Though Ebenezer Franklin Barnes died three years before the first shots were fired in the Civil War, he was certainly part of the fight to end slavery in the United States. Born in Indiana in 1811, his family moved to McLean County, Illinois, in 1829. (The land was a grant his father earned for enlisting five times during the American Revolution.) Two years after arriving, 20-year-old Ebenezer married our 1st cousin 5x removed, Sarah Hobson, whose family had moved from North Carolina to Illinois around the same time as the Barneses. (The Hobsons are on the Woodard/Standiford branch of our family tree.)
In 1832, Ebenezer and Sarah welcomed their first son, Charles E. Barnes, followed by Sarah Matilda (1834), Ebenezer Frank (1838), Margaret R. (1842), Evemilla Belle (1846), Eliza (1850), and Ellen Jane (1854). Both Evemilla and Eliza died as infants from measles in August 1850, but the rest of the Barnes children lived to adulthood.
Charles married a woman named Mary Ann Johnson in 1853, and in January 1855 welcomed a young daughter, Sarah. Later that year, both Barnes families moved to Linn County, Kansas, as part of the Free State movement following the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. The law stated that once these two new territories gained enough settlers to become states, elections would be held to determine if they entered the union as slave states or free states. Both pro- and anti-slavery supporters moved to the Kansas Territory to sway the future election, and violence flared, a border war known as Bleeding Kansas.
The Barneses originally lived together in a cabin on Sugar Mound, a high spot east of what became Mound City. The same year they arrived, Ebenezer Barnes and D. W. Cannon platted out the new town and Barnes paid $800 for the land he was already living on. Ebenezer opened a grocery and post office, which became a meeting place for the community, a community that was predominantly anti-slavery. The town wasn’t officially incorporated until 1857, and when it was, Charles was elected the first president of the Mound City Town Company.
The stories attached to the Barnes family aren’t entirely clear, and are sometimes contradictory, but they all point to a family committed to the anti-slavery cause. One account claims that Ebenezer and Charles were conductors on the Underground Railroad, though I have not yet found any historic record to confirm that they were—it’s not as if they kept public records.
Better documented is Mound City’s roll in the often-violent opposition to pro-slavery forces in Missouri and Kansas. The Jayhawkers first organized in Mound City, possibly in Ebenezer Barnes’s store, according to the history page of Mound City:
“During these tumultuous years, Mound City and its vicinity became the headquarters of Charles R. Jennison, the leader of the Kansas “Jayhawkers,” and Free-State advocate, James Montgomery. Many area citizens rode with these leaders on their forays against the Missourians. Jennison was the first to become established in the town and his name became a terror to the people of Bates and Vernon Counties in Missouri. Mound City was used as a base from which to strike quickly and get back across the border before the citizens of Missouri could gather a force and strike back. In December 1860, a company of infantry under Captain Nathaniel Lyon came to Mound City with orders to capture Captain Montgomery, who lived about five miles up Sugar Creek, but when the company arrived Montgomery, who had been notified, was gone.”
While supportive of the anti-slavery cause, the Barneses do not appear to have backed the Jayhawkers’ border-raiding tactics, which brought them into direct conflict with the US government. As explained in the Kansas Herald of Freedom, Wakarusa, Kansas, July 18, 1857:
Meeting at Sugar Creek
At a political meeting held on Little Sugar Creek, on the Fourth of July, the following proceedings were had:
The meeting was called to order by Rev. Thomas J. Addis, when Ebenezer Barnes, of Sugar Mound, was appointed chairman, and David W. Cannon, Secretary. Dr. R. Gillpatrick, Erastus Heath, and James M. Arthur, were appointed a Committee to draft resolutuons expressive of the sense of the meeting. During the absence of the Committee, the meeting was addressed by several persons; and after this the Committee on Resolutions reported as follows:
Whereas, Certain men, who aspire to be leaders in the Free State Party of Kansas, are anxious to force that party into a new position, and bring it into hostility to the Federal Government, and,
Whereas, The said would-be leaders have passed resolutions which abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of thought and action, we therefore, present the following, as expressing our views and sentiments on the various topics herein embraced:
Resolved, That we acknowledge no affinity with the Pro-Slavery Democratic Party of this nation, in Kansas or out of it.
Resolved, That we appreciate and will reciprocate the air and sympathy extended to us by the Republican Party of the United States.
Resolved, That we recognize in Robert J. Walker a talented and honorable officer of the Federal Government, and the legal, bona fide Governor of Kansas Territory.
Resolved, That we will go into the elections as proclaimed by him, and vote for or against a Constitution, for Representatives to the next Territorial Legislature, and for a Territorial Delegate to Congress; and, if our numbers warrant it, will thus take peaceable possession of the Territorrial Government.
Resolved, That, as Missouri has ceased all efforts to force her policy upon us, we deem it the heighth of folly to attempt to inflict our resentment for injuries received in past times upon the present officers and Government of the United States in Kansas.
Resolved, That we can reach the ends we aim at, to wit, virtue, intelligence, peace, prosperity, and freedom, more speedily, more certainly, and more satisfactorily, by the ballot than by the cartridge box.
Resolved, That in accepting the overtures made by the General Government, through Gov. Walker, for the settlement of our difficulties in Kansas, we only accede to the demands which we ourselves have repeatedly made as satisfactory and just, viz., a fair vote and a fair ballot box.
Resolved, That our Delegates to the Convention held in Topeka, on the 15th of July, are instructed to take no grounds which will bring the Free State Party into collision with the Federal Government when exercised in its legitimate and usual sphere.
Resolved, That while we deem it entirely proper, and in accordance with long established usage, for Conventions to express, in the fullest and freest manner, their views with referenc either to past or future action of the people, we do not deem any body of men competent to decide what is and what is not proper for the people to do in thie sovereign capacity, whether individually or collectively; and that any effort on the part of the Conventions to rule persons out of a party, because of their independent action, is wholly unwarented; and we wholly disclaim the right of any person or person to exercise political censorship over individuals or masses. The people may rule Conventions, but Conventions cannot rule the people.
Resolved, That the newspapers in the Kansas Territory be requested to publish these proceedings.
Ebenezer Barnes, Ch’n
David W. Cannon, Sec’y
To learn more about Mound City’s history during the Bleeding Kansas years, watch the first half of this documentary, Original Jayhawker:
Ebenezer Franklin Barnes died on October 17, 1858, at the age of 47, and Sarah (Hobson) Barnes died in 1866 at age 54—both were relatively young. I have not yet discovered where they were buried. Charles Barnes lived until he was 92, and died on this day in 1924. He was buried in Mound City at Woodland Cemetery beside his wife Mary, who had passed away in 1890. Col. James Montgomery, leader of the Jayhawkers who also served in the Civil War and died in 1871, is buried in the same cemetery.
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