In 1839, a dispute between Missourians and Iowans over honey trees and the state line nearly erupted into war. Honey was the sugar of pioneers, who obtained this natural sweetener by following bees from water or nectar sources to their tree, then cutting the tree and stealing the honey. When a Missourian chopped down three bee trees in an area that Iowans argued was part of their state, an irate Iowa lawman attempted to arrest him, but the woodsman fled back into Missouri. The trees were valuable both for the honey, which had a value of up to 37 cents a gallon, and for beeswax. Iowa tried the bee tree thief in absentia and imposed a fine of one dollar and 50 cents. The Missouri governor then sent the Clark County Sheriff into the contested territory to collect taxes on, among other things, bee trees, but he was taken by force by Iowans:
The Iowans weren't kidding. They took the beleaguered sheriff by “fourse” and confined him at Burlington. He later said they treated him pretty well. They let him roam around town but wouldn't let him go home. He apparently enjoyed his enforced vacation and seemed relieved to have his problems solved for him.
But even a docile and contented hostage was too much for Governor Boggs. Daniel Boone wouldn't have stood for it, and neither would he. He ordered out the militia, and Governor Lucas did the same. It was December, snowy, and bitterly cold. Both sides began to arm for battle. The alarmed Governor Lucas prophesied, wrongly as it turned out, that the dispute “might ultimately lead to the effusion of blood.” According to the Missouri State Archives, he called up 1,200 men who cried “Death to the Pukes” and drank plenty of whiskey They were a bit officer-heavy. They had four generals, nine general staff officers, forty field officers, and eighty-three company officers. Of one thousand who enlisted, about five hundred reported for duty dressed in an assortment of uniforms that made them look more like a mob than an army.
According to Duane G. and Marilyn H. Meyer in Heritage of Missouri, the Missourians tried to raise 2,200 militiamen, but less than half showed up. However, they were armed with the latest military technology: one carried a sausage stuffer, a crank-handled mechanism that grinds meat and forces it into a casing.
The two states glowered at each other across the potential battlefields in northeast Missouri (or southeast Iowa) on the week of December 7–12. The Lewis County, Missouri, militia spent two nights bivouacked in the cold and snow without tents or enough blankets. They did, however, have plenty of whiskey One company brought six wagons of provisions, five of them reputed to be filled with booze.
Meanwhile, Clark County officials, exhibiting common sense, sent a delegation to Iowa to work out a truce and try to get their sheriff back. The two sides came up with a classic political solution: They dumped the problem in the lap of the federal government, and both sides told their soldiers to go home. Even before the order, neither side was happy Christmas was only a few days away The troops wanted to be home . . . and the whiskey had begun to run out.
But they had come to shoot something. So they split a haunch of venison—labeled one half “Governor Boggs” and the other “Governor Lucas”—shot them full of holes, and held a mock funeral. That and a mule shot by mistake were the only victims of the Honey War.
It would be 1849, another ten years, before the United States Supreme Court ruled that the 1816 boundary was the legal one, and that it should be resurveyed and marked with posts every ten miles, some of which still exist.
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