You know from the earliest days of the Kansas Territory, the Missourians who planned to colonize it for the South and fight the New englanders called themseleves and their organizations "the Blue Lodges." This hits right at the heart of American Free Masonry. When Sherman's Army left Columbia, SC, in early 1865, the only building that was intact and still standing was the local Masonic Temple. It had been guarded all night long.

I think there is a thesis or dissertaton in Kansas or Missouri history here waiting to be picked up and embraced.

The Missourians had already defeated one set of so-called invaders from New England in the laye 1830s (the Mormons) and had run them out. A generation later the same men armed with the same tactics waited the new wave of abolitionists with the same confidence. What went wrong? Why were they successful in repelling one group and so totally inept at fending of the seond? Therein lies the tale... Scott Price