USA > Kansas > Kansas : the prelude to the war for the union > Part 3
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The Emigrant Aid Company planted a hand- ful of towns in the territory - Hampden, which disappeared after a little, Wabaunsee, Osawato- mie, Manhattan, Topeka, and Lawrence. Of these anti- slavery villages the oldest, and for a time the chief, was Lawrence. Upon the first day of August, 1854, the pioneer party, twenty- nine in number, sent out by the Boston society, reached the spot where that town was afterwards built. The directions given to C. H. Branscomb, conductor of the company, were, " proceed through the Shawnee Reservation and select the first eli- gible site on the south side of the Kansas River." Six weeks later a second expedition of one hun- dred and fourteen members arrived. In its ear- liest and rudimentary stage the village was merely
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DRIVING DOWN STAKES.
a little collection of tents. Then followed, in due time, queer, grass-thatched huts, copied appar- ently from African kraal village models, and rude, squat, mud-plastered log-cabins, beyond which the line of territorial architecture advanced slowly and with difficulty.
What the new village should be called was a matter of some discussion. For a while it had various names - Wakarusa, New Boston, Yankee Town. Citizens of Worcester, Massachusetts, of- fered a library if it should be christened Worces- ter. The name Lawrence was finally agreed upon in honor of the treasurer of the Emigrant Aid Company. " I think I was the first to suggest your name for the city," Dr. Robinson wrote Mr. Law- rence October 16th, 1854 ; " though I have never urged it at all, as I wished every person to be sat- isfied in his own mind. . .. Most of our people are very much attached to it, and after I explained your course in connection with the enterprise . .
there was much enthusiasm manifested. . . . A committee has been chosen to give a formal notice of the naming of the city."
It was unavoidable that a portion of the immi- grants fetched from New England to the outposts of civilization, set down amidst the privations and discomforts of pioneering and in the neighborhood of powerful pro-slavery communities - mutterings of great social disturbances singing in the upper air and threatening to add unknown elements of
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KANSAS.
peril to the hardships of the wilderness - should give way to homesickness and despair. They had dipped their hopes in the magic dyes of the im- agination, had pictured to themselves some re- stored paradise on the wonderland plains of Kan- sas ; and when the raw, crude, belligerent reality dawned upon them, they shook the dust of the territory from their feet and returned, disgusted with the border, to their old homes. But the great majority of colonists, not only from New England but also from other Northern States, - men and women little given to irresolution, cow- ardice, or panic, ruled by exacter, less romantic ideas, - were not unprepared to meet the trials of the wilderness and the inevitable hostility of Missouri.
CHAPTER IV.
LESSONS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
THE first territorial governor of Kansas was An- drew H. Reeder, of Pennsylvania, a mild, easy, rhetorical, admirable man, of good intellectual parts, well reputed as a lawyer, a national demo- crat, and an enthusiastic advocate of popular sov- ereignty. A complete assortment of customary officials - judges, secretaries, marshals, surveyors, land commissioners - was fitted out in Washing- ton. One or two gentlemen of leisure, reckoning, though wholly without their host, on a dearth of local candidates, accompanied these dignitaries with design of standing for any desirable office the territory might offer.
Reeder arrived at Fort Leavenworth October 7th, where a public reception - given by pro-slav- ery partisans, who viewed the new governor as nothing more than their tool - and a wordy, noisy address of welcome awaited him. In responding, Reeder pleasantly referred to the reception as "a foreshadowing of kindness and confidence " which he hoped to receive from citizens of the territory. His talk, however, was not wholly given over to
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KANSAS.
eulogy and congratulation. The spirit of violence which was already beginning to stir he denounced with the fluent boldness and confidence of inexpe- rience. " I pledge you," he said, " that I will crush it out or sacrifice myself in the effort." It was an heroic avowal that failed to kindle any enthu- siasm whatever among the auditors.
The governor sensibly prefaced his work in Kansas by a tour of observation which consumed some weeks. He was anxious to get his knowl- edge at first hand - an ambition that did not fa- vorably impress the gentry concerned in the Leav- enworth reception. They regarded themselves as entirely competent and were more than willing to furnish information on any point of Kansas af- fairs. Then followed a partition of the territory into districts, and the election of a delegate to Congress November 29th, 1854.
This first Kansas election never attained the no- toriety of the second, which took place four months afterwards, yet both experiences present the same characteristic features - large and elaborate expe- ditions from Missouri to stuff territorial ballot- boxes with illegal votes. No defense or apology has ever been put forward for these extraordinary proceedings except the necessitarian plea of fight- ing the devil with fire. The opinion universally entertained on the border in 1853 and in the ear- lier months of 1854, that the safety of slavery in Missouri and its ultimate expansion into Kansas
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LESSONS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
would be assured simply by the repeal of restric- tive legislation, showed unmistakable signs of weakening in the resolutions adopted at Salt Creek Valley. Subsequent events tended to in- crease and exasperate the alarm. Rumors now flew thick and fast on evil wings that the Emi- grant Aid Company and the kindred organiza- tions, which sprang up with a tropical luxuriance throughout the North, were pushing " military colonies " into Kansas, primarily to protect it from pro-slavery inroads, and secondarily to attack Mis- souri. It is true that the Boston company, in the enormous breadth of its original scope, mapped out some such prospectus which gave rise to dis- composing talk on the border. " Free-state men," said B. F. Stringfellow, "before we resorted to aggressive measures, openly boasted in the streets of Weston that they would drive slavery out of Missouri." Discussions in Congress added fuel to the fire, and as a consequence there was no small stir along the border. "When the people of Mis- souri," said Mordecai Oliver, defending lis con- stituency in the House of Representatives, " saw these proceedings on the part of these intermed- dlers in the affairs of Kansas and in contradiction of the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, they were roused - I confess it and confess it with no spirit of humiliation, but with pride and to the honor of my people - they were roused to an in- dignation that knew no bounds."
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KANSAS.
Anger is well enough in its place, but it would have been wise for these furious Missourians to make sure of their ground before proceeding to extremities. A little investigation would have established the fact that the Emigrant Aid Com- pany never bought a firelock or furnished its patrons with warlike equipments of any sort ; that it simply opened a western emigrant agency, - a perfectly legitimate transaction which broke none of the commandments ethical, political, or interstate. Though at a later day - after the first two election experiences - members of the corporation in a private, individual way contrib- uted freely toward the purchase of Sharpe's rifles for the use of free-state settlers, the corporation itself religiously held fast, through the whole period of its operations, to the unmilitary fune- tions of an ordinary transportation bureau. Had tlie Missourians followed the Massachusetts ex- ample and poured into Kansas as actual settlers rather than as crusading ballot-box stuffers, their fortunes would have thrived the better.
There was comparatively little at stake in the election of November 29th - nothing more than the choice of a delegate to Congress, and that for a fractional term. Besides, the pro-slavery candidate, J. W. Whitfield, a tall, strongly-made, rather prepossessing but thick - tongued Tennes- sean, holding the office of Indian agent, was not particularly objectionable. Whatever partisan
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LESSONS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
sentiments he may have cherished were kept out of sight, and unquestionably he would have been elected, had the Missourians stayed at home. But rumor and demagogues roundly abused the ear of the border. Western Missouri was armed and equipped to assail abolitionists in the ter- ritory. For this purpose Blue Lodges - a species of semi - secret, counter - Massachusetts societies designed to operate at Kansas elections - liad been extensively organized. To allow so much froth and fume, so much stir and alarm, to end in nothing might present an uncomfortable parallel to the historic feat of marching up the hill and then marching down again. The leaders chose to do something superfluous rather than nothing at all. The 29th of November at all events would afford opportunity for a little experimenting to see what seeds of promise lay in the Blue Lodges. So seventeen hundred and twenty-nine Missouri- ans invaded different election districts and cast as many gratuitous ballots for Whitfield, who received his credentials and appeared in Wash- ington as the first congressional delegate from Kansas, but was not allowed to take his seat.
The incursion from Missouri was not the only original suffrage feature of the election. Rumors got abroad that Whitfield designed to impress an aboriginal " Native American " vote into his ser- vice. The fact of his being an Indian agent lent plausibility to the canard. Some enterprising
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KANSAS.
Yankee hit upon an expedient to forestall any ad- vantage that the pro-slavery party might expect from extensions of the franchise in that quarter. Learning that a certain Delaware chief had re- cently enunciated his views on the relative merits of Yankees and Missourians - " Good man - heap - Yankee town. Missouri - bad - heap - heap - heap ! - d-n um" - it occurred to him that here might possibly be a neglected field of politics worth cultivating. Unfortunately his bright thoughts were somewhat belated. They did not fairly dawn upon him until the evening before election. However, he rode over to the Delaware Reservation in the morning, assembled the braves, and expounded to them their unap- preciated political privileges ; confidently argued their right to vote, and proposed that they should instantly assert it at the election in progress that very day. The Indians drew off by themselves and entered upon a council over the matter which went on interminably without apparent signs of conclusion. The opportunity for " Native Amer- ican " or for any other phase of suffrage was rap- idly disappearing, and at last the exasperated Yankee, in no very conciliatory or complimentary dialect, demanded some sort of answer. Finally, the oldest chief arose and, appareled in a solemnity never surpassed by the judiciary of Tartarus, said - " Tinkum four days - den vote heap - heap- um ! - sometime - may be !"
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LESSONS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
But the most astonishing exhibition of pop- ular sovereignty occurred in the spring of 1855. During the preceding February the authorities took a census of the territory, which showed a population of 8,601. There were figured out 2,905 voters, a majority of whom came from slave states. Alexander H. Stephens made effec- tive use of this fact in a speech in the House of Representatives July 31st, 1856. " This census," he said, " gives the name of each resident legal voter in the territory thirty days before the March election. . . . I have counted every name on the census roll and noted the section of country from which the settler migrated, and I find that of those who were registered as legal voters of the territory in February, a month before the elec- tion, 1,670 were from Southern States and only 1,018 from the entire North. There were 217 from other countries. .. . The inference which I draw from these facts is that there was a decided majority of anti-Free-Soilers in the territory in the month of February." Mr. Stephens erred in classing all immigrants from Southern States as pro-slavery in sentiment. A not inconsiderable element among them preferred that Kansas should become a free state.
Both sides appreciated the importance of secur- ing the legislature which was to be elected March 30th. Success in that matter would be a decisive victory. In Missouri the excitement surpassed all
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KANSAS.
foregoing experiences. The orators were abroad in their most tempestuous mood, denouncing abo- litionists and Eastern corporations that sought to fang the heart of Missouri as with the tooth of a viper. Voting machineries had been tested and worked to the satisfaction of the experts who devised them. To meet the present emergency, it was only necessary to put on a little higher pressure. Blue Lodges bestirred themselves en- ergetically. There were recruitings, organizations of companies, drills, armings, as if some great military expedition were afoot. Those who could not give personal attention to the preservation of law and the purity of public franchise in Kansas were exhorted to assist in paying the bills. At a meeting in Boonesville, held for the purpose of raising money and enthusiasm, a half-tipsy planter stumbled up to the speaker's table, and, flinging down a thousand dollars, said, - " I've just sold a nigger for that, and I reckon it's about my share towards cleaning out the dog-gauned Yankees."
The Missouri expounders of popular sovereignty marched into Kansas to assist in the election of a territorial legislature - an unkempt, sun-dried, blatant, picturesque mob of five thousand men with guns upon their shoulders, revolvers stuffing their belts, bowie-knives protruding from their boot-tops, and generous rations of whiskey in their wagons.
Six thousand three hundred and seven votes
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LESSONS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
were polled on this memorable 30th of March elec- tion - nearly eighty per cent. of them by Mis- sourians, who, of course, swept the boards. In a military point of view the expedition was man- aged effectively, and succeeded in distributing pro- slavery voters through the territory in such bulks as were needed to overcome opposition. The in- vaders did not, as a general rule, molest actual res- idents unless they showed fight. Judges of elec- tion who meekly accepted the situation and re- ceived all ballots offered were seldom set aside. In cases where they objected to Missourian the- ories of suffrage they were promptly removed, and their places supplied by men whose scruples of conscience did not lie in that direction.
At Lawrence there was an illustration of the milder sort of displacement. One of the judges insisted that the first Missourian who presented himself at the polls should swear that he re- sided in Kansas. The fellow hesitated. He evi- dently stumbled at the ethics, lately sanctioned by high pro-slavery authority, that in dealing with abolitionists scruples of conscience were an impertinence. The leader of the gang, seeing there promised to be an awkward hitch in the programme, ordered him to retire and presented himself at the polls, that the on-looking crowd might have the benefit of liis elucidating and in- spiring example. " Are you a resident of Kan- sas?" asked the election judge. "I am," the
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KANSAS.
Missourian replied. " Does your family live in Kansas ? " persisted the former. " It is none of your business. If you don't keep your imperti- nence to yourself I'll knock your d-d head from your shoulders." The judge, considering his use- fulness gone, retired, and thenceforward everybody voted who felt so disposed.
At Bloomington there was an exceptionally suc- cessful Bedlam. The judges exhibited obstinacy which yielded only to an active revolver and bowie-knife treatment. They persisted in theo- ries of suffrage altogether too illiberal and nar- row for the times. It was intimated that their resignations would be accepted - a hint which they neglected to act upon. Finally, to expedite affairs, a borderer drew his watch and announced a five minutes' period of grace - then resignations or death. The five minutes expired and nothing had been done. An extension of one minute was allowed, during which the judges decamped.
In the main there was but slight occasion for anything beyond a savage pretense of violence. Numbers, bluster, profanity, and a liberal display of fighting-gear completely cowed opposition. The visiting voters returned to Missouri, feverish with triumph - " We've made a clean sweep this time." Border newspapers rioted in extravagances of fe- licitation. " Abolitionism is rebuked," one of them screamed, "her fortress stormed, her flag draggling in the dust." But dashing into the ter-
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LESSONS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
ritory with a braggart, rub-a-dub publicity, and casting four thousand nine hundred and eight votes in a total of six thousand three hundred and seven, turned out to be a ruinously expensive vic- tory.
In Western Missouri the policy of invasion re- ceived a practically unanimous support. Dissent meant trouble for the dissenter. It drew suspicion and unpopularity upon him if nothing worse. The " Parkville Luminary," venturing to question dis- tantly and mildly the expediency of forcing slav- ery upon Kansas, was summarily quenched in the Missouri River. Now and then an intrepid, out- spoken man, with clearer, less jaundiced vision than his neighbors, made head against the univer- sal frenzy. One person of this stamp, old Tom Thorpe, of Platte County, Missouri (a remark- able specimen of frontier independence ), appeared before the Congressional Investigating Committee in 1856. " Whenever there was an election in the territory," Mr. Thorpe testified, " they were fussin' roun' an' gettin' up companies to go, an' gettin' hosses an' wagins. They come to me to subscribe, but I tole 'em that I was down on this thing of votin' over in the territory, an' that Tom Thorpe didn't subscribe to no such fixins. They jawed me too about it -they did ; but I reckon they found old Tom Thorpe could give as good as he got. They tole the boys they wanted to make Kansas a slave state; an' they tole 'em the abo-
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KANSAS.
litionists war a commin' in ; an' that the Emigrant Aid Society Company & Co. war pitchin' in; an' they'd better too. You see they took the boys over, an' they got plenty liquor, an' plenty to eat, an' they got over free ferry. Lots an' slivers on 'em went. A heap o' respectable folks went with them. There's Dr. Tibbs, lives over in Platte, he used to go, an' you see they 'lected him. The boys tole me one time when they come back - says they ' We've 'lected Dr. Tibbs to the legis- lature ;' an' says I 'Is it the state or the terri- tory ?' An' says they ' The territory.' Says I, ' Boys, ain't this a puttin' it on too thick ? It's a darned sight too mean enough to go over there and vote for them fellers, but to put in a man who don't live there is all - fired outrageous.' There 's my own nephew - he come all the way up from Howard County to vote. He come over to see me an' our folks as he went along. I says to him - says I, 'Jim Thorpe, hain't you nothin' better to do than to come way up to vote in the ter- ritory ?' Well he tole me that they want buisy at home, an' that they got a dollar a day an' liquor; an' says I, .Stop, Jim Thorpe, that 's enough ; you can't stay here in my house to-night an' nobody can that goes for votin' in the terri- tory. I tell you what, boy, I've always been down on that kind o' thing. I ain't no abolition- ist neither. I tell you I'm pro-slave. I'm dyed in the wool an' can't make a free-soiler ; but mind
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LESSONS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
what I say, if the boys keep a cuttin' up so I'll come over to the territory an' 'nitiate Betsey.'"
The events of March 30th disturbed free-state settlers profoundly, and well they might. Dr. Robinson wrote A. A. Lawrence April 4th - " the election is awful, and will no doubt be set aside. So says the governor, although his life is threatened if he does n't comply with the Missou- rians' demands. I with others shall act as his body-guard."
But there was no general movement of protest against the irregularities of the election. From six only of the eighteen election districts did remonstrances appear. This was a negligence that the " Democratic Review " energetically rebuked. " What did the Free-Soilers do? Did they pro- test ? Did they deny the legality of the votes ? Not a bit. ... There was an admirable chance for Free-Soilers to prove how much they loved or- der, law, and regulated freedom. It could hardly be supposed that they would miss so fine a chance to immortalize their law-abiding tendencies. But really and truly they let it slip. They were drowsy over it. Jupiter nodded."
There was some excuse. It lay in the isolation of the little towns, in difficulties of communica- tion necessary to concerted action, and in the haz- ard that attended the business. One man who was active in pushing a protest got into trouble. William Phillips, a Leavenworth lawyer, promi- 4
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KANSAS.
nent in an effort to have the election canceled, because, among other things, " the New Lucy, a boat, on the morning of the day of election started for Leavenworth from Weston with citizens of Missouri," who "did vote at the polls of the six- teenth district, and then immediately returned . on said boat to Missouri," was brutally mobbed. As a sequel to tar and feathers, head - shaving, and riding on a rail, a negro sold the unfortunate lawyer at auction - " How much, gentlemen, for a full-blooded abolitionist, dyed in de wool, tar and feathers and all? How much, gentlemen ? He'll go at the first bid." This wretched out- rage, if we may believe the "Kansas Herald," published at Leavenworth, sent a thrill of delight through the community.
Rumors that Governor Reeder designed to set aside the entire election, or at least to refuse cer- tificates to a large number of candidates whom the judges of elections had declared elected, blasted whatever personal popularity he might still retain among the Missourians. The alienation which began with the reception festivities at Fort Leav- enworth had constantly widened and deepened. Now, in the waxing bitterness, pro-slavery men freely coupled threats with denunciations. Some talked of " hemping " the scoundrel, while others felt more like "cutting his throat from ear to ear."
On the 5th of April Governor Reeder heard
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LESSONS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
protests and canvassed returns. Beweaponed gen- try representing both factions thronged the exec- utive office. Free-state men, with their slender list of remonstrances, insisted that the election should be canceled, and another ordered under precautions which would make a second 30th of March impossible. Charges of illegal voting they themselves did not entirely escape, arising mainly from the circumstance that a party of Eastern immigrants reached Lawrence on the day of election, some of whom, it was alleged, voted notwithstanding the brevity of their residence in Kansas. A few of the new-comers, alarmed by the threatening aspect of affairs, immediately fled the territory. It is uncertain whether any of these fugitives went to the polls or not. Yet it is beyond reasonable doubt that the number of anti-slavery ballots cast by men, against whom charges of non-residence could be sustained, was very small. In the shifting, prospecting, to-and- fro situation considerable laxity of suffrage could not be escaped. But neither the Emigrant Aid Company nor any like Northern society ever com- mitted the stupid blunder of sending pseudo-set- tlers half across the continent simply to vote. The pro-slavery representatives, however, did not find illegal voting a congenial theme. They ac- centuated the point that the governor could not lawfully go behind the returns - that it only re- mained for him to authenticate them.
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KANSAS.
Governor Reeder adopted an intermediate, half- way policy, which failed to satisfy anybody. Stickling unhappily for technicalities, he cast out the mote of eight candidates against whom pro- tests had been filed, and ordered new elections in their districts, but ignored the beam of a great systematic, wholesale fraud. Of the thirty-one members of the legislature twenty - eight were satisfactory to the pro-slavery managers. But
they loudly resented the governor's interference, and their curses were almost as violent as might have been expected had it been less ineffectual. The little company of free-state men who went down from Lawrence to Shawnee Mission to act as Reeder's body-guard wished they had allowed him to take care of himself. Dr. Robinson an- nounced that for his part he repudiated both governor and legislature - a declaration prophetic of future free-state movements.
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