Augusta's Journal
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In 1857 Augusta, indeed the originator of this book through her three bound journals, which I inherited, met Sara Robinson, the plucky abolitionist wife of the first elected Governor of Kansas Territory. She had written a book, while in a P.O.W. camp with her husband. It so impressed Augusta that after Eldorado was founded and she settled down there, she began planning a book about their pre Civil War adventures traveling to the Kansas Territory. Arriving there in the summer of 1856 at the height of the abolitionist immigration, they met General Jim Lane, and John Brown, who gave each girl a Bowie knife, helped organize and defend these early abolitionists' settlements. Shortly after arriving her father joined Jim Lane's militia and fought several battles against proslavery companies. His company was captured by the U.S. Army and put into a P.O.W. camp for several months. In the spring of '57 Sam Stewart, Augusta's father, organized a small group of abolitionists to go west into the territory to form some new settlements and a new voting district. By June they had founded Eldorado and planted the first crops. The girls joined him that fall. That winter Augusta and her sister Adda were entertaining some friends in Eldorado in their tent. Among the guests from Lawrence was Captain Joe Cracklin, who had named the town and was a cofounder, asked Augusta what she intended to do with all of her notes and journal entries. She said she intended to follow Sara Robinson's example and write her own book on these early years of the Kansas Territory. However the business of running a household, which often included board and room for prospective settlers, building a saw mill and a sorghum mill, the distractions caused by her father's murder. her husband's death, her move to the Gold Fields of Kansas and finally settling down with her new husband (a co owner of a gold mine in Colorado Territory) in another new territory, Montana, were all good reasons for procrastination. 150 years later, using her 2,000 journal entries (180,000 words) and other references, these books begin to fulfill her ambition. Volume I is about Hope and intentions bordering on the spiritual. It takes us from Michigan as Sam, full of abolitionist zeal sells his sawmill and buys a "prairie schooner" and they commence their trek to the Kansas Territory ending with the founding of Eldorado. Volume 2 begins with a prairie romance. It includes several firsts for the new Town of Eldorado, the first funeral, first sawmill and first sorghum mill and ends with Sam (now a Territorial Legislator) in pursuit of a horse thief and his horses. Volume 3 is about tragedy. Sam's murder, Augusta's short but happy marriage, her husband's death and Adda's return to Lawrence. In 1860, after five years in the Territory the girls sell their claims, the two mills in Eldorado. Return to Lawrence and buy a house. Adda marries a gunsmith, who in the early days of the Civil War recruits an all Black Regiment of slaves from hundreds flocking to freedom. In the summer of '63 Augusta, the young widow, leaves for the mountains with some friends from Eldorado and a job cooking for a mining outfit south of Denver's current site. Hopefully volume 4 will take us to the new gold strike in Alder Gulch and Virginia City: the new Territory of Montana. It's all there in Augusta's journal.
Wicked Kansas
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Kansans like to think of their state as a land of industrious, law-abiding and friendly people, and for the most part they are correct. But its history has many tales of murders, cons, extrajudicial killings and other crimes. Its restive frontier attracted menacing characters, such as a cowboy who murdered a man for snoring, the serial-killing Bender family and the train-robbing James-Younger Gang. Although the area was eventually settled, the scandals did not cease. Learn about how a quack doctor nearly won the governorship, a decommissioned nuclear missile silo housed the largest LSD manufacturing operation in American history and more. Author Adrian Zink explores the salacious side of Kansas history in these wild and degenerate stories.
Kansas
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Back in 1915, Snowden D. Flora of the US Weather Bureau wrote, "Kansas has been so commonly considered the tornado state of the country that the term 'Kansas cyclone' has almost become a part of the English language." Flora's words still seem to ring true. Whether called a twister, a tornado, a vortex, or cyclone, these catastrophic events have shaped lives in the Sunflower State for generations. Just a few destructive moments forever changed places such as Irving, Udall, Topeka, Andover, and Greensburg. Even before Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz helped equate the tornado with Kansas, the turbulent nature of local weather seemed to parallel an equally turbulent history, with the fury of people such as John Brown compared to a cyclone. Even if they have never seen a funnel cloud themselves, those who live in Kansas have come to accept the twister as a regular and always unpredictable neighbor.
Ballots and Bullets
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?Bleeding Kansas? has earned its name. A state already scarred from the violence wrought by the likes of John Brown and William Quantrill, Kansas witnessed further episodes of wanton bloodshed in the late nineteenth century when settlers poured into a supposedly peaceful frontier. Focusing on the tumultuous years 1885?1892, Robert K. DeArment?s compelling narrative is the first to reveal the complete story of the county seat wars that raged in Kansas?controversial episodes that made national news in the late 1900s but are largely unknown today. With a story populated by some of the most notorious characters of the West?including Sam Wood, Theodosius Botkin, Bat Masterson, and Bill Tilghman?Ballots and Bullets relives the violence that only avarice can breed. Ordinary, decent citizens were drawn into bitter conflicts to advance their own communities and block the fortunes of other towns, even if it meant using hired gunmen. Gripping and historically accurate, DeArment?s account reveals a shocking chapter in the history of the West.
Kansas
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Kansas is not only the Sunflower State, it's the very heart of America's heartland. It is a place of extremes in politics as well as climate, where ambitious and energetic people have attempted to put ideals into practice-a state that has come a long way since being identified primarily with John Brown and his exploits. Craig Miner has written a complete and balanced history of Kansas, capturing the state's colorful past and dynamic present as he depicts the persistence of contrasting images of and attitudes toward the state throughout its 150 years. A work combining serious scholarship with great readability, it encompasses everything from the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the evolution-creationism controversy, emphasizing the historical moments that were pivotal in forming the culture of the state and the diverse group of people who have contributed to its history. Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State is the first new state history to appear in over twenty-five years and the most thoroughly researched ever published. Written to enlighten general readers within and well beyond the state's borders, it offers coverage not found in previous histories: greater attention to its cities-notably Wichita-and to its south central and western regions, accounts of business history, contributions of women and minorities, and environmental concerns. It presents the dark as well as the bright side of Kansas progressivism and is the first Kansas history to deal with the post-World War II era in any significant detail. Craig Miner has spent almost forty years researching, teaching, and writing Kansas history and has dug deeply into primary sources-especially gubernatorial papers-that shed new light on the state. That research has enabled him to assemble a wider cast of characters and more entertaining collection of quotations than found in earlier histories and to better show how individual initiative and entrepreneurial aspirations have profoundly influenced the creation of present-day Kansas. Ranging from the days of cattle and railroads to the era of oil and agribusiness, this history situates the state in its own terms rather than as a sidebar to a larger American epic. Miner brings to its pages an identifiable Kansas character to preserve what is distinctive about the state's identity for future generations, echoing what one Kansan said over half a century ago: "Kansas is simply Kansas. May she never be tempted to become anything else."
