Driving around Shawnee, you may find yourself near the corner of 60th and Neiman. If you look East around that corner, you might see a two-story house with pyramidal roof about halfway down the block. This humble building once served as the Territorial Governor’s Mansion for one of the most controversial leaders in Kansas’s early years. I am writing of the first Territorial Governor, Andrew Horatio Reeder.
When the Territory of Kansas was created by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the bill gave the duty of appointing the Territorial Governor to President Franklin Pierce. A Democrat from New Hampshire and staunch anti-abolitionist, his choice of Governor was Andrew Reeder. A fellow northern Democrat and supporter of state sovereignty, Reeder was the safe pick for a president trying to keep the country together against a growing tension by keeping a balance of slave and free states.
Arriving in Kansas Territory in October 1854, Reeder’s first test as Governor came the following spring with the election of a Territorial Legislature. As results came in from the March 30 election, it was clear that some of the districts had been the target of ballot box stuffing by pro-slavery Missourians. Angered by the infringement on the sovereignty of his territory, Reeder chose to throw out the results from those districts and have their citizens re-vote on May 22, 1855. Although he faced some backlash over the decision, the worst was yet to come.
Fearing further pressure from Missouri, Reeder established the territorial capital in Pawnee, a town 100 miles west of the border. This also earned him criticism, as Reeder owned a great deal of land in Pawnee, and the move was seen by some as a blatant maneuver to line his own pockets through land speculation. This debate over the real reason for moving the capital is unsettled, but in either case Pawnee’s status as the capital was short lived.
When legislators arrived on July 2, 1855, there was immediate conflict between those elected in May and those from March, the latter showing up claiming to be the rightfully elected representatives despite the evidence of voter fraud. The pro-slavery slate of legislators forced off the free-staters, and their first act was a vote to move the capital to Shawnee Mission. Reeder attempted a veto but was overridden and after only 5 days as the territorial capital, Pawnee was abandoned by the legislature.
Reconvening on July 17, the legislature and the governor found themselves again at odds. Reeder had lost all patience for what history now calls the “Bogus Legislature.” When word traveled back to President Pierce that his appointed Governor for the territory was actively opposing the legislature, he removed Reeder from office. Having made a number of enemies in the territory and the neighboring Missouri, Reeder spent a year in hiding with free-state allies in Lawrence. In 1856, the former governor fled back to his home in Pennsylvania disguised as a woodcutter.
Reeder’s time in Kansas seems to have changed his political leanings. On his return to Pennsylvania, he became an active member of the new Republican party, reaching notoriety as a nominee for the vice-president in the 1860 presidential election. Reeder passed away on July 5, 1864 in Easton, Pennsylvania.
-Charles Hower, Johnson County Library
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