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Volume 104 • Number 47 • Tuesday, March 11, 2014 • PO Box 188 • 111 E. Jenkins • Maryville, MO • 75¢
Appeals Court back on campus By STEVE HARTMAN Staff writer
A nearly full house of students and other onlookers gathered Monday in the J.W. Jones Student Union ballroom to witness a live session of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western Division. For the fifth time in six years the court, which usually convenes in Kansas City, brought its “roadshow” to Northwest in an attempt to give the public a chance to experience highlevel justice in person. Similar events are held at other college campuses across the region, including William Jewell College in Liberty and the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg.
The Western District court, which has 11 judges altogether, hears appeals from trial courts in 45 counties that include all of northwest Missouri and most of the central portion of the state. Eastern and southern appeals districts are located in St. Louis and Springfield. Judge Anthony Rex Gabbert presided over Monday’s session. He was joined on the bench by Western District colleague Victor Howard and Missouri Supreme Court Judge Zel Fischer, a native of Rock Port who has filled in during past meetings of the appellate panel in Maryville. Both cases before the court dealt with criminal trials in which procedural matters or supposed legal See COURT Page 6
STEVE HARTMAN/DAILY FORUM
Justice at Northwest
Missouri Supreme Court Judge Zel Fischer, left, and Missouri Court of Appeals (Western Division) judge Anthony Rex Gabbert listen to arguments from counsel Monday during a case dealing with juror disclosure. The court session took place in the J.W. Jones Student Union ballroom at Northwest Missouri State University.
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
About the Honey War …
Lois Jean Ellison, a retired teacher from Braddyville, Iowa, dressed in mid-19th century garb Saturday while talking about the Honey War, a pre-Civil War border dispute between Missouri and Iowa that, thanks to a bellicose Missouri governor named Lilburn Boggs, nearly escalated into armed violence. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.
Speaker revisits ‘sweet’ little war By VENUS BROWN
Special to the Daily Forum
Forget about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. There was a time when Cold War central was the border between Missouri and Iowa. “In the Honey War, no lives were lost and no shots were fired,” said Lois Jean Ellison of Braddyville, Iowa, to a full house of history buffs at the Nodaway County Historical Society Museum on Saturday. Dressed in a long ruffled apron and period white cotton cap, Ellison stirred a bowl of honey as she spun out the tale of a conflict that was caused by tension between territorial Iowa and border-state Missouri, a tension that would blossom after a generation into fullscale Civil War. “Most people say ‘I’ve
always heard about that (the Honey War), but didn’t know the particulars,’” said Ellison, who retired after teaching English, speech, drama and journalism at West Nodaway High School for twenty years. Those particulars describe one of the most unusual “wars” never to be fought. Due to discrepancies that found their way into several official surveys in the early 1800s, a 2,600 squaremile strip of rich farmland stretching from the Missouri River on the west to the Des Moines River on the east was in dispute between the new state of Missouri, admitted to the Union in 1821, and the territory of Iowa, which would not achieve statehood until 1846. In the winter of 1839 Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs pressed his state’s claim to
the disputed land by sending tax agents from Kahoka, Mo., to what is now Van Buren and Davis counties in Iowa. The residents, who sided with their home territory, grabbed some pitchforks and forced the tax collectors to beat a quick retreat. But has they headed back south, the agents cut down three bee trees in order to collect the honey, intending to sell it as a way of collecting partial payment on the supposedly owed taxes. While this didn’t exactly make the Iowans happy, the matter might have ended there. But Gov. Boggs, a man of somewhat aggressive temperament, felt his state’s honor had been disparaged. It is also possible that Boggs, a native Kentuckian, wanted to grab some more
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land for slave-holding Missourians at the expense of what was likely to become a Northern state. In any event, Boggs mustered 600 militiamen and ordered them to march on the Iowa border, wherever exactly that was. But since Iowa, which wasn’t a state yet, didn’t have a militia it took territorial Gov. Robert Lucas some time for his response. Finally, he rounded up 1,200 Iowans armed with pitchforks and homemade swords to meet the “enemy.” But by that time the Missourians, who according to later reports had drunk considerable whiskey and were tired of waiting around in the cold December weather, had grown tired and gone home. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the issuance of 1,500-pound
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NODAWAY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Drawing the line
The marker shown above is one of hundreds set out in the 19th century to mark the Missouri and Iowa state line following a pre-Civil War dispute over the border’s location that almost led to violence. obelisk-shaped markers that were placed every ten miles along the border to ensure the peace. Ellison has tracked down a few of the markers and would like to find more of them. Ellison gave her presentation on behalf of the Nodaway Valley Historical Society Museum in Clar-
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inda, Iowa, where she saw an exhibit about the Honey War that got her interested in the topic. “I like representing the museum and its outreach program,” Ellison said. “What I most enjoy about telling the story of the Honey War is seeing the audience’s reaction to it.”
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