Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow (1816–1891)
Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow (September 3, 1816 – April 26, 1891) was a pro-slavery border ruffian in Kansas, when the slavery issue was put to a local vote in 1855 under the Popular Sovereignty provision. As a General in the Missouri Militia, and ex-Attorney General of that state, Stringfellow openly defied the law by declaring that Missourians were free to vote in Kansas territory, and attacked abolitionist patrols in what became known as Bleeding Kansas. When the vote went against him, he turned his attention to developing the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. Early life . Stringfellow was the youngest of the ten children born to Robert Stringfellow (a veteran of the War of 1812 and merchant at Raccoon Ford on the Rapidan River and farmer in Culpeper County, Virginia), and Mary Plunkett (daughter of an early industrialist in Orange County, Virginia). John H. Stringfellow was his brother. Educated in Fredericksburg, Virginia, he then attended the University of Virginia and was admitted to practice law in Louisville, Kentucky in 1837. In 1839 Stringfellow moved to Boone's Lick, Missouri and practiced law in Keytesville, Missouri. He was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives as an  anti-Benton Democrat serving from Chariton County, Missouri. Stringfellow served as Missouri's Attorney General from 1845 to 1849. Border ruffian. In 1853 he and his doctor brother John moved to Weston, Missouri, in Platte County, just across the Missouri River from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. B.F Stringfellow practiced law with Peter T. Abell and published the pro-slavery "Squatter Sovereign" with his brother. In 1854, after four slaves from Platte County ran away to Leavenworth, they organized the Platte County Self-Defensive Association to attempt to prevent Free-Stater settlement of Kansas. The Stringfellow brothers also stumped western Missouri organizing  blue lodges along the entire Kansas border. The brothers, working with David Rice Atchison, attempted to get residents of Southern states to move to Kansas with their slaves to counter settlements by the anti-slavery Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. B.F. Stringfellow also issued "Stringfellow's Exposition," which said Missourians could vote in Kansas as it decided whether to enter the Union as a free state or a slave state. Stringfellow's positions as General in the Missouri Militia increased his opinion's clout. The "New York Tribune" quoted him in an 1855 speech in St. Joseph, Missouri: Fight with Kansas  Governor Andrew Reeder. On July 2, 1855, he was accused of attacking Kansas Territory Governor Andrew Horatio Reeder at Reeder's office in the Shawnee Methodist Mission in Fairway, Kansas. The free state version of the encounter says: The slave state version said that Stringfellow told the governor: Bloodshed would occur on both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border in the Bleeding Kansas skirmishes as attempts were to influence how the state entered the union with 5,000 Missourians voting in one Kansas election alone. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. In 1859 after Kansas entered as a free state, Stringfellow  moved to Atchison (named for his ally, political boss and future U.S. Senator David Rice Atchison), where he continued to practice law, although his brother John temporary returned to Virginia to settle their father's estate. The Stringfellow brothers organized the Atchison and St. Joseph Railroad Company and B.F. Stringfellow became company attorney. B.F. Stringfellow also performed legal work for the Kansas City, St. Joseph & Council Bluffs Railroad, and the Kansas and Western Missouri Railway Company. During the Civil War, age prevented him from enlisting, and the Platte Bridge Railroad Tragedy (which destroyed a crucial bridge on the Hannibal and  St. Joseph Railroad on September 3, 1861) and defeats of the Missouri State Guard may have changed his proslavery sympathies. B.F. Stringfellow continued his law practice through the war and concentrated on promoting the area's economic development. He worked with former antislavery adversary Cyrus K. Holliday, who had organized the Atchison and Topeka Railway Company in 1859, which reorganized in 1863 as the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Using their political connections and funds (government railroad bonds and land grants) allotted by the Pacific Railroad Acts, they connected their lines to the First Transcontinental Railroad at Council Bluffs  in 1869. Three years later Topeka became the eastern terminus for the second transcontinental route, which ended in Los Angeles. B.F. Stringfellow died at the home of his daughter in Chicago, Illinois on April 26, 1891.