The Middle Period 1817-1858 Part 35

[Sidenote: The Kansas-Nebraska Act a stupendous fallacy.]

From the point of view of the present, we are compelled to regard the pa.s.sage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act as probably the greatest error which the Congress of the United States ever committed, and the arguments by which it was supported as among the most specious fallacies that have ever misled the minds of men. We must take this ground, unless we a.s.sume that we could not have solved the slavery problem in any other way than we did, and at any less cost. If we make this a.s.sumption, we may then consider this Act as providential, in {406} that it precipitated a crisis, which was bound to come, and which would only have been made more terrible by delay. While, however, we of the succeeding generation may explain the place of this Act in our history in this way, no considerations of this kind can justify the men who produced it, and placed it upon the statute-book.

That G.o.d should "make the wrath of man to praise him" does not excuse the wrath of man.

{407}

CHAPTER XX.

THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS

Eli Thayer and His Emigrant Aid Scheme--Reports in Regard to its Character and Purposes--The Missouri "Border Ruffian" of 1854--Nebraska for the North and Kansas for the South--General Atchison--Dr. Charles Robinson--The First Party of Emigrants--The "Platte County Self-defensive a.s.sociation"--The Founding of Lawrence--First Invasion of the Missourians--Governor A. H.

Reeder--The Second Invasion of the Missourians and the Election of the Delegate to Congress--The Indignation of the North--The Republican Party--The Third Invasion of the Missourians--Governor Reeder and the Territorial Elections--The Organization of the First Legislature of Kansas Territory--The Topeka Const.i.tution--The Removal of Governor Reeder; and His Election as Congressional Delegate--Establishment of the "Free-state" Government--The First Violence--The "Free-state"

Government and the Administration--The New Governor, Shannon, and the "Law and Order" Party--John Brown--The President's Proclamation--The Congressional Committee to the Territory--Application for Admission--The "Treason Indictments"--The Sacking of Lawrence--The Attack on Senator Sumner--The Pottawattomie Ma.s.sacres--The Battle at Black Jack--The Governor's Proclamation, Enforced by United States Soldiers--The Pa.s.sage of the Bill for the Admission of Kansas by the House--Dispersal of the "Free-state" Legislature by Colonel Sumner--The "Free-state" Directory--The Treaty of August 17th--The New Invasion from Missouri--General Smith's Att.i.tude Toward Invaders--The failure of "Popular Sovereignty" in the Territories--The New Governor Establishes Peace by Means of the Army of the United States--The Judicial Contribution to Kansas History.

The pa.s.sage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the purchase of nearly fifty thousand square miles of territory {408} from Mexico on the Southern boundary of New Mexico, and the issue of a manifesto from Ostend by the Ministers of the United States to Great Britain, France, and Spain, Messrs. Buchanan, Mason, and Soule, advising the acquisition of Cuba by the United States, together with the preparation of filibustering expeditions in the South for the execution of this and similar designs, all coming within the same year, 1854, seemed to be sufficient evidence of a fixed plan among the slaveholders for the extension of slavery and the increase of the number of slaveholding Commonwealths in the Union, and roused the people of the North to an appreciation of the impending danger and to extraordinary exertions for meeting the same and warding it off.

[Sidenote: Eli Thayer and his emigrant aid scheme.]

During the debate upon the Kansas-Nebraska bill in Congress, it does not seem to have been generally appreciated that it might, after all, turn out to be a Free-soil measure, and that the question whether it would be such or not in a specific case resolved itself into the problem of immigration. There lived, however, in the town of Worcester, Ma.s.s., a shrewd, far seeing business man, with whose shrewdness, however, ideality and patriotism were mingled in an uncommon degree, who immediately comprehended the situation from this point of view. This man was the now well known and universally honored Eli Thayer. Before the Kansas-Nebraska bill had become law, the idea in his mind had ripened into a wide-reaching plan. This plan was the organization of an emigrant aid society, with an immense capital, the purpose of which should be to foster emigration from the Northern Commonwealths and the European states into the Territories and the slaveholding Commonwealths of the Union, to the end that a Free-soil population should gain control of them, and prohibit or abolish slavery in them by their {409} own local acts. Mr. Thayer reasoned with himself that masters would be very timid about immigrating into a Territory with their slaves until the question should be determined whether slavery should have a legal existence in the Territory, while men without such impediments would go boldly forward and occupy the country, and vote the free status for the Territory; and again, that with only about one-fourth of the white population of the slaveholding Commonwealths pecuniarily interested in slavery, the immigration of a few thousand active anti-slavery men into these would finally turn the balance at the polls against the further existence of the inst.i.tution in the slaveholding Commonwealths themselves. The plan was so comprehensive that most of Mr. Thayer's friends thought it visionary, and he modified it, after having obtained his charter from the legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts, limiting it to the settlement of the Territories, and especially to that of Kansas Territory, by anti-slavery men. The organization, as thus finally effected, counted among its directors some of the purest, most patriotic, and most capable men of the country--Mr. A. A. Lawrence, Dr. Samuel Cabot, Mr.

John Lowell, Mr. Moses H. Grinnell, Rev. Edward E. Hale, Rev. Horace Bushnell, Professor Benjamin Silliman, and others of the like fame and fortune. The way in which they proposed to accomplish their purpose was by lessening the hards.h.i.+ps of the journey to the distant country, and the hards.h.i.+ps of life in the new country. They proposed to organize the emigrants into companies, procure transportation for them at the most favorable rates, build hotels, boarding-houses, mills, school-houses, churches--in a word to send capital in advance of population, in order to attract a good, law-abiding population by planting for them the advantages and conveniences of civilization in the new country. It was a {410} n.o.ble scheme, and none the less so because of the idea of making it pay ultimately as a business venture.

[Sidenote: Not an entirely new thing in American history.]

[Sidenote: Denunciations of it as an odious innovation.]

It cannot be said that it was a movement entirely new in American history, although this was charged by many of the politicians, both of the North and of the South. A number of the American colonies were originally planted under the auspices of corporations in the motherland, and others were formed by companies of immigrants for the purpose of securing more freedom than the Old World afforded. It is difficult to see how any objection could have been found to such an a.s.sociation, animated with such motives and purposes, and operating through such means, and yet it was charged, even by Northern men, with the responsibility for all the outrages perpetrated in Kansas during the stormy period of 1855-56. Even the President of the United States denounced it with great severity.

The view held by the President and his friends, both of the North and of the South, was that no aid should be allowed to be given, and no incentive offered, by any person or organization to any other person, to go to, and settle in, the common Territories of the Union, but that every emigrant should go entirely upon his own impulse, and be sustained entirely by his own means. This they regarded as the only natural and fair method for carrying into effect the principle of popular sovereignty in the Territories. Such a view was a perfect travesty of popular liberty, and manifests the tyranny which slavery was imposing upon the minds of freemen.

[Sidenote: The organization of Mr. Thayer's company.]

Mr. Thayer's company was never organized under its original charter, but under a charter obtained in 1855. During the period when the counter movements, to be described, were set on foot against it in Missouri, it had no corporate existence at all, but was a movement {411} conducted by three private gentlemen, Mr. Thayer, Mr. Lawrence, and Mr. J. M. S. Williams. Moreover, the establishments which they founded in Kansas were open to use by immigrants from any and every part of the Union, or of the world, without distinction. Such was the organization which was made the justification, or better the subterfuge, for excesses, which had never before been committed in the history of the building of the Commonwealths of the Union.

[Sidenote: Reports in regard to its character and purposes.]

During the early summer of 1854, exaggerated and false reports in regard to the character, purposes, and means of the proposed Emigrant Aid Company were circulated through Missouri and the entire South. It was said that an organization, chartered by the legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts, possessing an immense capital, was preparing to abolitionize Kansas by means of military colonies, recruited from the slums of the Eastern cities, and planted in Kansas with all the munitions of war, to be used not only when necessary for their own defence, but for keeping out immigrants from the South. The notorious B. F. Stringfellow, co-editor with one Kelly of the _Squatter Sovereign_, a paper published at Atchison, which professed to be the organ of the Was.h.i.+ngton Government in western Missouri, rang the changes upon these misrepresentations in his newspaper, and advised that the emigrants sent out by the Aid Society be met with the weapons of their choice, which he charged were those of violence.

[Sidenote: The Missouri "border ruffian" of 1854.]

[Sidenote: Nebraska for the North and Kansas for the South.]

The population of western Missouri was then such as to receive ready impression from such representations, and respond heartily to such counsel. This region was then the frontier between civilization and savagery, and into it had gathered a horde of desperate characters, {412} vulgar, fearless, brutal, without respect for civilization or reverence for G.o.d, usually inflamed with whiskey and stained with tobacco, gambling by day and jayhawking by night, always ready for any adventure which promised fun, blood, or booty. It is true that they had no special interest in slavery. They were simply the ready material out of which the slaveholders of Missouri might recruit their mercenaries for any villainous work which might be found necessary.

Such was the Missouri "border ruffian" of 1854. It must not be understood that western Missouri contained no other sort of people.

There were many generous-hearted, fair-minded, upright men there, among both the slaveholders and the non-slaveholders, who would no sooner have done wrong than suffered wrong. Most of them felt, however, that Kansas for the South and slavery, and Nebraska for the North, was the fair thing, the only fair thing, the thing understood and intended in the organization of the two Territories by one Act, and that any attempt on the part of the North to make Kansas a non-slaveholding Territory was a breach of faith, which ought to be resisted by the South, and especially by Missouri.

[Sidenote: General Atchison.]

General D. R. Atchison was such a man, and such was his view of the case. He was, at the time, the leading man of western Missouri, had represented Missouri in the Senate of the United States, and had been president _pro tem._ of the Senate. His opinion and his advice naturally determined the course which the people of western Missouri would pursue toward Kansas. In justice to his memory, however, it must be said that, while he was resolved to make Kansas a slaveholding Territory, and then a slaveholding Commonwealth, his presence and counsel exerted a moderating influence upon his fierce and reckless followers. He {413} left Was.h.i.+ngton soon after the pa.s.sage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and repaired to the scene of the coming conflict, for the purpose of organizing and conducting his forces.

[Sidenote: Dr. Charles Robinson.]

In June of 1854, Mr. Thayer, Mr. Lawrence, and Mr. Williams invited Dr. Charles Robinson, of Fitchburg, Ma.s.s., to meet them in council, in regard to the projects of the Emigrant Aid Company. Dr. Robinson was a prominent "forty-niner," and the leader of the California squatters in the war against the Sutter land claims. He was shrewd, calm, courageous, and full of expedients. These qualities, together with his large experience in organizing the forces of an embryonic Commonwealth, fitted him exactly for the work which Mr. Thayer and his colleagues were seeking to accomplish. Dr. Robinson was not an Abolitionist, and neither was Thayer, Lawrence, nor Williams. They were simply working to prevent the extension of slavery. They were all Whigs or Free-soil Democrats. They were thus by their moderation in principles and their conservatism in character admirably fitted to undertake the great work of making Kansas a free Commonwealth.

[Sidenote: Mr. C. H. Brans...o...b..]

The conference resulted in the sending of Dr. Robinson to the front to inspect the Territory of Kansas and make arrangements for settlements.

Accompanied by Mr. C. H. Brans...o...b.. a young lawyer, of Holyoke, Ma.s.s., he started for Kansas in the last days of June, 1854. They went by way of St. Louis and Kansas City. When they arrived in Missouri they found the excitement in reference to the reported doings of the Emigrant Aid Company already at a high pitch. They heard threats that no anti-slavery man would be allowed to settle in Kansas, and they heard of rewards offered for the head of Eli Thayer. They found also that a goodly number of pro-slavery Missourians had already {414} immigrated into the Territory, had held a popular convention or a.s.sembly at Salt Creek Valley, at which they had declared slavery to be an existing inst.i.tution in the Territory, and called upon its friends to aid in its firmer establishment and its wider extension.

[Sidenote: Dr. Robinson and Mr. Brans...o...b..in Kansas.]

From Kansas City Mr. Brans...o...b..proceeded alone up the Kansas River to Fort Riley, while Dr. Robinson went up the Missouri to Fort Leavenworth. The Doctor found surveyors laying off a town near Fort Leavenworth, despite the fact that the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton had not yet opened the country for purchase. He immediately returned to Kansas City, where he received a letter from Boston informing him that the first party of emigrants was on the eve of starting for Kansas, and instructing him to join them at St. Louis. Upon meeting them at St. Louis, a letter was handed him asking for his immediate presence in Boston. He wrote to Mr. Brans...o...b..to join the party at Kansas City and lead them to a settlement, while he himself hurried to Boston.

[Sidenote: The first party of emigrants.]

Mr. Brans...o...b..and a Colonel Blood, of Wisconsin, who had also been sent out by Mr. Lawrence, met the emigrants at Kansas City, and, after a good deal of deliberation, led them to the spot on the Kansas River, above the confluence of the Wakarusa with the Kansas, on which the town of Lawrence was afterward built.

[Sidenote: The "Platte County self-defensive a.s.sociation."]

A few days before this first party of emigrants had arrived from the East, a meeting of residents of Platte County in Missouri took place at Weston, and, under the lead of B. F. Stringfellow, an organization was formed, which called itself the "Platte County Self-defensive a.s.sociation," with the declared purpose of aiding in the removal of all persons from the soil of Kansas who might go there through {415} the aid or protection or guidance of emigrant aid societies in the North. Other such a.s.sociations were formed in other localities of western Missouri, and before the autumn of 1854 had hardly opened, from five to ten thousand persons, mostly desperate and reckless characters, were organized in the border counties of western Missouri, and ready to invade Kansas for the purpose of protecting the settlers in the Territory from Missouri and the South generally in the exclusive possession of the Territory.

[Sidenote: The founding of Lawrence.]

In September, the little party of about thirty men, who had pitched their tents upon the site of the present city of Lawrence, were joined by Dr. Robinson and S. C. Pomeroy, with the second party from the East, numbering some two hundred men. Upon the arrival of these the work of laying out and building the town was begun, and the place was named, in honor of the strong financial supporter of the Emigrant Aid enterprise, Lawrence.

[Sidenote: First invasion of the Missourians.]

When the first party arrived at the site they found it occupied by a single settler, named Stearns. Mr. Brans...o...b..immediately purchased Stearns' claim and improvements for the company. The Missourians had, however, rushed into the Territory, at the earliest moment after the pa.s.sage of the organic Act, and marked all the best lands as taken, leaving very little for bona fide settlers. As the result of this procedure, another claimant to the site of Lawrence soon appeared, one John Baldwin, and ordered the Yankees to decamp. Robinson proposed that each settler be left in possession until some authorized tribunal could pa.s.s upon the claims, and declared that his party would hold possession until removed by a legal act. Baldwin and his party rejected the proposition, and summoned their Missouri friends to a.s.sist them. Some came, {416} but not enough to overcome the Yankees.

The Yankees stood firm and the Missourians retired, declaring that they would come again, and breathing out threats of war and bloodshed upon their return. This was October 6th, 1854, and such was the first invasion of the Missourians.

[Sidenote: Governor A. H. Reeder.]

On the next day, the Governor of the Territory, the President's representative, the Hon. A. H. Reeder, of Pennsylvania, arrived at Fort Leavenworth, and began his regime in the Territory. From this time forward the history of the Territory is the resultant of four elemental forces in contact with each other--the general Government, the pro-slavery inhabitants, the anti-slavery inhabitants, and the Missourians.

Governor Reeder was a genial, intelligent, upright man, a good lawyer and a fine orator. He was a Union-loving Democrat, and a firm believer in the doctrine of home rule in the Territories. He declared that he would maintain peace and order in the Territory, and immediately set out on a tour of inspection through the Territory. After having finished this, he caused the Territory to be districted, and ordered the election of a delegate to Congress.

[Sidenote: The second invasion of the Missourians and the election of the delegate to Congress.]

There is little question that at the moment a majority of the bona fide settlers in the Territory were pro-slavery, and would have elected the delegate to Congress without any outside aid, but the pro-slavery men in Kansas and Missouri had become excited by the rumors of the vast schemes in the East for planting anti-slavery military colonies in the Territories, and also in the slaveholding Commonwealths, and were in no state of mind to think quietly and act calmly. They felt that they must make sure of all of the elements of government in {417} Kansas at the outset. The Missourians consequently committed the fatal and unnecessary blunder of going over into Kansas, to the number of some seventeen hundred or more, and voting for the pro-slavery candidate for Congress, J. W. Whitfield, who was thus elected by a large majority. Without the vote of the Missourians, Whitfield had still a substantial majority, but this travesty of the principle of home rule in the Territories, this pollution of republican principles at the very fountain-head, roused the North to the highest pitch of indignation.

[Sidenote: The indignation of the North.]

This election took place on November 29th, 1854. Had it occurred before the Congressional elections of that year, it would most probably have caused a much more rapid development of the Republican party than happened, and the election of the Republican candidate for the presidency two years later. As it was, the struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and its final pa.s.sage, had started the amalgamation of the Northern Whigs, the Free-soilers, and the Northern Democrats who opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, into the Republican party, and had, in the Congressional elections of 1854, been the chief cause in changing a Democratic majority of more than eighty in the House of Representatives into a minority by more than seventy.

[Sidenote: The Republican party.]