On Missouri’s Honey War

Or, Tales of the Wandering Troubadour

By guest author Seneca.

If you are ever wandering through the lonely, rolling farmlands north of Sheridan, Missouri, you might stumble across a pair of curious monuments hidden amongst the roadside weeds near the intersection of Birch Trail and 100th Road. I’d bet only the locals know these monuments exist. One is an iron obelisk sunk deep into the soft ground. Time’s casual, passing cruelty has worn away the surface of the metal from a gleaming black to a pockmarked brown. “Iowa” is inscribed on its northern face, and Missouri is etched upon its southern face.

The other monument is clearly a recent edition. The second monument is carved like a classic tombstone out of red Missouri granite. It sits upon a platform of simple concrete, uncracked yet by the ruthless Missouri weather. Its clean and smooth surface gleams in the sun as you gaze upon it. A bronze plaque is the only marking upon its pure surface:

This iron marker, remnant of the Honey War, was placed at this point in 1850 to identify the Northwest Corner of the Territory of Missouri, as determined by the Sullivan Survey in 1816.

Honey War? Sullivan Survey? What’s that? It’s likely that you’ve never heard of these events previously, and I’m not surprised. Most Missourians and Iowans wouldn’t know what the “Honey War” or “Sullivan Survey” are if you questioned them. I think it’s a shame that no one remembers the time Missouri and Iowa almost went to war.

The Honey War

The seeds of the Honey War were planted well before either Missouri or Iowa were a glimmer in Uncle Sam’s eye. The story begins in 1816 with United States surveyor John C. Sullivan and the Louisiana Purchase. The Louisiana Territory had been bought by the Jefferson administration in 1803, and Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery to explore the Missouri River watershed to map the U.S.’s new acquisition. Lewis and Clark would map the Louisiana Territory as thoroughly as they could, but much surveying work still needed to be done before the United States could effectively use the new Territory.

Hence, why Mr. Sullivan arrived in the Louisiana Territory in 1816. Sullivan was on a mission from the U.S. government to chart and survey the new Territory. Part of his mission, according to his orders from Washington, was placing the border between the organizing Missouri Territory and what would become Iowa. Sullivan would carve territorial markers on tree stumps and note where he had drawn the line, but these markers would be lost or destroyed as time progressed. The notes Mr. Sullivan wrote left the ticking bomb which would result in the Honey War nearly twenty years later.

Mr. Sullivan placed the Missouri-Iowa border at the “Des Moines Rapids,” which is incredibly obscure for survey notes. Sullivan’s notes could indicate two completely different points for the Missouri-Iowa border: the Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi River, or the “rapids on the Des Moines River” which are south of present-day Keosauqua, Iowa. When drafting its constitution in 1820, Missouri also wrote these obscure notes in the clauses defining its borders. When Missouri resurveyed its northern border in 1824 after achieving statehood (1821), it declared a maximalist reading of the notes, which placed Missouri’s border south of Keosauqua. By now, most of Sullivan’s original territorial markers were destroyed. All Missouri had for reference were those notes. Missouri’s claim went unchallenged at the time because Iowa was still organizing as a territory. Few settlers were in the area to fuss over borders and who had political control.

Confusion began to boil in 1837 when Missouri resurveyed its northern border once again. By now, many settlers had made lives for themselves in the disputed region. The situation quickly spiraled out of control during the survey. Everyone realized that no one involved had any idea where to place the border. The only documents Missouri and Iowa had to guide the survey were Sullivan’s confusing, twenty-year-old notes. Sullivan’s old border markers had long since rotted away. Missouri reaffirmed its 1824 claim at Keosauqua, which is 9.5 miles north of its current position. Iowa then disputed Missouri’s claim, saying the border started as far south as the mouth of the Des Moines River, 15 miles south of the current Missouri-Iowa border.

The ticking bomb would finally explode in 1838–39, when Missouri began sending tax collectors into the disputed territory. Thousands of settlers now occupied the disputed region, and many of them didn’t identify as Missourians. The Iowans were furious that a foreign state was attempting to tax them on sovereign Iowa Territory. Mobs of angry Iowans in modern Davis and Van Buren Counties chased away the Missouri tax collectors with pitchforks and torches. The legends say those Missouri tax collectors retaliated by chopping down three local honey trees and collecting the honey in lieu of actual payment. Thus was the Honey War dubbed, as memorialized by Missourian John Campbell from Palmyra in his satirical poem “The Honey War”:

Ye freemen of this happy land,
Which flows with milk and honey;
Arise! To arms! Your ponies mount,
Regard not blood or money.
Old Governor Lucas, tiger-like,
Is prowling ’round our borders,
But Governor Boggs is wide awake—
Just listen to his orders.
Three bee trees stand about the line,
Between our State and Lucas;
Be ready all these trees to fall,
And bring things to a focus.
We’ll show old Lucas how to brag,
And seize our precious honey.

The Honey War reached its climax when the sheriff of Clark County (MO) was arrested by the sheriff of Van Buren County (IA) while attempting to collect Missouri’s taxes. The Missourians were enraged when they heard the news. The local militias in Lewis and Clark Counties (MO) were quickly called up to rescue the captive Missouri sheriff. Iowa’s Territorial Governor, Robert Lucas, responded by activating the Iowa militia once news reached him of the mustering Missouri forces. Soon thousands of Missourians and Iowans were swarming the border in the middle of winter with whatever weapons they could scrounge. Everything from Grandpa’s old blunderbuss to heavily modified farming equipment was present; and everyone was ready to duke it out and settle the matter once and for all.

Thankfully for intra-Union relations at the time, cooler heads prevailed in the end. War served neither Missouri nor Iowa, and the governors of both states recognized that. Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs and Governor Lucas quickly crafted a compromise and allowed either Congress or the Supreme Court to settle the matter on their behalf later. The Supreme Court in 1849 would order the remarking of the Missouri-Iowa border along its modern lines. That’s how the old iron obelisk ended up in a roadside ditch north of a sleepy Missouri village. That iron obelisk once marked the northwestern corner of Missouri before the Platte Purchase. It’s one of many territorial markers the Supreme Court demanded be placed along the Missouri-Iowa border to prevent another mishap in the future.

The Wandering Troubadour

“But why does any of this matter?” the Coasters, Westerners, or Southerners in our midst might ask. Why care about a peacefully resolved, Middle American border dispute from 185 years ago? I don’t expect many people outside the Midwest to care about the Honey War by itself, but the Honey War is emblematic of a problem common in American society nowadays: the death of identity and local history.

One of the Online Right’s favorite hobby horses to ride is the deracination of American society and the death of community. We love to complain about the churches being empty, Main Street closing, and neighbors refusing to converse with each other. We are a people out of time, rootless and cosmopolitan in the worst sense. The problem is worse than simply being atomized individuals. We have no identity as a people. Americans have no collective identity to relate to since our history, culture, and folkways have been sanitized into sterility or discarded by the American Empire in the mad quest to forge a common American identity.

We hear the hollow ring of this hole in the heart of our politics whenever immigration is discussed. Underlying the entire immigration debate is another debate on who counts as an American. We have no idea what makes Americans different from anyone else in late-stage GAE because we’ve stripped away every possible characteristic differentiating Americans from non-Americans. The most extreme form of tabula rasa hyper-egalitarianism is the law of the day. There is no difference between a Heritage American and the Somali refugee who just stepped off the boat.

Even the internal debates within the “Dissident Right” mirror this desperate quest for a cohesive identity. The Christians want to preserve the old order our ancestors established when founding the country. We’re enraged at the lefties tearing down everything the country was, and we’re horrified that the pagans and vitalists in our own camp want to do the very same thing. The pagans and the vitalists feel that the Christians are defending an order which currently seeks the death of all Western Civilization; 2,000 years of Christian leadership has led to our current socio-political disasters, and they want a return to older ways which they believe are stronger. We’re desperately crying out for answers to two basic questions: Who are we? What is our relationship to the past?

All of this is to suggest that we on the “Dissident Right” need to focus on providing quality answers to those questions of identity; and the best way to answer those questions is through the timeless medium of storytelling. The “Dissident Right” should become a band of wandering troubadours, recounting strange tales and forgotten histories to our countrymen as the dark age envelops us. Rediscovery of the old and beautiful, then creating something new from the ashes, will be the order of our current era.

Anything should be fair game: history, cryptids, myths and legends, poetry, song, music, philosophy, and more. I’d prefer more local culture crafting, but some of us should be dedicated to memorializing the glory of the United States and what it became as twilight fell. As we teach our children these tales of glory and tragedy, the topsoil of something new will build over time through successive generations. What will that culture look like? I have no idea. I’m no prophet. The far future is in the hands of God. I can only pray that I’m planting the correct kinds of seeds, so that my children can play underneath the shade of something healthy. It is enough for me, in the meantime, to dedicate my time to the wonders and tales of my Missouri homeland.