“Waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”

“We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, compromise Union Whigs & waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”

— Amos A. Lawrence, (namesake of Lawrence, Kansas) on June 1, 1854

Drawing of Lawrence Kansas from its first year in existence, overlaid with the locations of modern streets

As the saga of the Pinckney Neighborhood name change continues, one thing keeps coming up in Lawrence journal-World articles and Facebook comments: the ‘intent’ of ‘the founders’. I touch on this in the previous entry of the blog (To “C” or not to “C”) and I highly recommend reading that article first to learn more about the broader evidence pointing to William Pinkney (no “c”) being the real namesake of what would become Pinckney Street. But I feel like the “founders” issue deserves additional examination because it is so persistent, especially in the absence of any direct documentary evidence of why the names were chosen.

Which “founders”?

The first thing to examine of course, is any evidence that points to who actually named the streets in the first place. It is well established that our city’s name of Lawrence was chosen by a vote of the earliest settlers, shortly after the second party sponsored by the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company arrived in mid-September, 1854. (Up until then the community had been known back east as New Boston and by Missourians as Yankeetown.) But that appears to be the sum of the influence that the on-the-ground “founders” had on labeling anything in the city.

As has been noted before, the town site of Lawrence was surveyed in the fall of 1854 by A D Searl, on behalf of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company . The Company was eager to have a formal map with property lines as early as possible because, in its original incarnation, it intended to make money as part of the town-building, and this included land speculation. (It would not change its name to the New England Emigrant Aid Company and become a benevolent [non-profit] corporation until early 1855). The emigrants sponsored by the Society would be allowed to claim a certain amount of property in this new community, while some was allocated to the Company  (The legality of the Company even being able to do this was hotly contested by early, unaffiliated settlers in the area with their own claims to the land.)

But back in Boston, the Company was busy producing more materials to encourage additional emigration to Kansas, and a handsome map of a burgeoning town was an important element in that effort. Searl’s platted survey upon which a map would be produced arrived in Boston in late 1854, and by the end of the year was turned into the commercial promotional piece that would be sold by the Company to parties interested in emigrating to Kansas.

It seems that in this rush to produce the map, there wasn’t time to gather any input at all from the town’s “founders”, whether they be the ones on the ground in Lawrence or the New England-area financial and political backers who made up the Company itself. The key piece of evidence to this is the letter published in the January 20, 1855 edition of the Kansas Herald of Freedom, from Dr. Thomas H. Webb, the secretary of the Company. In a letter noting the completion of a map of the town, he claims sole responsibility for the naming of the streets and parks, in particular noting it “devolved” to him, and added, “the names selected, I hope, will prove acceptable.”

Up to this point, there appears to have been only one street in Lawrence that the 300 or so people living in the area had given a name. The main business thoroughfare was referred to, unsurprisingly, as “Main Street” in correspondence and newspapers in early 1855. (It is now Massachusetts St.) Nothing so far available via digital resource searches indicate that other streets had pre-map “local” names, or that there was correspondence between Dr. Webb and settlers in Lawrence regarding street names. Nor can any communication between Webb and key members of the Company (or amongst Company members themselves) be found discussing it either. While there may yet be documentary evidence to be found in the archives, for the time being the best evidence we have is that Dr. Webb alone named the streets of Lawrence.

The final part of Dr. Webb’s letter is the most tantalizing and frustrating. “The reasons which influenced me in making the selection shall be hereafter given.” Again, nothing has emerged beyond the few broad, vague descriptions included in articles and pamphlets he authored, all nearly identical to this one in the 1856 Information for Kanzas Immigrants: “… other streets, which are named after individuals, Distinguished for their Patriotism, Philanthropy, and love of Liberty.”

That can mean … just about anything.

The Best of Intentions

So to bring this back to the “intentions” of those who created the town and the man who named the streets, I think it is important to examine the forces that brought the Emigrant Aid Company into existence in the spring of 1854. Forces that were causing political upheaval throughout the country, but especially in Northern political circles. While detesting slavery, they had come to accept the uneasy equilibrium that the Compromise of 1820 provided the Union. Slavery’s advance was contained and power equal in the Senate, with an identical number of slave and free states. States continued to be added in a manner that kept this balance until 1850 when California looked to join the Union as a free state, threatening the give anti-slavery states an advantage. The architect of the Compromise of 1820, Henry Clay, again attempted to appease all parties, this time with a complicated set of bills involving numerous aspects of slavery in the eastern states and the western territories. A key demand of the slave states was a more aggressive Fugitive Slave Act, to force the return of runaway slaves from Free states. It did so by empowering and rewarding federal agents to pursue slaves, compelling state and local officials to assist, overriding any local laws that interfered with slave-catchers, harshly punishing private citizens assisting runaway slaves, and giving those accused of being slaves no legal right to challenge their apprehension. While most of the northern politicians were unhappy with this and other elements of what would become known as the Compromise of 1850, slavery would still be kept from expanding across the continent, and the Union was still intact.

But instead of helping to tamp down sectional tensions, the Compromise of 1850 started a new fire for every one it put out. The new Fugitive Slave Act was a particular flash point. Northern communities were long accustomed to bolloxing up slave catchers with local ordinances and procedural maneuvering under the much weaker Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. The slave power, however, was determined to press the advantages they had negotiated via the new Act, and when Northern states attempted to resist, the administrations of presidents Fillmore and Pierce generally interceded on the slave power’s behalf. Yet by forcing Northern officials and citizens into becoming active agents of the slavers, it brought many more people formerly without intense feelings about slavery into the ranks of the anti-slavery cause.

In Boston in particular, resistance to the new fugitive slave law was intense from the beginning. A group sprung up - the Boston Vigilance Committee - to assist in keeping slave catchers from returning escaped slaves. In one high profile case in 1851, the group was able to rescue a captured slave, Shadrach Minkins, by force, overwhelming federal agents at the courthouse where Minkins was being held and ultimately spiriting him away to Canada.

In this environment, the announcement of the proposed Kansas-Nebraska bill in early 1854 exploded like a bomb in Boston. The ignominy of freed slaves returned to bondage was supposed to have been the price paid to keep slavery from spreading throughout the territories of the American West, yet just four short years later even that was being thrown aside. On February 23rd, despite a raging snowstorm, mass meetings were called for. Two were held - one led by radicals, the other led by men considered moderate or conservative, including several former elected officials and members of the moneyed elite who had supported elements of the 1850 compromise and who would become supporters of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company  Held at Faneuil Hall and attended by over 3,000 Bostonians, the fiery speeches of these moderate men at that night indicated they were coming to the conclusion that there was no amount of compromise, no amount of trading off one’s principles, that would satisfy the slaveholders, edging them towards more radical positions.

Then, just three months later, on May 24, a recently escaped slave named Anthony Burns was captured by a slave catcher outside the shop where he worked, in the heart of Boston. Although an attempt was made to keep Burns’ apprehension quiet, word leaked out and unrest quickly spread. Handbills appeared with language like “The compromises trampled upon by the slave power when in the path of slavery, are to be crammed down the throat of the North.” Supportive lawyers were able to slow the process at the courthouse and two days later, another impassioned meeting was held at Faneuil Hall, and members of the Vigilance Committee led some of the audience to the courthouse to attempt to rescue Burns by force. They attacked the courthouse, breaching the doors but were turned away by armed guards, and several were arrested. The local US Marshal in charge of Burns’ confinement quickly called up federal troops to protect the courthouse; when news of the unrest reached Washington DC, President Pierce sent further federal reinforcements to ensure Burns would be remanded to his owner.

The legal maneuvering was doomed after the defanging of the new Fugitive Slave Act, and on June 2nd, Burns was ordered to be returned to bondage in Virginia. By this time thousands of people from surrounding communities had flocked to Boston. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had been signed into law by President Pierce just days earlier, on May 30th, and unrest was expected. More than two thousand federal soldiers and marines cordoned off the streets of Boston for Burns’ procession to a waiting ship in the Boston Harbor. But while there were acts of civil disobedience that caused the procession to take hours to reach the harbor, the event was largely peaceful:  

(James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryant campaign of 1896)

This was the moment that caused Amos A. Lawrence to utter his famous quote used at the beginning of this article. This was also the environment that birthed the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, chartered by the state of Massachusetts on April 26, 1854. Amos Lawrence would serve as treasurer, and Dr. Webb, one of the first to join the endeavor, served as secretary of the Company, managing much of the day-to-day operations.

It would not be six months later that the responsibility to name the streets of the new city of Lawrence would “devolve” to Dr. Webb. As to what this “founder’s” intentions were, it is possible that he decided to exclusively honor Revolutionary War heroes, but everything leading up to the moment of him choosing names seems to argue against it. (Especially with the name Pinckney linked so inextricably to slavery - Charles Pinckney, the author of the Fugitive Slave Clause in the constitution, from which the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 drew its authority; and Thomas Pinckney, his son, the namesake for a gag rule that prevent members of the House of Representatives from discussing slavery in Congress from 1836-1844.) I have spent some time investigating possible namesakes for all seventeen of the original east-west streets, and a filter of “Revolutionary War military/political figures” lines up far less well than “people of significance to the anti-slavery movement as it ramped up in 1854”. This isn’t to say that the latter has perfect alignment - there are still some stretches and guesses - but far fewer than what it takes to get alignment with the former. (The investigation of the full list of street names has been its own endless series of rabbit holes, hopefully someday I can get it organized enough for its own article.)

The Other Guy

Finally, one other curious piece of evidence exists regarding the names on the map. The original letter from Dr. Webb regarding the map appeared in the Kansas Herald of Freedom, a newspaper funded by the Company. There was a competing paper in the nascent town of Lawrence, and not only was it unaffiliated with the Company, it actively demonized the group. The Kansas Free State, while also stridently anti-slavery, railed against the Company and its agents and benefactors, even accusing the Herald’s publisher of admitting to not care if Kansas entered the Union as a free or slave state. As touched on throughout this article, the politics of anti-slavery and abolition were complex; Josiah Miller, the publisher of the Kansas Free State was seen as more ‘conservative’ than the Company men. He was against the Company ’s influence in the community and thought it endangered both the chance of Kansas becoming a free state and the long term viability of Lawrence as a city. In an article in the March 10, 1855 edition of his paper about the establishment of Delaware City, he notes that giving a community a person’s name such as “Douglas, Lawrence, Whitfield or Atchison” are sure ways to invite controversy because of the political positions associated with those individuals:

This context may explain why Miller, upon seeing the map of Lawrence, was not impressed. From the January 24th, 1855 edition of the Free State:

“The streets running North to South are called by the names of the States; those running East to West by the names of distinguished persons. We regret the bad taste displayed in the system of naming the streets and the parks, but in every other respect we decidedly fancy the plan of the city.” Perhaps Miller’s disdain at the idea of place names that are strongly associated with political issues of the day may explain his antipathy towards the Lawrence street names as well? Would he have felt this way if the names were more ‘universal’ or ‘apolitical’ in their appeal, such as those of Revolutionary War heroes?

At the end of the day, bits and wisps like this are all we have to work with when trying to gauge the “intent” behind these oddly named streets. Cases can still be built to support a number of different outcomes. But until more primary sources emerge (and I hope to spend a few days at the state historical society looking for them in the near future) I really do believe that the simplest argument is still the strongest: that in 1854, Dr. Thomas Webb alone choose a handful of personally and politically meaningful names for the streets of the new city of Lawrence Kansas.

A note on research and sourcing: I have mentioned this before in other articles, but there are likely many new readers so I will state it again: Although I don’t treat this blog like an official research paper, I do try to find documentation for my work. I also want it to be readable and more informal, so while I will attribute direct quotes from sources, I don’t footnote every individual fact, especially if they are commonly known or what you should have learned in high school history classes. But here are a few key sources for much of the material:

“We waked up stark mad Abolitionists”, excerpted from Stark Mad Abolitionists by Robert K Sutton
https://www.salon.com/2017/08/05/we-waked-up-stark-mad-abolitionists/

Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border by Donald Gilmore
https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/6NCEb-2SU-4C

Philanthropy and The New England Emigrant Aid Company, 1854-1900 by Courtney Buchkoski 
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1081&context=historydiss

Albert Dwight Searl: A Free-State Surveyor in Bloody Kansas
https://blogs.lib.ku.edu/spencer/tag/maps/

A History of the Kansas Crusade by Eli Thayer
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_the_Kansas_Crusade/CbFLAAAAMAAJ

History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryant campaign of 1896 by James Ford Rhodes
https://www.google.com/books/edition/1850_1854/HgXVAAAAMAAJ

Abolitionist Persuasion: The Varied Lenses of 19th Century Abolitionist Writings compiled by Sean Robertson
https://www.juniorhistorians.com/uploads/7/3/3/6/7336905/amazing_grace_anthology.pdf

The Slave Catcher’s Riot
https://www.worcestermag.com/2008/02/28/the-slave-catcher39s-riot