{Editor's note: In preparation for this year's Border War, RMN reader Keith Piontek has authored a four-part series on the origins of the Missouri/Kansas rivalry. Today, we have part two.}

One of the more hotly debated topics regarding the origins of the MU-KU rivalry is KU’s selection of “Jayhawks” as their athletic team moniker.  It is unlikely the KU athletic teams would have this name if not for one man, Charles R. “Doc” Jennison.  More than any other individual, Jennison gave the term “jayhawkers” a lasting place in the lexicon of Kansas and the surrounding region.  To understand Jennison is to understand the original meaning of the jayhawker term, and the jayhawkers’ place in Border War history.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 turned Kansas Territory into a battleground between those that would extend and those that would exclude slavery from what would be become, in 1861, the new state of Kansas.  After pro-slavery forces dominated initial territorial government elections, aided by a campaign of Election Day intimidation and ballot box stuffing on the part of Missouri “border ruffians”, free-state forces formed a competing territorial government.   With two competing governments in place, there was really no government at all, at least not any unbiased law enforcement, and a period of lawlessness descended upon the territory.  In the spring of 1856, when John Brown and his band pulled five pro-slavery settlers from their homes along Pottawatomie Creek in the middle of the night and brutally hacked them to death, the struggle turned increasingly violent and bloody.  In the words of an early Kansas historian, “…the Pottawatomie massacre at once fomented and embittered the struggle. A period of lawlessness and marauding now set in that left stains on both parties as inevitably as the snail slimes its track.”[1] 

 During this period, many Kansans undoubtedly acted with noble motives: to stop slavery expansion, to uphold free and fair elections, and to resist the armed incursions of the border ruffians.  However, some of the free-state armed bands quickly “deteriorated into freebooters”.[2]   “They gave themselves up to plundering, robbing and stealing from everybody and anybody.  They pretended to be Free-State men – called themselves so – but any man who had a little property was a Pro-Slavery man in their eyes, and ‘all horses were Pro-Slavery’”.[3]  After immigrating to Kansas Territory in 1856, Charles R. Jennison became a leader among these plunderers. 

 Jennison was a diminutive man.  It is said that very little of Jennison was visible above his boot tops, and he often wore a tall, brimless fur cap to give the appearance of greater stature.[4]    His attire led some to describe him as a “dandy”.  In fact, one theory held that the term “jayhawker” was a derivation of “Gay Yorker”, and referred to Jennison, a New York native.[5]  It would be a mistake, however, to conclude Jennison’s chief attribute was gaiety.   His character was perhaps more aptly described by the person who, upon seeing Jennison doff his cap and display his disheveled hair, remarked that he looked like an “enraged porcupine”.[6] 

 The conflicts of the “Bleeding Kansas” period were largely confined to the area within a 30 mile radius of Lawrence, and were largely over by the end of 1858 when the Kansas statehood issue had essentially been decided in favor of the Free State party.  However, in the southeast Kansas counties of Linn, Bourbon, and Miami, the violence continued on into the Civil War.  Here, pro-slavery settlers had arrived first, and had staked claims to the best land, those with timber and water.  Here, the conflict evolved into an offensive by militant free-state forces that drove pro-slavery settlers from Kansas Territory, followed by raids into Missouri.  It was here in southeast Kansas that the term “jayhawker” emerged, and where Jennison initially made his mark.  Jennison excelled at turning the turmoil into personal gain.  When Free State forces raided Fort Scott in November of 1858 to free a compatriot jailed on murder charges, Jennison led the assault on a general store and its stockpile of women’s saddles.[7], [8]  Later that same month, when John Brown led a raid into Missouri to free slaves, Jennison helped liberate 1,500 pounds of ham and bacon.[9] 

 As an accomplished plunderer, Jennison attracted men of dubious character to his band.  One of them was Pat Devlin, also referred to as “Pat with a devil in him”, a man “no more or less than a dangerous thief”.[10]  When Devlin was seen entering a Kansas border village with a horse almost hidden from view by the various goods it was packing and was asked what he had been up to, Pat replied he’d been out jayhawking.  And when asked to explain what that term meant, Devlin stated, “I have been foraging off the enemy (pro-slavery settlers), and while riding home on me beast, I bethought me of the bird we have in Ireland, we call the jayhawk, which takes delight in worryin’ its prey before devouring it and I thought ‘jayhawking’ a good name for the business I was in meself.”[11]   By 1858 and 1859, the term “jayhawker” began appearing in letters and other documentation referring to Jennison and other militant free-state Kansan bands.[12]  

 If it was just the plundering, Jennison’s name would be mo more noteworthy than the names of the other thieves he ran with, names that have generally been relegated to the dust bins of history.  It was Jennison’s viciousness, disregard for human life, and flair for the dramatic that set him apart.  Jennison’s notoriety spread like prairie fire when Jennison took a trip through Linn County, Kansas in November of 1860 and left a string of dead men in his wake.   On three consecutive days, Jennison first hung “old man Scott” in his own door yard, then hung Russ Hines, and finally broke into L.D. Moore’s home during the night and shot him in his bed.  One story is that the first two were killed because they had participated in enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law which, while still federal law, was anathema to majority of the free state settlers.  However, another theory is that Jennison’s true motive was to terrorize pro-slavery settlers into permanently abandoning their valuable land claims.  Jennison’s justification for the murder of Moore was different.  Moore had been a member of a vigilante committee attempting to stop the rampant horse theft in the area.  When Moore and his fellow vigilantes lynched a horse thief, it apparently hit too close to home for Jennison.  When asked why he killed Moore, Jennison stated he was “a little too  ______ conservative”.  After Moore’s murder, Jennison illustrated his cold-blooded nature when he and  his band “went to the house of M. E. Hudson, whose wife was a relative of L. D. Moore….Jennison informed Mrs. Hudson of what he had done, and, while she was weeping, ordered her to provide breakfast for his party." [13]

 The Governor of Kansas Territory issued a warrant for Jennison’s arrest and offered a $1,000 reward for his capture, but Jennison eluded the authorities.  Less than 15 months later, after Kansas had gained statehood and the nation fell into civil war, Jennison standing with the government made a dramatic turnaround.  Not only was the warrant for Jennison’s arrest dropped, Kansas Governor Charles Robinson appointed Jennison a Colonel and head of a cavalry unit, which became the Seventh Kansas Cavalry. “Robinson hoped, fatuously, that if Jennison was given a legitimate outlet for his warlike propensities he would cease his marauding and be of service to the state and the Union.”[14]  Proud of his jayhawking past and not intending to deviate from that mode of “military action” in the future, Jennison called his cavalry unit the “Independent Kansas Jay-Hawkers”, which became shortened in popular usage to “Jennison’s Jayhawkers”. 

 The Seventh’s nickname and esprit de corps was provided in large part by Company H, a group of Kansans already well versed in the practice of jayhawking.  Their leader, an escaped convict named  Marshall Cleveland, was commissioned Captain.  George Hoyt was also made an officer in Jennison’s regiment.  This was the start of an alliance between Jennison and Hoyt that would last throughout the war.  Hoyt first came to public notice as defense counsel at John Brown’s treason trial (following Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and failed slave insurrection).  Hoyt’s primary duty as Brown’s counsel was apparently to help plan an escape attempt.[15] Together, Jennison and Hoyt would become a scourge to Missourians along the Kansas border. 

 At the outbreak of the Civil War, most Missourians along the western border were neutral.  They wanted nothing to do with either the radical abolitionists in Kansas or the secessionist element in Missouri.  However, these people were not going to be allowed to stay out of the conflict.  At the outset of his jayhawking expedition into Missouri, Jennison issued the following proclamation, perhaps to justify the wide-spread looting that followed: “..neutrality is impossible; if you are patriots you must fight; if your are traitors, you will be punished...Traitors will everywhere be treated as outlaws; enemies of God and man, too base to hold any description of property, and having no rights which loyal men are bound to respect.”[16]  By the terms Jennison thereby set forth, any families attempting to stay neutral were fair game for his marauders.

 Between Jenison’s forces and the troops under the command of Senator Jim Lane, the Kansas troops descended upon the border counties of western Missouri in a campaign of theft, arson, and murder.  A whole sting of towns, as wells as large swaths of the western Missouri countryside, were pillaged and put to the torch.  The largest of these towns, Osceola, with a population of approximately 3,000 (roughly the same size as Lawrence, Kansas), was sacked and burned in December 1861.  Men across western Missouri forfeited not only their wealth, but their lives.  Hundreds of families were burned out of their homes during the middle of winter, with nothing but the clothes on their back. 

 General Henry H. Halleck, Union Commander of the Department of the West, belatedly moved to stop the predations of the Kansas troops.  In the spring of 1862, he characterized the forces of Lane and Jennison as “worse than useless, for they compel me to keep troops from other States on the Missouri border to prevent these Kansas troops from committing murders and robberies.”[17]  Halleck ordered the Seventh Kansas to the interior of Kansas, and plans were developed to use the Seventh Kansas Cavalry in an expedition to New Mexico.  It has been theorized that Halleck was thinking, “the Seventh have made themselves obnoxious with their jayhawking; very well, let them try it with the Mescalero Apaches.” [18]

 With Halleck asserting control over his command, the Independent Kansas Jay-Hawkers were no longer as independent as Jennison preferred, and to make matters worse the Seventh was now stationed outside striking distance of the Missouri border.  Also upset over having been passed over for promotion, Jennison resigned his command in April 1862.  George Hoyt’s resignation soon followed.  A member of the Seventh Kansas who later wrote a regimental history, commented that , “Colonel Jennison performed some acts worthy of commendation, conspicuous among which was his resignation…Captain George H. Hoyt was combination of ambition and cruelty…The company and regiment were well rid of him when he resigned.”[19] 

 Jennison did not resign quietly.  A number of his troops interpreted his inflammatory farewell address as an invitation to desert.  When Jennison interfered with efforts to return these deserters to their units, Jennison was arrested and sent to St. Louis with this warning from his commanding officer, “I send Col. Jennison of the Seventh Kansas Volunteers to St. Louis, in order that he may be placed in such close custody as will place his escape beyond the pale of possibility…He is charged with very grave offences, such as disorganizing his regiment, and inducing his men to desert so that he can place themselves at their head…and become the leader of a band of outlaws whose object is to be plunder.”[20]  However, Jennison had powerful friends among abolitionist politicians, and they succeeded in having Jennison released before formal charges were brought against him. 

 The Seventh was rid of Jennison, but not of the bad reputation they had acquired under his leadership.  A solider in the Seventh Kansas who rose to the rank of Adjutant wrote, “The name of ‘jayhawker’ was not an asset at first to be highly valued…When, in the spring of 1862, the regiment was ordered down to the Army of the Tennessee, where real war was on tap, the name suggested a scapegoat, and every regiment in the army corps began systematically to lay their depredations on the shoulders of the Seventh Kansas.”[21]   

 Meanwhile, back in Kansas, it appears that Jennison fulfilled the prediction that he intended to resume his plundering as leader of an outlaw gang.  General Blunt assumed command of the Department of Kansas in 1862, and declared upon taking command that “An organization had sprung into existence known as “Red Legs”…A reign of terror was inaugurated, and no man’s property was safe, nor was his life worth much if he opposed them in their schemes of plunder and robbery.”[22]  The term “Red Legs” came to be used to describe three different (but overlapping) elements: 1) rogues devoted entirely to plundering, regardless of the political caste of their victims, 2) men nominally associated with Union forces but primarily engaged in profitable criminal activity, and 3) those who served alongside regular federal forces as scouts and in a counter-insurgency role, who occasionally lapsed into criminal activity.[23] 

 The shadowy connection between the redlegs and regular Union forces was illustrated in the following order from General Blunt.  “All operations against rebels must be directed by the legal military authorities. This injunction is to apply especially to an organization known as the Redlegs, which is an organized band of thieves and violators of law and good order…And as there is reason to believe that officers in the military service are implicated , directly or indirectly, in the offenses committed by Redlegs and lawless bands, therefore upon the evidence that any officer has failed or neglected to carry out the foregoing instructions in reference to such offenders, they will be dishonorably dismissed from the service of the United States.”[24]

Both Jennison and Hoyt figured prominently in the redlegs’ operations.  Lawrence, Kansas was a redleg headquarters.  Here, the livery stables were filled with stolen horses, and stolen goods were brazenly auctioned.  “Red-legs were accustomed to brag in Lawrence," says one who was familiar with their movements, "that nobody dared to interfere with them. They did not hesitate to shoot inquisitive and troublesome people… I once saw Hoyt, the leader, without a word of explanation or warning, open fire upon a stranger quietly riding down Massachusetts Street. He was a Missourian whom Hoyt had recently robbed."[25]

 Jennison worked behind the scenes in a freighting business that he started after his resignation from the army, where he would have ready use for jayhawked livestock.  In the words of a Jennison biographer, “It was a foregone conclusion that Jennison, once he was free of his ties with the army, would become involved in some manner with the Red Legs.  They were only practicing what he had advocated from the start as the proper method of dealing with the rebels.  If in the process non-rebels and even anti-rebels and Kansans suffered the same treatment, Jennison was not the man to boggle over technicalities.”[26] Jennison’s brother was implicated in an associated scheme of seizing livestock and other property from recently freed slaves that could not prove ownership.[27] 

 The activities of Jennison and Hoyt were common knowledge in Kansas.  Just weeks before Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, a correspondent for a Kansas newspaper wrote a tongue-in-cheek dispatch from Lawrence concerning the city’s efforts to establish a defense, “These formidable defenses were made for two reasons: First, to save us from surprise from Quantrill.  Second, to prevent Jennison and Hoyt from coming to our rescue…It was decided that although great danger to the city still existed, still, a just regard to the insecurity of property, especially stock, demanded that Jennison and Hoyt be excluded.”[28]

 While this illustrates the ill repute that Jennison had among some Kansans, Jennison was embraced to a greater degree after Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence.  One newspaper wrote, “We do not endorse Jennison in some respects.  He is too wild and reckless.  But one thing is certain; when Jennison was in Missouri, we did not have rebel raids into this state.  He generally made enough work for them at home, to keep them there.”[29]  This newspaperman apparently failed to recognize or acknowledge that it was men like Jennison and their predations in the early months of the war that had helped to unleash the horrors of total war in the region, and that had precipitated the retaliatory raid on Lawrence.      

 At about the time of Quantrill’s raid, the Governor of Kansas called upon Jennison to raise and lead a regiment of cavalry (the Fifteenth Kansas) to defend the eastern counties of Kansas from the incursions of Missouri guerillas.  The Jennison-Hoyt connection continued, with Hoyt commissioned as Captain and second-in-command.   Jennison, true to earlier form, parlayed animosity against Missourians into recruits, announcing in a recruiting poster, “No Quarter for Bushwackers!  Desolation Shall Follow Treason Wherever This Regiment Marches!”  However, the Union military command, recalling the campaign of terror perpetrated by Kansas troops in 1861/1862, had previously decided the Fifteenth was to be used solely for the protection of Kansas within that state and would not be permitted to cross the border into Missouri.[30] 

 While Missouri was not subjected to the additional round of plundering, arson, and murder that had been threatened by Jennison, Arkansas was not so lucky.  After Price’s Raid into Missouri and his defeat at the battle of Westport in the final months of the war, Jennison led the Fifteenth Kansas in its pursuit of Price into Arkansas.  On the return trip through northern Arkansas, reports began to filter in that the Fifteenth had fallen into the same pattern of criminal activity that had earlier characterized Jennison’s Seventh Kansas.  A correspondent with the Fifteenth Kansas boasted that “Arkansas guerilla mothers and sisters use the name of (Jennison) to frighten unruly children, and by the light of burning houses, and beside the blackening timers of their homes, wish perhaps that Dad hadn’t gone off with (Confederate General) Prices or into the brush (to fight guerilla style).”[31] 

General Blunt ordered an investigation, and charges were brought against Jennison and others under his command.  Charges against Jennison included burning defenseless women and children out of their homes, entering private residences with his troops and robbing the occupants of personal effects, hanging three men professing to be loyal to the Union, and permitting his troops to “engage in an indiscriminate system of destruction and pillaging of property from loyal as well as disloyal citizens”.  At the ensuing court martial, Jennison was not held personally responsible on some of the more odious charges brought against him, but he was convicted on several others and was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army.[32] 

 Jennison retired to a life of ranching and politics.  During the Civil War, in acknowledgement of Jennison’s prolific horse thievery, the pedigree of good horseflesh in the region came to be described as, “out of Missouri, by Jennison”.  Jennison’s ranch was known for its thoroughbred racehorses and trotters.  Kansas thought it natural that Jennison should become involved in the breeding of racehorses, because “for some five or six years the Colonel enjoyed unusual facilities for selecting fast horses from numerous stables”.[33]  

 Over his military career, Jennison accomplished some good.  Most notably, he and his forces freed many slaves.  Some claim Jennison was an ardent abolitionist with a hatred of slavery that was as great as his love of plunder.  However, the good done by Jennison in freeing slaves was offset (at a minimum) by the vicious tactics he employed against the civilian population of surrounding states.  One noted Border War historian concluded Jennison’s chief attributes were “brutality, unscrupulousness, and opportunism”, and that for Jennison, “fighting against slavery was mainly an excuse for banditry”.[34]

 When confronted with the historical reality of the original jayhawkers as thieves and plunderers, many KU fans state that the jayhawker term had acquired a different meaning by the time it was embraced by Kansans (and later by KU).  However, it is perhaps noteworthy that in the years following the Civil War, Kansans seem to have embraced not only the term, but the jayhawkers themselves.  Charles R. Jennison, who did more than anyone to bring “jayhawker” into the nation’s language as a term denoting thief and plunderer, was elected to the Kansas State House of Representatives in 1865 and again in 1867, and to the State Senate in 1871.  Perhaps even more illuminating, “Chief Redleg” George Hoyt was elected by Kansans to the top law enforcement position in the state, that of Attorney General, in 1867. 

 Keith Piontek
November  2008

[1] Spring, Leverett Wilson.  Kansas: The Prelude to the War for the Union.  Houghton, Mifflin, and Company.  1896.  p 176.

[2] Bondi, August.  Excerpts from the Autobiography of August Bondi (1833-1907).  Yearbook for German-American Studies 40(2005): 87-159.   

[3] T.F. Robley.  History of Bourbon County, Kansas: to the close of 1865.  Fort Scott, Kansas.   Press of the Monitor Book & Print. Co., 1894.  http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/bourbon/history/1894/

[4] Starr, Stephen Z.  Jennison’s Jayhawkers, A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and Its Commander.  Louisiana State University Press.  1973.  p 32. 

[5] Spring, Kansas: The Prelude to the War for the Union, p 256. 

[6] Daily Times [Leavenworth, KS], September 6, 1864, p. 3, c. 1

[7] Robley. History of Bourbon County, Chapter XVIII.

[8] Cutler, William G.  History of the State of Kansas.  Bourbon County, Part 4, Border Troubles.   www.kancoll.org/books/cutler

[9] Welch, G. Murlin.  Border Warfare in Southeast Kansas: 1856-1859.  Linn County Publishing Co., Inc.  1977.

[10] The Kansas War, The Distrubances in Southern Kansas – Brown and Montgomery.  New York Times, January 28, 1859.

[11] Cutler, History of Kansas; Miami County, Part 2.  www.kancoll.org/books/cutler

[12] Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, etc.  Standard Publishing Company, Chicago.  1912.  http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912]

[13] Robley. History of Bourbon County,  Chapter XXI.

[14] Castel, Albert.  Kansas Jayhawking Raids Into Western Missouri in 1861.  Missouri Historical Review 54/1.  October 1959.   

[15] Thomas J. Fleming.  Verdicts of History III: The Trial of John Brown.  American Heritage.  August 1967.  Volume 18, Issue 5. 

[16] New York Times.  November 16, 1861.  Extracts from proclamation issued by Jennison to the people of six Missouri counties along the Kansas border.

[17] General Henry H. Halleck.  Letter to E.M. Stanton, Secretary of War.  March 8, 1862.

[18] Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers, p 133. 

[19] Fox, S.M.  The Story of the Seventh Kansas.  Kansas State Historical Society, Volume VIII, 1903-1904.

[20] Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers, p 143.

[21] Fox, S.M.  The Early History of the Seventh Kansas Cavalry.  Kansas State Historical Society, Volume XI, 19093-1911.

[22] General Blunt’s Account of His Civil War Experiences. Kansas Historical Quarterly 1 (May 1932): 211.

[23] Matt Matthews and Kip Lindberg.  “Better Off in Hell”,The Evolution of the Kansas Redlegs.  North and South, May 2002, Vol. 5 No. 4. 

[24] General Blunt, Headquarters District of Kansas, Fort Leavenworth, April 16, 1863.  Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Part II, pp 222 and 223. 

[25] Spring, Kansas, The Prelude to the War for the Union, p 286.

[26] Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers, p 215.

[27] Matthews and Lindberg, “Better Off in Hell”.   

[28] Leavenworth Conservative, August 4, 1863.

[29] Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers, p 258. 

[30] Ibid, p 258.

[31] Correspondent writing under the name of “Occasional”.  Letter to the Daily Times 9Leavenworth, Kansas), November 24, 1864. 

[32] Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers, p 367.

[33] Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers, p 382.

[34] Castel, Albert.  Civil War Kansas.  University Press of Kansas.  1997.  Page 43.