Kansas- From "Bleeding Kansas" to Oz- Saturday, July 27, 2019

     Today, we went to sights that covered the two things that we think of most when we think of Kansas- its bloody pre-Civil War history and its home for a new American fairy tale and mythology.

     "Bleeding Kansas" is a topic that Scott has to cover every time he teaches about the coming of the Civil War.  Ever since the Missouri compromise, which admitted Missouri to the US as a slave state in 1820, the portion of the Louisiana Purchase that contained Kansas was supposed to be free territory, where slavery would never be allowed.  In the 1850s, however, Senator Stephen Douglas got Congress to pass the "Kansas-Nebraska Act," which said that settlers in those territories would vote on whether slavery would be allowed there.  This opened the territory of Kansas to the possibility of slavery, and neither side wanted to let the other one gain an advantage.  Abolitionists, including John Brown* came rushing into the territory from New York and New England, but the pro-slavery "ruffians" from the nearby state of Missouri came across the border to intimidate the abolitionists and influence the votes with threats, cheating, and violence.  Two rival governments- one supporting slavery and one against it- were each claiming to run the territory where in truth, there was no law or order to be had.   The violence that occurred was dubbed, "Bleeding Kansas."

     In Kansas, the abolitionist named John Brown first gained notoriety at a place called Pottawatomie Creek.  On the night of May 24-25, 1854, in response to attacks on abolitionists, Brown and his sons murdered five pro-slavery settlers, hacking them to death with broadswords, at what is called the "Pottawatomie Massacre."  Though we didn't know exactly where the attack took place, Scott found an historical marker in the hamlet of Lane, Kansas, noting that the location was a little ways north of the town, which was the direction we had come from.   We stopped for a photo, and continued on to the town of Osawatomie, which bills itself as "The Cradle of the Civil War," with some justification.  The fighting here was a bitter civil war that was being fought a full five years before the rest of the nation joined in.  John Brown and his family have deep connections to this place.  Our first stop was a large historical sign that read "John Brown Country. "  It sat next to the small red land office that had been built in 1854.  It was a stone's through away from a stone church built by the Reverend Samuel Adair who had married the half-sister of John Brown, and was thus his brother-in-law.

      Also in Osawatomie is the John Brown Museum State Historical Site.  It sits in the middle of John Brown Memorial Park, and includes Reverend Adair's cabin.  The cabin itself was originally built over a mile away from its current location, but was moved to this park to preserve it.  A second stone building has been built around the log cabin to further protect it for the future.  (Scott suspected that the stone building was built to resemble the building in Harpers Ferry, WV, where John Brown was ultimately captured, and the man working their confirmed that was true.)  The cabin itself contains many relics from the Adair/Brown family and tells how Brown and his sons came there and used it as a sort of headquarters.  After a brief introduction from the state employee, it is possible to stroll through the cabin.  It has many signs and a few push-button recordings to tell the story of its occupation.

    Outside, there was a statue of John Brown, and by it is the first of a series of signs that describe the "Battle of Osawatomie."  This memorial park is on the land where it occurred, and the signs offer a short walk through the rolling, shady park grounds.  30 anti-slavery men, led by Brown, fought against 250 pro-slavery men in August of 1856.  Brown and his men were ultimately overrun here, but their defeat helped inspire other anti-slavery forces to rally.

     Last night at dinner, Scott and Richard were discussing John Brown. Scott said Brown was "problematic" and Richard knew exactly what he was talking about.  As an abolitionist, John Brown was on the right side of history, working to end the evil scourge of slavery.  But as an extremist, Brown went to measures that brought violence and terror to Kansas and, later, to Virginia.  Brown would be caught at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now WV), and hanged for his plot to try to spread weapons to slaves to start an insurrection.  Is that a bad thing?  Southerners would have called him a terrorist for what he was planning if they had coined that word then, but at least some Northerners were singing his praise as a savior whose "soul goes marching on."  If nothing else, Brown made people on both sides look at each other with far more fear and confusion than they had before.  Still, there was recently a Facebook meme that used words sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson- "When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty," and the creator of the meme though it was cute to put these words around a Confederate battle flag.  Surely, the words apply more to the four million enslaved Southerners who were being kept as chattel and whom Brown was trying to help.  Today, when the state employee was giving us the introduction to the log cabin, he noted how many people want to say that in Bleeding Kansas, one side was good and the other side was bad but that the truth is that both sides were pretty brutal.  That's true.  So, is John Brown a hero here?  Well, it's his memorial park, and his museum, and his statue outside, so it would seem so.  Relics of villains are sometimes kept, but this does not seem to be a museum to an outlaw, but rather to a founding father of the community.  Furthermore, as violent as Brown was, the crucible of Kansas shows the pro-slavery side with their true motivation, and without the banner of "States' Rights" to hide behind.  That would come later.  John Brown himself explained his actions by writing, "I am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

     We continued on to Lawrence, Kansas, and while we were eating lunch there we had some discussions about the plans for the rest of the vacation and what we really wanted to do.  Our plans changed, but we'll write more about that at the end.  Meanwhile, we searched Lawrence for its pre-Civil War history.   It was the seat of the antislavery government, which met at the Free State Hotel.  The town became a target of the pro-slavery forces, and was "sacked" by the ruffians on May 21, 1856, and the burning of the town escalated the violence.  There is a plaque on the Hotel Eldridge today which marks it as the site of the Free State Hotel.  Lawrence is a busy little place, being the home of the University of Kansas and its Jayhawks.  We could have gone to the location of the rival pro-slavery government at Lecompton, but we had enough of Bleeding Kansas at this point and wanted a change.

     We drove a little over an hour through Topeka to Wamego, Kansas, which is the location of the OZ museum.  The character of Dorothy Gale is famously from Kansas.  "Kansas, she says, is the name of the star!"  There are at least two places in Kansas that make a claim for Oz tourists- this museum in the northeast part of the state and "Dorothy's House" in the far corner of the southwest of the state.  Neither has any real claim to a connection to the Oz stories other than just being in Kansas.  But the books and movies are not more specific than that.  As with Clark Kent's Smallville, all we know is that Kansas was her home, so why not Wamego?

     Many of the buildings on Wamego's main street are made out of a light-colored stone, but the front of the OZ museum is unmistakable with its emerald green.  Visitors enter in the gift shop and find themselves on Aunt Em's front porch.  Once you enter the museum proper, you follow the yellow brick road through the familiar story.  The exhibits are centered around figures of each of the characters and tell the story of the story.  They begin with the books, of course, written first by L. Frank Baum and continued later by other others.  Baum wished to write an American fairy tale, and found that the story he had been telling his niece was popular with others as well.  His book was illustrated by W.W. Denslow and published in 1900 to great success.  The first few display cases are filled with early editions of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it's many sequels, versions of the stories in many other languages, and portraits and autographs of Baum.  We asked Emma if she would dance in front of the Scarecrow the way she did when she was little, but she quickly said "No!"

     From almost the very beginning, Baum tried to dramatize the story of Oz, and the many versions that were produced all have a place in the museum.  The majority of the story told here seems to be of the 1939 MGM movie that is a beloved classic.  Videos play to tell the story of how this production came to be, and the exhibits show items and photos associated with the cast.  There are lots of new pieces of trivia that visitors can learn here.  The movie was one of the first to be produced in Technicolor, and because of that, the silver shoes that play a key role in the book were changed to be ruby slippers so that they will show up better against the yellow brick road.   There were several pairs of ruby shoes made for the movie production, and one pair is famously in the Smithsonian.  One pair was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005, just weeks before they were supposed to come to the OZ Museum here.  There are also lots and lots of display cases full of merchandise, toys, books and games related to the story.  There were hundreds of pieces on display, and it seemed odd that we didn't spot Mego dolls like the ones that Julie has from when she was young.

     At the half-way point in the museum is a theater where the MGM movie plays continuously.  Julie and Emma settled in to watch it, but Scott excused himself to go back over the museum displays we had just looked at.  There were two videos playing there that were going in depth into the story and the movie, and Scott was much more interested in seeing them.  When Julie and Emma had enough, they weren't sure where Scott had gone, and they went forward through the museum instead of back through it like he had.  It took us a while to reconnect with each other and when we did, we all had ended up going through the museum several times, but we can honestly say that we noticed new things each time.  After the theater came the Haunted Forest hallway, with its warning sign, "I'd turn back if I were you," and the Wicked Witch of the West herself lurking at the end.  After that were exhibits on more recent movies and productions like Disney's Return to Oz, Michael Jackson's The Wiz, the book and Broadway musical Wicked, the 2013 movie Oz the Great and Powerful with James Franco, and others.

     After the OZ Museum in Wamego, we decided that we were going to go east instead of west.  The original plan was to go to Dodge City, which is practically in the opposite corner of the state.  We all decided that we didn't want to do that.  Emma hasn't been sleeping great and has missed a few of our stops because she needed to nap in the car (with the air conditioner running, of course, but even that is a problem).  Julie has been getting beaten down quickly by the heat.  It's hot for all of us, but she's particularly susceptible to it now and needs to be careful to protect "the little strawberry."  Taking Dodge City out of the itinerary saves us from a total of 8 to 10 hours driving, a day in what was going to probably be either dusty or muggy heat (or both), and two nights in a cheap hotel.  Instead, we're going back into Kansas City tomorrow, and then we'll head south to Oklahoma.  We'll fill you in as we go.  We've got a big hotel room here because we seem to have gotten a room built for wheelchair access.  We've been in touch with Anna and Julie's parents.  Anna went camping with Noah and his family, and Julie's folks were helping her by agreeing to watch the three dogs.  Julie and Scott went out to eat while Emma got some more "alone time" in the hotel room.  We all called it an early day after that because we all needed it.  For now we'll paraphrase Loretta Lynn- "But here in Topeka... one's on the way."

*Not Julie's dad's friend--- the other John Brown. 😉