Born in Autauga County, Alabama, on February 27, 1819, the future associate justice on the territorial supreme
court of Kansas attended primary and secondary school in the county of his
birth and then studied law at the University of Alabama. Upon graduation Rush
Elmore was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Montgomery, Alabama. During the Mexican War
he raised a company of infantry and served as its captain.
After the war, he returned to Montgomery where he established a law firm with
his brother John A. Elmore and William L. Yancey, a former Alabama congressman
who was assume a leadership role in the early years of the Confederacy
(1861-1863).
Within a month of the organization of the Kansas and Nebraska territories in 1854, President
Franklin Pierce appointed Rush Elmore as
an associate judge of the supreme court for the territory of Kansas. Elmore moved his family
and fourteen slaves to Kansas in the fall of 1854, settling in
the town of Tecumseh, Shawnee County. He served on the territorial supreme
court from October 15, 1854 to September 13, 1855, when he was removed, along
with Judge Saunders W. Johnston and Governor Andrew H. Reed, by President
Pierce following allegations of unlawful purchases of Kansas Indian lands. The
charges were later proved to be unfounded, and Elmore was again appointed-this
time by President James Buchanan-as an associate judge on August 13, 1858, a
position in which he served until February 9, 1861. Upon the admittance of Kansas into
the Union and the organization of the first state government during the late
winter and early spring of 1861, Elmore moved to Topeka where he resumed the
practice of law.
Judge Elmore was one of the wealthiest and largest
slave owners in the Kansas Territory. He was assaulted and severely injured a
man by the name of John Henry Kagi, striking him over the head with a
gold-headed cane, on January 31, 1857. Kagi had enlisted in A. D. Stevens's
("Colonel Whipple's") Second Kansas Militia, and was captured in 1856
by United States troops. Kagi was imprisoned first at Lecompton and then at
Tecumseh, but was finally liberated. After being struck, Kagi drew his
revolver and shot the judge in the groin. Elmore then fired three times and
shot Kagi over the heart, the bullet being stopped by a memorandum-book. Kagi
was long in recovering from his wounds. After a visit to his Ohio home, Kagi
returned to Kansas and joined John Brown. He bore the title of Secretary of War
in the provisional government, next in command to John Brown and was also the
adjutant.
In 1857 Judge Elmore was as a Shawnee County delegate to the Lecompton Constitutional
Convention. Elmore was by this time
recognized, according to the New York Times of September 17, 1857, "a
keen party leader, an acute, high-minded, and well-disposed Southern Democrat,"
and a man that even the free-state press admitted considerable ability,
observed historian Robert W. Johannsen. Once the pro-slave document had been
drafted in October 1857, Elmore worked to have the entire constitution
submitted to the voters for their approval or rejection. The majority of the
delegates rejected this move, however, so Elmore supported the compromise
effort that allowed Kansans to vote on the slavery clause-that is to vote to
ratify the Lecompton Constitution with or without slavery. For much of the next
year, the document "with slavery," ratified by the voters in December
(free-staters boycotting this referendum), was the focus of national debate and
controversy. Finally, however, the Free State Party gained control of the
territorial government and at a new election on August 2, 1858, the by then
infamous Lecompton Constitution went down in defeat.
Elmore, despite his deep Southern roots and
efforts on behalf of slavery in Kansas Territory, remained a staunch unionist,
even after secession and the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861. As a
steadfast union man, he remained devoted to one nation-the United
States of America-and the free state of Kansas until his death on August 14,
1864.
