Missouri, Opressors of States' Rights!

By Chris Thompson

It’s great to be back on this blog. I guess my last one was so successful, it brought the blog to a standstill for a year. But I’m back to offer some quasi insightful historical jargon to Border War week.

I was extremely excited to see that KU made the cover of Sports Illustrated, but I am a little miffed. Just like Todd Reesing was left out of the photo, my family and I were crudely cropped out. If the photo had extended just a few inches further, you would have seen us clearly as a bunch of dots just above the section 41 sign. (See photo for detail). I guess the editors at SI don’t care about who they hurt.

But one thing I did like about the cover, besides the obvious fact that KU football is on it for the first time ever, was that Sports Illustrated straight up called it the Border War - none of this Lew Perkins and Mike Alden PC sensitive Border Showdown stuff. Yes America is in a war, but if we had to stop using the word war to describe things during times of conflict we’d never be able to talk about any history. And what would sports announcers use to fill the void if they were not able to use the cliché of war when describing football. “Yes Kirk, the linemen down there are really battling it out in the trench… wait I mean they are aggressively contesting each other while playing football which is just a game.”

I think the Border Showdown should be changed because I still find it too offensive, because a showdown reminds me of an old west shoot out at High Noon. It should be called “The Football Game between two neighboring states that respect each other tremendously and in no way is it comparable to any armed conflict past or present.” But all this worrying about calling it a war is superfluous. Why? BECAUSE WE ACTUALLY FOUGHT A WAR!

Now get ready for a good old rehash of the Civil War, mainly Bleeding Kansas. I’d like to address a movement that is en vogue among Missouri fans nowadays. They think that the University of Kansas should not have the name Jayhawks, because it is reflective of a group of free state soldiers that defended Kansas from invading forces and ran raids into Missouri. They like to call them “terrorists,” which drives me nuts in and of itself. Missourians can’t believe that we could have a mascot represented of a group of people who killed innocent civilians. Now I would like to dismiss their accusations as completely false but there were a few raids into Missouri where Jayhawkers in their red leggings killed civilians. Nowhere near the amount of Kansan civilians that were killed by Missourians, but sadly they did do it.

However, if you were to not honor American soldiers who killed civilians while fighting a war, you could never celebrate any veteran’s participation in war. No war in American history has been fought without civilian casualties. Am I justifying the killing of civilians? No, but sometimes it is either a side effect of war or a necessity. What if a school were to have a mascot named the Bombers, honoring the brave men of World War II that led raids into Germany and Japan, would we denounce that and call them terrorists? American bombers in World War II purposefully targeted civilians to ensure victory. American bombers killed millions of civilians in World War II. Ever hear of the fire storms in Dresden and Tokyo, and, oh yeah, the atom bomb? But would you ever walk up to a World War II veteran and call them a terrorist for these acts? I wouldn’t.

The thing is you have to be fighting for a more just cause than your opponent. Civilian casualties are a sad part of warfare, but in modern war it is a side effect of wiping out cruel institutions such as slavery and Nazism. So I am proud of the Jayhawkers. It is sad that they killed a few dozen civilians to protect our state from invaders and slave masters, but it was part of a just cause. Killing over 150 people, including women & children, in defense of a state’s right to hold and own other people just seems a little more vicious.

While were on the subject of state’s rights, let us turn to the hypocrisy of Missourians claiming the Civil War was not fought over slavery, but was actually fought for "States' Rights" (a common claim amongst southerners during the War). I’ve never quite understood this argument. The tyranny that the South was facing after the 1860 election was that of a popularly elected government.

How can you call the government a tyranny simply because it is not representative of your views? There will always be a minority in a democracy. It might have helped had the Southerners not split the Democratic party by geographical sections, but you know whatever. But how does a president win the popular vote and the electoral vote and then be called an oppressive administration all before he gets into office? Seven states seceded before Lincoln was sworn in. When did the administration even have time to start oppressing people?

And Missouri especially should never stand by the state’s right argument. Because I can think of no better assertion of a state’s rights then its right to come into existence. When Kansas was given the right to choose whether it was to be free or slave, the Missourians oppressed democracy in the worst way. The first election of the new Kansas Territory in 1854, to elect a representative of the state, was marred by Missourians getting whiskeyed up and coming into Kansas to stuff the ballot boxes. They felt due to their proximity to the Territory it was their right to ensure it held the same values they did, even though the voters held no property in Kansas.

The Border Ruffians as they came to be known harassed any one going to the polls in that first election, and if found to be against slavery voters were taunted and not allowed to vote.
This was of course the start of the conflict between Missouri and Kansas. Not all migrants to Kansas were abolitionists; they just were not in favor of slavery taking hold. It’s hard for immigrants to find work when unpaid forced labor is their competition. So I ask which is more tyrannical and oppressive of state’s rights, a freely, legitimately elected president who does not share your values nor is even in office yet, or a phony state legislature with ballot boxes stuffed by non-residents who are imposing their values on a budding state?

The sad thing is that all this posturing on the Civil War, which was apparently fought over 140 years ago, will do nothing to help Todd “Sparky” Reesing and the Jayhawks win on Saturday. Nor will it do anything for Chase “Bugger Eater” Daniel and The Slaver… I mean Tigers.

What I do know is that wearing Jayhawks across their chests does not make my football team supporters of terrorists. I could see their point if we were the University of Kansas Radical Jihadists. And this were our mascot (see right). But sadly it’s not, so it leads to one logical conclusion: Missourians are idiots. How was that for a childish way to end a post?