Thomas Leiper Kane

Background

Thomas Leiper Kane was born on January 27, 1822, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States; the second of four sons and one daughter of John Kintzing and Jane Duval (Leiper) Kane, and the brother of Elisha Kent Kane.

Education

In 1840 Thomas completed college with dangerously taxed health from overstudy. He was sent to England to recuperate, where an elderly relative wanted to make Kane his heir. Kane excused himself gracefully from that dependency by accepting an appointment in Paris as an attaché in the American legation.

Kane was admitted to the court of Louis Phillipe, became friends with the renowned philosopher August Comte, and was tutored by a former secretary to the revolutionary Robespierre. Kane enjoyed the company of Frenchmen still caught up in the spirit of the French Revolution. But his body broke down. Neither French nor American doctors could control what later became pulmonary tuberculosis. He went home to live with his mother and father. Though weak and bedridden, he studied under the direction of his father.

Career

Thomas was admitted to the Philadelphia bar as a lawyer on March 4, 1846. Kane became a lifelong crusader. He resigned a government post and the bar in 1850 rather than uphold the Fugitive Slave Act, and he was an active supporter of the Underground Railroad. He chaired the Free-Soil State Central Committee and worked to abolish capital punishment, improve conditions in American prisons, and open higher education to women. He also established a school for tots, much like a modern kindergarten.

Kane’s most challenging crusade arose unexpectedly. War broke out between the United States and Mexico in May 1846 as about 15,000 Mormon refugees were struggling westward through Iowa’s mud. Kane likely learned through his father and President James K. Polk that these Mormon refugees included about 4,000 former Illinois militiamen from west-central Illinois and southeastern Iowa. Kane attended, unannounced, a conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS, or Mormon, in Philadelphia that was scheduled to discuss the migration. At the end of the conference, Kane invited Mormon elder Jesse C. Little, who had presided at the conference, to explain more about the Mormons and their plans. Little mentioned that he was on his way to Washington, D.C., to learn if there was some building the Mormons could do along the Oregon Trail as they moved west. Kane offered, through his father, who was a confidant of American presidents from Andrew Jackson to James Buchanan, to try to arrange high-level interviews for Little. Kane also asked permission to go west with the Mormons, a bold gambit for a man of frail health who thought that the Mormons might be going to fight for Mexico against the United States.

Meeting with President Polk, Elder Little said that the Mormons would like to earn money for their migration by building forts or blockhouses along the Oregon Trail, an unfulfilled plan of the War Department since 1839. President Polk replied that he needed soldiers, not builders. Would some Mormons volunteer for service in the U.S. Army for a year. Soon thereafter Kane and Little left Washington, D.C., together for St. Louis. From there, Little went north up the Mississippi River to join the Mormon exodus to the west. Kane went northwest up the Missouri River to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, to hand-deliver War Department orders to recruit between 292 and 545 Mormon men for the army.

U.S. Dragoon mounted infantry, Captain James Allen, former commander of Fort Des Moines, with five aides, was sent immediately from Fort Leavenworth to intercept and solicit volunteers from Mormon refugees in south-central Iowa. Those Mormons sent Allen and his recruiters on the west to talk with LDS leader Brigham Young. Kane meanwhile rode alone up the Missouri River to the advanced LDS camps in time to help Allen and Young recruit about 489 men, nine boys as aides to officers, and 20 women volunteer as laundresses. Kane met frequently with LDS leaders, traveled unescorted through scattered camps, and sent letters back to the Polk administration in Washington, D.C. He became convinced that the Mormons were loyal citizens who had no intention of fighting for Mexico against the United States. For much of his life, Kane worked hard to refute false reports about the Mormons. Impressed with Kane’s integrity and desire to help them, the Mor- mons renamed Miller’s Hollow, one of their earliest settlements, Kane in 1847 and then Kanesville in 1848. Later settlers, after the Mormons had left, renamed it Council Bluffs and changed every street name. Yet however briefly, idealist Thomas Kane was etched into the history of Iowa.

Achievements

• Thomas Leiper Kane rendered valuable and dangerous services through the military campaigns in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was involved in founding the community of Kane, Pennsylvania, and influential in the western migration of the Mormon refugees.
  
  Kane County, Utah was named for Thomas L. Kane, as was the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints maintains as a historic site the Thomas L. Kane Memorial Chapel, in Kane, Pennsylvania, in recognition of Kane's friendship and assistance. Kane was a founder of the Borough and is buried in the chapel. In addition, a bronze statue of Thomas L. Kane is displayed in Utah's Capitol Building, identified as a "Friend of the Mormons".

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Mormons 1850
  • The Private Papers and Diary of Thomas Leiper Kane, a Friend of the Mormons 1882
  • Coahuila

Politics

Kane became a leader of the Free Soil Party in Pennsylvania, United States.

Views

Kane was active in the abolitionist movement.

Membership

Kane was a member of the American Philosophical, American Geographical, and Pennsylvania Historical Societies. He was a Freemason.

Connections

On April 21, 1853, Thomas married Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood. They had four children, Harriet Amelia Kane, Elisha Kent Kane, Evan O'Neill Kane, Thomas Leiper Kane.

Father:

John Kintzing Kane

Mother:

Jane Duval (Leiper) Kane

Spouse:

Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood Kane

Brother:

Elisha Kent Kane

Brother:

John Kintzing Kane

Brother:

Robert Patterson Kane

Sister:

Elizabeth Kane Shields

Brother:

John Kintzing Kane

Brother:

William Leiper Kane

Daughter:

Harriet Amelia Kane

Son:

Elisha Kent Kane

Son:

Evan O'Neill Kane

Son:

Thomas Leiper Kane

Friend:

Brigham Young

References

• Colonel Thomas L. Kane and the Mormons 1846-1883
  2010
• Liberty to the Downtrodden
  2009
• Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire
  2018
• History of Pennsylvania Volunteers
  1995
• The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.
  2008