Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow - Border Ruffian

Border Ruffian

In 1853 he and his brother John moved to Weston, Missouri in Platte County, Missouri just across the Missouri River from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1854 after four slaves from Platte County ran away to Leavenworth he was among the organizers of the Platte County Self-Defensive Association to attempt to prevent Free-Stater settlement of Kansas.

Benjamin and his brother then stumped western Missouri organizing "blue lodges" along the entire Kansas border.

In 1854 along with David Rice Atchison he 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.

Failing to convince southerners to move to Kansas, he issued the "Stringfellow's Exposition" which said it was legal for Missourians to vote in Kansas on deciding whether the state should enter the Union as a free state or a slave state. Stringfellow's position was reinforced by his title of General in the Missouri Militia and his capacity as publisher of the Squatter Sovereign newspaper.

The New York Tribune quoted him in an 1855 speech in St. Joseph, Missouri:

I tell you to mark every scoundrel that is in the least tainted with free-soilism or abolitionism and exterminate him. Neither give nor take quarter from the damned rascals. I propose to mark them in this house, and on the present occasion, so you may crush them out. To those who have qualms of conscience as to violating laws, state or national, the crisis has arrived when such impositions must be disregarded, as your rights and property are in danger, and I advise one and all to enter every election district in Kansas, in defiance of Reeder and his vial myrmidons, and vote at the point of the bowie-knife and the revolver. Neither give or take quarter, as our cause demands it. It is enough that the slaveholding interest wills it, from which there is no appeal. What right has Governor Reeder to rule Missourians in Kansas? His proclamation and prescribed oath must be prohibited. It is to your interest to do so. Mind that slavery is established where it is not prohibited.

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