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Geographically, the capital events of Kansas history in the territorial days covered a narrow space. With Lawrence at its center, the revolution of a radius thirty miles in length would include the vast majority. However, the southeast, embracing Bourbon, Linn, and Miami Counties, also saw its share of border struggles.

At the outset, and for a considerable period, pro-slavery settlers had a comparatively clear field in southeast Kansas. "It has occurred to our friends,” a correspondent of the Kansas Association of South Carolina wrote from Platte City, Missouri , “that it would be better, as a matter of policy, and as being more southern -- more agreeable to the southern emigrants -- that a good portion of them would settle south of the Kansas River. By this means we will secure the southern half of the territory before it is filled by abolitionists; the northern half will be saved by Missourians. I would suggest that you should seek, as far as possible, to induce all who have a small number of slaves to come out. To such, this is a peculiarly desirable country, and they need have no fear of slaves escaping.”  

Lawrence, Kansas in 1867.

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James Montgomery earned a reputation as being one

 of the most notorious Jayhawkers.

Free-State men in southeast Kansas, comparatively isolated, having little communication with Lawrence, and consequently almost wholly without check, developed a successful if not very praiseworthy system of retaliation. Confederated at first for defense against pro-slavery outrages, but ultimately falling more or less completely into the vocation of robbers and assassins, they received the name -- whatever its origin may be -- of Jayhawkers.

The best known leader in the Jayhawk episodes was James Montgomery. Born in Ohio, a resident of Kentucky and Missouri for seventeen years, he reached Linn County in August, 1854, and became a prominent figure in the affairs of the area. He was courageous, an effective talker -- a qualification that served him to good purpose -- not devoid of craft and stratagem, but without large mental or executive force.

Montgomery's tactics after Clarke's raid were characteristic. To obtain a list of the men concerned in it he visited Missouri in the disguise of a teacher searching for a school, which he succeeded in obtaining and actually taught for two weeks -- long enough to get the information he wished. That secured, the school suddenly closed, and the school-master soon reappeared transformed into a guerrilla chief. Twenty of the ex-raiders were captured and robbed of their money, weapons, and horses.

Though months of disorder followed, with the exception of the Marais des Cygnes Massacre, Clarke's raid was the last considerable Missouri attack in Kansas Territory until the outbreak of Civil War .

In these aggressions Jayhawkers seemed to have taken the lead, establishing a freebooting reputation that fairly intimidated pro-slavery adherents. The accounts of marauding incursions from Missouri were mostly exaggerations circulated by Jayhawkers as an excuse for their own depredations. They occasionally dispatched a messenger to Lawrence with a budget of overstated or manufactured pro-slavery outrages, to keep alive their reputation as struggling, self-denying, afflicted patriots.

Disturbances continued intermittently until December, 1857, when claim difficulties of more than ordinary consequence occurred. A delegation representing the Jayhawking interest had been in Lawrence to enlist James H. Lane in their cause, but he was absorbed with agitations against the Lecompton Constitution, and could give them no personal assistance. However, a small company from the vicinity of Lawrence, led by Captain James B. Abbott, returned with the messengers, for the purpose of investigating affairs and of lending any assistance to Free-State men that might be possible or advisable. Soon after their arrival in the vicinity of Fort Scott some land dispute came to a crisis. A Missourian was charged with “jumping “the claim of a Free-State settler. Whether that was actually the case, or whether an enterprising Jayhawker wished to drive him out of the territory as a step preparatory to seizing his property, was not entirely clear. But the Missourian was arrested and arraigned before an impromptu squatters' court, the officers of which were mostly drawn from the Lawrence party. None of the usual judicial appurtenances such as judge, counsel, sheriff, and jury were present.

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