By Roger McKinney
rmckinney@joplinglobe.com
A plan is in the works to connect and interpret the stories of the Civil War on the Kansas-Missouri border.
Judy Billings last week hand-delivered the proposed management plan for the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area to officials with the National Park Service and members of congressional delegations from Missouri and Kansas in Washington, D.C. Billings is the director of Freedom’s Frontier as well as the Lawrence (Kan.) Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The 15-year plan seeks federal funding of $10 million. Billings said that considering the national economy, the plan probably won’t be fully funded. She said any federal funds would be leveraged with an equal amount of local funds and private donations. National Park Service approval of the plan is expected by September.
The mission statement of the national heritage area reads in part: “Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area is dedicated to building awareness of the struggles for freedom in western Missouri and eastern Kansas. These diverse, interwoven and nationally important stories grew from a unique physical and cultural landscape.”
The heritage area was designated in 2006. The area comprises 41 counties in Kansas and Missouri. Kansas counties include Cherokee, Labette, Crawford and Bourbon; Missouri counties include Barton and Vernon.
“The idea is to empower the individual locations to interpret their own pieces of the story, take them to the next level and connect them up,” Billings said. “There will be a comprehensive story told, rather than individual pieces. It’s a new way of thinking.”
Phyllis Abbott, president of the Baxter Springs (Kan.) Historical Society, said she thinks being part of Freedom’s Frontier will benefit all the counties involved.
“It will be a big boon to tourism,” Abbott said. “People who are very interested in the Civil War can follow the path on both sides. A lot of people think the Civil War started here first.”
Savage attacks were taking place along the border years before the Civil War started, as pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces wrestled for control of Kansas.
Baxter Springs also was the location of an attack in 1863 by Confederate guerrillas under the leadership of William Quantrill. Those killed in the attack are buried in a cemetery west of town.
The October attack in Baxter Springs came just a few months after Quantrill’s attack on Lawrence in August 1863.
One goal of the heritage area is to get plans in place before the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, in 2011.
At the Bushwhacker Museum in Nevada, museum coordinator Terry Ramsey said a travel writer from England visited recently, interested in learning about the border war and the personal aspects of the stories.
She said the writer told her that interest in the American Civil War in England is intense.
“I look at the heritage area as one gigantic museum,” Ramsey said. “The Bushwhacker Museum is one exhibit.”
Bushwhackers were Confederate guerrillas on the Missouri side, the equivalent of the Jayhawkers, who were union guerrillas in Kansas.
“The war here was often fought in a different way,” said Ramsey, who is on the steering committee for Freedom’s Frontier. “It was all so personal.”
On the Net
More information and the proposed management plan for the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area are available online at www.freedomsfrontier.org.
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