Kansas City is dead center in “Border War” country. Annually, football and basketball games between the Universities of Missouri and Kansas are billed as “renewals” of the Civil War strife that made Jackson and surrounding counties in Missouri as well as Lawrence in Kansas very unsafe places to live in the decade from 1854 to 1865.
As a graduate of two Kansas universities [KU and K-State] and with a son and daughter-in-law who are MU grads, the present author holds that ANY comparison between the lawless era of the Civil War with current sports rivalries is dangerous and misleading. The Missouri-Kansas frontier had been something of a war zone for nine years prior to the events of August 1863. The comparatively tame athletic contests are thankfully conducted according to rules set down by the Big 12 Conference and the NCAA.

The Border War of 1863 was an intense series of life-and-death confrontations. The state of lawless life on both sides of the state line was brutal and tragic. The cause of this terrible condition was the national Civil War which translated into a breakdown in the normal agencies that normally regulated behavior in the region. The lack of authority and/or partisan actions by sheriffs and other public officials made the situation worse. Citizens took out old grudges on each other with impunity.

In the midst of this lack of lawful control, the pro-Confederate “bushwhackers” dedicated themselves to doing whatever they could to harm pro-Union advocates as well as to settle old scores and steal as much as needed or wanted to operate in rural Jackson and adjacent counties.

Technically, both Missouri and Kansas were Union states so in the absence of city and county police powers, the Union Army was charged with enforcing local, state and national law. Without question, the “blue coats” proved to be almost as unlawful as the bushwhackers in much of their “foraging” and terrorizing activities.
Many of the bushwhackers carried on in the tradition of “patrollers” who had travelled the backroads of slaveholding counties in Missouri at night to prevent or diminish slave escapes.

The largest portion of Union forces detailed to “police duties” in Missouri came from Kansas or Iowa, both of which held Missouri to be little more than a slave state in hiding.

In order to attempt control of bushwhackers, in early August Union forces rounded up female relatives of many known buswhackers and placed them in what proved to be an unsafe building at what is now 1425 Grand [the Sprint Center] in downtown Kansas City. Quantrill and his outlaw bushwhackers had been planning a surprise raid on the “most Union” town in Kansas for some time before these women were jailed in Kansas City.

On August 14, 1863, the building collapsed, killing at least four women and injuring many more. Several of the dead and injured were relatives of the leaders of Quantrill’s band—the Youngers and Bloody Bill Anderson. Naturally, this tragic event was added to the already established reasons for attacking Lawrence. Of course, the men, women and children of that Kansas town had nothing to do with the building collapse, but in the minds of the outlaw bushwhackers it was just one more reason to attack a hated town.

During the ensuing attack on Lawrence on August 18, 1863, Quantrill and his men killed approximately 150 men and boys. Some commentators make much of the fact that the bushwhackers killed no women. These sources usually omit the fact that dozens of women saw their husbands and sons literally executed before their eyes.

There is no glory for anyone in the 1860s Border War in Missouri and Kansas. Much brutality and terrorism was carried out by partisans on both sides and by outlaws who may well have cared little about the outcome of the larger war.

Today, a marker stands just south of Sprint Arena on Grand Avenue, commemorating the jail collapse and providing one interpretation of the events. This article varies somewhat in its interpretation.

One final tragedy remained. Union officials had determined before the Quantrill raid that unabashed Confederate partisans would have to leave western Missouri. After the Lawrence massacre by Quantrill, the Youngers and compatriots, General Order #11 was added specifically to require that all persons who refused to swear loyalty to the Union would have to leave Jackson, Cass, Bates and the northern half of Vernon Counties. More hardship and loss of property resulted from this action.

Kansas City and Jackson County were truly terrible places to live during the Civil War.

Dr. Bill Worley, Instructor in History, MCCKC-Blue River