Several years before the Civil War, Daniel Read (D.R.) Anthony—a fiery Quaker from upstate New York and brother to Susan B. Anthony—was already fighting for freedom on the Kansas-Missouri border. Raised in a family that harbored freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad, D.R. carried his belief in human equality westward, where violence over slavery erupted in “Bleeding Kansas.” Here, his moral convictions collided with the brutal realities of frontier warfare, forging the fierce reformer and soldier he would become.

D.R. Anthony’s years on the Kansas-Missouri border strongly influenced the rest of his life in Leavenworth, which sat on that state line. He served as a guerilla warrior before the Civil War and an army colonel at the onset of the conflict. Before, during, and after the war he demonstrated by word and deed that he considered African-American people equal to whites.

Because this conviction preceded so much of what he said and did, today I’m beginning here a series about his many activities for racial equality. The series will involve up to four historical articles in this space, interspersed with other topics.

So what started D.R. Anthony on the path of racial equality?

First and foremost, his parents raised him that way. I’ve written much about his upbringing as a Quaker, which may have prompted his family’s friendship with Frederick Douglass and participation in the Underground Railroad.

But he also lived in a political climate much like ours, when lawmakers were rescinding human rights policies that had been in effect for decades. Let’s look at the progression of legislative changes for a moment.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820

This law decreed that no state north of the 36°30′ line could practice slavery.

According to the National Archives, “This legislation admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a non-slave state at the same time, so as not to upset the balance between slave and free states in the nation. It also outlawed slavery above the 36º 30′ latitude line in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory.”

But in 1854, when Dan Anthony was 30 years old and living among several conductors on the Underground Railroad, the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law. Senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced this bill by saying that territories wishing to join the United States could decide for themselves whether they wanted to enter as slave or free states. This choice, called popular sovereignty, aimed to allay the growing conflict over slavery, but it only made it worse. This is where Kansas comes into the picture.

How the Kansas-Nebraska Act backfired

The border of Missouri that adjoined Kansas practiced slavery. When the Act went into effect, pro-slavery people flooded across the Kansas border and stuffed ballot boxes. In response, abolitionists from the North emigrated to Kansas in an effort to establish a majority of citizens who abhorred slavery.

In 1854, D.R. joined the first party of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, which founded the town of Lawrence, Kansas that became the antislavery capitol of the territory. After summering in what was then the Wild West, he decided that making his home there was not feasible. Though he returned home to Rochester, NY., his interest in Kansas never waned.

A family effort

At the same time, Daniel’s second-oldest sister, Susan B. Anthony, had quit her teaching career to throw in her lot with a group of reformers who advocated against liquor and for the rights of African-Americans and women.

How the Anthonys must have grieved when they received news of the Sack of Lawrence in May of 1856. Within months, the youngest brother Merritt (then 22) left for Kansas to fight slavery alongside John Brown.

Painting of John Brown from the Kansas State Capitol Building.

When word reached the East that Brown’s forces had suffered defeat near Merritt’s 8×12 foot cabin in Osawatomie, the Anthonys feared for their youngest’s life. D.R., whose insurance office sat within a stone’s throw of a telegraph, greeted his family with the joyful news that Merritt had lived through the massacre.

A year later, D.R. returned to Kansas, taking up permanent residence in Leavenworth, 60+ miles north of Lawrence.

You’ll find more about these events—and can order your copy—in my earlier novel Secrets to the Wind. I’ve decided to keep the sale price going until next Friday, November 4—just to be sure everyone can enjoy the full backstory of my new book, Born of This Fire.

D.R. Anthony’s convictions were tested and tempered on the Kansas-Missouri border, where the question of freedom could no longer be debated—it had to be fought for. These turbulent early years not only challenged his pacifist Quaker roots, but also transformed him into one of Kansas’s most outspoken champions of equality.

In the next article of this series, we’ll journey into the heart of Bleeding Kansas (1854–1861), when Daniel’s ideals met fire, fury, and the making of a new nation.

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The post From Quaker Roots to Guerrilla Warrior: D.R. Anthony’s Early Crusade for Freedom appeared first on Jeanne Gehret Author.