Johnson County Park and Recreation District’s (JCPRD) Big Bull Creek Park is a beautiful, serene, natural setting located near Edgerton. Visitors likely have no idea that the area was once the setting for some of the most contested moments in the county’s history. The history of the Border War and the Civil War played out along the banks of Bull Creek, where differing visions for the future of Kansas clashed. A new interpretive marker soon to be installed in the park reveals more of that history and is the subject of this month’s blog post.
A War of Beliefs
Conflict on Johnson County’s landscape arose when Congress created the Kansas Territory in 1854. Johnson County was organized the following year. When the federal government opened Kansas to Euro-Americans, Congress did not designate the new territory as slaveholding or a free state. Instead, the controversial idea of popular sovereignty, which argued that the people who lived in a territory should vote on whether slavery would be permitted, was applied to Kansas.
Although individual Kansans held a spectrum of beliefs about slavery, those beliefs are most often categorized as simply proslavery and free-state. Abolitionists from New England flooded into the territory and called for the end of slaveholding in the U.S. While some Free Staters imagined a Kansas free of slavery, other Free Staters desired a Kansas without any African American residents at all.
Proslavery sympathizers, which included slaveholders and non-slaveholders, were typically from Missouri or other nearby slaveholding states, such as Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas. For slaveholding Missourians, the idea of Kansas as a Free State threatened their way of life and economic prospects. Slaveholders streamed across the Missouri boundary into Kansas Territory in an attempt to ensure the future of slavery.
Vigilante Violence – The Border Wars
In November 1855, a simple land dispute ended with one neighbor, who was proslavery, killing the other, who was a Free Stater. While not about politics, the event set proslavery and free-state forces squarely against each other. Armed bands of men assembled, forming vigilante groups that took extra-legal action against their neighbors.
In May 1856, proslavery forces attacked and burned much of the free-state stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas. Only one fatality occurred, but the situation exploded. Abolitionist leader John Brown launched attacks in the Pottawatomie Creek area in retaliation, murdering several proslavery civilians. The state of affairs turned into continual tit-for-tat action back and forth across the Kansas-Missouri border. These Border War raids continued through the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 and led to many deaths in the border region.
The “Battle of Big Bull Creek”?
Large-scale military action did not occur in the Big Bull Creek Park area, but a series of events that almost led to it are called the Battle of Big Bull Creek to this day. The story begins when a large proslavery force under the direction of David Rice Atchison was camped along the Santa Fe Trail crossing at Big Bull Creek, near where the Lanesfield Schoolhouse stands today (approx. 3 miles from the park). Free-state troops under James Lane, numbering around 250 to 300, arrived on September 1, 1856.
What happened next is unclear. Some sources report a skirmish ensued, while others say no engagement ever took place. One enduring legend suggests Lane marched his significantly smaller number of troops in a circle, single file up on a rise, making their numbers appear larger to the proslavery forces. Most sources agree the proslavery force retreated to Missouri before an actual battle could occur.
The Civil War on the Border
The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, less than three months after Kansas became a state on January 29. Many Border War guerillas became Union and Confederate troops. Both sides were mainly white, Protestant farmers. Both sides perpetrated similar crimes: freeing or recapturing African Americans, destroying property, killing enemy combatants and civilians, and sacking and burning towns and homes along the Kansas-Missouri border.
Of the 24 proslavery guerilla raids that occurred in Kansas during the war, at least eight happened in Johnson County, including two raids in Gardner. After Union victories in 1861 and 1862, William Clarke Quantrill emerged as a leader of Confederate guerillas raiding in Kansas. Desperate to end the attacks, the Union Army issued General Order No. 11 in August 1863, which required everyone in three and a half Missouri counties, regardless of loyalty, to remove to select towns or out of the region. The vital countryside support for Quantrill and proslavery guerillas dwindled. Although many Johnson Countians supported slavery, Quantrill’s continual guerilla raids caused many to join the Union cause for safety. Confederate forces were beaten back from the Kansas-Missouri border region in late October 1864 during the Battle of Westport. Within six months, the Civil War came to an end with a peace treaty in Virginia in April 1865.
Learn More!
You can learn more by visiting Big Bull Creek Park later this spring after the new interpretive marker is installed there. The marker is part of JCPRD’s History in the Parks (HIP) marker series, a collaborative project between the Parks and Golf Courses Division and the Johnson County Museum, part of the Culture Division of JCPRD. Similar markers about local history have already been placed in Shawnee Mission Park at Barkley Plaza, at Verhaeghe Park, and a marker is underway for Meadowbrook Park. To learn even more about Johnson County’s history, visit the Johnson County Museum at 8788 Metcalf Ave in Overland Park – open Monday through Saturday, 9am to 4:30pm. Plan your visit at jcprd.com/Museum.
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