Douglas County Law Library
Judicial and Law Enforcement Center
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Lawrence, Kansas 66044
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This Month in Legal History


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This page contains the "This Month in Legal History" column as published in the current Douglas County Law Library E-Mail Newsletter. The column features a different event from the history of law and jurisprudence of Douglas County, Kansas, that occurred during the month. It is published monthly in the Douglas County Law Library E-Mail Newsletter and on the Home page of this website.

Archived entries from this and previous years can be accessed by visiting the This Month in Legal History Archive page on this website.


May 21, 1856 - Sheriff Jones gives Lawrence a hot time.

On May 21, 1856, Sheriff Sam Jones led a large pro-slavery posse against Lawrence, Kansas, the center of Free State activity in Kansas Territory. Sheriff Jones claimed to have a warrant issued by Judge Lecompte of the United States District Court in Kansas. The warrant was said to be intended to stop the supposed insurrectionist activities of the Free State men in the town, which Jones said were centered in the Free State Hotel, home of the New England Immigrant Aid Company. To enforce the supposed warrant, Jones and the posse proceeded to attack the hotel. Despite receiving no resistance to their attack, the pro-slavery men burned it to the ground. It was later determined that no such warrant had ever been issued. The posse also attacked the two Free-State newspapers in town, the Herald of Freedom and the Kansas Free State, destroying their presses and throwing their type into the Kaw River. They justified the destruction of the two newspapers by citing the "gag law" enacted the previous year by the pro-slavery "Bogus" Kansas territorial legislature, which, despite the freedom of the press guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution, made it a crime to print or in any other way assert that people did not have a right to hold slaves in Kansas Territory. The sack of Lawrence was one more step in the increasing violence of the Bleeding Kansas era, and led to the so-called "Pottawatomie Massacre," on May 24, which then led to the Battle of Black Jack on June 2. Early the next year, Jones resigned as sheriff, reportedly because his request to use balls and chains to restrain incarcerated Free-State men was denied by then Kansas Territorial Governor John Geary. Jones then left the territory and settled in New Mexico.

From:http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1953/53_8_malin.htm; http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/cgiwrap/imlskto/index.php?SCREEN=border&topic_id=69&search=Sack%20of%20Lawrence,%20May%201856; and http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/cgiwrap/imlskto/index.php?SCREEN=bio_sketches/jones_sheriff.


For more information, contact the Law Library at: info@douglascolawlibrary.org.


Comments to: Webmaster: Kerry Altenbernd, Law Librarian, Douglas County Law Library, Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, 111 East 11th Street, Lawrence, KS  66044.

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Created: November 27, 2006; Revised: May 7, 2008