Author’s Note

The history of the Kansas Territory is not a simple subject. Between 1854 and 1861, the territory had ten governors, seven capitals, and four constitutions. At times a pro-slavery legislature and a free-state legislature were meeting simultaneously, both claiming to be the only legal legislature. In the interests of not driving the reader mad with details, I have intentionally omitted descriptions of various events, some of them major, including several murders that would lend themselves nicely to a noir mystery novel should any future author care to undertake one.

Although some of the language has been modified for modern ears, for the most part I have chosen to record things as they actually happened. For example, on May 21, 1856, an army of pro-slavers attacked Lawrence, smashing printing presses, burning the Free State Hotel, and looting homes and stores. Three days later, John Brown and his sons rode to Pottawatomie Creek and—unlikely as it may seem—killed five pro-slavers with broadswords.

On various occasions, I have exercised the novelist’s prerogative to create fictional events. Although Brown and the Adairs once hid eleven fugitive slaves for over a month in a cabin four miles west of the present town of Lane, Kansas, there is no indication Brown trained an African-American cavalry unit like the one that defeats Clark’s Raiders. However, there is a reasonable possibility that such a unit could have existed. At one point, Brown told fellow abolitionists about a plan to arm former slaves and send them into the Allegheny Mountains to fight a guerilla war against slave owners. It is unlikely that he began to implement this plan while living in Kansas, but John Brown was a man who kept many secrets.

Although Henry Clark is loosely modeled on William Quantrill, the Confederate raider who attacked Lawrence in 1863, he is a fictional character. There was never a senator from Kentucky named Bennett Presgrove, nor did the fictional Senator Presgrove attack real Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Senator Sumner was brutally beaten by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks. I was the one who placed the cane in Bennett’s hand and let him share Brooks’s infamy.

I have previously written about the Civil War in my novel The Notorious Mrs. Winston. One question I am frequently asked is: “Was the Civil War fought over slavery?” In Kansas, slavery was the only real issue. Although it sometimes masqueraded under the banner of States’ Rights or Southern Rights, the question of whether or not Kansas was going to enter the Union free or slave was the explosive problem that polarized America, pitted North against South, and helped get Abraham Lincoln elected president. It is telling that Kansas was only admitted to the Union as a free state in January of 1861, after South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana had already seceded.

I like to imagine that if the men of Keyhole Draw had existed, Elizabeth and the Adairs would have made sure they were swiftly conducted to Canada and freedom after the Battle of Beau Rivage. When the Civil War officially began, perhaps some would have returned to Kansas to fight with the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment, which had the distinction of being the first unit composed of men of African descent to engage in battle with Confederate troops.