When president Woodrow Wilson spoke in Topeka on February 2, 1916, in favor of a stronger military, he faced skepticism and outright opposition from many Kansas residents—including Governor Arthur Capper and University of Kansas chancellor Frank Strong. But when war against Germany was declared two months later, Kansans joined forces to lend support in money and manpower.
In Kansas and Kansans in World War I, Blake Watson helps readers understand how World War I affected Kansas and its residents, and how Kansans in turn had an impact on the outcome of the Great War. Through thorough and extensive use of letters, newspapers, and other documents, Watson brings individual soldiers’ service to life, using their own words to describe their attitudes and experiences. Watson also looks at Kansans’ service and support on the home front, chronicling Kansans’ participation in initiatives such as Liberty Loan bonds, newspapers’ publication of military service honor rolls and soldiers’ letters from abroad, and the xenophobia and hysteria that confronted Mennonites—who were pacifists—and German Americans.
Finally, Watson describes postwar efforts to honor Kansas veterans and fallen soldiers with commemorations and memorials, including Haskell University’s Memorial Arch, the University of Kansas’s Memorial Stadium and Memorial Union, and Kansas State University’s Memorial Stadium.
Tabella dei contenuti
Preface
Acknowledgments
1916
1. The President Comes to Topeka: Woodrow Wilson and the “Preparedness” Debate
2. Oskaloosa Forms a National Guard Company
3. The Kansas National Guard at the Mexican Border
1917
“Today We Stand behind the Nation’s Chosen Leader”: Kansas Supports War with Germany
5. The Army Draft and “Fatal Number 258”
6. Kansas “Rainbow” Guardsmen: The 117th Ammunition Train, Forty-Second Division
7. Camp Funston: White and Black Men Form the Eighty-Ninth and Ninety-Second Divisions
8. Camp Doniphan: Kansas and Missouri Guardsmen Form the Thirty-Fifth Division
9. The Kansas Home Front, 1917: Support, Suppression, and Suspicion
10. First in France: Charles Orr, Clyde Grimsley, and Frank Cadue of the First Division
1918
11. Victory at Cantigny: Charles Avery, Harry Martin, and Clarence Huebner of the First Division
12. Belleau Wood: The Holton Marin Band and James Harbord of the Second Division
13. Rocks of the Marne: Ulysses Grant Mc Alexander and Thomas Reid of the Third Division
14. Death in the Trenches: Company B and the Vosges Mountains
15. Saint-Mihiel and the Eighty-Ninth Division: September 12, 1918
16. Meuse-Argonne and the Thirty-Fifth Division: September 26-27, 1918
17. Meuse-Argonne and the Thirty-Fifth Division: September 28-30, 1918
18. Meuse-Argonne and the Eighty-Ninth Division: November 1-2, 1918
19 Black Kansas Soldiers: Fighting Germans and Segregation
20 Medals of Honor: John Balch, Erwin Bleckley, George Mallon, and George Robb
21. The Kansas Home Front, 1918: distrust, Coercion, and Influenza
22. Prisoners of War and the YMCA: Clyde Grimsley, Melvin Dyson, and Conrad Hoffman
1919–2024
23. the Kansas Home Front after the War: Joy, Uncertainty, Anger, and Remembrance
24. The Boys of Company B: William Davis, Victor Segraves, Ralph Nichols, and Samuel Gutschenritter
25. The Boys of Company B: William Smith, William Kimmel, Theodore Blevins, and Melvin Dyson
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Circa l’autore
Blake A. Watson, a former attorney with the US Justice Department, is the Samuel A. Mc Cray Chair in Law, University of Dayton School of Law. He is the author of Buying America from the Indians: Johnson v. Mc Intosh and the History of Native Land Rights. One of the soldiers featured in the book, Ralph Nichols of Oskaloosa, is Watson’s great-uncle. Nichols’s brothers Arvil and Charles also served. Watson’s relatives have lived in twenty counties in Kansas.
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