Bucking the Railroads on the Kansas Frontier

Bucking the Railroads on the Kansas Frontier PDF Author: John N. Mack
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786470291
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
As the Civil War ended, thousands of Union veterans imagined Kansas as a place to make a new beginning. Many veterans settled in the southeastern part of the state. In their struggle to establish lawful, ordered communities the settlers came into conflict with railroads intent on building through southeast Kansas to reach warm-water ports in Texas. To the settlers the railroads represented both a promise and a threat. By linking farmers and businessmen with eastern markets, the railroads guaranteed the prospects of economic gain. However, when they claimed rights to the land that settlers had already claimed, railroad monopolies were identified as a new manifestation of the same threat to republican values they had fought against in the recently concluded War. This book tells the story of the settlers' opposition to and victory over railroads and the impact on the evolution of political thought in Kansas and the American west.

Bucking the Railroads on the Kansas Frontier

Bucking the Railroads on the Kansas Frontier PDF Author: John N. Mack
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786470291
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
As the Civil War ended, thousands of Union veterans imagined Kansas as a place to make a new beginning. Many veterans settled in the southeastern part of the state. In their struggle to establish lawful, ordered communities the settlers came into conflict with railroads intent on building through southeast Kansas to reach warm-water ports in Texas. To the settlers the railroads represented both a promise and a threat. By linking farmers and businessmen with eastern markets, the railroads guaranteed the prospects of economic gain. However, when they claimed rights to the land that settlers had already claimed, railroad monopolies were identified as a new manifestation of the same threat to republican values they had fought against in the recently concluded War. This book tells the story of the settlers' opposition to and victory over railroads and the impact on the evolution of political thought in Kansas and the American west.

Hell's Half-Acre

Hell's Half-Acre PDF Author: Susan Jonusas
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984879855
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of NPR's "Books We Love" New York Times Book Review's "The Best True Crime of 2022" "Rich in historical perspective and graced by novelistic touches, grips the reader from first to last.”—Wall Street Journal A suspense filled tale of murder on the American frontier—shedding new light on a family of serial killers in Kansas, whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of a nation still reeling from war. In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who once resided on the property were nowhere to be found. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an epic manhunt for the Benders. The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders—one among the thousands relocating farther west in search of land and opportunity after the Civil War—were capable of operating "a human slaughter pen" appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree and whether justice ever caught up to them is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Set against the backdrop of postbellum America, Hell’s Half-Acre explores the environment capable of allowing such horrors to take place. Drawing on extensive original archival material, Susan Jonusas introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, many of whom have been previously missing from the story. Among them are the families of the victims, the hapless detectives who lost the trail, and the fugitives that helped the murderers escape. Hell’s Half-Acre is a journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a place where modernity stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing populations and building new ones. It is a world where folklore can quickly become fact and an entire family of criminals can slip through a community’s fingers, only to reappear in the most unexpected of places.

Peopling the Plains

Peopling the Plains PDF Author: James R. Shortridge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
This engaging and richly annotated atlas illustrates the distribution of Kansas settlers from diverse cultural and ethnic origins in America and around the world. James R. Shortridge explores how frontier settlement patterns were influenced by railroad routes and promotion; land prices and speculation practices; homesteading laws; U.S. and international social, economic, and political conditions; terrain; weather; and pioneer perseverance. He also demonstrates that many legacies of the original settlers have endured and are apparent today in social, political, agricultural, and religious customs throughout the state. Providing new and enlightening insight into a unique cultural heritage, Peopling the Plains is an invaluable building block for anyone interested in the people and places of Kansas, past and present.

Kansas History

Kansas History PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Kansas
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description


Conquest of Southwest Kansas

Conquest of Southwest Kansas PDF Author: Leola Howard Blanchard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Finney County (Kan.)
Languages : en
Pages : 410

Get Book Here

Book Description


CONQUEST OF SOUTHWEST KANSAS

CONQUEST OF SOUTHWEST KANSAS PDF Author: LEOLA HOWARD. BLANCHARD
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781033370827
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Twenty-Five Years among the Indians and Buffalo

Twenty-Five Years among the Indians and Buffalo PDF Author: William D. Street
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700636161
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nearing 60, William D. Street (1851–1911) sat down to write his memoir of frontier life. Street's early years on the plains of western Kansas were both ordinary and extraordinary; ordinary in what they reveal about the everyday life of so many who went out to the western frontier, extraordinary in their breadth and depth of historical event and impact. His tales of life as a teamster, cavalryman, town developer, trapper, buffalo hunter, military scout, and cowboy put us squarely in the middle of such storied events as Sheridan's 1868–1869 winter campaign on the southern Plains and the Cheyenne Exodus of 1878. They take us trapping beaver and hunting buffalo for hides and meat, and driving cattle on the Great Western Cattle Trail. They give us insight into his evolving understanding of his multi-decade relationship with the Lakota. And they give us a front-row seat at the founding and development of Jewell and Gaylord, Kansas, and a firsthand look at the formation of Jewell's "Buffalo Militia." In later life Street rose to prominence as a newspaper publisher, state legislator, and regent of the Kansas State Agricultural College. At the time of his death—noted in the New York Times—he was still at work on his memoir. Handed down through his family over the past century and faithfully transcribed here, Street's story of frontier life is as rich in history as it is in character, giving us a sense of what it was to be not just a witness to, but a player in, the drama of the plains as it unfolded in the late nineteenth century. Edited by Street's great-grandson, with an introduction by Richard Etulain, a leading scholar of the West, this memoir is history as it was lived, recalled in sharp detail and recounted in engaging prose, for the ages.

Frontier Community

Frontier Community PDF Author: Andrew Theodore Brown
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781258420680
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description


Frontier Community

Frontier Community PDF Author: A. Theodore Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Death on the Western Frontier

Death on the Western Frontier PDF Author: Eugene D. Fleharty
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780897452441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book Here

Book Description