USA > Kansas > Douglas County > Lawrence > The Kansas memorial, a report of the Old Settlers' meeting held at Bismarck grove, Kansas, Sept. 15th and 16th, 1879 > Part 13
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THE KANSAS MEMORIAL.
But the signs of progress were, nevertheless, quite discerni- ble. The seeds of liberty were germinating in the propitious soil of current events. The purposes of desperate men are often providentially overruled. The hierarchy of scoundrels that re- solved to blacken your soil with slavery by organized robbery and rapine unwittingly served the very cause they sought to crush. Atchison and Stringfellow were useful northern schoolmasters. The enlightening influence and saving grace of the Black Code of 1855 should be duly acknowledged. The outrages of 1856, and the dispersion of your Free State Legislature, were undoubtedly powerful make-weights in the march of freedom. The picturesque popular triumph of border ruffianism in 1857, by the help of voters whose names were carefully copied from the Cincinnati directory, ยท and the arrest of leading members of the Free State party as trai- tors, did a grand work in the spread of anti-slavery principles.
The adoption of the Lecompton constitution could not fail to serve the same ends. The terrible trials through which you were called to pass were probably necessary to save the Republic from stagnation and death. The hideousness of slavery had to grow to its full stature, and display all its devilish enormity, before the American people would engage earnestly in its overthrow ; and the fires of freedom were now finally lighted, which could never be quenched till liberty should be proclaimed throughout all the land. The old Whig party mercifully disappeared in 1854, availing itself of the Know-Nothing movement as a sort of under- ground railroad on which its members could securely escape from their old masters, while another great mercy was vouchsafed to the country in a formidable disruption of the Democratic party. The defeat of the homestead act at the bidding of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, and the merciless enforcement of the fugi- tive slave law, did their part in strengthening the anti-slavery sen- timent of the free States. On the 24th of February, 1856, after an exasperating and protracted struggle, freedom achieved its first decisive national victory in the election of Banks as speaker of the House of Representatives. As early as 1854 Republican parties, on a broad anti-slavery basis, had been organized in Michigan, Massachusetts, and many other States, and the leaven of freedom was evidently spreading. Know-Nothingism gradually retired from our politics, while trimmers and conservatives began to accept a position of subordination under the comprehensive and positive anti-slavery policy which claimed the leadership of the new move- ment. On the 22d of February, 1856, the first National Repub- lican convention was held at Pittsburg and the party formally organized. On the 17th of June following it nominated Fremont for the Presidency, on a very radical and ringing anti-slavery plat- form, and there was a romance about his life and name which seemed to make him preeminently the man for the hour. The honor of first naming him for the Presidency, and of starting the popular tide in his favor, belongs to the honored president of this
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convention. In unbounded and jubilant enthusiasm the Fremont campaign has had no parallel in our national politics, and it was borrowed chiefly from the great tragedy then in progress in Kansas. Such masses of earnest, orderly and intelligent men and women I have never seen assembled, and the whole land was made vocal with spontaneous eloquence and music. It was a mighty educator of the people, and to this extent a real national triumph. Anti- slavery principles were thoroughly discussed, and took root in thousands of hearts that had never before been touched. Old party lines were consumed in the fervent heat of the new move- ment, while political cowards and dough-faces where made to tremble in anticipation of the reckoning which they saw pre-figured in the general commotion. Fremont was defeated; but the moral power of the large vote he received was felt throughout the nation, . and saved Kansas from the clutches of slavery, as the Free Soil movement of 1848 had saved California. In fact, the defeat of 1856 may have been fortunate. As a statesman Fremont was nearly unknown to the people. Congress would have been against him, and only a partially developed anti-slavery sentiment could have given him its support. It was a formative period, rather than a time for courageous and energetic action. The revolution so hope- fully begun might have been arrested by half-way measures, pro- moting the slumber, rather than the agitation, of anti-slavery truth ; while the irritating but helpful nostrums of Buchanan's adminis- tration, which afterward filled up and rounded out the horrors of slave-breeding desperation, might have been lost to the country.
Indeed, with all the aid which freedom could extract from the madness of slavery, the admission of Kansas as a free State was accomplished by a prolonged and most distressing trouble. The triumph of freedom in 1860 was only secured by a division in the Democratic party, caused by the stupid and shameless surrender of the body and soul of James Buchanan to the slave power. Mr. Lincoln was a minority President, and the country, even then, had no adequate moral preparation for the crisis which confronted it. We were saved by the perfectly splendid madness of the enemy. The slave-holders occupied a fortified position, and could certainly plead no desperate necessity for their infernal leap at the nation's throat. They had the Supreme Court on their side. They had both houses of Congress; and as a peace-offering we proposed to surrender our national Territories to the ravages of slavery. We were willing to abide by the Dred Scott decision and the fugitive slave law.
So feeble was the grasp of the conscience of the people of the free States upon the nature of their quarrel, and so long had slavery fed upon the manhood of the country, that they even proposed the incorporation of the Lecompton constitution into the constitution of the United States, by an amendment, making slavery perpetual. But the same providential madness of our foe followed us as our ally throughout the struggle. You know how reluctant we were
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to strike at slavery as the cause of the war and the obstacle to peace, and how anxiously we sought to save the Union and save slavery with it. We were equally unwilling to arm the negroes as soldiers, and afterwards to arm them with the ballot. After the close of the war, and these people had furnished nearly two hun- dred thousand soldiers to aid us in preserving the national unity, we deliberately proposed to hand them over to the mercy of their old masters, on the single condition that they should not be counted in the basis of representation. It was not the ready and spontaneous humanity and sense of justice of our people, but the iron hand of necessity, invoked by the sublime folly of the enemy, which signally marked our pathway through the fearful conflict, and at last made certain the great and enduring fruits of our vic- tory. Let us frankly tender our acknowledgments to the respect- able and popular personage who is understood to appear only in black costume, and whose name is not fit to be mentioned in polite society.
The lesson embodied in the facts to which I have thus hastily referred is two-fold. In the first place, they teach that the work of reform has certain normal limits, which cannot be overpassed by human effort. It must obey the inevitable conditions of prog- ress. It is with communities as with individuals. Every man is the product of his antecedents. His character has been stamped up- on him by his ancestry, and by external influences, as to which he had little choice. In the sun and air of favoring conditions, and through the exercise of his will, a good deal may be done in mod- ifying native tendencies, but it is as impossible wholly to escape the logic of his personality, as it would be to run away from his own shadow. It is equally impossible for society to cut the thread of history from behind it, and bound to some ideal height of per- fection and blessedness by a single leap. Reform mistakes its mission when it attempts any such folly. Not absolutely, but in a very large sense, progress must be a growth. It demands time, patience, and the helping hand of friendly circumstances. The temperance movement involves the general uplifting of society itself, and there is no short cut or royal road to its accomplishment. Reforms would be unnecessary if humanity had reached its possi- ble maximum of enlightenment; but that millennial day is rather too far off to concern the present generation. We must deal with humanity as we find it, ready made to our hands. Reformers themselves are not angels, or even perfect men, and the raw mate- rial with which they are obliged to deal makes their work exceed- ingly difficult.
The truth of this was painfully realized by the pioneers of your State, and by the leaders of the anti-slavery cause every- where. Their enterprise appealed to all that is best and noblest in enlightened humanity, and arrayed against them all the forces of incorrigible ignorance and barbarism. While they were compelled to make themselves of no reputation, they were cheered by no
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hope of reward, or of immediate success. Forsaking all the prizes of life which worldly prudence or ambition could covet, they took up the heaviest cross yet fashioned by this century as the test of real character and heroism. They never under-estimated the diffi- culties of their task. They were no fanatics, or dreamers, respect- ing the future. They did not suppose that the new heavens and the new earth for which they toiled, would ever salute their vision. They saw the world about them lying in darkness, which antece- dent causes had produced, and without foolishly quarreling with unmanageable facts, they soberly and resolutely dedicated them- selves to the work of doing their part in righting the wrongs of society. They could at least oil the machinery of progress, and smooth its pathway, instead of handing it over to the unpitying logic of events, and the ugly friction which is always threatened by a cowardly and stupid conservatism.
In the second place, while the progress of reform has its essen- tial limitations, we are taught the supreme value of individual effort Society is not a growth, in the sense in which we speak of the growth of a plant, or an animal, which proceeds in a certain predetermined order. It is largely molded by efforts voluntarily put forth for the purpose, and so far it is a manufacture, as well as a growth. The notion that progress is to be wrought out by grad- ual development, and that all forms are to be superseded by social evolution, is as indefensible as it is demoralizing. This theory takes the poetry out of life, and reduces humanity itself to a machine. It strikes a deadly blow at personal responsibility, and belittles human character, which is above all price. It practically confounds the distinction between right and wrong. It threatens to dethrone conscience, and substitute development for duty. By committing all social questions to the working of inevitable laws, it dishonors the heroes and prophets of every age, through whose labors and sacrifices our present civilization has been made possible. If social progress has been evolved, it has also quite as certainly been propagated. It is not simply the product of law, but the fruit of human toil and sacrifice, purposely embraced for the im- provement and regeneration of the race. We have already seen how the wrath of man has been made to serve the truth, and how beautifully the sincere strivings of faithful souls are supplemented by the blindness of their foes. The history of the anti-Slavery movement is the history of great moral leaders, without whose unquenchable zeal and perfect self-renunciation, the Republic would have drifted to destruction. Their devotion to a great and holy cause was a fascination, and has called forth the enduring admiration and perfect love of mankind. When the church and the State joined hands with slavery as the new trinity of the nation's faith, they believed in God, in justice, and in the resistless might of the truth. They broke in pieces the great political and ecclesi- astical organization of the land, and their moral appeals and per- sistent labors were the rills that finally blended in the grand river
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which swept slavery from our soil. Who would discrown these martyrs to liberty and high priests of reform ? Who now doubts their power as grand factors in the emancipation of a race? Who questions the great lesson of history, that "all mankind at last inherit what is sown in the blood and tears of the few ?" For my- self, I am sure that God does not mock His faithful children, or suffer their labors to come to naught. Justice is certain. The souls of your hallowed dead are still "marching on," while his- tory will weave into the brightest pages of her story the memory of the men whose toils and struggles for the freedom of your great Commonwealth became the introduction and prelude to the free- dom of the nation.
HALE AND JULIAN.
At the conclusion of Mr. Julian's address,"Col. Anthony said : " I am requested to ask every man in this audience, who voted for Hale and Julian, to stand up and raise his right hand and stand until counted. I count 55. Now, all those who voted for Julian for Congress in 1852, will please do the same. I count IO."
ADDRESS BY MAJ. GEN. JOHN POPE.
In the midst of Mr. Julian's address the train bringing Gen. Pope arrived, and the battery fired a salute in his honor, during which the speech was suspended. When Gen. Pope entered the tabernacle three rousing cheers were given in his honor, and the audience were almost determined that he should address them then, so at the end of Mr. Julian's address Col. Anthony said : "While I was in the army in Mississippi, General Sheridan once placed a guard of eight men over a peach orchard, in order to keep the boys from stealing the peaches. The boys in my old regiment went down there and captured the guard, stole all the peaches, then re- leased the guard and put them in possession of the peach orchard. General Sheridan sent for me and reprimanded me; and that was the end of it. Yesterday General Pope was over at Leavenworth, and he could command; but to-day, the soldier, and man who has a heart full of sympathy for progress and every thing good, is here. We old settlers have got the power. Let us take the General prisoner, and let him feel how it is to have some one over him. Let us force him to come forward and acknowledge us, and thank us for thus honoring him. He is compelled to come."
General Pope said :
Ladies and Gentlemen :
I assure you I esteem it a great honor to have been invited to participate with this goodly company in the celebration of an occa- sion so full of interest. There are few if any present to-day, who
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THE KANSAS MEMORIAL.
came to Kansas at an earlier day than I did. I came as a soldier,
pure and simple. I tramped on foot and on horse back over the greater portion of Kansas in those early days. It was my mis- fortune to be absent from this State during the most eventful and interesting period of its history ; from 1854 to 1865. It is scarcely to be expected therefore that I have anything to tell you of the ear- ly struggle and of the final triumph; a history to which we have been listening and which I hope to continue to listen to during the day from the lips of the eloquent orators whom you have summoned here for this purpose. It was neither my wish nor my expectation to be called upon to deliver an address upon a subject with which you are much more familiar than I am. I shall rely upon the con- siderate kindness that prompted you to invite me here to allow me to sit by and look on. There is no man who has a warmer feeling for the welfare of this State than I have. The time is not far dis- tant, when Kansas will have a place in the first rank among this great sisterhood of States. Even now you all have a right to feel proud of the trials you suffered in the early days, to establish free institutions in this new State. I trust you will receive my excuse, and allow me to be like yourselves, a silent listener to the good speeches to be made here to-day. [Applause. ]
THE BARBACUE.
Gov. Robinson announced that the heads of the table at the grand barbacue would be occupied by Mr. Hale, Gen. Pope and Mr. Forney.
ADDRESS BY ROBERT MORROW.
COL. ANTHONY : It becomes my duty to introduce to you one who is an honest man, one who is governed by principle. It has been said that but few men in Kansas are actuated from that motive. I believe that the majority act from principle. I believe that Governor Robinson could no more be untrue to human liberty than he could be false to himself, or his own country, and I believe that the gentleman that I now introduce to you is equally true to principle. It is only those men who have hearts and who are true to us, that we should really love to honor. It gives me great pride and pleasure to introduce to you the honorable Robert Morrow.
Mr. Morrow said :
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens :
I was put on the programme not for the purpose of making a speech, but only to introduce an old friend and acquaintance, Ex- Senator Howe of Wisconsin.
Some thirty odd years ago, we were pioneers together in the then Territory of Wisconsin. I aided by my vote and in my humble way to place this gentleman on the bench of that State. He was
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afterward chosen to represent that State in the Senate of the Uni- ted States three consecutive terms. Commencing his term of ser- vice as senator, with that of the administration of Abraham Lin- coln. It was at that critical period in the history of our country, that he was called to the councils of the Nation, when the fate of this great Republic was so uncertain. He aided in molding much of the legislation during the war, as well as that of reconstruction after the close. No taint of corruption, or breath of slander at- tached to his name.
While serving as a senator on a salary of five or six thousand dollars a year, he did not become a millionaire; while serving as a senator he did not become the silent partner of jobbers of bank syndicates, or credit mobilier. When Oliver Ames pulled out his old memorandum book, that destroyed the reputation of so many public men, he did not fear the same. He served his State and his country faithfully and honestly. I need not tell you what pleasure it would have given me to introduce so distinguished a man as Ex- Senator Howe of Wisconsin, but I most sincerely regret that he has been unable to attend. I have a letter from him which I will read, in which he sends his regrets and his good wishes to the old settlers of Kansas. Senator Howe was an anti-slavery man and always a warm friend of Kansas. We heard yesterday what the Pennsylva- nia Democracy had done toward making Kansas a free State, as well as what Massachusetts and the Emigrants' Aid Society had done. Last night Sam Wood claimed that the honor of making Kansas free belonged to Ohio. Well, Ohio is a modest State and her citizens do not like to hold office. I only wish we might have heard from one of the great north-western States in the person of Senator Howe. I will now read Senator Howe's letter:
LETTER FROM HON. TIMOTHY O. HOWE.
MR. MORROW read as follows :
GREEN BAY, Sept. 9, 1879.
My Dear Sir : After diligent search I can find no practical way by which I can join the Old Settlers of Kansas on the 15th inst., consistently with the duties devolved upon me here.
I regret this. It would give me great pleasure to aid in cele- brating the 25th anniversary of the founding of your State. The occasion will be replete with interest and I hope will not be without instruction.
It is somewhat startling to reflect that only twenty-five years ago, the fair domain of Kansas was flung down as the wager for which Freedom and Slavery were to do battle. Then Slavery had her principal magazine in Missouri, while Freedom had hers, in Massachusetts, and so the conditions of the conflict did not seem quite fair.
Perhaps the framers of your organic act spoke with literal truth when they declared in the 14th section, that it was the true intent
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of the act "not to legislate Slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom."
But whatever may have been the real intent of the act, there were few there who did not believe its actual effect would be to fasten Slavery upon Kansas. In this respect we have been happily disappointed.
I hope those who next week may be privileged to see, what free labor has done for Kansas in twenty-five years, will candidly admit that the architects who laid the foundations of your State builded better than they knew.
And when they reflect that the election of President Lincoln was mainly a popular protest against the organic act of Kansas, and that four years of bloody civil war was in turn only a sectional protest against the election of President Lincoln, I hope it will be conceded, that truly wise and prudent architects would have built quite as well, more intelligently and more cheaply.
Wishing for the future of your State all that prosperity which her brilliant past predicts, I am very truly, your ob't Servant.
T. O. HOWE.
TEN TIMES ONE ARE TEN.
Gov. ROBINSON :- Many of you have seen the little book called "Ten Times One Are Ten." I believe the Congregational Church over here has a club of young people named after this lit- tle book, "Ten Times One Are Ten." I suppose that one of those belonging, perhaps, to that club has sent up this little basket of flowers for the author of " Ten Times One Are Ten." Perhaps she will excuse me if I say her name is Katie L. Ridenour. The author will be here this afternoon, when this little basket will be presented to him.
ADDRESS BY HON. C. B. LINES.
Gov. ROBINSON :- You have all heard about the Beecher Ri- fles, and the Beecher Bibles. I have now the pleasure of intro- ducing to you one of the old settlers of Kansas, who will tell you all about the rifles and the Bibles, Hon. Charles B. Lines, of Wa- baunsee.
Mr. Lines said :
Mr. President :
We certainly ought to congratulate each other that we are here to-day, under such auspicious circumstances, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of what has already become the great State of Kansas-great in its area-in its vast resources, ag- ricultural, horticultural. mineral, pomological, climatical, etc. In the constantly and rapidly increasing multitudes of its people, from
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every clime and country of the earth, intelligent, progressive, mov- ing on with apparently a common purpose to develop our vast pos- sibilities into the great central State of the greatest nation on earth. In addition to the material resources of our State above re- ferred to, it is pertinent also to refer to its educational and relig- ious progress and advantages, its schools and colleges which so vastly exceed and excel any and all other States when at twice the age of our own, and its churches and Sabbath schools, which are sufficient for all our own necessities in the older settlements, and go with the tide of emigration over the prairies and toward the frontier, till from nearly every section over the entire country, where human habitations exist, the voice of the living preacher and the songs of salvation are heard, but leaving to the future his- torian the task of describing the capability and growth of Kansas, its resources, etc., in detail, our duty for the day will have been performed, if, in connection with the rejoicing, we note down for the benefit of our children and children's children, such facts and reminiscences as our experience may furnish, of the early settle- ment, trials and triumphs of our people. Although in conflict with good taste it is nevertheless a necessity in detailing facts, to refer often to the participation of the narrator in the scenes de- scribed. In the present case it will be obvious to all that such a necessity exists. My own home for 49 years was in New Haven, Conn. Of course there was born in me a hatred of despotism, and my first inspiration was from the atmosphere of freedom. To digress a moment, an old friend from one of the great and noble States of the West, who addressed you this morning, having in mind only the numerical force of his State, gave utterance to the belief that she contributed more toward saving Kansas to freedom than all New England, whereas the history of the past 250 years has demonstrated that the world is more indebted to New Eng- land for its intellectual and moral power, its inventive genius, its philanthropic and Christian activities, its self-sacrificing devotion to universal liberty, than to all America besides. So obvious is it that most of the streams of intellectual, inventive and moral prog- ress that are fertilizing the world take their rise largely in New England, that to leave her out or attempt to belittle her agency in the great work of saving Kansas to freedom, would be as absurd as to omit the sun in a treatise on the origin and power of light. But to return, it will be my purpose to give you a very brief sketch of the origin and work of the "Connecticut Kansas Colony." Prior and immediately subsequent to the passage of the "Nebraska Bill," so called, an intensely quickened interest was awakened among the liberty-loving people of New England, and at New Haven, in the autumn of 1855 a series of public "Anti-Nebraska" meetings were held, and crowded with our most intelligent and influential citi- zens. Addresses were made by a large number of our clergymen, lawyers and business men. The question in all these meetings was, what can we do to save Kansas to freedom? During the
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