L AW R E N C E â¢ 1 8 5 6 - The Kansas City Store

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LAWRENCE • 2012 Kansas’ earliest settlers promptly built communities. They drew boundaries and lot lines, bought and sold properties and built homes and stores. Leavenworth, Atchison, Quindaro and other towns sprang up just across the border from Missouri. Farther west, along the Kansas River, emigrants laid out streets and put up buildings in Topeka and Lawrence. By March 1856, barely two years after Kansas was declared a territory, the Massachusetts Street business The city symbol is a phoenix rising from the ashes. Twice Lawrence had to come back from destruction – the first time only months after the early photograph was made. On May 21,1856, pro-slavery partisans led by the Douglas County sheriff, Samuel Jones, destroyed the Free State Hotel by fire and cannon blast. They burned at least one house, broke up district of Lawrence was taking form, left. The view was south from today’s Sixth Street. The three-story Free State Hotel, still weeks away from its opening, stood on the right or west side of Massachusetts. The photographer positioned his equipment inside an earthen embankment intended to help defend the anti-slavery community from attack. Nevertheless, attacks came. printing presses of two newspapers and perpetrated various other looting and vandalism. Seven years afterward came the far bloodier and costlier attack by the guerrilla band of William C. Quantrill. Each time, the city’s economy recovered nicely. The memories, however, never died. Above: Today’s Massachusetts Street, south from Sixth. 9
ATCHISON • 1859 A national political candidate had good reason to visit distant Kansas Territory late in 1859, almost a year before the presidential election. Among other things, he could trot out his ideas far from the big eastern newspapers and their reporters. If western audiences didn’t like a speech, few would know it. So Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois lawyer who had made a name in debate, accepted an invitation from friends in the territory, traveled through Missouri by train and on November 30 crossed the river into Kansas. He traveled by carriage in bitter cold from town to town along the western side of the river – from Elwood to Troy to Doniphan and then, on Friday, December 2, to Atchison. Here, he spoke in this rather modest Methodist church building, only eight months old, which stood on a block bounded by Fifth, Sixth, Parallel and Laramie streets. At the time, the church was the largest hall available in the town. Officials of the congregation, it is said, acceded only grudgingly to the use of the building for Lincoln’s speech. The speech, however, went well; after talking for an hour and a half, Lincoln indicated he would wind things up, but the crowd urged him on — and on he went, for at least another half-hour. 10
Page 1: LAWRENCE • 1856 1800-1869 8
Page 5 and 6: ATCHISON • 1860 Kansas was still
Page 7 and 8: FORT LEAVENWORTH • 1862 This army
Page 9 and 10: TOPEKA • 1863 As they did in Lawr
Page 11 and 12: LAWRENCE • early 1860s Along Mass
Page 13 and 14: PAOLA • 1860s Mules and covered w

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L AW R E N C E â¢ 1 8 5 6 - The Kansas City Store