The record-union., 1897-09-22
THE LAST SLAVE DRIVE.
A Scene in Kansas Streets That
Made Northern Blood Boil.


The last shipment of slaves from
Jackson County to a Southern market
was. made from Kansas City in May,
1859, says a writer in the Kansas City
Star" s5
An apparent uneasiness was visible
among the owners of slaves when it be-
came a fixed fact that Kansas would
become free soil instead of slave. The
easy escape of the slaves across the
imaginary line between the two States
rendered that kind of property very
insecure. When once acros the line
into Kansas, they were safe. No fugi-
tive slave law could be enforced there
to return slaves to their owners, and
the underground railroad made rapid
and frequent trips to the North into
Canada, where their forced return was
beyond all possibility.
This fact induced many to part with
their negroes. Their value as chat
tel was becoming more and more inse-
cure as population flowed from the
North into Kansas. Among the slave
holders were those who had owned
slaves all their lives, but who never
sold one, and would not under any cir
cumstances. They despised and held
in the most utter contempt the slave
buyer. 1t was beneath the dignity of
many who owned slaves to even recOg-
nize the man who speculated in that
kind of property. Yet there were 9TH
ers who sold them as they would sell
any other kind of prOperty-no matter
whether it parted father and mother,
husband and wife. brother and sister,
or sundered any other tie that bound
them together. A great many were
sold out of the border tier of counties
of the State during the years 81, '5S
and %.
1t was a misdemeanor in Missouri to
teach a slave to read and write, yet
there were those who acquired a. knowl-
edge of both reading and writing. They
were looked upon as dangerous, and
sold in the South as soon as the fact
became known to the master. 1t was
not often that they found out in ad-
vance of their being hand-cuffed and
sent to jail that they had been sold
to some Southern slave-buyer. The
constant dread of being sent south
made the slave very uneasy, and he
watched every opportunity to glide TO
freedom. When the proclamation Of
President Lincoln was promulgated
there We're few slaves to be found in
the border counties of Missouri. There
were some however, who even refused
to take advantage of their freedom, but
continued to live in the families of
their old masters long after the war
had ended. They were mostly old men
and Old women, who spent all their
days in slavery, and would have be-
come q public charge under the new
condition in which they would be placed
by asserting their freedom.
The last shipment of slaves to the
South in May, 1859, was made by
Thomas McDaniels, who had amassed
quite fortune speculating in negroes.
He owned and laid out McDanfel's ad-
dition to Kansas City. which contained
some forty acres. and cornered at Mis-
souri, avenue and Main street, running
south. In 1858 he erected the Union
Hotel that occupied the site Of the
ground upon which the Nelson building
now stands He had purchased nearly
! 100 likely young negroes, mostly males,
between the ages of is and 80, in diff
! ferent parts of the country. and had
congregated them in front of this hotel
at the corner of Missouri avenue and
| Main street. preparatory to putting
| them on a steamboat and shipping
them to a Southern market. They were
| handcuffed, and in some instances