THE DAILY STAR-JOURNAL, WARRENSBURG, MO., FRIDAY, NOV. 16, 2012 PAGE 5

Soper said Missourians believed they needed slaves for the hemp crop and Park’s views threatened the local economy.

“When that article came out a group of men from Platte City went to Parkville ... and took the press and threw it into the Missouri River,” Soper said. “You have to admire a man that knew he was standing waist-deep in the middle of controversy and continued to print something like that.”

To then find editors at another Mis-souri paper, in slave territory, willing to reprint the abolitionist article is sur-prising, she said.

“Gutsy men – very gutsy men. This was not a state to be antagonizing about that,” Soper said. “Those were very, very hard times.”

Foley wondered how well The War-rensburg News would have fared after republishing the Luminary’s article.

“That’s fascinating, that someone here, at that time, would have chosen to reprint that – that’s kind of surprising,” he said. “That’s probably why it didn’t last too long.”

A year after the article appeared, another newspaper began publishing in Warrensburg.

THE WESTERN MISSOURIANThe Missouri State Historical Society

safeguards four copies of The Western Missourian, with dates scattered between Aug. 29, 1856, and July 27, 1860. Typical for the period, the issues include notice of a lawsuit involving property, including “a negro woman, Fanny, and her children, Dorcas and James.”

Racial healing took time, with part of the process after the Civil War starting in Warrensburg with a teacher at what is now the second-oldest, surviving Freedmen school in Missouri.

“There was a woman who came to Warrensburg ... Carry Reed Briggs. She was sent by the American Mis-sionary Association to teach classes for former slaves, right at the end of the war. ... She was a teacher at the Howard

School and her husband had been a Union officer,” Foley said. “She wrote letters to the American Missionary Association and ... she said Warrens-burg is, ‘Oh, so, secesh.’”

Education provided a source of early healing and continued through the years, with public schools and what is now the University of Central Missouri desegregating.

“Morris Col-lins was the first person of color to be hired as a teacher in the Warrensburg schools and then he became president of the school board, so we have come a long, long way,” Foley said. “He was elected and is a highly regarded person in the community – he’s still on the school board.”

The Western Missourian gave notice of an ordinance covering another aspect of city life. Gambling had taken hold in Warrensburg, where the Temperance Union met every Tuesday at the Methodist Church. The council decided gaming tables should be destroyed and a fine of $100 levied against offenders.

The final issue of the Western Mis-sourian found in the society’s collec-tion contains an ad showing that slaves longed to cross the border into Kansas and freedom. The ad identifies two escapees, George and Wallace, an ironic similarity to the name George Wallace, the Alabama governor who in the 1960s tried to prevent integra-tion. The ad states George and Wallace escaped July 1, 1860, just before Inde-pendence Day. To get to Kansas, where the ad speculated they headed, the men would have had to pass through about 60 miles of pro-slavery territory. If caught, they faced punishment.

“It would depend on the owner. There would probably be some lashes. ... The ultimate threat was to sell them ‘down the river’ – send them down to New

Orleans,” Foley said. “Slavery was hor-rible and horrendous, but it wasn’t as harsh (here) as down where they had those large plantation gangs and over-seers. To be sold down the river – it removed you from any ties with family, and that was forever. Beyond that was the threat that you would be sent to

one of those places where, if slavery could be any worse, it was.”

Getting away safely to Kansas from Johnson County for a run-away slave would have been difficult, Foley said.

Whether George and Wallace found freedom is lost to history.

THE WEEKLY UNIONThe final postbellum newspaper

published in Warrensburg, The Weekly Union, by C.A. and C.H. Middleton, contains tidbits from city life in 1860, with ads for the Mansion Hotel on Main Street, the Bolton House on the south-west corner of the public square and City Hotel at Main and Market streets; and the Wolfort and Hamburger clothing store “opposite the Court House.” The paper mentions organiza-tions, including DeMolay, Odd Fellows and Masons. There also is notice that the Johnson County Fair would take place for four days, starting Sept. 25.

The pro-Union newspaper did not have kind words for the competition, taking to task The Western Missourian and publisher Marsh Foster. In the May 16, 1860, issue, The Union gives this account of a political rally:

“Candidates were as numerous as whortleberries on the hills of North Carolina, and each of course, and as usual, deeply anxious to offer himself a sacrifice for his country’s good. The meeting was called to order, if order it can be called, where chaos reigns, by our good friend Dr. Calhoun, erst an

old line Whig, but now (we grieve to say) the fervency of whose zeal is lost in the dark and troubled pool of Loco-focoism. ... Mr. Eads was invited to air his vocabulary, which accordingly he proceeded to do, in a speech of consid-erable length and noise; and if he didn’t tear a passion into tatters, then it was because he couldn’t, that’s all. ...

“But let us give praise where praise is due. The party is much indebted to our neighbor of The Missourian, for the skill he displayed in engineering the thing safely through; and we couldn’t help sympathizing in the remarks of a Kentucky friend who stood near us, when he said, ‘What a glorious captain he would make for a corn shucking.”

A WINDOW ON HISTORYOld newspapers – such as The

Weekly Union, The Western Missou-rian and The Warrensburg News – hold historical value, Foley said.

“You get a sense of viewpoints that were prevalent at the time – it gives you a glimpse. Newspapers are a huge source of information ... from the latest news stories, but also just looking at the advertising and the things they fea-tured. ... It’s amazing what you can find that you weren’t even anticipating.”

Kremer said newspapers are an essential historical resource.

“The newspapers from the ante-bellum period, and indeed from the entire 19th century, are windows into the past. There are few windows that you can look through and get a clear image of what was going on in a com-munity in the 19th century, and the newspapers are absolutely essential to that,” Kremer said. “Newspapers are one of the first sources I use in an effort to understand community, and state and regional history, because you can’t go back and talk to the people who lived there. The next best thing you can do is get a sense of what they were thinking, what they were reading, their view of the world, and there is in my judgment no source better to do that with than the newspapers.”

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The Weekly Union

Candidateswere as numerousas whortleberries

on the hills of North Carolina.‘

‘

AT 400 W. CULTON ST., on Warrensburg’s west side, Howard School stands – but for how long is anyone’s guess. The school represents one of

the steps taken to bring blacks into the general society after the Civil War. Today, the school is in disrepair and open to the ravages of the elements.

LOST HIS PRESS: As an abolitionist newspaper publisher in pro-slavery Missouri, George Park, for whom the city of Parkville and Park College are named, found his press dumped into the Mis-souri River.