General Jim Lane's House, Lawrence, Kansas, Alexander Gardner

Exhibition Label: "Windmills to Workshops: Lawrence and the Visual Arts," Jul-2004, Kate Meyer Alexander Gardner, best known as a Civil War photographer, documented emerging settlements in Kansas at various stops along the Union Pacific Railway in the fall of 1867. While some of the towns recorded in this year are obviously quite newly settled, Lawrence can already be seen as a thriving young town. Photographs from Gardner's photographic series include a view of Massachusetts Street lined with storefronts and populated with buggies and cattle, an image of KU, and this photograph of James Lane’s house. Lane moved to Lawrence in 1855 and quickly became a well-known, if somewhat infamous member of the Free State Party. A charismatic speaker, Lane served as a U.S. Senator and military leader. Lane closed an 1858 response to President James Buchanan concerning Kansas with the following declaration indicative of his passion for the free-state cause: “Let Buchanan howl, and Congress enact! - Kansas is free, and all the powers of the earth cannot enslave her! Today the people of Kansas are a unit: so long as that unity is preserved, nothing can prevail against them!”