free State” has been similarly engaged and has recently reported the resolutions of a public meeting in Johnson County in this Territory, in which resistance to Territorial law ‘even to the blood’ had been argued upon, and respectfully recommend their abatement as [illegible] nuisance. Also that we are satisfied that the building known as the ‘Free State’ Hotel’ in Lawrence has been constructed with a view to military occupation and defense, regularly parapetted and portholed for the use of cannon and small arms and could only have been designed as a stronghold of resistance to law, thereby endangering the public safety and encouraging rebellion and sedition in this county, and respectfully recommend its destruction.” [17]
Document 2 stated above the foreman’s signature: “that steps be taken whereby said nuisance may be removed.”[18] Malin construed Documents 1 and 2 as follows: “In [Document 1] the final words ‘its destruction’ were crossed out. Evidently, composition, or copying was interrupted at this point, reflecting divided counsels. The amended wording [in Document 2] was less extreme than that deleted.”[19] Malin believed the “advocates of moderation” had prevailed.[20]
Malin therefore concluded that Documents 1 and 2 were combined to form Document 3, and this is a reasonable reading of the evidence. Malin did not publish Document 3, however, and an examination shows it is not quite identical to the combined Documents 1 and 2. The most substantial distinction is a change from the “Free State” newspaper in Document 1 to the “Kansas Free State” newspaper in Document 3.[21] It is also unclear why Malin thought Documents 1 and 3 were both written by a clerk. The handwriting in the documents is dissimilar, with the script of Document 3 substantially more flowing in appearance, akin to the other entries in the court records.[22]
Yet another version is found in a book by Sara T.D. Robinson, the wife of one of the indicted Lawrence men.[23] The text in Robinson’s book, first printed in October 1856, is very similar to Document 3, including for example the “Kansas Free State” reference from that document, not the “Free State” formulation from Document 1.[24] This would make sense if Document 3 were the final, and therefore public, version. The remaining changes in Robinson’s text, mostly punctuation differences, could be explained by inaccuracies occasioned by hand copying Document 3 and then setting it for publication. In any event, Robinson identifies the text she reproduced as the “indictment” of the hotel and printing presses, showing that those who claimed such a document were not thinking of another.[25]
Malin established that Documents 1 and 2 (and 3 by inference), did not constitute an indictment even apart from their failure to mention a person subject to indictment. There was no signature by a prosecutor, no endorsement as a “‘True Bill,'” and no record of its entry into the journal of the court.[26] A review of the court’s journal for May 1856 confirms that none of Documents 1, 2, or 3 was entered, and it shows further that all indictments entered during that month did record the grand jury’s finding of a “True Bill.”[27] The legal framework connected with indictments is simply missing from Documents 1, 2, and 3.
Lecompte, moreover, did not personally call the grand jury’s action an indictment. Lecompte’s view of the matter is known from a letter published during the Congressional controversy over his actions. In June 1856, Schuyler Colfax, a United States Representative from Indiana, attacked Lecompte during a speech in the House of Representatives.[28] He was answered in July 1856 by Representative James A. Stewart of Maryland.[29] Lecompte wrote to Stewart in August 1856, and the judge’s letter was published in various newspapers in September 1856.[30]
In this letter Lecompte characterized the grand jury’s action as a “presentment.”[31] Turing again to the legal dictionary, it states, “a presentment differs from an indictment in that it is an accusation made by a grand jury of their own motion, either upon their own observation and knowledge, or upon evidence before them,” without the involvement of the prosecutor.[32] An indictment, in contrast, “is preferred at the suit of the government, and is usually framed in the first instance by the prosecuting officer of the government, and by him laid before the grand jury, to be found or ignored.”[33]
Lecompte explained in his letter:
“The Grand Jury sitting at the time made presentment of the presses and of the hotel in Lawrence, as nuisances, and that presentment still lies with the Court. No time for action on it existed—none has been had—no order passed—no decree made—nothing done, and nothing even dreamed of being done, because nothing could be rightly done but upon the finding of a petit jury.”[34]
Lecompte’s view was supported by the reporting of William Phillips, the New York Tribune’s special correspondent for Kansas, who was also an attorney.[35] In a work published in October 1856, Phillips reproduced the same text as Robinson but called the document a “presentment.” [36] Phillips was favorable to the free-state cause, but the fact that he gave the grand jury’s action the same label as the pro-slavery judge lends support to the conclusion that this was indeed a presentment.
Lecompte would write another letter on the matter which was published in September 1875. He again called the grand jury’s action a “presentment.”[37]
Malin, however, was unsatisfied with this characterization of the documents. He thought it “astounding” that Lecompte would consider the grand jury’s action a presentment.[38] Malin also asserted that Lecompte “did not clarify . . . his use of the phrase ‘presentments by the grand jury.'”[39] It appears that Malin conflated indictment and presentment, as if the jury could not return the latter without also returning the former. But C.S. Griffin, a University of Kansas historian who favorably cites Malin’s work regarding the lack of an indictment, readily called the grand jury’s action a presentment.
“The grand jury’s recommendation carried no weight whatever; it authorized no action at all. It was merely a presentment—and Judge Lecompte identified it as such three months later—that is, a statement by the jury that in its opinion an offensive or illegal state of affairs existed. It was not an indictment; a grand jury, indeed, could not indict a building instead of persons. Had the grand jury submitted a true bill of indictment, framed by the district attorney and found by the grand jury, it would have had no weight until Judge Lecompte ordered the apprehensions of the persons charged. Lecompte took no official notice of the presentment, for he had no juridical power to do so.”[40]
Whatever the origin of the legal imprecision regarding the grand jury’s action, it seems clear that the grand jury did not indict the hotel and printing presses. The grand jury was instead working on a presentment to Lecompte regarding the hotel and printing presses, calling them a threat to the territorial government and asking that steps be taken to remove the nuisance. The effect of that action is the next issue.
III. The timing and effect of the grand jury’s action
The technical question regarding the legal effect of presentments in the territorial courts of Kansas in 1856 is beyond the scope of this paper. The practical question regarding the effect of the presentment at issue here can be addressed, but only a few observations are possible.
The first is that causation requires temporal sequence. In other words, to believe the grand jury had some effect on Jones’ action, as historians still assert, is to assume the grand jury acted before Jones did, either by returning a presentment, which Jones undertook to execute without court order, or by beginning deliberations of which Jones knew, and the sheriff then took matters into his own hands. Research has not revealed, however, clear evidence that the grand jury had returned its presentment or even begun deliberations before Jones led his posse into Lawrence. And Phillips reports that the grand jury returned its presentment while “a force of Missourians were around Lawrence, as a marshal’s posse, threatening to destroy it.”[41] There is, furthermore, the close correspondence between what the grand jury said should be abated, and what Jones actually did. This supports an inference that either Jones acted with knowledge of the jury’s wishes, or the jury acted with knowledge of Jones’ accomplished feat. An issue on timing therefore exists.
Documents 1, 2, and 3 are not dated, they were not entered into the court record, and the court journal does not mention such a presentment. The records of the court do show the grand jury convened on May 3, 1856, sat through May 9th, and then adjourned until May 20th, when it sat for three more days.[42] Without denying the reasonableness of the common assumption that the grand jury had acted before Jones did, the grand jury could have deliberated and/or returned the presentment on any of these days, including after Lawrence had been sacked. If the deliberation and presentment occurred after the sack, perhaps as a way of justifying or supporting Jones’ action, the editing Malin identified would not evidence moderation but rather craftiness. Document 3 might create an impression that Jones had acted under color of law without too closely tying the grand jury (and Lecompte himself) to the extent of the destruction actually wrought, which the edited words from Document 1 tended to do.
The earliest account of Jones action is found in a “Memorial to the President from Inhabitants of Kansas,” dated May 22, 1856. The memorialists asserted that they belonged to “a committee of the citizens of the town of Lawrence and vicinity,” and that they intended to relate “facts, mostly within our personal knowledge, and all of them we are prepared at any time to substantiate by testimony conclusive and unimpeachable.” The memorialists quoted in an orderly fashion numerous government documents from the days leading up to May 21, 1856, and they then recited the events of that day. Despite all of this, the memorialists did not mention a presentment against the hotel or presses, they only called Jones the “Sheriff of Douglas county,” not a deputy marshal, and they did not mention any claim by Jones of authority from Lecompte’s court. The memorialists said merely, “it was announced that the printing offices and the Eldridge House must be destroyed.”[43]
The next account of the events located by research appeared in the pro-slavery Squatter Sovereign on May 27, 1856. The newspaper reported that the hotel and printing presses were “ordered by the court to be abated, which was done.”[44] This account was readily taken up by free-staters, Sara Robinson, for example, who alleged in October 1856 that “the court . . . ordered them to be destroyed.”[45]
Lecompte’s denial that he entered such an order has already been noted. Malin accepted Lecompte’s denial, and Malin further believed that no one could have thought otherwise: “The claim was false that Jones was acting under orders of the court in the destruction of the presses and the hotel, and it was well known at the time.”[46] Malin explained the contrary statements by both sides as simple rhetoric — the pro-slavery forces needed a justification for Jones’ action, and the free-state forces were only too happy to blame the Pierce Administration, especially in an election year. “Regardless of the lack of truth in the allegations, the propaganda value of both points was great, and so long as it was effective the ethics of the matter did not bother the consciences of these reformers.”[47]
Malin expanded on his view in a later article:
“In order to justify the action of Jones, the Proslavery newspapers alleged that Jones was executing the orders of the grand jury or of the United States District Court, Judge Lecompte’s division. This claim of right under law, played directly into the hands of the Free-State party, in Kansas, and the newly organized Republican party in federal politics, which were engaged, for political purposes in the midst of the presidential campaign, in pinning all Kansas troubles on the federal government, as represented by the Democratic party and the Pierce administration. In fact, the excesses of the presidential campaign are the major explanation of the so-called Kansas Civil War of 1856, with Bleeding Kansas as the principal stock in trade of the newly launched Republican Party, composed of discordant elements whose only point of coherence was this one issue of opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories, epitomized by Kansas.”[48]
There were, however, eyewitnesses who later affirmed that Jones had claimed authority from the court.[49] This would be at least some evidence that Jones knew of the grand jury deliberations or the presentment itself. But contrary evidence comes from another source who, ironically, agreed that Jones had claimed authority. In 1875, James Christian, a participant in Jones’ posse, recalled the events as follows:
“Jones informed several of our citizens that he had a writ from the District Court to destroy the hotel as a nuisance, and he held in his hand a paper that he pretended to be the writ, but did not show it. I asked him to let me see it. He laughed and said: ‘Don’t be too inquisitive.’ I said: ‘You know very well you have got no writ, and you ought not to place the court in a false position.[‘] He remarked: ‘They don’t know any better.’”[50]
Christian’s account tends to undercut the case for the presentment as justification for Jones’ action. While the testimony was only that Jones knew there was no court order, it is still more consistent with the lack of a prior grand jury presentment against the hotel and printing presses than its existence. Absent even a presentment, Jones’ claim would indeed have placed “the court in a false position,” and it is conceivable the grand jury would seek to remedy the false position, and to cover for Jones’ aggression generally, by making a finding on the nuisance value of the property already destroyed.
Lecompte’s personal defenses are also interesting. In September 1856, he claimed: “‘It was under the authority of the Marshall [sic] thus rightly exercised, and not that of the Court, that posse went to Lawrence.'”[51] Lecompte took the same tack in his September 1875 defense, this time blaming in addition the court clerk, and perhaps the district attorney:
“If it be true that I did, directly or indirectly, by word, by intimation, by order, by connivance, by innuendo, advise, counsel, direct or approve of all or any of the wrongs then perpetrated, I trust God almighty shall paralyze my arm as I write, so that this disavowal shall never meet the public eye. Where more can I say? Where is the order? Where was the trial, where the conviction upon which such an order could have been based? Do the records show it? Does anybody remember it? Has anybody ever seen it? How heartless, how base such aspersions!
“There were presentments by the grand jury of the hotel, and, I believe, of the press that denounced the laws and defied and counseled resistance to them. There may have been issued by the clerk of the court citations to the owners to appear in court and show cause why they should not be abated as nuisances. I know not that there were. It was not my duty to know, but that of the district attorney. If he ordered them, they would have been issued by the clerk. There may have been many writs in the hands of the marshal for service, and I presume there were; for I do know that it was to aid him in the service of the writs, which he stated his inability to serve without aid, that he made the foundation of his proclamation ordering a posse. It was his duty to serve the process of the courts. If he could not without aid, it was his duty to summon aid. This he did, and with this I had nothing to do. The public meetings assembled in Lawrence so understood . . . Nowhere in all the publications of the time will it be seen that my name was mentioned, except in the purely gratuitous and, as I have shown, absolutely groundless and false assertion that my authority justified the subsequent wrongs.”[52]
Malin justly observes, “‘Lecompte’s defense is strictly legalistic and negative.'”[53] Indeed, the defense may suggest some consciousness of guilt on Lecompte’s part regarding the Sack of Lawrence. But that is another matter.
Conclusion
In one sense, the entire event is edifying. The notion that a federal judge would turn the power of the court against citizens of the United States in a political dispute was powerful only because it was so outrageous, meaning of course, so rare. If such a thing were common, the power of the accusation at the time, and the continuing interest in it, would not exist. Only with time has the explosive nature of the accusation cooled, and a closer examination become possible. Based on this study, it is possible the grand jury took action after the sack itself.
Primary sources
Black, Henry Campbell. A Dictionary of Law. 1891. Reprint, New York: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 1991.
Kansas Free State, April 14, 1856.
Kansas Territory U.S. District Court Administrative Papers, 1855-1860.
Lecompte, Samuel D. “A Defense by Samuel D. Lecompte.” Troy Chief, February 4, 1875.
Phillips, William, The Conquest of Kansas by Missouri and Her Allies. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1856.
Record A, First District Court, First Judicial District, Kansas Territory, 1855-1858, Leavenworth, K.T.
Robinson, Sara T.D. Kansas; Its Interior and Exterior Life, 10th ed. Lawrence; Journal Publishing Company, 1899.
Squatter Sovereign, May 27, 1856.
Winchell, J.M., et al. “Memorial to the President from Inhabitants of Kansas, May 22, 1856.”
Secondary Sources
Cutler, William G. History of the State of Kansas. Chicago: A.T. Andreas, 1883.
Etcheson, Nicole. Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.
Griffin, C.S. “The University of Kansas and the Sack of Lawrence: A Problem of Intellectual Honesty.” The Kansas Historical Quarterly XXXVIII (Winter 1968) 409-426.
Hoeflich, M. H. “In Judge Lecompte’s Court.” Kansas Law Review 62 (June 2014) 1169-1181.
Johanssen, Robert W. “James C. Malin: An Appreciation.” The Kansas Historical Quarterly, XXXVIII (Winter 1972).
Malin, James C. John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society 1942.
_________. “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase.” The Kansas Historical Quarterly XX (August 1953) 465-494.
_________. “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” The Kansas Historical Quarterly XX (November 1953) 553-597.
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Mosher, Orville Watson. “John Brown and His Influence on Kansas,” in Kansas: The First Century, ed. John D. Bright. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1956.
Nevins, Allen. Ordeal of the Union, vol. II, A House Dividing 1852-1857. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947.
Nichols, Alice. Bleeding Kansas. New York, Oxford University Press 1954.
Ponce, Pearl T. To Govern the Devil in Hell: The Political Crisis in Territorial Kansas. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014.
Rydjord, John. Kansas Place Names. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972.
“About the Kansas Herald of Freedom, (Wakarusa, Kan. Territory), 1854-1860,” Library of Congress, retrieved from http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82006863/
“Sara Robinson, 1827-1911,” Territorial Kansas Online, 1854-1861, retrieved from http://territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=bio_sketches/robinson_sara
“William A. Phillips, 1824-1893,” Territorial Kansas Online, 1854-1861, retrieved from http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=bio_sketches/phillips_william_a
[1] James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 148-49; James C. Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” The Kansas Historical Quarterly XX (August 1953): 465; James C. Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” The Kansas Historical Quarterly XX (November 1953): 581. Lecompte is typically described as a judge of the First Judicial District. M. H. Hoeflich, “In Judge Lecompte’s Court,” Kansas Law Review 62 (June 2014): 1169-70. However, the existing records of Lecompte’s court show that his court in Lecompton, which is in Douglas County, was using stamps for both the First and the Second Judicial District in April and May 1856 at least, with a seeming transition from the Second District stamp to the First District stamp during this time. Kansas Territory U.S. District Court Administrative Papers, 1855-1860, Boxes 1 & 2, 27-02-05-03 and 27-02-05-04, Kansas State Historical Society. There is an explanation of sorts. The original description of the First Judicial District ran along the north bank of the Kansas River, and did not include the south bank, which at the time formed the northern border of Douglas county. Record A, First District Court, First Judicial District, Kansas Territory, 1855-1858, Leavenworth, K.T., Kansas State Historical Society; William G. Cutler, History of the State of Kansas (Chicago: A.T. Andreas, 1883), retrieved from http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/douglas/douglas-co-p1.html#NATURAL_FEATURES (for the boundaries of Douglas County). Lecompte explained in a letter to Governor John W. Geary that Douglas County was added to his district by an 1855 act of the Kansas territorial legislature, meaning the “bogus” pro-slavery legislature. “From Chief Justice S.D. Lecompte, Near Leavenworth, K.T., October 6, 1856” Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 4 (Topeka: Kansas Publishing House, 1890), 604. The change in judicial districts, whenever it occurred, is interesting because Lawrence is also in Douglas County. The change therefore brought Lawrence under Lecompte’s purview and, given Lecompte’s pro-slavery views, raises a question regarding the motive for the change. Considering especially that there were no nearby bridges over the Kansas river, the decision to switch this one county to a judicial district otherwise comprised of counties north of the river is surprising and could merit further research. Cutler, History of the State of Kansas, retrieved from http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/douglas/douglas-co-p31.html#LECOMPTON (for the existence of a ferry at Lecompton in the mid- to late- 1850’s, not a bridge).
[2] Larry Gara, The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1991), 112-13.
[3] “From Chief Justice S.D. Lecompte, Near Leavenworth, K.T., October 6, 1856,” Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 4, 603.
[4] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 471-72; Robinson, W. Stitt Jr., “The Role of the Military in Territorial Kansas,” in Territorial Kansas, Studies Commemorating the Centennial (Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1954), 87; Cutler, History of the State of Kansas, retrieved from http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/douglas/douglas-co-p3.html.
[5] One of the presses destroyed in Lawrence on May 21, 1856, belonged to the Kansas Free State, which had complained on April 14, 1856, of a “Pro-slavery inquisition” intended “to subdue the inhabitants of Kansas,” and of which “[t]he authorities are not unadvised, but proceed according to their instructions received from Pierce and Douglas.” Retrieved from https://www.newspapers.com/image/61541709/.
[6] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 560-80.
[7] Alice Nichols, Bleeding Kansas (New York, Oxford University Press 1954), 106; Allen Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. II, A House Dividing 1852-1857 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), 434; Sara T.D. Robinson, Kansas; Its Interior and Exterior Life, 10th ed. (Lawrence; Journal Publishing Company, 1899), 282. On the naming of Lecompton after Lecompte, together with a very unfavorable view of the judge, see John Rydjord, Kansas Place Names (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 334-35.
[8] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 592 (“How long can people remain captive to so obvious a hoax?”). On Malin generally, see Robert W. Johanssen, “James C. Malin: An Appreciation,” The Kansas Historical Quarterly, XXXVIII (Winter 1972), 457-66.
[9] Pearl T. Ponce, To Govern the Devil in Hell: The Political Crisis in Territorial Kansas (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014), 78-79 (saying the grand jury “declared” that the hotel and printing presses should be “‘abated as nuisances,'” and the “grand jury . . . authorized this destruction.”); Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 104 (referring to “the grand jury’s order,” and stating, “Jones declared that he would carry out the grand jury’s order to remove obnoxious buildings such as the Free State Hotel and the newspapers.”); Orville Watson Mosher, “John Brown and His Influence on Kansas,” in Kansas: The First Century, ed. John D. Bright (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1956), 152 (“The assumption was made that the obliging grand jury had also intended to condemn as nuisances, the newly built Free State Hotel and the abolitionist newspaper, the Herald of Freedom.”).
[10] Record A, First District Court, First Judicial District, Kansas Territory, 1855-1858, Leavenworth, K.T., 105.
[11] J.M. Winchell, et al., “Memorial to the President from Inhabitants of Kansas, May 22, 1856,” Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 4, 399; Wilson Shannon, “Letter to Franklin Pierce, May 31, 1856,” Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 4, 415; Samuel D. Lecompte, “A Defense by Samuel D. Lecompte,” published in the Troy Chief, February 4, 1875, quoted in Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 8, 395.
[12] James C. Malin, John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society 1942), 81, 584-85. In a letter to the Troy Chief published on February 1875, Judge Lecompte stated with regard to his charge: “‘One of the most serious regrets that I have felt in recurring to those unhappy days is that I had not, despite the great inconveniences under which I labored, in the want of facilities, at whatever cost of labor to surmount them, put upon paper and safely preserved every utterance in court.'” Quoted in Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 8, 398.
[13] A few things may be noted, however. Among those indicted was George Washington Brown, the publisher of the Herald of Freedom, to which belonged one the presses Jones destroyed. “About the Kansas Herald of Freedom, (Wakarusa, Kan. Territory), 1854-1860,” Library of Congress, retrieved from http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82006863/; Record A, First District Court, First Judicial District, Kansas Territory, 18855-1858, Leavenworth, K.T., 105. The proprietor of the hotel and the publisher of the other newspaper were not indicted. One historian alleges that Lecompte further charged the jury “to abate Lawrence’s free-state newspapers and hotel as nuisances.” Etcheson, 102. If so, the judge’s charge would be relevant to the eventual destruction. But since there is no written record of the charge, and because the charge itself is beyond the scope of this study, it is not analyzed here.
[14] Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (1891; rpt. New York: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 1991), 616.
[15] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 591-92.
[16] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 591-92
[17] Ibid., plates between 592 and 593.
[18] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” plates between 592 and 593.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21]Kansas Territory U.S. District Court Administrative Papers, 1855-1860, retrieved from http://img.kansasmemory.org/00298049.jpg
[22] All three documents, and an apparent cover sheet for Document 3, may be viewed at: http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/225797
[23] “Sara Robinson, 1827-1911,” Territorial Kansas Online, 1854-1861, retrieved from http://territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=bio_sketches/robinson_sara
[24] Robinson, Kansas; Its Interior and Exterior Life, iv, 282.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” 471; “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 592.
[27] Record A, First District Court, First Judicial District, Kansas Territory, 1855-1858, Leavenworth, K.T., 1052-06.
[28] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” 486.
[29] Ibid., 488.
[30] Ibid, 489.
[31] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” 491.
[32] Black, 616, 931.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Quoted in Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” 491. A petit jury means the jury at trial. Lecompte was therefore asserting that nothing could be done against the alleged nuisances unless and until a trial was held.
[35] “William A. Phillips, 1824-1893,” Territorial Kansas Online, 1854-1861, retrieved from http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=bio_sketches/phillips_william_a
[36] William Phillips, The Conquest of Kansas by Missouri and Her Allies (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1856), 269.
[37] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” 574, 578.
[38] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 591.
[39] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” 578.
[40] C.S. Griffin, “The University of Kansas and the Sack of Lawrence: A Problem on Intellectual Honesty,” The Kansas Historical Quarterly XXXVIII (Winter 1968): 414 Griffin relates the bizarre story of how the University of Kansas pursued a claim against the federal government for damages to the hotel at issue here on the theory that Jones had acted as a federal agent. The Emigrant Aid Society had transferred its purported claim for such damages to the university in 1897, and the university unsuccessfully sought relief in Congress off and on until 1929.
[41] The Conquest of Kansas, 269.
[42] Record A, First District Court, First Judicial District, Kansas Territory, 1855-1858, Leavenworth, K.T., Kansas State Historical Society; Kansas Territory U.S. District Court Administrative Papers, 1855-1860. The grand jury began work on May 23rd, but according to the journal, it then returned “into open court.” The grand jury reported to Lecompte, “that under the Excitement now existing in this county it is impossible for them to transact any Business that may come before them and ask to be Discharged.” Lecompte discharged them “with the thanks of the court,” and adjourned the court until June 2, 1856. Record A, First District Court, First Judicial District, Kansas Territory, 1855-1858, 106.
[43] Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 4, 400; Griffin, 413-14 (noting the doubt the memorialists” account throws on the nature of Jones’ action).
[44] Retrieved from newspapers.com/image/77902861.
[45] Robinson, 282.
[46] Malin, John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six. 51 n. 46.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” 465-66.
[49] Griffin, 414, n. 11. The eye-witness statements were produced in 1863 by the Emigrant Aid Society to support its claim to compensation from the federal government. The statements are preserved in a Senate Miscellaneous Document cited by Griffin, but they have not been examined for this study.
[50] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 581.
[51] Quoted in Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part One, The Contemporary Phase,” 491.
[52] Malin, “Judge Lecompte and the ‘Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856; Part Two, The Historical Phase,” 578
[53] Ibid.