Memory-1856

In his 1856 book, Conquest of Kansas, by Missouri and her allies: a history of the troubles in Kansas, from the passage of the Organic Act until the close of July, 1856, William Phillips his view of the role of the Shawnee Mission and Thomas Johnson in promoting the Pro-slavery cause.

   Close to the frontier of Missouri, and within a few miles of Westport, stands one of the oldest missions in the territory,—the celebrated “Shawnee Mission,” of the Methodist Church South. Three sections of the very finest land were by the Shawnees to this mission; besides which, no inconsiderable portion of government money and percentage on the Indian annuities have been expended in erecting three or four massive and extensive, but tasteless and filthy-looking, brick buildings, and in converting those three sections of fertile Indian land into a well-improved and beautiful farm, which I have heard estimated worth sixty thousand dollars. In the progress of events, and by a system of management which I cannot comprehend, much less explain, two sections of this farm, containing many of the best improvements, have fallen into the hands of the present head of the mission, Rev. Tom Johnson.

   Some twenty years ago, when this worthy came to Kansas, he was, as I have been emphatically told, “not worth a blanket.” By “breaking the bread of life” to others, he seems haply to have acquired a reasonable portion of the baser, or “of the earth earthy: bread himself. The “laborer” was doubtless “worthy of his hire;” but whether it was hire for preaching the great Christian doctrine, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them,” or in the vigorous inculcation of more critically orthodox doctrines on the relative duties of “servant” and “master” is a point worth considering.

   The Rev. Tom Johnson is a western man. Vulgar, illiterate, and course, l have heard his voice through the dingy brick wall of the Shawnee Mission in prayer, his style being characterized chiefly by extreme western provincialisms and very bad. grammar. A violent pro-slavery partisan, he has been a useful tool in his way. His name may be found figuring in some of the most violent of the pro-slavery partisan meetings, and he was President of the Council of the Bogus Legislature which, within the walls of his mission, in the rooms dedicated to the service of Him who is the God of justice and truth, perpetrated one of the most flagrant outrages on right and justice recorded on the page of history. The Rev. Tom was elected in a district in which white men were not allowed to reside with the exception of the few religious missions, and federal officers in the shape of Indian agents; his constituency coming chiefly from Westport, Mo. This worthy is said to have first introduced slavery into Kansas. He introduced and held slaves at the time when the existence of the restriction rendered it a violation of the spirit of the temporal law.

   I conversed with one of the most intelligent of the Delaware chiefs on the political sentiments of his tribe. He told me they were nearly all free-state men, except a few on the south side of the reserve, close to the Shawnee country, On inquiry why these were pro-slavery, he shook his head, and said,

“There is no sense in it; for not one of them will ever be rich enough to own a nigger, or take care of him if they had him. It is these preachers who tamper with them. They believe everything they say.”

   Does not this out-Jesuit Jesuitism? I only mention these facts in this connection to show the means used to rob Kansas from freedom, and that the first step in the conquest was done under the shadow of the Prince of Peace. I would merely exhibit the point of all this by stating that when the treaties were arranged, a year and a half ago, the portion of the funds dedicated to religious uses fell into the hands of this Methodist Mission; the Quaker and the Baptist Missions, in the same locality, which had also labored long in the field of Shawnee heathenism, were left out. Perhaps this was because it was conceived that the positions of these bodies would sustain the more republican theory of religious support,—on the voluntary principle; perhaps, because the agent was a pro-slavery man, and, in point of fact, a Missourian.

William Phillips, The Conquest of Kansas, pp. 16-18. Read the book.