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 4
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THE OLD BAND.
In making the announcement of music by the " old band " Governor Robinson said: In 1855 you remember we had the Wakarusa war. When we were preparing for the defense of Law- rence against the twelve hundred men who came from Missouri and had their camp near Franklin-a town below, on the Waka- rusa-people came here from all parts of the Territory to aid in our defense-from Topeka, from Leavenworth and all around. Those were serious times. News came in one day that George W. Clark, a pro-slavery man, living between Lawrence and Lecompton, had shot and killed Thomas W. Barber. I will not attempt to depict the consternation (perhaps that is not the word) but the stupefac- tion that came over our little band as we were gathered on that occasion. The funeral proper of Thomas Barber was held the next spring. His remains were removed from their temporary rest- ing place to a permanent one. At least one of the members of the band that played on that occasion (the first settler's band I
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believe that ever played in Kansas) is with us as a musician to-day and will remain during the meeting. The old band will now entertain you before the next address." [See chapter on Old Band by Joseph Savage .- ED. ]
ADDRESS BY HON. GEO. A. CRAWFORD.
Introducing Ex-Gov. Geo. A. Crawford, Gov. Robinson said : You all remember Gov. Walker, Gov. Stanton and others of their class who came among us. You all remember that when we con- cluded to vote for members of the Territorial Legislature in 1857, that although we knew well enough the free state men had a ma- jority over the pro-slavery party, we were all very much afraid we should be swindled out of the election. We would not consent to vote until Gov. Walker had given the most solemn pledges that we should have a fair election. The election was held. The voice of the people would have been beaten had it not been for the manly action of Gov. Walker in throwing out the bogus votes. You remember how many instrumentalities were employed about that time to defeat us, and you know the true friendship manifest- ed by Hon. Geo. A. Crawford and Govs. Walker and Stanton. Several of the friends who stood by us in those days are here and will address you. Hon. Geo. A. Crawford will now introduce to you one of those noble men.
Mr. Crawford came forward and spoke as follows :
FELLOW KANSANS-Your Committee honor me with this moment of your time to present your distinguished guest because he is my friend. To me it is an inestimable pleasure that he has been yours also. Long years-long years ago-he was presented by the only one capable, himself. Then, though distant, he found Kansas an altar of sacrifice, and grandly he made the immolation of himself in your cause.
Let me introduce him as a Pennsylvanian, that, in honoring him we may honor the State that bore him. Disparaging nothing of the efforts of others, and leaving to others to present differ- ent claims from different standpoints, I may say of Pennsylvania that in our crisis when the then slave Territory was being bound in the prison house of a slave constitution, she took that sober second thought of hers, reconstructed her forces, and came with her army of rescue, her Democratic Governor, Wm. F. Packer, at the head-antidote to Buchanan. In Congress her Democratic Congressmen, Hickman and Montgomery led the fray, and in his Democratic press Forney thundered.
Let us never forget, whilst gratitude is "the memory of the heart " that Pennsylvania gave us those Democratic Territorial
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THE KANSAS MEMORIAL.
Governors-Reeder, Geary, Walker-the first driven out in dis- guise, the second spat up, and the third permitted to resign, but each true to freedom and to Kansas as once the panting heart of the slave to the north star. Among these honored names let me not forget that old Pennsylvania Whig and Republican, late citizen of Lawrence, Judge George W. Smith, free state Governor elect under the Lecompton Constitution. In the " white winter of his age" he made it summer where he went, warming and being warmed by the hearts that love him, and the sunset of his life was a full orbed splendor, cloudless as his character and resplendent as his services.
In this galaxy of Pennsylvania names let me mention that one of " fortune's dimmer stars"-poor old Dutch Charley Torrey of " Alt Berks," only factotum in the office of Surveyor General Cal- houn, who muttered doubtful English, smoked his old pipe and was nobody, yet he was spy for freedom. When Maclean had sworn that the fraudulent returns of the election were in Missouri with Calhoun and then returned to hide them under the wood pile at midnight, the old factotum was watching from the window. He reported to another Pennsylvanian-Gen. Brindle-who re- ported to yet another-Col. Sam. Walker-and by morning Sheriff Walker and his Lawrence boys were digging in that wood pile and found the famous candle-box and the bogus returns, by which the free state men were to have been cheated of the election. [Here the candle-box, now in custody of the Historical Society, was handed the speaker who said, "yes, I recognize it as an old ac- quaintance."-ED. ]
So the Lecompton pro-slavery constitution thus exposed, would have had the Pennsylvanian-the free state Judge Smith at its head if it had been adopted by Congress.
Col. Forney and you his friends with him, say to old Penn- sylvania, mother of so many of us, home of my kindred, grave of my ancestors, that she need not blush for her record in Kansas.
We recognize in one guest a representative of that great city of the Declaration of Independence whose chart of freedom has been re-written with larger meaning in the blood of Kansas, a city endeared to us as the battlefield of our Centennial triumph. We may feebly repay in the person of her veteran editor some of that hospitality which in 1876 embraced the whole world and yet had ample room for the representatives of Kansas.
But not so much to the Pennsylvanian or the Philadelphian as to the man himself do we extend this grand ovation. It would be difficult to measure his services and sacrifices for Kansas.
Editor of the great daily of Philadelphia, The Pennsylvanian, his fame touched the bounds of the republic and he was elected Chief clerk of the House of Congress, and became editor of the Washington Union, organ of the then dominant National Democra- cy. Seeing what a fire-brand the slavery question had become, and how it endangered the Union, he sought and achieved that
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absorbing ambition of his life, the election of Mr. Buchanan, in the interests of pacification and on the basis of fair play to the " squatters." It was a memorable struggle, "Kansas and the Union " the watchword, and Pennsylvania the battle-ground. Col. Forney was chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee, and managed the campaign, and to him Mr. Buchanan owed his election.
Then, when Pennsylvania's president refused to sustain Gov. Walker in his efforts for fair elections in Kansas, and in his opposi- tion to the Lecompton Constitution because of its non-submission to a vote of the people, Col. Forney opened up the batteries of his great newspapers against Buchanan and against the Lecompton Constitution. He sacrificed his leadership in a triumphant party to help the weak and to defend the right.
It was a grand fight against an almost solid south and a solid administration. Douglas, in whose honor your county, here, is named-born leader-led the battle in the Senate against Buchanan and the Lecompton Constitution, whilst Seward, Sumner, Chase and other great Republican leaders dealt heavy blows. The great guns of Forney chimed in chorus. Yon sun never rose nor set on a grander victory for God and humanity.
Prior to his departure for Washington, I had visited Judge Douglas in Chicago to assure myself of his opposition to the Le- compton Constitution. The other day-Sabbath day-standing by his Chicago monument, there came the memory of a ride from Washington to Philadelphia. He was fresh from his victory-still red-hot with the rage and rapture of the fight. He kept me on the platform of the cars all the way, whilst he smoked and cooled off. Arrived in Philadelphia, his first exclamation was, " Let us go and see Forney."
That sentiment is your own and has largely brought you here. You, too, are impatient to " see Forney," and I am proud to pre- sent him.
ADDRESS OF COL. JOHN W. FORNEY.
Col. John W. Forney, of Philadelphia, then spoke as follows : Ladies and Gentlemen, Gov. Robinson, Gov. St. John, and my Friends :
Although I have printed what I intended to say, I am tempt- ed, before I read the cold pages that will to morrow be read by perhaps a million people, to say something else. I am recalled by this extraordinary reception, and by this flattering introduction, to remember what Queen Catherine said when the news came to her of the death of Cardinal Woolsey. There sat by her side one of her servants, who, appalled by the bitterness of her invections against the wily churchman, said to her, "My good lady, now let me speak the better part of Woolsey," and so when she said of the great man that he had some good qualities, the servant cap-
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tured her mistress so that when she finished she said, " Dear, honest Libby, when I die let me have no better chronicler than you." And so I say to you of our friend Crawford. I want no better chronicler of fame than what he says for Pennsylvania, for me and of our native Commonwealth Here we meet in a common congress, and here all the States meet around a common fireside of peace and freedom and fraternity. We have met here to talk over the scenes of twenty-five years ago, the mere mention of which always fills my heart with pride, and I am right glad that dear old Pennsylvania found such an orator in Gov. Crawford.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, while I read to you what I have printed, I will try to articulate it so as to be heard by all the persons comprising this vast assembly. I have entitled my paper the
LESSON OF KANSAS.
If I had been commanded to choose one spot on the globe upon which to illustrate human development under the influence of absolute liberty, I could have chosen no part of God's footstool so interesting as Kansas; and if I had also been ordered to fix the time for the experiment, I would have found no period like the present. And what is best of all, you yourselves have fixed both the place and the time. I come by your invitation. I feel I am welcome, not only because it is pleasant to myself, but chiefly be- cause it is agreeable to you. We wanted to see each other, and I know how I have longed to look into your eyes, and to take you all by the hand. It is twenty-five years since we began to be fa- miliar with our names; twenty-five years since many now present first saw the light; twenty-five years during which we have seen thousands laid away in the silent chambers of the dead. This is not a long time, friends ; not much longer since that graceful tree began to grow ; not much longer since that lovely woman began to be called mother; not much longer since that handsome man began to feel himself a part of this magical Commonwealth. But what a cycle of war and wonder has it been! How much has been crowded into a little! You remember the Arabian legend where the fisherman drew to the shore in his net a small vessel, which, when opened spread into a massive figure of light and glory that covered all the land. That was like Kansas. And Kansas was only yesterday. Yesterday an infant, to-day a giant, to-morrow who can tell? Who could have foreshadowed this colossus twen- ty-five years ago, in 1854, when Lawrence was a city of tents, and kind Dr. Robinson gave shelter to the wandering stranger ?
And now as distant commonwealths and empires are reading the marvelous answer to this question, you would hardly tolerate me if I attempted to repeat the story you have written yourselves, or to take or carry you through a world of your own creation. You do not visit St. Peter's to tell the Romans of its centuried glories; nor Westminster Abbey to preach to the English of that ancient cathedral; nor Shakespeare's home to recite on the spot
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the wondrous romance of an inspired life. You go there as I come here, my friends, that you may draw from the text of a great fact some thoughtful and resounding lessons for others.
In 1854 the Whig party was dead, killed by the Know-Noth- ings as the Anti-Masons had suicided the Anti-Jackson party in 1833-35 In 1854 there was no Republican party. In 1852, two years before, the Democrats had carried the whole country, and as a presage to the dissolution of all antagonism to that great organ- ization, its giant foes, Henry Clay, died in Washington, June 29th, and Daniel Webster, at Marshfield, Massachusetts, October 23d, in the same year. In November following, the most illustrious sol- dier of the republic, Winfield Scott, running as the Whig candi- date for the presidency, received but 42 electoral votes out of a college of 296, and was defeated by one of his bravest subordinate generals, my own personal friend, Frank Pierce, who got 254 electors. All the West was Democratic; all New England but Massachusetts and Vermont; all the Middle States, including Ohio and New York; and every southern State but Kentucky and Ten- nessee. Both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court of the United States, the army and the navy, the press, the social aris- tocracy, and, in a large degree, the church, were dependants, trib- utaries, echoes, and defenders of slavery and the Democratic party.
In two years from that time the Kansas-Nebraska bill became the law. From that hour the fate of slavery was sealed. A party of that revolution, and a friend of the much derided popular sovereignty doctrine, I claim to speak for those who resolved at all hazards that there should be a true, and not a false sovereignty. They were not holiday soldiers. They voted for the Kansas and Nebraska bill, meaning no pledge to a glittering generality, but to a sound religion. Others understood it differently ; the ultra slave holders, as a snare and a delusion, believing all Democrats would finally come to the heresy that slavery could be carried anywhere under the Constitution, and the ultra abolitionists that it was Con- gress, and not the people, that had the ultimate decision of the greatest question nearest the people.
I am not here to-day to revive old issues, but I claim that it was the doctrine of a righteous popular sovereignty that gave lib- erty to Kansas and Nebraska; and that the Democrats who fol- lowed Douglas, and fought Buchanan, who gave up office, party, social position, and even life itself, rather than yield their faith, deserve to be remembered with special honor on this silver wed- ding of the Republic of Kansas.
We must not forget that the Northwest was ripe for revolt against slavery long before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. There was hardly a Democrat in the organized States of the great empire between the Ohio and the Lakes, and from the Upper Mississippi to St. Louis, that had not been shaken by the conflicts over the Wilmot Proviso and the admission of California. Great
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thoughts had been planted in the minds of your earlier statesmen by two great hands over three-quarters of a century before; and they grew and brightened in your Bentons, your Casses, your Dodges, your Douglases, your Wentworths, your Trumbulls, and other Democrats of the generation that began with the adminis- tration of John Quincy Adams.
And when the presidential election of 1856 came to be de- cided, the cause of freedom in the Northwest had got too strong for falsehood. Already the Northwest, the bulwark of the Democracy for many years, was getting weaker and weaker in its allegiance to slavery ; and nothing saved a part of it to the Democratic candi- date for president that year but a voluntary and efficient pledge tu the Douglas doctrine in the Kansas and Nebraska bill. An old statesman had been nominated for that high office by the Democracy, and a very young man by the just organized Republicans against him ; d noth- ing prevented the success of the latter but the broadest assertion of the right of the people of these twin Territories to de- cide the question of slavery for themselves In my relations to that event I can only say what I have said a thousand times be- fore, that I had been so solemnly impressed by events under the administration of Franklin Pierce, and by my long experience in Washington, and a full knowledge of the deep conspiracy of the slavery chiefs to force their peculiar institution upon our public domain, that if James Buchanan had not convinced me of his sincerity on this great issue, I should have cordially sup- ported General Fremont for the presidency. No man knew this so well as Mr. Buchanan himself, and if he had not authorized me to pledge him to you-if I had not daily, hourly, by word and deed, declared that his administration would not obstruct the course of a free ballot in this Territory, we could no more have carried Pennsylvania for him, to use an old simile, than I could storm Gibraltar with a pocket pistol, or sail through the air in a gos- samer balloon! And when in the year following I found that he was preparing to break this pledge, I boldly denounced that be- trayal, and together with thousands of other Democrats, took the case before the people, and in 1858 saw a verdict in favor of Kan- sas so overwhelming, that, from that day, with two immaterial ex- ceptions, Pennsylvania has never voted the Democratic ticket. A single fact will show how, in that glorious era, an unbought people turned upon public servants who had violated written and public faith. In 1856 Buchanan's majority in Pennsylvania was 607; in 1858 the Democrats were beaten by 26,987; and the dele- gation in Congress was changed from twelve Democratic and thirteen opposition in 1857, to three Democratic and twenty-two Republican and anti-Lecompton.
But I dare not open the volume to which this tempting chap- ter invites me; and yet here I stand in Lawrence, Kansas, named after a distinguished citizen of Massachusetts, with my old friends,
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THE KANSAS MEMORIAL.
Eli Thayer and George W. Julian, who began the great work of organization and victory twenty-five years ago, and not only in Lawrence, but in Douglas county, which brings back the name to which I have just directed your attention. And I find it impossi- ble to restrain the other thoughts that come rushing to my lips in such a presence; backed by such a past, and beckoned by such a future. Indeed, I seem to stand among many eloquent recol- lections and examples. The figures of the heroic dead; the faces of the heroic living, the moral heroism and physical courage of that tremendous personality, John Brown, and his compatriots; the earlier martyrdom of Elijah P. Lovejoy, whose great brother I knew so well, and whose fearless arraignment of the South for the murder of Elijah I heard on the floor of Congress; the sou- venirs of James H. Lane, Samuel C. Pomeroy, Richard Realf, Amos A. Lawrence, Joshua R. Giddings, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, David C. Broderick, John Hickman, Anson Burlingame, and last, not least, Abraham Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton, Salmon P. Chase, William H. Seward; these reappear to me to-day, not only because I knew them all, some of them most closely, but be- cause they were your champions, and some of them died in fight- ing for your cause. The tragedy of August, 1863, the Quantrill Massacre, was a new consecration of liberty, another trial in the great crucible of destiny.
But Lawrence has other memories. To me as a Pennsylva- nian it is singularly and sadly interesting. Indeed the history of this region, Territorial and State, is redolent of my native Com- monwealth.
Pennsylvania not only sent you the Delaware Indians, but three early territorial governors, Reeder, Geary, and Walker. They were all Democrats, high in the councils of their party, iden- tified with the pro-slavery influence. Reeder at the head of the bar in his own district, Geary a gallant soldier in the Mexican war, and afterward first mayor of the city of San Francisco, and Walker, who removed to Mississippi in his youth, which he after- ward represented in the Senate of the United States and in the Cabinet of President Polk, and always as the mouthpiece and apostle of extreme southern ideas. A native of the same State, I shared their confidence during many years. The Kansas-Nebraska bill became a law May 30th, 1854, and a few days after, the late Asa Packer, also of Pennsylvania, and myself, called on President Pierce, and recommended Andrew H. Reeder for the appoint- ment of Governor of Kansas, not believing at the time that he would accept. His character was so high, and his ability so dis- tinguished, and his integrity so marked, that we felt, if he would accept, this promising Territory would secure a superb executive, and the true principle of the organic law a congenial interpreter and advocate. To our surprise and delight the President respond- ed to our appeal, and Reeder, to our equal surprise, accepted the place. He was a lawyer of large means and great practice; and
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he left a home of elegance and refinement to come out to this then distant domain ; and when he reached here he was accom- panied and followed by a large constituency. My own heart went with my devoted friend. I knew his courage and his honesty ; I placed high hopes upon his rare administrative and executive powers; and I waited for his report as I watched his career in the still unorganized Territory of which he was the first executive.
This is what he said to the people at his home in Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1854, when he received his appointment. It shows his devotion to the great Democratic party, and his broad and far seeing nationality :
The event which has brought you here, my friends, is well calculated to suggest most interesting reflections upon the wonderful progress of our country ; and you will excuse me for relating an appropriate incident that occurs to my memory. In 1848, when California was almost an unknown region, and without even a territorial government, I was a delegate in the National Convention of the political party to which I belong, and I recol- lect that a member in the course of his remarks intimated that when that body should assemble again, a delegate would claim his seat there from the State of California. It seemed a wild and extravagant prediction, entirely out of the bounds of probability, and yet it touched a responsive chord in the sense of manifest destiny and pride of country that dwells in the bosom of every American ; and the building shook from the floor to the roof with the shout that hailed it. In 1852 I was again a member of the Convention, and the wild prediction was realized. I found delegates from the State of Cali- fornia, who had come from the very shores of the Pacific Ocean, casting their votes like old denizens of the place.
Now we find that two embryo States are about to be organized beyond the Missouri, although within six days' travel of our Atlantic coast. We pass to them over 1,500 miles of a country teeming with wealth, and commerce, and business, and swarming with population whilst the very starting point of the journey was, but a century ago, itself a frontier, protected by the bullet and the rifle from the savages who prowled around it. Some idea may be formed, too, of the resistless force of the populous wave which has spread like an inundation over this vast continent, from the interesting fact that in this very Territory of Kansas to which my friend has alluded, we find like an uprooted tree carried by the flood, the fragment of the tribe of the Del- awares, on whose proper native soil we now stand, and whose fathers waged deadly war upon ours; here in our valleys, where the scream of the loco- motive seems to chase the very echoes of the Indian's yell.
But this is not a theme to be discussed in these desultory remarks. It is a subject for thoughts to fill a world, to amaze future generations, and to convert history into romance. We can not discuss it now, and I will close by thanking you once more for this congratulatory call, and by the earnest assurance that whatever may be the result of senatorial action, or of my own action upon the honor which the President has conferred up me, these expressions of confidence and approbation, which it has evoked from my fellow-citizens and friends, will ever be cherished in my memory, are giving to the appointment its greatest value; and whether now or hereafter, in whatever circumstances I may be placed, present or absent, on the banks of the Delaware or at the base of the Rocky Mountains, my heart will al- ways kindle with affection and regard for the kind and faithful friends who have cheered my path by their confidence and devotion. I give you as a sentiment-
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