"Bad Blood": The familiar border war tale, 21st-century style

You have heard the story about the Kansas-Missouri border wars before, but I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like “Bad Blood,” the Kansas City Public Television production that airs at 7 tonight on KCPT.

Following other films that depicted the battles of “Bleeding Kansas” — including Ang Lee’s “Ride With the Devil” and the Wichita-produced “Touched by Fire” — producers Angee Simmons and Pam Reichart decided they would try a different tack.

The result is an engaging 84-minute film that marries a fluid retelling of the seven-year political battle for the soul of Kansas Territory with first-rate action sequences from Kansas City’s own Wide Awake Films.

“Bad Blood” brings to life the origins of the two states’ feud, and also makes the case few historians a generation ago would have: that here, on this soil, the first blood of the American Civil War was shed.

Yes, there’s plenty of period gunplay and men in hopelessly bulky clothes running around in fields. But aside from a chapter in James McPherson’s award-winning Civil War book Battle Cry of Freedom, I can’t recall a more thorough or compelling account of the tug of war between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces in Kansas.

To its credit, the film downplays the role of John Brown and gives more voice to the ordinary people, the vast majority of settlers who came neither for slavery nor abolition but for cheap land and opportunity.

Reichart, a native of the area, and Simmons, who hails from Iowa, had been pining to do a film about the border wars ever since they visited Lecompton, the territorial capital of Kansas before the Civil War. They were captivated by the Lecompton Reenactors, the all-volunteer living history troupe that performs raucous 1850s-style town hall meetings around the state.

As it happens, I was there as the producers filmed scenes for what would become “KC to Kanorado,” KCPT’s travelogue of attractions along I-70. My wife, then writing a biography of the pioneer feminist Clarina Nichols, was performing with the re-enactors, and on that day I joined in the fun as the Rev. Thomas Johnson, fulminating about the disease of abolitionism, “which came from the East, just like the cholera!”

What impressed Simmons and Reichart about Lecompton, a slavery stronghold in its heyday, was how its residents had preserved a story of Bleeding Kansas that was more balanced and more complicated than the popular accounts handed down over the years.

With less than 48 hours before the “Bad Blood” premiere at the Liberty Memorial, Simmons took a break last week from an editing marathon at KCPT to talk about the film’s shaky first steps.

“We interviewed two historians — Nicole Etcheson (author of the recent history Bleeding Kansas) and Jonathan Earle (the KU prof who has written about the impact of abolitionism in pre-Civil War politics) — and both of them had many, many brilliant things to say,” Simmons said.

Yet as they replayed the interviews and pored through the growing pile of revisionist literature on the period, they realized they were not exactly doing original or perhaps very interesting work. “So we decided, why not tell it instead in a new way that’s hopefully more entertaining than the usual talking heads?” she said.

About that time the filmmakers learned about Wide Awake, a River Market video production company whose principals are working on their seventh in a series of DVD documentaries on Civil War battles. Their forte is military re-enactment, as you’ll see from the opening of “Bad Blood,” which includes a few seconds from one of Wide Awake’s films, an overhead shot of men charging through a battlefield toward a line of rifles firing madly.

Reichart and Simmons set aside the interviews (which will be extras on the forthcoming DVD) and partnered with Wide Awake Films. Over the next year the group filmed various scenes with more than 30 actors and 110 extras at Old Missouri Town, the Shawnee Indian Mission and Shoal Creek, among other places.

Just as effective as the battle re-enactments are the political re-enactments. Key moments in the struggle for free-state Kansas are convincingly dramatized in “Bad Blood.” Wide Awake’s Shane Seley is notable for his portrayal of free-state militia leader Jim Lane, who was certainly inspired and quite possibly insane.

But the producers’ most important decision was to turn the historical figures themselves into talking heads. Instead of latter-day scholars, the actors sit in the interview seat and look slightly off-camera as they complain of the “blackest of all evils, human slavery,” or the “scum and filth of the Northern cities” coming to pollute Kansas.

We hear from colorful personalities like future governor Charles Robinson and his flinty wife, Sara, or the rascally sheriff of Douglas County, Sam Jones. But we also hear from some unnamed characters, such as the settler’s wife who sighs and says, “We were just comin’ to Kansas for the land, not the cause.”

The music by Connie Dover is affecting, and the cinematography — the documentary is shot in high definition — at times is dazzling. The strongest aesthetic touches in “Bad Blood” are the title cards that open each segment of the film. Each one features a portrait taken by Robert Szabo, one of the country’s leading practitioners of 19th-century wet plate photography.  (I've included three here on this page.) Szabo’s process renders an authentic, sepia-toned look, yet no matter how sternly his period-dressed models glare into his lens, they can’t help but look like 21st-century men.

The effect is a bit of magic, not unlike hearing “Ashokan Farewell,” the heart-rending fiddle song Jay Ungar composed for Ken Burns’ “The Civil War.” Both are works of emotional genealogy by contemporary artists that bring the dry bones of our ancestors to life. Looking at Szabo’s subjects, you can’t help but think: That could be my brother or father or son going off to senseless slaughter in a faraway, lawless region. It’s a thought more Americans ought to have, especially those who work in the District of Columbia.

Comments

[drp]

KCPT outdone themselves in partially producing a rather poor historical documentary presentation on the origins of the Civil War and the issues of slavery between Kansas and Missouri. Despite an endorsement from "The Kansas City Star" that production lacked texture that only film can provide. Video is easy to use, quick, and fraught with technical shooting problems and washed out visuals. Video is flat and unappealing. An 84 minute account could have been done better without second rate actors [those "talking heads"] attempting to mimic the period. Reinactors--stay home and play in the back yard or city parks. Wait six months and the video will be found in garage sales in the affluent neighborhoods. The material is worth discussion but by scholars who are expert and shed the desire to don historical outfits and present the material in a more professional way.

[Aaron]

Speaking of fraught with problems, (1) you're not going to convince anyone on this board that high definition video produces "washed-out visuals," (2) filmmakers like Rory Kennedy -- who long resisted using reenactors -- have given in, so you've pretty much lost that battle, (3) good luck with that talking-scholars-on-film idea, and (4) I'm married to someone who's managed to produce original scholarship and also wear the fancy clothes of the period to make an obscure American figure more accessible to modern readers. It's not an either-or.

[drp]

It's not that clear cut. 1.) Think about it...how many viewers [a percent] have access to "high definition"? I bet there were not that many. My point being, the scenes were not balanced in exposure ratios and overall lacked contrast and depth and that film stock provides a texture not achievable in video. 2.) The reenactors, as accurate as they attempt to be and many are fine, add little to the documentation of the events and mostly supply "fill" material that makes the approach popular and more palatable...more generated revenue. This may well be the goal. 3.) The "talking heads" approach has been done successfully many times...even by KCPT on other productions. 4.) Your spouse may be an exception [this was not a personal indictment] but the dramatization depicted in several parts of this production were weak and frankly hard to understand. I am entitled to my analysis and just because it is a local PBS production and endorsed by "The Kansas City Star" does not automatically garner high marks or critical acclaim.

[druidbros]

It sounds like you have a film snob on your blog Aaron. First, HD video is THE wave of the furure so get used to it. Second, just because it is on video does not mean it will be 'thin or washed out'. Most good video cameras have white balance on them. Third, and I just have to ask, How many videos/films have you done?

[drp]

The ad hominem was unnecessary. I have a legitimate complaint and my analysis and comments are perfectly valid. I have no issue with the future of HD television but I am not the few that have the finances to participate; I am quite comfortable with my analog television and not dependent on the technical aspects of television transmission. Perhaps I am more interested in content than presentation. I will answer your question...I have made three films on film stock. Now you answer a question: Can you not appreciate the texture and tone expressed via film stock as compared to the flatness of video and agree that it conveys a character and feeling much different than that expressed via tape? I would be more flattered if I were called a "purist" rather than a "snob".

[Aaron]

A reader writes ...

"Border Ruffians" Versus "Free" Staters

Many people must have watched "Bad Blood" recently, March 3, on KCPT-TV. Oddly, the sound was missing on about the first five minutes of the program, but no apology was made after or during the documentary to explain this fact. The program basically tells only of the Kansas Territorial period, and it doesn't go into the 1861-1865 Civil War period in Missouri, except as an afterthought at the end of the documentary. The producer says she hopes the program will be shown in all the local schools. I hope for the opposite.

The documentary is more balanced than some I've seen, I admit, and I think it was because the Kansas advocates are fearful to get too partisan with their station set in the heart of what they imply is "Border Ruffian" country, the old "Burnt District." The terms "Free" Stater and "Border Ruffians" was used repeatedly throughout the program almost as a motif. So if you were not for the "Free" Staters, you were necessarily for slavery and the evil "Border Ruffians," who the program never defines as the elites of Missouri backed by their proslavery colleagues.

The program starts out with the stilted declaration: "The truth is here to be told," a promise that no one could have lived up to in earnest because, as most of us know, there are two sides to the Border War issue, and the Southern one is usually ignored or slighted to a large extent and certainly was in this documentary.

The producers referred in the program, as part of their narration, to "the radical theory of 'Popular Sovereignty.' " This made me wonder: just who believes the theory of "Popular Sovereignty" was "radical" since it basically states that in deciding for or against slavery being included in a new state or territory, the popular vote, the democratic vote, should decide the issue. I didn't know that democracy was "radical." I wondered if this was a case of "The truth is here to be told," as they boasted at the outset of the program. Wasn't this a blatant editorial comment and slanted in content? I believe so.

During one part of the narration, while the speaker talked, you heard the cracks of whips in the background, or at least that's what it sounded like to me. So am I supposed to absorb the notion that in the background of these speakers' voices are whips being laid on the backs of black slaves? Now, we are talking about "The truth is here to be told," or was this an attempt to subconsciously affect the listeners, many of them young children or relatively uniformed adults, without their even being aware of it?

The documentary also maintains, without credible evidence throughout the program, that abolitionists outnumbered the proslavery people in Kansas during the territorial period. While at the start, they admitted the proslavery people won the first territorial-wide election, even excluding the illegal votes, the narration, afterward, began pushing the notion that the abolitionists were being cheated out of power in all of the elections. My data, from Kansas Historical Society publications and data proves that in 1855 and likely through 1857, the proslavery people outnumbered the abolitionist voters in the territory, despite their illegal voting practices.

Another questionable ploy was using narrators during the program to promote abolitionist propaganda without telling us who was speaking and what ax they had to grind or whether they were even telling the truth. In fact, I was under the impression that it was the program's producers and directors speaking most of the time, promoting the abolitionist/"Free" Stater causes. So I think they were taking abolitionist examples and narrating them without telling who was saying what, whether it was someone today or in yesteryear talking, and making it appear, often, that it was the program's narrator, "telling the truth is here to be told," once again

The story of the abolitionists in the founding of Lawrence and their heavy-handed, armed intimidation of the proslavery people in the area is left untold. Charles Robinson even hired a personal thug, David Evans, a man he referred to as a "California Bully," to beat up the local Missourians in Lawrence. When James Lane submitted a territorial constitution to the U.S. Congress and it was rejected, Producer Pam Reichart neglects to say why it was rejected. That was because all the signatures were forged in one man's handwriting, an outrageous example of blatant duplicity. Let's say it.

When Lawrence, Kansas, was sacked in 1856, Reichart tells through her narrator that Samuel Jones is present, gives him some bad press, but fails to say he was a Federally appointed sheriff of Douglas County and therefore anyone resisting him with arms was committing treason against the federal government who appointed him. She fails, also, to mention that United States Marshall Israel B. Donalson was with Jones, demonstrating that the invasion was a Federally sponsored U.S. operation with the proper officials present to enforce law and order legally.

Reichart et al. downplay tremendously the actions of Montgomery in southeast Kansas in 1858-1861, and when discussing John Brown's killing of the Doyles fails to mention that the reason he chose the Doyles to kill was not random or an accident. Doyle and his sons carried warrants for Brown's arrest for recently intimidating a Supreme Court Judge in the area, a Federal appointee. It is mentioned that John Brown "left" Kansas after the Pottawatomie Massacre, which, incidentally, is never called a "massacre" in this production, which is usually done even in Northern histories The narration doesn't mention that Brown left Kansas because he was wanted for murder, either, and it doesn't say that he was harbored in the East by members of the "Conspiracy of Six," a group of wealthy, influential New Englanders with national reputations, who funded him and also were committing treason, but it says Brown went east to "raise money," not run from the law. Absolutely no mention is made of the large-scale conspiracy to break John Brown out of jail by some twenty-two Kansas notables before his execution, who were a Who's Who of Kansas Abolitionism but abandoned their attempt at the last minute because of the phalanx of guards shielding the prison.

My main complaint with the documentary is that 98 percent of it was a discussion of Territorial Kansas, as if telling that would be a history of the Border War, while at the same time ignoring the atrocities, burning, and plundering in Missouri in 1861 by Jim Lane's sweep up the Missouri border counties and the complete destruction of Western Missouri in 1863 with Orders No. 11, enforced by Red Leg Charles Jennison, only mentioned. But you can't really write a comprehensive, meaningful account of the Border War without writing about Territorial Kansas (1854-1861) and the Civil War in Missouri (1861-1865) in the same breath. You have to combine the two for a history to make any sense. So I am one Missourian who does not want to see this documentary exhibited in the Missouri schools of the area, as its producer wishes. We have had 150 years of histories about our "Border Ruffians" evil aspirations against the beleaguered, sophisticated, and relatively innocent "Free" Staters. We don't need one more.

Donald L. Gilmore

P.S. I am the author of the book Total War on the Missouri-Kansas Border (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2005) and the articles "Revenge in Kansas," History Today (April 1993) (London, England) and "Total War on the Missouri Border" Journal of the West (July 1996), Awarded "Best 'About the West' article in 1996" in that journal. I am also the editor of U.S. Army Atlas of the European Theater in World War II, Barnes and Noble (2004) and Eyewitness Vietnam: Firsthand Accounts from Operation Rolling Thunder to the Fall of Saigon, Sterling Publishing Co., 2006.

I retired in 2001 as Senior Editor of the Combat Studies Institute (History Dept.) of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, where I worked for seventeen years.
I am a former adjunct English instructor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (1980), Longview Community College (1981-84), and Avila University (2004).

[Aaron]

The writer wanted this to run on the editorial page, but it was about 1,000 words too long for that.

He makes some useful points, but these are obscured by a tendency to defend the Missouri "side" of the story. Yes, we get that resisting federal troops was "treason" in 1856, though that says a lot more about Franklin Pierce -- who still in my book is The Worst President Ever -- than about the abolitionists. I found the aside about the Kansas conspiracy to break John Brown out of prison especially weird and ill-informed. As anyone who has read any of the numerous interviews he gave in the last month of his life would know, Brown didn't WANT to be broken out of prison. He understood the PR value of a martyr before a lot of people did.

The fact is, compared to decades of myth-making by Kansas free staters, "Bad Blood" is much more even-handed toward the Missourians. That doesn't mean the Missourians were half right.

[Mary Arney]

I was eager to watch Bad Blood, and enjoyed it until the first commercial. The commercial ended just before I was ready to turn it off. I watched until the next commercial and then did turn it off. This had the feel of a documentary film...until the promotions. Too bad.

[Mark Jeffries]

Uh, Mary, public TV doesn't have commercials. Unless there was "extended underwriting" involved--and I don't think anyone would dare put a funding plug longer than 10 seconds in the middle of the program--there shouldn't have been any advertising-in-a-broad-sense in the program.

However, public TV stations do put breaks in programs longer than an hour, but generally only one or two. Would you rather have five or six long breaks like in commercial television?

[drp]

It is obvious that Mary was making reference to one of several promotional, fund raising breaks and just chose the term "commercial"...as a synonym even though they were selling a product and service. I don't believe that she meant the "Veg-O-Matic" type commercials.

[Nick]

Is there any way to get a copy of this? I live in St Louis and obviously could not see this on TV.
Thanks

[Aaron]

It's out on DVD later this year. Also, KCPT will be offering it nationwide over American Public TV, and it's not too soon to phone KETC and ask that they carry it.

[David Chuber]

Bad Blood is just "Bad" I don't say this because of the Tech problems, I say this as a Military Historian for the US Army. Fire your script writer. This person doesn't understand how to do fair and balance research. Plan on losing money on this one! The writers for "Ride with the Devil" did sit down with Military History Instructors at Fort Leavenworth and discuss the research material. This looks like the script writer did this in a vacuum. Don't expect schools or the US Military to use this and don't expect you will be doing War in the West KS/MO any time soon until you fix the problems. I teach this time period to Officers and NCO's at Fort Leonard Wood and I had high hopes for the film but this took the area history back 140 years. PS need to change your company name, if your knew any history it shows your bias.

[Aaron]

I have trouble taking seriously anyone who (a) doesn't know I'm not the creator of the program, merely the critic, and (b) can't spell. But then I saw the Fort Leonard Wood affiliation and it all came back to me ... it's like it was just yesterday ...

Actually, it was Monday. From the Kansas City Star, dated March 12th:

A speech to lawmakers last week about Fort Leonard Wood and the Army took a political turn at one point.

Maj. Gen. Bill McCoy, the fort’s commanding general, came to Jefferson City ostensibly to tell lawmakers about the military base’s operations. But McCoy struck a defiant tone when he starting talking about the war in Iraq.

"On that subject, I want to tell you that our people have been misinformed by the media," McCoy said. "By that I mean the media has only informed the public on the negative aspects of this war, and that has resulted, I believe, in a turn in the popular support our Army so desperately needs to continue to defend its country.

"Had you been given a more balanced view of the war, I believe the level of support would be very different today."