Description
Negro Slavery, No Evil or The North and South - The Effects of Negro Slavery, as Exhibited in the Census, by a Comparison of the Slaveholding and Non-Slaveholding States Considered in a Report Made to the Platte County Self-Defensive Association by a Committee Through B. F. Stringfellow, Chairman - - (very lengthy defense of slavery) - -
"The purpose of the (Platte County Self-Defensive) Association in adopting this resolution, was to expose fully the dangers to which slave-property in Missouri, and especially on the borders of Kansas, is subjected; to arouse the attention of all good citizens, not of Slaveholding States alone, but of the whole Union to the results which must follow, if the abolitionists succeed in their purposes; and if possible, to suggest means by which those results may be prevented."
(Researcher's note: as excerpted from the Kansas City Public Library "Civil War on the Western Border" website at https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/stringfellow-benjamin-franklin:
Benjamin F. Stringfellow was a Missouri lawyer, civic organizer, and proslavery advocate. He was a key figure in the Platte County Self-Defensive Association, a proslavery organization that argued the expansion of slavery into Kansas was an essential requirement to maintain the “peculiar institution” in Missouri and throughout the South. Along with Senator David Rice Atchison, Stringfellow traveled the nation to advocate for Southern investment in Kansas. He insisted that Southerners stop trying to justify slavery as a political or economic necessity, but instead advocate for slavery as a positive moral good on the grounds that the institution was beneficial for whites (slave owner or not) and blacks.
In spite of his fevered defense of slavery during the “Bleeding Kansas” troubles, the Civil War later compelled Stringfellow to accept the reality that Kansas entered the Union as a free state, and he went on to support the Union and his own financial interests during the Civil War.
Despite owning few slaves himself, Stringfellow was a staunch advocate for “Southern rights,” and upon his arrival in Weston he began agitating for the creation of a civic organization tasked with protecting slavery in western Missouri. The first meeting of the Platte County Self-Defensive Association took place on July 20, 1854. Named after Weston’s home county, the Self-Defensive Association opposed abolitionism, which it claimed had a pernicious effect on slavery in Weston.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act’s “popular sovereignty” provisions meant that Kansas Territory could enter the Union as a free state, a possibility that Stringfellow and the Self-Defensive Association rejected as incompatible with the continuation of slavery in Missouri. Should Kansas be free, the lure of freedom for runaway slaves would be right across the river. Due to Platte County’s western border along the Missouri River, which also served as the border between Missouri and Kansas, the Association could directly influence events in Kansas.
The Platte County Self-Defensive Association took strong measures to prevent the spread of abolitionism, including going on the offensive against abolitionists and Free-Soil Kansans. The Association assumed vigilante trial powers to punish abolitionists, in some cases merely ordering them out of the county, but in other cases escorting them north to the Iowa border.")Date(s) of Creation
2/3/1855
