photo by: Richard Gwin

A cannon fires as free-state militia advance as Bleeding Kansas re-enactors, in traditional dress from Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas, put on a show for about 200 spectators for the 160th anniversary of the pre-Civil War Battle of Fort Titus in Lecompton on Saturday, June 18, 2016.

The vitriolic rhetoric re-enacted in the second-floor theater of Lecompton’s Lane Museum puts into perspective the cable news political shouting matches of today.

“I always smile when I hear how nasty politics are today,” said audience member A. Wilson Greene. “They obviously missed the history of Bleeding Kansas. It was a tough place to be.”

Last week, four actors — Paul Bahnmaier, Deb Powell, Tim Rues and Alan Shirrell — took the stage to recite monologues from the state’s Territorial past. They encouraged backers to hang or cut the throats of the “scofflaws” who opposed them as enthusiastic supporters shouted in agreement while waving Free State or “Southern rights” flags.

photo by: Richard Gwin

From left, Lynn Ward and Deb Powell wear traditional dresses as they watch Arabella Bradshaw, 5, of Lecompton, drive her toy car in the parade during Lecompton's Territorial Days on Saturday, June 18, 2016.

The performance was presented to a group from Virginia on a whirlwind tour of area Civil War sites, starting with Lecompton and ending in Fort Scott.

Greene, the executive director of the Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier near Petersburg, Va., said he convinced three park board members to visit the Kansas sites because of their importance in the Civil War.

“I’ve been here many times,” he said of Lecompton. “Anybody with an interest in the Civil War should see these places.”

Greene oversees a site where two large armies squared off in heroic and tragic conventional combat of a much different kind from the guerrilla warfare that characterized the fighting in Kansas. The neighbor-against-neighbor nature of the conflict and depredations that resulted from such actions as William Quantrill’s raids and earlier Union actions in western Missouri created long-lasting animosities of a kind not seen in the East, he said.

“I talked to one old gentleman in Missouri, who said he had never set foot in Kansas and never would,” Greene said during a discussion that followed last Monday’s re-enactment.

The re-enactment captures the rhetoric and emotions that first ignited the Jayhawker/Border Ruffian passions that still smolder 160 years later.

There’s no nuance or middle ground in the words of Rues’ firebrand character Free State leader James Lane, or in those Bahnmaier, president of the Lecompton Historical Society, delivers as Sheriff Sam Jones. Known as the bogus sheriff in Lawrence, the rough-and-tumble Jones brags of razing the first Eldridge Hotel and throwing the type of free state Lawrence newspapers in the Kansas River.

Trumping them all in words and deeds was Abolitionist John Brown. Brandishing a rifle, sword and pike, Shirrell quotes Brown’s grim assessment of how the slavery question would be resolved: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood.”

Powell’s Mahala Doyle gets the last word with the recitation of a letter the illiterate woman dictated to Brown, then awaiting a date with the gallows after his failed raid on the Harpers Ferry, Va., armory. After losing her husband and two sons in a Brown-led Pottawatomie Creek Massacre, she states she feels gratified about his coming execution and that a surviving son is desirous of attending the execution to adjust the rope around Brown’s neck.

Lecompton engineer and history buff J. Howard Duncan wrote the original script after penning a well-received one on the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

“My problem was I had a burr under my saddle by the name of Tim Rues,” he said. “Every time I finished a character, Tim would ask me to do another one. It was a good kind of burr.”

Duncan said he alternated writing characters with anti-slavery and pro-slavery views. He was so involved in the process that he had to take time to clear his mind from one view before he could start on a fresh monologue of the opposing position, he said.

His goal was to be as authentic as possible, Duncan said. For example, Lane’s words were taken from a long Leavenworth speech that was then reproduced in local newspapers, he said.

“The only difference is they used the N-word … frequently,” he said. “I didn’t think that was appropriate. That’s really the only discrepancy.”

Duncan said he couldn’t take credit for what was currently presented because the talented actors who play the historical figures have embellished on his original work.

His goal was to give modern listeners an insight into the minds of major players in the Bleeding Kansas conflict, Duncan said. He also wanted to help increase awareness of the importance of Lecompton and the area in the outbreak of the Civil War, he said.

The monologues have helped in that regard. Rues said it is performed about 50 times a year. Unfortunately, there’s too much going on and some of the actors were too busy to perform the monologues at this weekend’s Lecompton Territorial Days, he said.

Most of those re-enactment’s performances are for groups touring the museum.

“We put it on for a red hat woman’s group the other day,” he said. “We do it whenever school groups visit.”

They take the act on the road, too, visiting schools in northeast Kansas when their weapons carried as props don’t get in the way.

“The SRO at Washburn Rural wanted to look at them to make sure they were OK,” Rues said. “There are some schools that prefer not to have them.”