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 9
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34
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THE KANSAS MEMORIAL.
1855, to that memorable day and night of September 15th, A D. 1856, which closed the war, when the gathering hosts of slavery, led on by Atchison, Stringfellow, Reed and a score of lesser cap- tains, swarmed with their legions around the little village of Frank- lin, lowering like the pall of Egyptian midnight over that devoted city of the plain, vowing death and destruction to that Spartan band, who had gathered within its sacred and hallowed precincts, resolved to save the last altar of freedom and their household penates, or perish in their defense. All our would-be leaders (save Gen. Lane, who was at Hickory Point with the Topeka boys), had long ere this, fled to places of safety in the far east. Of the less than three hundred brave men and devoted women who stood in that breach, to guard the portals of our temple of liberty, over fifty true and tried men were from Leavenworth city and county, ready to do and die, if need be. But the great and good God who watches over the destinies of nations and protects His people, sent His guardian angels in the persons of Col. Philip St. George Cook and the U. S. troops under his command, tosave us in the hour of our great peril. When the morning sun arose over the eastern hills a wall of mailed warriors stood between the doomed city and the hosts of Sennacharib, and at his word of command they melted away like the dew upon the mountain-top before the golden orb of day.
MR. PRESIDENT, my heart grew weary and my soul was sick within me, as I listened with close attention to all of the speeches delivered from this platform to-day and this evening. With scarcely a single exception each speaker seemed to vie with the other in lauding to the skies the memory and acts of our first Governor, Andrew H. Reeder, and apparently with marked and studious effort ignored the memory and mighty deeds of that grand old hero, the "Grim Chieftain," as we delighted to call him. The sound of his clarion voice alone was worth a hundred Reeders. He did more to make Kansas a free State, than all the pigmies who have lived and died in her borders, and who have sought to blacken and sully his good name. Though dead, his memory still lives and will continue to burn with perennial brightness in the hearts of the friends of freedom everywhere; his deeds will be emblazoned on the scrolls of fame in characters of living light, among the names that were not born to die. The history of those days, when written, will award him merited justice, and Kansas, his first love, the idol of his heart, will ere long honor herself, by erecting a shaft of Parian marble to his memory, upon which shall be engraved in letters of purest gold, with a pen of iron and a point of a diamond, his many gallant and noble deeds of patriotic devotion to that fair land which to-day holds his sacred ashes.
I come not here to-night to pronounce a eulogy upon General Lane; he needs none at my hands, were I equal to the task. Al- though not here in person, I feel that his pure and angelic spirit is hovering over us, at this very hour, and bidding us God-speed in this good work of celebrating our natal day of freedom. He
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might ask, as I now inquire, why have those who have already spoken, neglected, forgotten, or ignored those noble and gallant soldiers, Abbott, Shore, McWhinney, Cutler, Cracklin, Blanton, Mitchell, Bickerton, Ritchie, Whipple, Brigden, Harvey, Williams, Walker, Leonhart, and a host of others, good and tried men, whose names should be cherished by a brave people. These heroes, ever true to freedom, drew their trusty blades, and, rallying their faith- ful clans, led them on to victory or death. These were the true men of Kansas, who deserted not their posts in the hour of danger, or turned their backs to the storm of iron rain and leaden hail, but faced it, daring to brave the dangers of death, if need be, that we might live and be free. Heroes who scorned the thought to fight and run away, that perchance they might live, to boast hereafter of their brave deeds done in former days, when poor Kansas, like her great Grecian prototype, bled at every pore.
MR. PRESIDENT, I have no disposition to speak a harsh word of any of the old settlers of Kansas, much less of those who bore an honorable part with us in its early struggles. But why, may I ask, is the necessity for all this glorification over Governor Reeder ? He may have been, and doubtless was, a most excellent and wor- thy gentleman, a sound Democrat and a friend of President Bu- chanan. I must confess I never had a very exalted opinion of him, or his career as Governor of Kansas Territory. He landed at Fort Leavenworth the 7th day of October, 1854, and was met with great cordiality and kindness by the people of that vicinity. By the terms of the " Kansas-Nebraska Act," the Governor had the sole power to locate the temporary seat of government of the Territory. He had not been here a week before he commenced negotiations with the Town Company of Leavenworth, to secure shares in that town, upon the express condition that he would locate the Temporary Capital at that place. Your humble speaker was the Secretary of that Town Company and knows whereof he speaks. We gave him five shares (sixty lots) in the original town of three hundred and twenty acres for a mere nominal price, and he gave us his word of honor that he would place the Temporary Seat of Government of the Territory there. How well he kept his word let the history of the town of Pawnee show, located a few months after, on the military reservation of Fort Riley, by himself and his friends, one hundred and fifty miles west of civilization. So unblushing a fraud was this act that even the " Bogus Legislature" of 1855 could not endorse it, and what they could not sanction would make an honest man leave his country. This model Governor shortly after left his own loved Kansas on a flat-boat, and came back no more to let the light of his benign countenance shine upon us, till he made a sickly effort to be elected to Congress, but ignominiously failed, more on account of his own cowardice than from the want of friends. The free state men of Kansas were made of sterner stuff than to tolerate effeminacy in their would-be leader. He afterward sought to con- test the election through the agency of the " Investigating Commit-
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tee of Congress," who came here to take testimony in the summer of 1856. He employed attorneys to manage his case before the committee, who traveled all over the Territory to see the witnesses and prepare his case. One of those attorneys was arrested at Leav- enworth by a mob, in the presence of one of the members of the commission, and thrown into prison to prevent his further examina- tion of the witnesses. Reeder failing to secure his seat in Congress, declined and refused to pay those attorneys a single cent for their services, although in some instances they had spent hundreds of dol- lars and weeks of time, and suffered ignominy almost beyond endur- ance to aid him. Such was the experience of some of us with the first Governor of Kansas.
Mr. President and Friends, allow me one word further, and I will not weary your patience longer. If I have said aught to wound the feelings of any one, in my desultory remarks, let the mantle of charity be thrown over them. I feel that it is good for us to be here to-night. It is well that we should meet together and renew our vows of fealty to our common country, re-kindle with a burning coal, snatched from the altar before the throne of God, the slumbering fires of liberty in our breasts, talk over with one another those old scenes and trials of other days, and baptize anew our hearts with the love of liberty. What spot in all this broad land is more sacred to freedom than this? Around the name of Lawrence cluster a thousand illustrious memories of the past. Was it not the Mecca of our salvation in the days that tried men's souls ? Let us ever respect and revere its almost holy name. 'Ere the cycle of time shall have revolved another quarter of a century, how few of us, of the " Old Guard " of 1854, 1855 and 1856, will meet on this sacred spot to celebrate those eventful days ! The places that now know us shall then know us no more forever. May we so live that our memory shall be kept green in the hearts of those who shall come after us. May our children's children rise up and call us blessed. May Kansas be better for our having lived in it and performed our duty well as became good and true citizens of this great Commonwealth.
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM HUTCHINSON.
MR. SPEER :- We have one of our oldest settlers here this evening, one who has passed through many a thrilling scene in the State. Many of you remember Wm. Hutchinson when he was an active worker for the cause of freedom, and you will now have the pleasure of listening to him.
Mr. Hutchinson's remarks were as follows:
Pioneers of Kansas :
The early settlement, organization and growth of a State, like the establishing of a national government, is an event that will be ever the most dear to those who shared in its hardships and
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endured its sacrifices. To the actors upon such a stage, the im- pressions are life-long. They know the best of all, the cost of its struggles and personal sacrifices, and the value of final triumph. Already, a generation has passed, since the conflict of moral forces, that fired the hearts of so many brave men and women to settle in the Territory of Kansas, became a thrilling chapter in our country's history. The deeds and achievements of the Kansas pioneer will soon pass from personal recollections, and day by day the imprint of those stern experiences will grow more dim, as the natural vision fades, as the actors are rapidly passing off the stage, until those who remain of you, to commemorate your own deeds of faith and devotion, must, however unwillingly, bear the title of " venerable men."
Humanity itself is not older than the sentiment that became the inspiration of the Kansas emigrant, as he bore the torch of liberty in one hand, and a Sharpe's rifle in the other. There was then a midnight summons to awake. There was then humanity's roll-call for volunteers to strike a blow for a great moral, as well as political victory. It was not from the administration then in pow- er, nor was it distinctively from the pulpit or the press. It was a spontaneous impulse in behalf of a portion of crushed humanity, and like the sullen murmur of the winds, it foretold the coming storm. There were no dazzling illuminations. It was more like the pensive twilight, or a sort of unheralded dawn, but it glimmer- ed from the prophetic West. There were songs and peans, writ- ten and sung, and our sweetest poets were invoked, to hasten forward the Kansas tide. One of the earliest responses was from the gifted New England poetess, Lucy Larcom. Like campaign songs in a political crisis, I well remember how her well known " Kansas prize song " thrilled the millions I have not yet quite forgotten all its prophetic lines. I was so anxious to refer to it here that I wrote to the authoress a few days ago for a copy as I could not find it in any of her published works. She answered that she too, had unfortunately forgotten the most of it, and had kept no copy. She could only give the first stanza from memory,
as follows.
" Yeomen strong, hither throng, Nature's honest men ! We will make the wilderness Bud and bloom again. Bring the sickle, speed the plow, Turn the ready soil ; Freedom is the noblest pay, For the true man's toil. Ho, brothers ! come brothers, Hasten all with me! We'll sing upon the Kansas plains, The song of Liberty."
Those of us who rallied under the inspirations of such songs, have now after the span of one generation met to mingle congratu-
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lations, and to thank the dispensation that has brought them to- gether under the blue canopy of a Kansas autumnal sky, illumed by the luminary that will shine evermore for all, with no more darkening clouds to hide it from the face of a brother man ; but, first and brightest, will it shine on for the millions then in bondage. The picture needs no retouch by the pencil or tongue of rhetoric, to portray the relationship between the courageous devotion to principle which upheld and led forward the little band of Kansas crusaders, with more than the zeal of the ten righteous men who saved their city, and the fruitions of this harvest hour, in which after a quarter of a century, not this State merely, but the whole nation is reaping of the seeds here sown, and rejoices in the name of a free and prosperous people. Manifest destiny will never per- mit the hands to be turned backward upon the dial of our national career. Our century clock has struck one, and its echoes have hardly ceased, when the quarter signal sounds for our adopted Commonwealth. '
There has been no period since our government was founded when a celebration of this character would have been more fitting, because the struggle between despotism and freedom is not ended, either among the citizens of our own country, or among the great family of nations. There is something in our political structure, that is yet inharmonious. The call of Abraham to a new land ; the leading of Israel through the Red Sea; the adventure of Colum- bus for a new world ; the migration of the Pilgrims in the little May Flower, through the perils of winter storm, were no more pointed by the finger of fate ; were no more a revelation of the Oninipotent Wisdom that tempers the dispensation of men and nations, than is the present exodus from the Southern States to these borders, of thous- ands of the colored race, in search of the promised land. It is doubly significant, therefore, that the State of Kansas should be- come the modern Palestine for the colored people, as they flee from the valley of the American Nile, because of the oppression of the modern Egyptians.
Having said this much publicly, I have by way of parenthesis my private opinion on this subject of colored emigration, wholly averse to their wholesale settlement in Kansas. I have not been able to see how either the South-the colored people-or Kansas are made better thereby. I hope they are not severally made worse, but it is safe to predict, that long before they have wander- ed forty years in the wilderness, their problem will be solved, in accordance with the appeals of our truest humanity, and the light of our highest civilization.
This is no occasion for recounting the multitude of important events that fill the everchanging panorama of the twenty-five years since the first emigrant party, numbering twenty-five, camped on Mount Oread, Aug. 1, 1854. Few indeed of that noble band are now living, and fewer still are now present to celebrate the event. Volumes might be written in adulation of the living, and in eulogy
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of the dead, who once formed that Spartan band ; but a word only must suffice. I will not even repeat the names of all who are already engraved upon the scroll of the honored Kansas dead.
The stream of the Kansas pioneers has been thickly studded with notable events that deserve a mere mention. Let us for a moment throw upon the canvas in panoramic order these floating islands : The long white-tented trains of thousands hurrying west- ward to Kansas; the Whitfield election; the bogus Legislature mostly from Missouri and its bogus laws; Sheriff alias Marshal Jones, and his reign of injustice; Cols. Buford and Titus and their desperadoes ; Marshals Donalson and Fain, who vie in their zeal to serve their slave masters; the murder of Barber and Phillips ; the Big Spring Convention; the Topeka Constitution ; the disper- sion of the Topeka Legislature by the regular army under Col. Sumner; the imprisonment of Robinson, Deitzler, Jenkins and Brown; the arrival of John Brown and his four sons at Lawrence ; the battles of Hickory Point, Black Jack and Osawatomie; the two battles of Franklin, and of Bull Creek under Gen. Lane; the Shannon or Wakarusa war; the march on Lecompton; the indict- ment of the Free State Hotel and two newspapers at Lawrence by Judge Lecompte; their destruction by a posse of twelve hun- dred Missourians led by Marshal Jones, in pursuance of an order for abatement as a nuisance, from said U. S. Judge; the killing of Doyles, Wilkinson and Sherman ; old John Brown and Henry Clay Pate; old preacher White and the fighting preacher Stuart; the Stubbs of Lawrence, the hardest worked and poorest paid soldiers in Kansas; the ladies who made the cartridges and bandages, ob- tained the ammunition, and bore important dispatches through the border ruffian lines; the outrages in Leavenworth; the de- fense of southern Kansas, in 1857-8, by John Brown, Captains Montgomery and Jennison; the Topeka boys as conductors on the underground railroad, and last but not least, the ladies of Law- rence one hundred strong, armed with axes and hatchets, march- ing to the doors of every rumseller in Lawrence, demanding an unconditional surrender, and spilling in the gutters every drop of liquor in the town. These, Mr. President, are a few of the inci- dents that distinguished early Kansas, from other States, and made strong the faith of her people
The first colonists, like all who came after them, took their lives in their hands and hazarded all. Some for freedom's cause, others for fame, others for fortune. Whatever their motives, they soon found themselves closely identified and knit into a sort of commune that is known in no other relation. Disaster, or struggles for existence, make near and lasting friendships. Who will ever forget their near neighbors in Kansas, in 1854-5 and '6 ? their companions in camp and garrison, or their allies when fugitives, during the reign of border ruffian terror? I well remember the appropriate phrase Gov. Reeder used when addressing the people of Lawrence in 1855, relative to his feelings toward them, when he
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THE KANSAS MEMORIAL.
said " he felt in his heart as if bound to them with hooks of steel." It is somewhat in acknowledgment of that sentiment, that I have traveled some 1, 500 miles to share with you the pleasures, and to mingle in the anniversary exercises of this hour. Although I have recently traveled but a few days in Kansas, I am more than grat- ified with what my eyes have beheld, and emotions are evoked in revisiting these once familiar scenes, that can find no expression in words. The reality has outrun the wildest fancy. Could you have looked out from Mt Oread twenty-five years ago through the glass of the future, and had your vision swept across all the broad plains and valleys of the State ; could you have painted all the thriving towns, the myriad of improvements that pertain to all the varied industries of city and country life, with all the rose hues that the veriest enthusiast can boast, you would have been happy indeed, to have equaled in your prospective, the reality that Kan- sas presents to-day in the number and enterprise of her population, the vastness of her agricultural resourses, the extent of her internal improvements, the high standard of her literary institutions, and in all the material and social elements of a rich and sovereign State composed of nearly or quite 1,000,000 people. I apply the term sovereign to all that relates to the material greatness of the State. While in supreme devotion to the very elements of constitutional government, Kansas is the most loyal of the loyal.
All paintings excel in value as they approach the reality in life. So will the events in our lives be classified as they severally impress upon our memories their foot-prints, so that when we be- hold them in reminiscence, they will vividly recall the light and shade of a past life. This 15th day of September, 1879 is a pin- nacle of grandeur, is therefore like the highest mountain peaks the view from which may well be compared to Tupper's proverbial description of-
" A volume in a word, an ocean in a tear, A seventh heaven in a glance, a whirlwind in a sigh, The lightning in a touch, a millennium in a moment."
But the imagery or conception of no poet is needed to fill all our hearts with pleasant memories, and to lead all to exclaim as we behold this marvel of a career in the history of a State-"it is well." The outstretching past is a mosaic of life's pleasure and gloom, and with a pioneer, the colors are well set The stream of time will never be without its floating islands. A few clouds in the heavens, rather adorn than mar the landscape picture. Kan- sas has been no elysian field. Its birth was during a storm at sea, when the ship of State was in imminent peril, and no daughter of Neptune ever had a severer struggle for existence or a more squally time in infancy. Refractory children often turn out to be the smartest in the end. This Kansas child was the first, I believe, in the national family, that has ever ventured to strike its foster parent during its minority. Insubordination is not to be drawn from the fifth commandment, but it is now the verdict of history,
6
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that in our Kansas conflict, the voice of the people was the voice of God, and the " wayward sister " is bidden " go in peace." No, the experience of our State will never be lost in either a national or an individual sense. The government has learned that an " ir- repressible conflict " is not easily repressed. The men and women of early Kansas have learned, that in laboring to lay deeper and broader the foundations of our free government, there is a reward more enduring than gold or silver.
To look back to those days of the log cabin, the turf house, and the thatched roof, it seems that the intervening events far more than fill the measure of an ordinary life-time. It is a long way from the Wakarusa camp-fires, to the Bismarck Tabernacle. I well remember a scene that bore some resemblance to this, many years ago in Washington, when Frederick Douglass, before an audience of a thousand people both black and white, well mixed, in one of the largest churches in the city began his two hours lec- ture by saying-" It is a long way from my master's corn-field to Dr. Sunderland's pulpit."
That, too, was a span of some twenty-five years. He then, as we now, could repeat-
" Oh ! fields still green and fresh in story, Old days of pride, old names of glory, Old marvels of the tongue and pen, Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of men," Will o'er us still their visions cast, Though one score years and five have passed.
May we all profit by these sweet memories that glide so un- bidden o'er the scenes that will in the near future abide only in the archives of our country's history. Then will follow upon the stage of this westward bound empire the teeming millions of com- ing generations, after our sands are run. They, too, will act their part, for a brief space, and then,-
" Darkly, as in a glass, Like a vain shadow they pass, Their ways they wind, And tend to an end, The goal of life, alas ! "
ADDRESS BY JUDGE BORTON.
Hon. L. W. Borton being introduced, spoke as follows : Ladies and Gentlemen :
I am not, in all respects, an old settler. But I came in Gov- ernor Medary's time, and was appointed a notary public for Arap- ahoe county, Kansas. That was at the time when the Kansas country extended to an indefinite distance to the westward, and all the Rocky Mountain country was included in Arapahoe county ; I went out to the mountains and my services were called into requisition as a notary public. I had to get up a seal and there were no seal engravers in the mountains; but there was a printer's
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office out there, and the printers helped me to bend some type metal around, and we stuck in some type, and I had a seal. That seal went with me wherever I went and sanctified deeds for mining property throughout Montana, Idaho, Utah and all the mountain region. Everybody, everywhere, in those days respected a seal under the authority of Kansas. I hail from away out on the fron- tier, in Cloud county, now. I have been living among the gopher hills and caves and dug-outs of the West for lo! these many years, killing rattlesnakes and lapping sorghum. But I thought I should have a finger in the Kansas salvation pie, and so I am here. And I rejoice from the bottom of my heart. With me it is not so much a question of how we used to feel, as of how we do feel now-and I feel good.
ADDRESS BY GEORGE W. HUTCHINSON.
Mr. G. W. Hutchinson, of Kansas City, was introduced. He said :
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :
I shall not detain you more than five minutes. I came here this evening to a love feast. I feel now something as the boy felt when he expressed himself at a camp-meeting. One little fellow had become converted and he gets up and says: "I feel good!" Another fellow, thinking he would not be outdone, said: "I feel bully!" And still another one, more enthusiastic than either, said : "I feel better than these fellows, I feel more than bully-d-n bully!" It is unnecessary for me to give anything in eulogy on the free state men of Kansas in its early days. I don't care anything about Pennsylvania-I am one of those fellows who came from Vermont ; there are but very few here to-day. Mr. William Hutch- inson used to be my partner in business with John H. Wilder. I remember well how I felt on a certain occasion when Jim Lane, as we used to call him, called the boys to him in front of my store -that Quantrill did not think was good enough to burn down; he got upon a box and said: " Boys, we are going out to fight these infernal scoundrels, and some of you may fall; if you do, you will fall in a righteous cause, and you will be carried by angels to Abraham's bosom. Boys, you are going to meet the enemy out there toward Bull creek, and I know you have to go and make this fight on green corn, for that is all you have to eat. The infernal Missourians have cut off our supplies, and it is they who have reduced you to this extremity; and, boys, you will make some of them bite the dust-and how different will be their portion! In hell they will lift up their eyes and call for you boys of the free state party of Kansas to bring them a drink of cold water. But you know your duty. Be good to Kansas, to your wives and to your sweethearts-and don't you bring the scoundrels nary a drop."
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