USA > Kansas > Kansas : the prelude to the war for the union > Part 12
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Governor Geary stepped into the border tumult with the assertive bearing of a Titan. Superb and not wholly misplaced was his self-confidence. That he did not idealize the situation is clear, as he took pains to say that it could not be worse. Not only did he fully anticipate success, but the very desperation of affairs fascinated him. No- vember 28th, after more than ten weeks in the territory, he could write to Lawrence, "I am per- fectly enthusiastic in my mission."
The policies and measures with which Gover- nor Geary began did him no discredit. " When I arrived here," he confided to a friend, " I per- ceived at once that, in order to do any good, I must rise superior to all partisan considerations, and be in simple truth the governor of the entire people." He concluded to disband the militia called into the field by Woodson, and all unauthorized bodies of armed men. If there should be need for soldiers, he would enroll actual residents of the territory
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and muster them into the federal service. Then, in reference to the laws, they must be obeyed un- til expunged from the statute-book.
The proclamation which was issued ordering the militia to disband produced less effect than could have been wished. Lane, it is true, turned his face once more toward the familiar regions of Nebraska without waiting for its appearance. Free-state organizations were inclined to disperse, but hesitated, feeling anxious about the move- ments of the other side. The governor told them under his breath that they might be leisurely in their obedience.
The Missourians had been busy, since the re- connaissance upon Bull Creek and the destruction of Osawatomie, in fitting out a military force, the most formidable in numbers and equipment that invaded the territory during the border struggle. If Woodson's administration could have been stretched into a few days more of life, the com- plete conquest of Lawrence and of Kansas would have been assured. Neither inaugurals, nor proc- lamations, nor explicit orders from Lecompton brought to a halt the pro-slavery leaders. They pushed on to Franklin. Their approach spread so much consternation throughout the region that the governor, accompanied by Colonel Cooke with four hundred dragoons, set out from Lecompton for Lawrence at two o'clock on the morning of Sep- tember 13th, where he found two or three hun-
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dred men, poorly armed and completely disorgan- ized, awaiting attack. The resuscitated fortifica- tions did not find favor with the military folk. " The town has some ridiculous attempts at de- fenses," said Colonel Cooke, "with two main streets barricaded with earth-works, which I could ride over. ... Few of the people had arms in their hands." Governor Robinson wrote Mr. Lawrence on the 16th, "I found our people in a bad fix when I came out of confinement. We have no provisions, and not ten rounds of ammunition to a man." The scare was premature, as the Missou- rians drew off under cover of darkness without pressing an attack. Governor Geary made a re- assuring speech, and returned to Lecompton.
But the blow was delayed, not averted. About noon on the 14th couriers, riding at a tearing pace, began to arrive in Lawrence with intelligence that the enemy was advancing in force. The town presented a scene of gloomy, almost helpless confusion. Captain J. B. Abbott was nominally in command, though Governor Robinson, Colonel Blood, Captain Walker, and Captain Cracklin acted with more or less independence of head- quarters. Here and there Old John Brown urged his favorite maxim, -" Keep cool and fire low." During the afternoon a troop of the enemy's horse pushed their reconnaissance within range of the few Sharpe's rifles which the free-state men had. A volley checked their advance and sent them back
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toward Franklin. The Missourians missed their opportunity if they really wished to destroy the town. Lawrence, with its rickety fortifications and its handful of demoralized, poorly armed de- fenders, was utterly at their mercy. " So far as its inhabitants were concerned," said Governor Geary, "the place was almost in a defenseless condition. and the sacking and taking of it under the circumstances would have reflected no honor upon the attacking party."
At sundown dispatches, apprising the governor of the situation at Lawrence, reached Lecompton. He immediately sent Colonel Johnston with cav- alry and artillery to the scene of disturbance, and proceeded thither in person next morning at an early hour. When he arrived the advanced guard of the Missourians was in sight and marching toward the town. Governor Geary and Colonel Cooke hastened to intercept it, and were escorted to headquarters at Franklin. " Here about twenty- five hundred men," said Colonel Cooke, " armed and organized, were drawn up, horse and foot, and a strong six-pound battery."
The governor summoned to a conference the principal leaders - Atchison, Whitfield, Reid, Titus, Jones, and others - and made a speech flavored to the latitude. " Though held in a board house," he said, characteristically magnifying the occasion, " the present is the most important coun- cil since the days of the Revolution, as its issues
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involve the fate of the Union then formed." The governor assured the Missourians that as Demo- crats they could not afford to destroy Lawrence, and that he could take care of the abolitionists without their help. " He promised us all we wanted," said Atchison, and the council broke up generally satisfied with the governor's plans and purposes. The largest and best appointed force Missouri ever sent into the territory dissolved, and Lawrence was saved, solely by Geary's energy and decision.
The governor pushed the work of pacification effectively. One hundred free-state men - fight- ing material that should have remained at Law- rence in the lowering aspect of affairs - made an expedition against Hickory Point, Jefferson County. Lane, in his progress toward Nebraska, stopped to chastise a pro-slavery band, which took refuge in log-cabins at that place and bade him defiance. He sent a courier to Lawrence for help, who arrived September 13th, and Colonel J. A. Harvey immediately responded with one hundred or more men. Abandoning his campaign before their arrival, Lane expected to meet and turn back these reinforcements, it is said ; but they missed him, pushed on to Hickory Point, which they reached the next forenoon, and fought a miniature battle in which one pro-slavery man was killed. Then followed a treaty. Both parties agreed to retire, and celebrated the conclusion of peace by
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passing round a demijohn of whiskey. " The drinking was not general on either side," says Captain F. B. Swift. " There was no carousal or jollification, but the consequences were serious. We had been without sleep for thirty-six hours, and without food for twenty-four hours, and with- out drinkable water all through that hot after- noon's skirmish, so that the whiskey proved too much for those who drank, and it became neces- sary to go into camp a few miles from the scene of the fight instead of pushing on to Lawrence." Here they were surprised and captured by federal Captain T. J. Wood, taken to Lecompton, and ar- raigned before Judge Cato, whom Governor Geary found at Franklin serving in the Missouri army. Judge Cato refused bail, and committed eighty- seven prisoners on charges of murder in the first degree. A doleful experience of captivity suc- ceeded. Trials began in October, and resulted variously, the verdicts ranging from acquittal to five years in the penitentiary.
Nor did Governor Geary overlook the judiciary in his efforts for reform. He addressed communi- cations to the judges, calling them to account for the inefficiency of the courts - courts whose re- straining and punitive authority over the calami- tous course of territorial affairs had been as slight and inappreciable as the sway of drift logs over the Gulf Stream. Criminal offenses of every grade shot up luxuriantly and overshadowed the terri-
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tory with their noxious umbrage - thefts, arsons, manslaughters, murders - yet the paltry account of criminal convictions footed up two sentences for horse-stealing, three or four for assumption of office, and twice that number for unlicensed sell- ing of liquor. Chief Justice Lecompte replied at length. He claimed that partisan bias had never tarnished his judicial record, and insisted, with some show of reason, that the unhappy, inhospi- table times were answerable for the paralysis of the judiciary.
Temporarily Governor Geary succeeded. The territory gradually settled into something like re- pose. Marauders of every sort, free-state and pro- slavery, who had so successfully established a reign of terror, abandoned the field. After a pleasant tour of observation, which occupied twenty days, finding " the benign influences of peace " every- where prevalent, the governor appointed Thurs- day, November 20th, “ as a day of general praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God." Depart- ment commander Smith shared in his hopefulness. " I consider tranquillity and order," he reported November 11th, "entirely restored in Kansas."
An astute, unpublic movement was also afoot to put the peace on permanent foundations by a transfusion of the territorial government into the Topeka state government. " What if by means of certain influences," Governor Robinson wrote Mr. Lawrence December 21st, " the Topeka
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constitution should be admitted, the state gover- nor should resign, the territorial governor be unan- imously elected, and we should have a peaceable free state ? Of course the Senate will need to compromise the matter with the House by provid- ing for submitting the constitution once more to the people. This with an election law by Con- gress and Governor Geary to execute it would be
no very serious objection." The short cut into the Union offered many advantages over compet- ing methods. It involved the resignation of Rob- inson, the election of Geary in his place, and a little favorable congressional action. Geary advo- cated the scheme enthusiastically. In his anxiety to elude observation, and not seem to be on too friendly terms with prominent free-state men, he made an appointment to meet Robinson in the attic of a log-cabin at Lecompton, a low, dingy store-room, in which it was impossible to stand upright except directly under the roof-tree. "I am sure my friend Buchanan," said Geary, "will be glad to get out of the scrape in this way." The date of an adjourned meeting of the Topeka legis- lature was January 6th, 1857. Robinson, who went to Washington to engineer the consolidation project, left behind his resignation as governor. On the first day of the session no quorum ap- peared. The second brought larger numbers and organization. But at the close of business the federal marshal, who was lying in wait, arrested
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a dozen members, and the legislature took a recess until the 9th of June. Robinson's mission to Washington did not prosper. The administration was unfriendly, and nothing could be done. In truth, Geary, fast falling under suspicion at Wash- ington, had seen his brightest Kansas days. The confusion and alarm of a reawakened anarchy followed hard upon the pæans of his public thanks- giving.
The territorial legislature began its second ses- sion at Lecompton January 12th, 1857, and gave Governor Geary plenty of wormwood to bite upon. Substantially the council of the first legislature reappeared, but a new and undissenting pro-slav- ery House of Representatives had been elected. Gihon, in his rather intemperate and heavily-col- ored book, " Governor Geary's Administration in Kansas," describes the legislature as chiefly a vul- gar, illiterate, hiccoughing rout - blindly, madly, set on planting slavery securely in the territory. His picture, however, after all abatements and concessions are granted, still retains large elements. of historic fidelity. At every turn this brass- throated legislature confronted the governor and his fair-play policy. Not satisfied with the din stirred up in Kansas, pro-slavery leaders sent on men to plot and vociferate in Washington. Lo- cally affairs came to a crisis in the death of a young man by the name of Sherrard - well-born, with generous traits of character, but under the
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influence of drink or bad advice a desperado. Sherrard failed to secure an office for which he was an applicant, and charged his disappointment to the governor, whom he endeavored to draw into an altercation as an excuse for shooting him. He equipped himself for the encounter with two heavy revolvers and a bowie-knife. Meeting Geary as he left the legislative hall, he began to assail him with abusive words. Geary did not notice the insult. His coolness and self-command probably saved his life. This ineffectual essay at assassi- nation received, perhaps, some inspiration from members of the legislature. In the House of Rep- resentatives the Rev. Martin White presented laudatory resolutions, but that body shrank from so formal an encomium.
Governor Geary became alarmed. He applied to the federal commander at Leavenworth for additional troops, and was rebuffed with the an- nouncement that they were otherwise occupied. By this denial of protection, the fact that the ad- ministration had abandoned him passed from hint and conjecture into declaration. Free-state men rallied in support of the deserted governor. There began a series of indorsing, panegyric mass-meet- ings, which reached a tragic conclusion at Lecomp-
ton February 18th. Here the usual resolutions friendly to the governor were introduced, which threw Sherrard, who took pains to be present, into a paroxysm of rage. Leaping upon a pile of
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boards, he delivered a brief but clear and pithy address : "Any man who will indorse these reso- lutions is a liar, a scoundrel, and a coward." One man in the crowd did indorse them, and said so rather loudly and defiantly. This exhibition of frankness was resented by an appeal to pistols. The fight spluttered and fusilladed for a time without much execution ; then concluded abruptly with the death of the desperado. " I saw Sher- rard leap into the air as a bullet struck him in the forehead," said a quiet, pacific spectator. "I don't think anything ever happened in the terri- tory that pleased me so much as the shooting of that man." The fatal pistol shot also dispersed numerous pro-slavery roughs in attendance, and spoiled a pretty programme of mischief which they had sketched.
Governor Geary's extraordinary hopefulness and self-confidence temporarily gave way. The enthusiasm for his mission, which blazed and crackled so brilliantly three months before, now burned feebly and intermittently like a twinkling flame among dying- embers. "My only consola- tion now is," he wrote A. A. Lawrence February 25th, " that my labors are properly appreciated by, and that I have the sympathy of, very many of the best citizens of the Union. ... How much longer I shall be required to sacrifice pecuniary interests, comfort, and health in what appears al- most a thankless work remains to be determined."
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The sacrifice continued only a few days, when the governor abandoned the territory very hastily and informally. The end had been predicted from the beginning. " What you say suits us first-rate," said Captain Samuel Walker, an old acquaint- ance, as he was eloquently expounding his pur- poses to a little knot of listeners in his office at Lecompton soon after his arrival ; " but mark my word, you'll take the underground railroad out of Kansas in six months." "I'll show you," Geary retorted, with the emphasis of a smart blow on the table at which he sat, "and all the d-d rascals that I am governor of Kansas. The ad- ministration is behind me." The prophecy was literally fulfilled. About midnight March 10th a heavy knock at his cabin door roused Captain Walker. Great was his surprise to find that the belated visitor was Governor Geary, with two re- volvers buckled about his waist, on his way out of the territory. Though agitated and shaken by the perils hounding his trail, his self-assertion was not wholly extinguished. "I'm going to Wash- ington," he informed his host, " and I'll straighten things out."
But Geary found the authorities at Washington deaf to his talk. Nothing remained for him but to print a leave-taking address and make his exit, after a stirring, egotistic, even-handed, almost brilliant six months in Kansas.
CHAPTER X.
THE LECOMPTON STRUGGLE.
THE presidential election of 1856, which re- sulted in a Democratic victory, turned chiefly upon questions brought to the surface by the contest in Kansas. Into all the national conventions - American, Whig, Republican, and Democratic - the territory thrust its disturbing presence. The struggle was remarkable in many respects. Never before did a presidential election turn so largely upon questions of statesmanship, of ethics and the higher law. A variety of influences contributed to this temporary lustration of national politics, but they all radiated from the slavery problem, the compromise of 1850, the tempest in Kansas, and the phenomenal currency of " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
The Democratic campaign dealt heavily in threat and menace. Southern orators and news- papers drew lamentable pictures of the woes that would succeed a Republican triumph. Such an untoward event, they did not scruple to announce, would certainly justify, if it did not absolutely necessitate, a destruction of the Union. James
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Buchanan's election as president postponed the date of secession.
Two days after the inauguration of Mr. Bu- chanan, Chief Justice Taney, of the Supreme Court, delivered the famous Dred Scott decision, the purport of which was that slavery should have the freedom of the public domain - that nobody should meddle with it before the adoption of a state constitution.
President Buchanan, alarmed by the disastrous effect of the Kansas disturbances, immediately cast about for some cloud-compelling successor to Governor Geary. Robert J. Walker, a Pennsyl- vanian, though long resident in Mississippi- an active, shrewd, tonguey, intellectual, withered little man, experienced and not unsuccessful in public vocations - was selected as the best pro- tagonist within call to invade the perilous nether world of Kansas.
Walker's appointment indicated a change in federal tactics and policy. It was now conceded that Kansas could not with any likelihood be made a slave state, but it was hoped that by a skillful disintegration of existing parties, and the forma- tion of an administration party out of their ruins, it might be made a Democratic state. To this task Walker brought a veteran political astuteness, from which much was expected. That the work of any constitutional convention which might con- vene should be fully and unqualifiedly submitted
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to the people for ratification or rejection was a prominent feature of the revised programme, and one to which President Buchanan gave assent.
Meanwhile the new territorial secretary, Fred- eric P. Stanton - an able, scholarly lawyer who had served ten years in Congress as representative from Tennessee - proceeded to Kansas in advance of the governor. He immediately issued an ad- dress in which the policy of the new administra- tion was briefly set forth. The address did not have an enthusiastic reception. Pro-slavery ad- herents viewed with apprehension the fact that the secretary seemed to have a mind of his own, while the other side preferred to withhold their approval until the new régime should have passed successfully a period of probation.
A pro-slavery constitutional convention had long been preparing. The movement began in the first territorial legislature, which submitted the question of its expediency to the people in October, 1856. At the polls there was a favor- able verdict. The next legislature passed a bill authorizing the election of delegates June 15th, 1857. Governor Geary vetoed the measure, be- cause it failed to provide that the people should pass upon the proposed constitution at the polls, and because he regarded it impolitic " for a few thousand people, scarcely sufficient to make a good county," to set up an establishment of their own; but his effort to check the legislature was like
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trying to drain an Irish bog with a sponge. The census, prefatory to this election, turned out to be a very imperfect affair. Apportionment of del- egates depended on population, but nobody could vote whose name did not appear in the registry lists. In sixteen only out of the thirty-four or- ganized counties was there any registration, and the census tables showed still larger gaps. For this condition of things the pro - slavery party was not wholly responsible. Free-state men per- plexed the enumeration by embarrassments of omission and commission, and were not ill pleased at the starved and skeleton returns. Unfortu- · nately, Secretary Stanton, fresh upon the ground and not fully cognizant of the situation, appor- tioned delegates for the convention on the basis of the defective census. Here was another firebrand flung upon free-state straw. The territory was again in a flame. After much talk and some fruitless negotiation, the anti-slavery party con- cluded to let the election go by default. " Men who could expend thousands, and travel many a weary mile to fill Kansas with rifles," said Rep- resentative Hughes, of Indiana, " could not walk across the street to vote." The election passed off tamely. Less than one fourth of the nine thou- sand two hundred and fifty-one registered voters took part in it. The material and animus of the convention were completely satisfactory to the pro- slavery party.
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Governor Walker reached Lecompton May 26th, and gave his inaugural to the public the next day. It was a diffuse, reverberating, able exposition of the new policy which had been agreed upon in Washington. Shortly after he made a tour of ob- servation and of exposition. By conferences with the people, public and private, he hoped to con- vince them that his purposes were pacific and honorable, and that their interests lay in discard- ing every form of controversy except " the peace- ful but decisive struggle of the ballot-box." He was in Topeka June 6th, and made a cogent, un- equivocal, manly address. In three days a session of the state legislature, adjourned from the dis- consolate January meeting, would begin. Should the state legislature enact a code of laws and at- tempt to put it in force, as some free-state men still urged, there could be, in the opinion of Gov- ernor Walker, only one issue - " absolute, clear, direct, and positive collision between that legisla- ture and the government of the United States." In the most explicit and reduplicative language he declared that henceforth the people of Kansas were to manage their own concerns. If the forth- coming convention, auditors asked, should decline to submit the new constitution to the people, what then ? " I will join you, fellow citizens," the gov- ernor replied, " in opposition to their course. And I doubt not that one much higher than I, the chief magistrate of the Union, will join you."
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Walker tarried in Topeka to watch the legisla- ture. This session, like that of July 4th, 1856, was yoked with a mass convention which began at an early hour June 9th, and did not dissolve until eight o'clock at night. The convention undertook the same functions of coaching and surveillance as its prototype. It wrestled with the perennial question whether the Topeka government should be placed squarely on its feet, or merely take such measures as would keep a breath of life in the organization without clashing with the territorial authorities. Though the discussions frothed and declaimed, the conclusions were of a mild, do- nothing order. Walker with all his astuteness did not wholly fathom the tremendous oratory of the convention. It was craftily handled so as to im- press him with the conviction that unless the anti- slavery folk should receive fair treatment, unless constitutional conventions should remand their in- struments to the polls for final adjudication, revo- lutionary convulsions would certainly break out. The convention accomplished its mission. Walker wrote his superiors in Washington that had it not been for his intervention "the more violent course would have prevailed, and the territory imme- diately involved in a general and sanguinary civil war."
When the legislature assembled no quorum ap- peared. This fact was carefully hidden from the impressionable Walker. Governor Robinson, find-
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ing the shrewd scheme of merging the territorial in the state government impracticable, recalled his resignation at the instance of the legislature, and read a message before that unpopulous body, which once more adjourned after transacting a lit- tle harmless amateur business.
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