Talk:Andrew Horatio Reeder

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Was Andrew Horatio Reeder the only Governor of the Kansas Territory?

What about Wilson Shannon? Unfortunately for Reeder, on January 10, 1855, the Indian Commissioner, G.W. Manypenny, had received a request to confirm contracts for the purchase of four large tracts titled to Kansas Indians who had agreed to sell to two Federal judges, Johnston and Isaacs, and to Governor Reeder. Five days later Manypenny, who knew something about land speculation himself, recommended to President Pierce that the contracts be rejected. Although these agreements had been known about for a year and were merely a pretext, they did provide a reason for the record for Pierce to replace Reeder with Shannon when Reeder went East later in 1855. Shannon, a Cincinnati attorney who had been Democratic Governor of Ohio, reached Westport and Shawnee at the beginning of September, 1855.

What about John White Geary? Born in Pennsylvania, he had been an attorney and civil engineer with the Allegheny Portage Railroad, a captain of volunteers in the Mexican War where he was promoted to colonel, and first mayor of San Francisco. Geary, appointed third Governor of the Territory of Kansas by Pierce, took up his duties at Lecompton on September 11, 1856.

What about Robert J. Walker? Another Pennsylvanian, first in his class at the University of Pennsylvania, he followed his brother to Mississippi in 1826, and by hard work, frontier opportunity, and slaves, he became rich. A staunch follower of Andrew Jackson, eventually Walker went to Congress as Mississippi's Senator and gave his name to the Walker Tariff. He was a Union man and an expansionist. As Polk's Treasury Secretary Walker had much to do with the successful outcome of the Mexican War. In 1857 Senator Stephen A. Douglas begged him to accept Buchanan's call to become Governor of the Territory of Kansas. As Douglas saw it, the fate of the Democratic party depended on stopping fraud and violence in the administration of Kansas. Walker would earn handling one case what he could make as Governor in one year. He knew that Kansas was a dangerous place and a political graveyard, but on March 26th he accepted the call to serve his country.

Bottom line: Reeder was not the only Governor of the Kansas Territory.