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Receipt, Kansas State Central Committee

Date: October 22, 1856

This receipt is signed by Willard Colburn and dated “Lawrence, October 22, 1856,” for items (shirts, pants, quilts, etc.) received by the Kansas State Central Committee. In light of the…

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Minutes, Executive Committee

Date: October 22, 1856

Dated “Lawrence, October 22, 1856,” these are apparently the minutes of the first meeting the Kansas State Central Committee’s executive committee, chaired by James M. Winchell with George S. Hillyer…

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E. R. Falley to Kansas Central Committee

Date: c. 1857

In this undated letter from Lawrence, Kansas Territory, E. R. Falley informs the Kansas Central Committee that he had lost a gun loaned to him by “Mr. Wilder” (D. W.…

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Samuel L. Adair to S. S. Jocelyn

Date: September 8, 1855

This letter was written in Osawatomie, Kansas Territory, to Reverend Jocelyn, who was Samuel Adair’s contact with the American Missionary Association. The first three pages deal with some disagreement over…

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James Montgomery to George L. Stearns

Date: December 14, 1860

In response to a letter dated November 29, Montgomery informs Stearns that “Uncle Sam has stolen all my late corrispondence [sic]. I suppose he thinks he will find some Treason…

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Dr. C. R. Jennison to George L. Stearns

Date: November 28, 1860

From Mound City, Kansas Territory, Jennison opens his letter to Stearns by acknowledging that the two men did not know each other but Jennison counts Stearns “a true friend to…

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James Montgomery to George L. Stearns

Date: October 6, 1860

Having returned from a trip to the East (where he visited George Stearns, Horace Greeley, and others in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia), Montgomery writes from Mound City, Linn County,…

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Joseph Gardner to George L. Stearns

Date: June 9, 1860

From Lawrence, Kansas Territory, Joseph Gardner describes one of the last battles of the border war between Kansas Territory and Missouri. The attack Gardner had feared came “last night between…

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E. B. Whitman to Samuel L. Adair

Date: May 15, 1857

E. B. Whitman, located in Lawrence, was the general agent for the National Kansas Committee that was distributing relief supplies in Kansas Territory. He writes that he is sending Adair…

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Aaron D. Stevens to Jennie Dunbar

Date: December 3, 1859

From his jail cell at Charles Town, Virginia, abolitionist Aaron Dwight Stevens, 1831-1860, wrote his dear friend, Jennie Dunbar, regarding his actions and prospects (“Slavery demands that we should hang…

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William F. Creitz to James Redpath

Date: December 17, 1859

William F. Creitz of Holton, who had served under Aaron Stevens as captain of a Kansas militia company, wrote Redpath regarding “the particulars of ‘Old John Brown’s’ final departure from…

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C. Whipple [Aaron.D. Stevens] to Jenny Dunbar

Date: October 7, 1859

The last of three “love letters” written by Aaron D. Stevens, alias Charles Whipple, to a girl he apparently had only recently met. He desperately desired a closer relationship. It…

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Jeremiah G. Anderson to J. Q. Anderson

Date: January 14, 1859

From near Lawrence, Jeremiah G. Anderson wrote to his brother (J. Q. Anderson) about his recent call “into the service,” whick took him to Fort Scott and into Missouri with…

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William Leeman to his mother

Date: October 2, 1859

From “Harpers Ferry” about two weeks before the raid that took his life, William H. Leeman wrote his mother that, although he didn’t want to worry her, he was “waring…

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John Q. Anderson to John Brown

Date: November 23, 1859

John Anderson, of Eddyville, Iowa, the brother of one of the Harpers Ferry raiders, Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson, writes to Captain [John] Brown, who was in jail awaiting execution in Charlestown,…

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William Hutchinson to Helen Hutchinson

Date: January 3, 1859

A resident of Lawrence, Kansas Territory, and correspondent from the New York Tribune, William Hutchinson writes his wife Helen from Mapleton, northern Bourbon County, right after the first of the…