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.
