Western author John D. McCall will soon have a new release titled South of Rising Sun with US Marshal Alistair Taggart paying a visit to Lecompton, Kansas Territory.
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| Lecompton, Kansas Territory (Kansas Historical Society Image) |
When using a historical setting as the backdrop for a novel,
a certain amount of accuracy is important to the believability of the story.
Unless you're already an
expert on the location and time you've chosen, some thorough research can keep
you from looking foolish to your readers, some of whom are bound to catch your
mistakes. One of the fun things which
can happen when you put in your due diligence is learning an interesting tidbit
of information about your setting you were previously unaware of. This has
happened to me many times over when researching the location of my new western
novel, set in Kansas. Being a Kansas native for fifty-eight years, one would
think I had already learned everything there is to know historically about the
state I live in. But once I started researching the setting for my tale, I
found out how completely lacking my Kansas history education had been in
elementary and secondary school.
Even if they are not into westerns, nearly everyone over the
age of forty has heard of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. They might even know
of the Hickock-Tutt Gunfight in Springfield, Missouri or the Hyde Park Gunfight
in Newton, Kansas. But few people have heard of one of the largest gunfights
ever to take place in the West, a politically motivated shootout in the now
tiny city of Lecompton in Douglas County, Kansas. Lecompton was the first
official territorial capital in Kansas’s long and often bloody struggle to
determine whether it would enter the Union as a free state or a slave state in
the latter half of the 1850s. This thriving city of almost five-thousand was
the seat of the pro-slavery (at that time) territorial government and was
expected to become the capital once statehood was conferred upon the Kansas
territory.
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| John W. Geary |
In 1857, John W. Geary had the dubious honor of being the
governor of territorial Kansas, one of six men to hold the title during its
seven year history of existence. During Geary’s
tenure, the self-appointed sheriff of Douglas County, Samuel J. Jones, resigned
his post, and the Douglas County board of commissioners appointed one William
T. Sherrard as the new sheriff under somewhat questionable legal authority. Governor
Geary was to have signed papers granting Sherrard his commission but stalled,
apparently feeling Sherrard’s pro-slavery leanings would conflict with his own
free-state inclinations, despite Sherrard’s declaration he would “see that the
laws were faithfully executed.” Geary continued to stall, then eventually
refused outright, claiming several acquaintances had reported Sherrard was of
dubious character and had been involved in several drunken altercations.
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| Constitution Hall as it now stands. Kansas Historical Society |
For over a month, Sherrard went to great lengths to secure
his commission by legal means, but each avenue led to disappointment. Thwarted
in all his efforts, he apparently had enough, and an armed Sherrard confronted
Geary in Constitution Hall as he left a legislative meeting. The exact words
exchanged are not agreed upon by historians, but the story goes that Sherrard
chastised Geary for assailing his character and then spat on him, hoping to
provoke the governor into an altercation so he would have reason to shoot Geary.
Geary wisely refused to take the bait, but his supporters did not let the
matter drop. They introduced resolutions in the house legislature condemning
Sherrard's actions and nine days, later held a town meeting on the matter.
At one point during the meeting, Sherrard was given the
floor to rebut the resolutions and declared that "Any man who imputes
anything dishonorable to me in that affair, is a liar and
a coward, and I stand ready at all times to back up my words."
After Sherrard left the podium, he returned to his place among the crowd and was
immediately bombarded with hostile questions and comments. One member of the
gathering, Joseph Sheppard, may have remarked that the resolutions were just
and moved toward Sherrard. Sherrard responded to the alleged statement by
yelling, "You are a G**—damned liar, a coward and a scoundrel,"
after which he drew his pistol and began firing. Sheppard pulled his own pistol
and fired back, but not before being wounded. When Sheppard's three rounds
missed, he tried to club Sherrard with the butt of his pistol before the mayor
and ex-sheriff Jones separated the two. By then, many in the crowd had drawn
their own weapons and commenced shooting, with upwards of fifty shots being
fired. Casualties from the melee might have been great had not several in the
crowd retained the presence of mind to use their canes to whack the gun hands
of many of the combatants when they attempted to shoot.
As it was, Sherrard, having exhausted the rounds in one
pistol, drew another and moved in the direction of Geary's secretary, John A.
W. Jones, who drew his own pistol in true Western fashion and plugged Sherrard
squarely between the eyes. He collapsed and died two days later. Remarkably, Sherrard
was the single fatality to result from the shootout, and Sheppard and a
merchant from Lawrence, Kansas were the only other two known to have sustained
wounds, barring the few sore wrists on some unlucky shooters.
It has been suggested that the whole affair was
orchestrated so that Geary could prove the existence of a pro-slavery
conspiracy to do him violence, and that he purposefully failed to use available
military personnel to ensure altercations did not take place during the meeting.
Any violence which did erupt was to have been proof of such a conspiracy.
Unfortunately for Geary, his reputation was irreparably harmed by the
circumstances surrounding Sherrard's death, and President Buchanan fired him on
March 12th of that year, making him the final casualty of the "Great Shootout at Lecompton."
