Jayhawker is a term that came to prominence in Kansas Territory during the Bleeding Kansas period of the 1850s; it was adopted by militant bands affiliated with the free-state cause during the American Civil War. These groups were guerrillas who often clashed with pro-slavery groups from Missouri, known at the time in Kansas Territory as "Border Ruffians" or "Bushwhackers". After the Civil War, the word "Jayhawker" became synonymous with the people of Kansas, or anybody born in Kansas. Today a modified version of the term, Jayhawk, is used as a nickname for a native-born Kansan and is the mascot of the University of Kansas, Kansas' flagship university
Origin
Early usage The term did not appear in the first American edition of Burtlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1848)Dictionary of Americanisms (1848) but was entered into the fourth improved and enlarged edition in 1877 as a cant name for a freebooting armed man in the western United States.Bartlett, John Russell. Dictionary of Americanisms. A glossary of words and phrases, usually regarded as peculiar to the United States; Fourth edition, greatly improved and enlarged. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1977, p. 321
It was established that the term was adopted as a nickname by a group of emigrants from Illinois traveling to California in 1849, who got stuck in Death Valley.Fox, Simeon M. "The Story of the Seventh Kansas," Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 8(1904): 13–49.William A. Lyman. Origin of the Name "Jayhawker," and How It Came to Be Applied to the People of Kansas , Kansas State Historical Society Collections, vol. 14, 1918, pp. 203-207.
In 1858–59, the slang term "Jayhawking" became widely used as a synonym for stealing.Robley, History of Bourbon County Kansas, p. 95;Cutler, History of the State of Kansas, 1:878.William Anselm Mitchell, Linn County, Kansas: A History (Kansas City, Kans.: Campbell-Gates, 1928), p. 22Daniel W. Wilder, Annals of Kansas: 1541–1885 (Topeka: Kansas Publishing House, 1875), pp. 615–16; Starr, Jennison's Jayhawkers, p. 29Kansas Magazine 3 (1873), p. 553. Examples include:
O'ive been over till Eph. Kepley's a-jayhawking.Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 34 (Summer 2011):, 117
Men are now at Fort Scott, working by the day for a living as loyal as Gen. Blunt himself, who have had every hoof confiscated, or jayhawked, which is about the same thing, for all the benefit it is to the Government.Pearl T. Ponce, Kansas's War: The Civil War in Documents (Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio, 2011), p. 174
Missouri–Kansas border lexicon The term became part of the lexicon of the Missouri–Kansas border in about 1858, during the Kansas territorial period. The term came to be used to describe militant bands nominally associated with the free-state cause.Missourians were called "Bushwackers" and Kansans—"Jayhawkers". One early Kansas history contained this succinct characterization of the Jayhawkers:
Farmer's Americanisms, old and new (1889) linked the term with anti-slavery advocates of late 1850s in Kansas.Farmer, John Stephen. Americanisms – Old & New: a Dictionary of Words, Phrases And Colloquialisms Peculiar to the United States, British America, the West Indies, Etc. Etc., Their Derivation, Meaning And Application, Together With Numerous Anecdotal, Historical, Explanatory, And Folk-lore Notes. London: T. Poulter, 1889, p. 323. G. Murlin Welch, a historian of the territorial period, describes the Jayhawkers as bands of men that were willing to fight, kill, and rob for a variety of motives that included defense against pro-slavery "Border Ruffians", abolition, driving pro-slavery settlers from their claims of land, revenge, and/or plunder and personal profit.Welch, G. Murlin. Border Warfare in Southeast Kansas: 1856–1859. Pleasanton, Kan.: Published for the Linn County Historical Society by Linn County Publishers, 1977.
While the "Bleeding Kansas" era is generally regarded as beginning in 1856, the earliest documented uses of the term "jayhawker" during the Kansas troubles were in the late 1850s, after the issue of slavery in Kansas had essentially been decided in favor of the Free State cause.Welch, G. Murlin. Border Warfare in Southeast Kansas: 1856–1859. Pleasanton, Kan.: Published for the Linn County Historical Society by Linn County Publishers, 1977. Chapter XV, End note No. 20.Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. Standard Pub. Co. Chicago : 1912. Vols. I–II edited by Frank W. Blackmar. "Jayhawkers" entry . Transcribed July 2002 by Carolyn Ward. Accessed January 21, 2011. The earliest mention of the name comes from the autobiography of August Bondi, who came to Kansas in 1855. Bondi said he observed General James Lane addressing his forces as Jayhawkers in December 1857.August Bondi. Autobiography of August Bondi (1833-1907): Published by His Sons and Daughters for Its Preservation . Galesberg, Ill.: Wagoner Printing Co., 1911, pp. 6, 33–34.Baron, Frank. James H. Lane and the Origins of the Kansas Jayhawk. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 34 (Summer 2011): 114–27
Another early reference to the term (as applied to the Kansas troubles) emerging at that time is provided in the retrospective account of Kansas newspaperman John McReynolds.Henry King, and William Elsey Connelley. History of Kansas Newspapers: A History of the Newspapers And Magazines Published In Kansas From the Organization of Kansas Territory, 1854, to January 1, 1916; Together With Brief Statistical Information of the Counties, Cities And Towns of the State. Topeka: Kansas state printing plant, 1916, p. 239. McReynolds reportedly picked up the term from Pat Devlin, a Free State partisan described as "nothing more nor less than a dangerous bully.""The Kansas War, The Disturbances in Southern Kansas – Brown and Montgomery". The New York Times, January 28, 1859. In mid-1858, McReynolds asked Devlin where he had acquired two fine horses that he had recently brought into the town of Osawatomie. Devlin replied that he "got them as the Jayhawk gets its birds in Ireland", which he explained as follows: "In Ireland a bird, which is called the Jayhawk, flies about after dark, seeking the roosts and nests of smaller birds, and not only robs nests of eggs, but frequently kills the birds." McReynolds understood Devlin had acquired his horses in the same manner the Jayhawk got its prey, and he used the term in a Southern Kansas Herald newspaper column to describe a case of theft in the ongoing partisan violence. The term was quickly picked up by other newspapers, and "Jayhawkers" soon came to denote the militants and thieves affiliated with the Free State cause."Origin of the Word Jayhawking In Application to the People of Kansas. Incidents in the early History of the Territory". The Allen County Courant (Iola, Kansas), May 23, 1868; Vol. 2, No. 19.
Other historic descriptions of the term have varied. Writing on the troubles in Kansas Territory in 1859, one journalist stated the jayhawk was a hawk that preys on the jay.The Daily Tribune (Manitowoc, WI), February 4, 1859, page 1, column A. From the N.Y. Tribune. One of the "Jayhawkers of '49" recalled that the name sprang from their observation of hawks gracefully sailing in the air until "the audience of jays and other small but jealous and vicious birds sail in and jab him until he gets tired of show life and slides out of trouble in the lower earth."
Kansas Union troops The meaning of the term evolved in the opening year of the American Civil War. When Charles Jennison, one of the territorial-era jayhawkers, was authorized to raise a regiment of cavalry to serve in the Union army, he characterized the unit as the "Independent Kansas Jay-Hawkers" on a recruiting poster. The regiment was officially termed the 7th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry but was popularly known as Jennison's Jayhawkers.Seventh Regiment (Jennison's Jayhawkers) Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. The regimental history of the Second Kansas Volunteer Infantry as published in the Adjutant General's Report, Vol. 2, pp. 93-97, Kansas Historical Society.Starr, p. 57. Thus, the term became associated with Union troops from Kansas. After the regiment was banished from the Missouri–Kansas border in the spring of 1862, it went on to participate in several battles including Union victories of the Battle of Iuka and the Second Battle of Corinth. Late in the war, the regiment returned to Kansas and contributed to Union victory in one of the last major battles in the Missouri–Kansas theater, the Battle of Mine Creek.
The term was further applied to any Kansas troops engaged in punitive operations against the civilian population of western Missouri, in which the plundering and arson that characterized the territorial struggles were repeated but on a much larger scale. For example, "Jayhawkers" encompassed Senator Jim Lane and his Kansas Brigade, which sacked and burned Osceola, Missouri, in the opening months of the war after their defeat by Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard in the Battle of Dry Wood Creek.Goodrich, Thomas. Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861–1865. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995.Benedict, Bryce. Jayhawkers: The Civil War Brigade of James Henry Lane. University of Oklahoma Press, 2009.Castel, Albert E. Kansas Jayhawking Raids into Western Missouri in 1861 , Missouri Historical Review 54, no. 1 (October 1959).
Jayhawking in western Missouri
Jayhawking was a prominent aspect of Union military operations in western Missouri during the first year of the war. In addition to Osceola, the Missouri towns of Morristown, Papinsvile, Butler, Dayton, and Columbus and large numbers of rural homes were pillaged by Kansas troops led by Lane, Charles R. Jennison, Daniel Read Anthony, and James Montgomery, among others.O’Bryan, Tony. Jayhawkers , Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. Scores if not hundreds of Missouri families were burned out of their homes in the middle of the winter of 1862.Erwin, James W. Guerrillas in Civil War Missouri. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012.
Union Major General Henry Halleck on January 18, 1862 in a letter to General Lorenzo Thomas described Jennison's regiment as "no better than a band of robbers; they cross the line, rob, steal, plunder, and burn whatever they can lay their hands upon. They disgrace the name and uniform of American soldiers and are driving good Union men into the ranks of the secession army."Starr, p. 96.Major General Henry Halleck to Brigadier General Lorenzo Thomas, January 18, 1862. In The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the War of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901, series 1, volume 8, pp. 448-449 There were no charges against Lane, Jennison, or other officers under Lane's command for their role in the jayhawking raids of 1861–1862, but Union General David H. Hunter succeeded in curtailing Lane's military role,Castel, Civil War Kansas, pp. 77–80. and units of Kansas troops such as the 7th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry were shuffled off to other theaters of the war.
Further compounding confusion over what the term Jayhawker meant along the Missouri–Kansas border was its use in describing outright criminals like Marshall Cleveland, a captain of Jennison's Regiment, who resigned and turned to jayhawking. Cleveland operated under cover of supposed Unionism but was outside the Union military command.Marshall Cleveland, Kansas Historical Society
A newspaper reporter traveling through Kansas in 1863 provided definitions of jayhawker and associated terms:
Guerrilla fighting