19 research outputs found

    In Search of Canaan

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    Word spread across the southern farm country, and into the minds of those who labored over cotton or sugar crops, that the day of reckoning was near at hand, that the Lord had answered black prayers with the offer of deliverance in a western Eden. In this vast state where Brown had caused blood to flow in his righteous wrath, there was said to be land for all, and land especially for poor blacks who for so long had cherished the thought of a tiny patch of America that they could call their own. The soil was said to be free for the taking, and even better, passage to the prairie Canaan was rumored to be available to all. . . . Thus began a pellmell land rush to Kansas, an unreasoned, almost mindless exodus from the South toward some vague ideal, some western paradise, where all cares would vanish.In Search of Canaan tells the story of the Black migration from areas of the South to Kansas and other Midwestern and Western states that occurred soon after the end of Reconstruction. Working almost entirely from primary sources—letters of some of the black migrants, government investigative reports, and black newspapers—Robert G. Athearn describes and explains the “Exoduster” movement and sets it into perspective as a phenomenon in Western history.The book begins with details of Exodusters on the move. Athearn then fills in the background of why they were moving; relates how other people—Black and white, Northern and Southern—felt about the movement; examines political considerations; and finally, evaluates the episode and provides an explanation as to why it failed. According to Athearn, the exodus spoke in a narrower sense of Black emigrants who sought frontier farms, but in the main it told more about a nation whose wounds had been bound but had not yet healed. The Republicans, without any issues of consequence in 1880, gave the flight national importance in the hope that it would gain votes for them and, at the same time, reduce the South’s population and hence its representation in Congress. Thousands of Black Americans, many of them former slaves, were deluded by false promises made by individual interests. As the hawkers of glad tidings beckoned to the easily convinced, the word “Kansas” became equated with the word “freedom.” Emotional, often biblical, overtones gave the movement millenarian flavor, and Kansas became the unwilling focus of a revitalized national campaign for Black rights.Athearn describes the social, political, economic, and even agricultural difficulties that Exodusters had in adapting to white culture. He evaluates the activities of Black leaders such as Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, northern politicians such as Kansas Governor John P. St. John, and refugee aid organizations such as the Kansas Freedmen’s Relief Association. He tells the Exoduster story not just as a southern story—the turmoil in Dixie and flight from the scenes of a struggle—but especially as a western story, a meaningful segment of the history of a frontier state. His remarkably objective, as well as suspenseful, account of this unusual episodes contributes significantly to Kansas history, to western history, and to the history of Black people in America

    The Education of Kit Carson\u27s Son

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    Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60\u3c/i\u3e By John D. Unruh, Jr.

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    In this somewhat less than precisely titled work John D. Unruh set out to synthesize an enormous amount of published and unpublished material concerning travel across the plains during a period of two decades. Readers will discover that to Unruh the plains across meant the central route to the West Coast. He refers only briefly to a southern passage (pp. 67 and 400) and to the Pike\u27s Peak rush that admittedly brought forth miners, as opposed to emigrant settlers (p. 119). However, he does discuss the miners\u27 rush to California in \u2749. It is estimated that one hundred thousand Peakers headed for Colorado before Unruh\u27s terminal date of 1860. Even though perhaps only 40 percent of them ever made it all the way, these are impressive figures, and in any case their collective experience would be interesting to lay against that of the earlier Argonauts. The introduction to The Plains Across reviews previously published works, including historians\u27 accounts of the overlanders and the standard textbooks of the frontier movement. The burden of this analysis is that these efforts had their shortcomings, especially because they did not always follow up accounts of trail experiences that succeeded the initial movements. Having more or less set up his straw man, Unruh presents what he held to be a new approach, treating more thoroughly the interaction between the overlanders and such groups as the army, the Indians, the Mormons, the federal government, the traders, and others, as well as filling the gap mentioned in later trail history, especially the 1850s. In terms of discussing these subjects, of pulling together a vast amount of both well-known and fugitive material and presenting it in a series of chapters under the appropriate titles suggested in the above-mentioned areas, the author succeeded very well. However, one can take almost any historical topic that has been done nearly to death, assert that it was not covered thoroughly enough in the past, and usually be right. Particularly welcome is the author\u27s discussion of the evolution in travel modes and facilities, especially during the 1850s, and his point that after the first flush of excitement, such as the attraction of Oregon to first-comers or the \u2749 gold rush to California, historical interest in the overland movement flagged, even though the emigration continued to grow and become more sophisticated. Welcome also is his chapter on the Mormons and their halfway house that supplied travelers, often at rigorous rates as urged by Brigham Young and occasionally under difficult conditions for buyers. The chapter on West Coast assistance, from both California and Oregon, is excellent and is one of the best examples of Unruh\u27s contribution to the general story of overland migration

    In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879–80

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    Robert G. Athearn (1918–1983) was professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder for the entirety of his career. He is the author of several books on Western history, including High Country Empire and The Mythic West, and was the inaugural recipient of the Western History Associations Caughey Prize.This Kansas Open Books title is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.Word spread across the southern farm country, and into the minds of those who labored over cotton or sugar crops, that the day of reckoning was near at hand, that the Lord had answered black prayers with the offer of deliverance in a western Eden. In this vast state where Brown had caused blood to flow in his righteous wrath, there was said to be land for all, and land especially for poor blacks who for so long had cherished the thought of a tiny patch of America that they could call their own. The soil was said to be free for the taking, and even better, passage to the prairie Canaan was rumored to be available to all. . . . Thus began a pell-mell land rush to Kansas, an unreasoned, almost mindless exodus from the South toward some vague ideal, some western paradise, where all cares would vanish. In Search of Canaan tells the story of the Black migration from areas of the South to Kansas and other Midwestern and Western states that occurred soon after the end of Reconstruction. Working almost entirely from primary sources—letters of some of the Black migrants, government investigative reports, and Black newspapers—Robert G. Athearn describes and explains the “Exoduster” movement and sets it into perspective as a phenomenon in Western history. The book begins with details of Exodusters on the move. Athearn then fills in the background of why they were moving; relates how other people—Black and white, Northern and Southern—felt about the movement; examines political considerations; and finally, evaluates the episode and provides an explanation as to why it failed. According to Athearn, the exodus spoke in a narrower sense of Black emigrants who sought frontier farms, but in the main it told more about a nation whose wounds had been bound but had not yet healed. The Republicans, without any issues of consequence in 1880, gave the flight national importance in the hope that it would gain votes for them and, at the same time, reduce the Souths population and hence its representation in Congress. Thousands of Black Americans, many of them former slaves, were deluded by false promises made by individual interests. As the hawkers of glad tidings beckoned to the easily convinced, the word “Kansas” became equated with the word “freedom.” Emotional, often biblical, overtones gave the movement millenarian flavor, and Kansas became the unwilling focus of a revitalized national campaign for Black rights. Athearn describes the social, political, economic, and even agricultural difficulties that Exodusters had in adapting to white culture. He evaluates the activities of Black leaders such as Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, northern politicians such as Kansas Governor John P. St. John, and refugee aid organizations such as the Kansas Freedmen’s Relief Association. He tells the Exoduster story not just as a southern story—the turmoil in Dixie and flight from the scenes of a struggle—but especially as a western story, a meaningful segment of the history of a frontier state. His remarkably objective, as well as suspenseful, account of this unusual episodes contributes significantly to Kansas history, to western history, and to the history of Black people in America

    The Education of Kit Carson's Son

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