learning from quindaro: indians, feminists, blacks, and germans, intercultural action for...

7/30/2019 Learning from Quindaro: Indians, Feminists, Blacks, and Germans, Intercultural Action for Freedom in the Kansas Free State Struggle, 1856-63

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H ur rah F rei Kansas!

Frei Kansas, freier Boden, Von Vorrecht frei und Bann!

Dem schwarzen und dem rothenSowie dem weissen Mann!

Free Kansas, free space,without privilege or discrimination!

For the black, and the red,as for the white man of the nation.

Abolitionist Song of Free State Kansas Germans(Many thanks for this to Prof. William Keel)


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Charles ReitzProfessor (Ret.) of Phi losophy and

M ulticultural Education Kansas City Kansas Community Coll ege

L earning fr om Quindaro: I ndians, F eminists, Blacks, and

Germans,I ntercul tural Action for F reedom in the

Kansas F ree State Struggle,1856-63


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Anti-Racism in Kansas Free State Struggle

Frederick Douglass (1852) asked inWhat to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?

Where are the white radicals

when it comes to anti-racism?You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland, but are cold as an icebergat the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America.

Irish : Greeley, Lane, Montgomery, Jennison, Stewart, PhillipGermans: Bondi, Kaiser, Weiner, Leonhardt, Deitzler

Kossuths of Kanzas ( --Thomas H igginson, 1857)

By 1856: Abolitionists and RadicalsFeminists: Lucy Armstrong, Clarina Nichols


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.Locus of multicultural

human rights movement:Native Americans, Blacks,Women, Irish , German 48ers

Quindaro, Kanzas, 1856-57Founded by coalition of anti-slave Wyandots and

Amos Lawrence's New England Emigrant Aid Society

Town Plan with Portrait of Quindaro Nancy Brown Guthrieof Wyandot Nation

Quindaro:

A Wyandot Indian wordmeaning, "a bundle of sticks,"

interpreted as"in union there is strength."


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6/26

Ruins of Old Quindaro City and Landing Today

Marvin Robinson, Fred Whitehead, Steve Collins


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Lucy B. Armstrong ,Wyandot by marriagemissionary's daughter,

Abolitionist

Wyandotsgoverned by clan councils of one man

and four women; women chose chiefs


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Clarina Nichols , Co-editor of

Quindaro Chin-do-wan (Leader)

Vermont abolitionist, feministWomen's Rights,Women's Suffrage

Underground RailroadTeacher of Black students

Marilyn S. Blackwelland Kristen T. Oertel.

Diane Eickhoff


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Wyandotte Constitution Which also expanded women's rights;

to own property; participate in school district elections;legal right of wives to retain household property;

this can not be lost by husband's indebtedness;secured legal recognition

of widows as heads of households

1861 Kansas Territory becomes a Free State Kansas and Feminism


11/26

Quindaro voters

approved Negro suffragein municipal elections;African-AmericansJerimiah Crump and Jimina KingMarried in Quindaro House hotel

Quindaro and Blacks -- Underground Railroad

http://researchfrontiers.uark.edu/16694.php

John Newman
http://researchfrontiers.uark.edu/16694.phphttp://researchfrontiers.uark.edu/16694.phphttp://researchfrontiers.uark.edu/16694.php


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ProminentGermans

in Quindaro

Henry Steiner and Jacob Zehntner,owned the Quindaro Brewery;Frederick Klaus, limestone quarryand stoneyard;

Jacob Henry brickyard and kiln;N. Ranzchoff, clothiers

In eastern Kansas (Wyandot City, Quindaro City, and Lawrence)

Germans were the largest ethnic group in Union Army

Phillip H.Knoblock

Union officeCharles

Morasch,brewe

TheodorPrau


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August Bondi was in 1848 Revolution in Austriaand rode with John Brown atBattle of Black Jack, Kansas

Go West to Kansaand save it from the curse of slaver

A founder of Greeley, Kansas,a station on theUnderground Railroad:John Brown hid 11 slavesthere for one monthin January, 1859


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German-American 48er Revolutionariesin Kansas Free State Struggle:

August Bondi,Theodor Weiner,Jacob Benjamin, Charley Kaiser,Charles Leonhardt


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Race and Radicalism in the Union Army Mark A. Lause

John Brown and others sought aState of Topeka a utopia inwhich neither race nor gender

barred citizenship and equal rights

Some Unionists...articulated a triracial dream of nation's future

Forty-eighter German socialistAdolph Douai : anti-slavery Texaslinked strategically to Kansas byOklahoma Indian lands:

multi -racial revolution.


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Dr. Charles Kob, Dr. Moritz Hartmann[Program for a belt of freedom]

Front page series by Douai


17/26

Mark Lauseon

Radicalism andAnti-Racism

After Harpers Ferry, Kansas radical, Richard Hinton, talked withGerman socialists of New York, Friedrich Kapp 's Kommunisten Klub , about liberating John Brown from prison, but Brown refused.

Jim Lane was most influential proponent of radical proposal to raiseand equip Indians and Blacks to reoccupy Indian Territory held bySouth. Radical associates of John Brown plunged into this work. Thisinvolved a rare level of interracial understanding, trust, and

cooperation.


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JennisonMontgomeryStewartLeonhardt/Lenhart

Man of Douglas / Man of Lincoln (Ian Spurgeon)The Lane Trail / Underground Railroad

Lane's Army of the NorthLane's Frontier Guard of Lincoln at White HouseTriracial

Indian Brigade s

Gen. Lane 's KansasDanites /Jayhawkers


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First Kansas Colored Infantry

William Matthews,First lieutenant,

Independent ColoredKansas Battery


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James H. Lane personally inducted 48-er, CharlesLeonhardt, into Danites

Frank Baron

Lane with Indian Scouts;Bondi's writings

attribute Jayhawk

to Lane

Danites/ the first JayhawksTodd Mildfelt

men of valor...

appointed withweapons of war

200 man army KansasTerritorial militia

Acted in concert with John Brownto expel the slavepower.Leonhardt met with Wide Awakesin Omaha with UGRR


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Todd Mildfelt onCharles F. W. Leonhardt and Esther Lewis

daughter of UGRR stationmaster in IowaFree State guerilla leader:

... it is utterly imposible for me to forget the deeimpression John Brown made onin our Homestruggles during 18471849 we had often held our own lia blood offering for our country's

as this man pleaded the cause of another people and race .


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Charles Leonhardt's account (1870) of hisFree State Kansas participation

in Underground Railroad

C l i


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Conclusions:

Transatlantic radicalism combined with advocacy of racialjustice represented a significant transformative force in U.S.history. But c ounterrevolution vs. Reconstruction Black power,

Western Indians, and militant industrial labor force (1876-77).International/intercultural human rights movements todayhave a genuine precedent here; this history should be partof our multicultural education curriculum reform effort.

Kansas history not just local, but national and inter-nationa l significance. The anti-racism and vanguard

political practice put forward by Quindaro NancyBrown Guthrie, Lucy Armstrong, Clarina Nichols, andFrederick Douglass was modeled by many German-American 48ers like Bondi and Leonhardt (and Marx).


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Karl Marx On Kansas!(published in Die Presse , Vienna, 1861)

For hardly had the Kansas -Nebraska Bill gone through when armed emissaries of the slaveholders, border rabblefrom Missouri and Arkansas, with bowie-knife in one handand revolver in the other, fell upon Kansas and sought bythe most unheard of atrocities to dislodge its settlers from

the Territory colonized by them. These raids were supportedby the central government in Washington.


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Marx

On Kansas and Missouri!

(published in Die Presse , Vienna 1861)

Colonel Jennison in Kansas has surpassed all his militarypredecessors by an address to his troops which contains thefollowing passage: I want no men who are not Abolitionists, I have no use for them, and I hope that thereare no such people among us, for everyone knows thatslavery is the basis, the center, and the vertex of thisinfernal war... The slavery question is being solved inpractice in the border slave states even now, especially

in Missouri.


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Karl Marx in

Das Kapital (1867)In the United States of North America every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed so long as slaverydisfigured part of the Republic. Labor cannot emancipateitself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. Butout of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The

first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours agitation.

learning from quindaro: indians, feminists, blacks, and germans, intercultural action for...

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