Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler Part 20

I sometimes said, "Get up a Sunday-school." But the old heads would get together and begin to debate where Cain got his wife, or who was the father of Melchisedec, or what was the thorn in the flesh that afflicted Paul; or they would dispute over the mode of baptism, or the operation of the Holy Spirit, and the boys, verifying the old adage that the devil always finds work for idle hands to do, and not appreciating this sort of thing, would shoot paper b.a.l.l.s at each other and at the old folks, and the girls would do naughty things and grieve their mothers, and the whole thing would go up in smoke.

Nothing seemed to be left to these brethren, only the protracted meeting and monthly preaching. To many of them "pastorating" was one of the sorceries which, with the mother of Babylon, had bewitched the world. These brethren seemed to have forgotten that Paul gives highest praise to that elder that not only rules well, but so addicts himself to the ministry of the Word and teaching as to require that he shall be sustained by the freewill offerings of the brethren. And when we sought an arrangement by which all should give--each man, according to his ability--we were alarmed with fearful prognostications of evil: "Beware! beware!" These brethren said, "You are making a veritable Popish bull, and he will gore you to death. Beware of missionary societies!" And when we turned to these men and besought them, "Tell us, dear brethren, how we shall obtain, without offense, the means to send help to those peris.h.i.+ng churches?" they were silent. This was not their function. Their vocation was to warn the people against Popish bulls and human missionary societies, for which there can not be found a thus saith the Lord, in express terms or by an approved precedent.

Meantime the churches in the older States had contributed one hundred thousand Disciples--this has sometimes been the estimated number--as emigrants to the great West, and these were scattered over its wide extended Territories, and it was to be shown how far this contribution, more precious than gold or silver or costliest gems, should be as water spilled on the ground, or as treasure cast into the bottom of the sea, or how far it should be as precious seed bearing fruit, some thirty fold, some sixty, and some one hundred fold.

When our first churches were organized in Kansas, Alexander Campbell had become old and well-stricken in years. I have already written of the missionary society that was created in 1864, and of the great convention held in Leavenworth City in 1865, in which we sought to perfect the workings of that society. Within the following year Mr.

Campbell died, and the always welcome _Millennial Harbinger_ ceased its monthly visits. The voice of Mr. C. had been a bugle blast calling men to heroic deeds, and his overshadowing influence had restrained from that tendency to division, for opinion's sake, which is our inheritance from our common Protestantism. But now a great emigration had come into Kansas from every part of the United States, and among these were many who looked with no favor on any innovation on the traditions of the fathers.

Mr. C. had said in his notable debate with the Rev. N. L. Rice, at Lexington, Ky.: "Men formerly of all persuasions, and of all denominations and prejudices, have been baptized on this good confession, and have united in one community. Among them are found those who had been Romanists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Restorationists, Quakers, Arians, Unitarians, etc., etc. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, but various opinions. All these persons, of so many and contradictory opinions, weekly meet around our Lord's table in hundreds of churches all over the land. Our bond of union is faith in the slain Messiah, in his death for our sins and his resurrection for our justification."

It is perfectly apparent that to harmonize these elements--often opposite and conflicting--thus brought together in one body was no easy task, but we had more than this to do; we were also to harmonize the fierce antagonisms growing out of our early contests, and then to make those brethren who had been heretofore averse to any combination whatever for religious work other than that of the single congregation--to make them feel the absolute necessity of united action and cooperation. This was indeed a task most difficult. And if the final good results have only slowly become apparent we are ent.i.tled to the judgment of charity.

It is admitted that every liberty that G.o.d has given to men may be abused, and has been abused. Marriage, religion, civil government, the rights of property, eating and drinking--in short, all liberty, of whatever kind, may be and has been abused. Still we must use our liberty, our very existence depends upon it. I have said it already, and I say again, if sixty millions of the American people can unite together to promote the public tranquillity, and all citizens enjoy more of personal liberty than they could enjoy if every county were an independent princ.i.p.ality, then our whole brotherhood, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, may be trusted to meet together, by their messengers or in person, to promote necessary Christian work without endangering our Christian liberties. If all the churches of Macedonia could unite together to send relief to the poor saints at Jerusalem, then, surely, the brethren everywhere may combine together to send relief to people peris.h.i.+ng for want of the word of life.

And so with much weariness and painfulness, and often with gratuitous and unrequited labor, with long rides by day and by night, and much exposure to heat and cold, to floods and storms, and to rough treatment by wicked men--in short, with that relentless and persistent toil which makes a man old before his time, and in which one man has carried on the work of two men year after year, I have labored on, never doubting, but always hoping for that good time coming, when churches will be just, and give honest pay to honest men who do honest work. My hope has been that if I can not live to profit by that better order of things, it will at least be better for the men that come after me.

The wife of a traveling evangelist will always be the proper object of pity and sympathy, if pity and sympathy are to be given. She is not cheered by the smiles of admiring crowds, nor does she feel the intoxication of flattering tongues. She dwells at home in the desolation and loneliness of a practical widowhood, and often ekes out a meager support from a stingy and starveling salary.

But somebody has to do this frontier and pioneer work; and might it not as well be me and my wife as any other man and his wife?

I have given a wide range to these "Recollections." In doing so, I have not followed the example of a cowardly, corrupted and compromising Christianity, but rather have imitated the robust and manly courage of the writers of the Old and New Testament, who tell of the deeds of good men and bad men, and who also use the same freedom in speaking of the evil deeds of wicked rulers that they use in speaking of the things that more immediately concern the spiritual and eternal interests of men.

I have made the briefest possible mention of the hapless condition our churches were in twenty years ago. The picture is neither flattering nor cheering; but right royally are the churches now redeeming themselves from the reproach they were under then. A pastor is now being settled in each church as fast as the pecuniary circ.u.mstances of the congregation will permit, and a grand enthusiasm in Sunday-school work, simplifying and ill.u.s.trating all its details, has made it possible for the weakest and poorest church to keep itself alive.

Wherever there are children with their young enthusiasm--and the children, like the poor, are always with us--and wherever there are parents ready to lead their children in the way in which they should go, there the permanency of a church is a.s.sured.

And now, with many misgivings as touching our immediate future, but with an abiding hope of triumph in the end, I bid the reader farewell.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

REMINISCENCES.

BY MRS. ROSETTA B. HASTINGS.

When father went back to Illinois, after he was rafted, we visited for several weeks among the churches where he had preached. Then we returned with him to Kansas, to visit my uncle, and to stay on our claim awhile, lest some person should jump it. We left our goods at Mt. Sterling, for father had promised to preach there that winter; but he told us that he had determined to move to Kansas sooner than he had first expected. We ferried the Missouri River near Jefferson City, and crossed the Kansas River in the woods, where Kansas City, Kansas, now stands. There was little of Kansas City then, except a few warehouses where freight was landed for Independence, which was the starting point of the Santa Fe trail.

Claims were being taken so rapidly that we remained to hold ours, while father returned to Illinois to preach. Two families in one room made it rather crowded, but we had a comfortable cabin. It contained a twelve-paned window--the only one in the settlement; cabins usually had no windows, or very small ones. Mr. May's folks had oiled paper over a narrow opening, which they closed with a board shutter.

I asked their little girl why they did not have a larger window, and she said the Indians might get in. But no Indians troubled us.

When father came home, April 30th, we all ran out to meet him. But mother's quick eye detected something wrong. "Why, I look all right, don't I?" he asked, smiling. When we reached the house she again questioned him, and he sat down, rolled up his sleeve, and showed us his arm, brown with tar, and fuzzy with cotton. Then he told us his story. They had not tarred his face, except a spot on his forehead, where, he said, they had stuck a bunch of cotton as large as his two fists. The road to Ocena, as our post-office was called, ran up the bluff now known to Atchison people as Sam Kingstown. On the top of that ridge he had stopped, and pulled off his coat of tar and cotton, put on his clothes and come home.

A few evenings after that, we heard that a company of South Carolinians had camped near Mr. May's house. Father said they had probably come after either himself or Caleb May. So he went up to Mr.

May's, to see what to do about it. After he left, uncle nailed shakes over the window, and cleaned up his old flint-lock musket, and loaded it carefully. Aunt moulded bullets, while mother got the ax and butcher knife, and then stuffed rags in the cracks, and brought in the half-bushel to turn over the light, so that they could not see where to shoot. Then we all took turns standing out in the darkness at the corner of the house, to keep watch, and listen for the sound of guns from Mr. May's. Father came home at eleven. He said the South Carolinians had asked permission to sleep in an empty cabin. He and Mr. May had followed them, and he had crept under the cabin floor and listened, and they had seemed to be sleeping soundly. So we all went to bed, but father slept with a revolver under his head, which Mr. May had insisted on lending him. The next morning the South Carolinians went quietly on their journey. We learned afterwards that they were on their way to lay out the town of Marysville, in Marshall County, and did not know that they were in the same neighborhood with Pardee Butler and Caleb May.

Father wrote an account of the Atchison mob, and took it to Lawrence to be published in the _Herald of Freedom._ The Congressional Committee summoned him to give his testimony. While there, the Lawrence people gave him a pistol, and insisted that he must carry it.

Father told us how the Carolinians had sworn to kill him, when they heard his testimony before the Committee; and as soon as he heard they were coming back, after the destruction of Lawrence, he knew that he was in danger. Brave as he might be, he saw no good in allowing himself to be butchered by those infuriated men, and resolved to keep out of their way. He kept his horse picketed on the gra.s.s near where he was at work, with saddle and bridle close by. One day as I was helping him drop sod corn on uncle's claim--two miles from our own--while uncle worked at his new cabin, we saw some hors.e.m.e.n coming over the hill.

"They are South Carolinians," said father, and saddling his horse, he rode in the opposite direction. In the afternoon he came back, saying that they had followed him all day, and he had circled here and there over the hills, and he had happened to meet two of them, one at a time, and recognized them as some of the men who had mobbed him; and they knew him too, but they had not dared to attack him single-handed.

He thought they were trying to get together, to attack him the next time they saw him.-He wanted uncle to change coats and hats with him, so that, if they saw him in the distance, they would not know him. He wore a black coat and hat, and uncle wore a white palmleaf hat, and had with him, in case of rain, an old-fas.h.i.+oned, light gray overcoat.

These father put on, and throwing a white cloth over his horse, rode away, telling us that he would not be at home that night, and that we need not look for him until we saw him. Day after day those men followed him, like hounds after a wolf. Through the day he rode here and there, spending the night with first one neighbor, then another.

One day, when uncle was working at his cabin, some South Carolinians rode up, and not seeing father, they searched the woods and ravine near by, and rode away. Father spent one night with Mr. Duncan, and had just gone out of sight in the morning, when the South. Carolinians rode up.

"Does Pardee Butler ride a bay horse?" they asked.

"No, sir," replied Mr. Duncan.

"We saw a man ride into the woods just now," said they, "that looked like Pardee Butler, but he was riding a bay horse."

"Pardee Butler never rides a bay horse." And so they went the other way. Father rode a spirited young "copper-bottom" horse, named Copper, that looked either bay or gray at a distance, as the light happened to s.h.i.+ne.

One day, father went to the post-office after his mail, and two young neighbors riding up, and seeing his horse hitched there, thought to have some fun. With loud shouts they galloped up, and hearing them, he stepped to the door, sprang on his horse, and dashed off over the hill, with them after him. But when they reached the top of the hill they found that he was standing on the ground behind his horse, with his pistol levelled at them across his saddle. They were glad to make themselves known, and own up to the joke.

Father slipped home a few minutes almost every day, to let us know that he was yet alive, and to see if we were safe. Every night we fastened up the house, expecting that before morning the Ruffians would try to burst in to search for father. Those were days of terrible anxiety for mother, for she thought every time father rode away that it was probably their last parting. Yet she was brave and quiet, and said little.

But father grew tired of being dogged, and told us that he was going to Lawrence. He was gone some time and we did not know where he was.

My little four year old brother George heard much talk of Border Ruffians, and he went around flouris.h.i.+ng a long thorn for a dagger, and boasting in childish accent: "Bad Border 'uffians s'an't get my pa.

I hit 'em in 'e eye wid my dagger." One day I was helping uncle drop corn, when George came running to us, much excited. "I foun' a Border 'uffian! I foun' a Border 'uffian! I hit 'em in 'e eye! I hit 'em in 'e eye!" We ran to see what he had found, and he ran ahead, picking up pebbles as he ran, "to fro at 'e bad Border 'uffian." What do you think he had found? A mud turtle! And that was his idea of a Border Ruffian. But he had a chance to see one. One day, while father was away, two men rode up to the house, whom we knew to be Border Ruffians by their red s.h.i.+rts and the revolvers in their belts. Mother told George and me to hide behind the door, while she talked to them. They asked for a drink of water, but while they waited for it, one of them rode almost into the door, and looked around the room--we had only one room--evidently looking for father. George became impatient, and kept whispering "Let me out, let me see a Border 'uffian. I _will see_ a Border 'uffian." And he pulled loose from me and peeped around the edge of the door.

When father came home he brought some type, and some half-printed papers, blackened with powder, that he had picked up in the sand on the river bank at Lawrence, where the Border Ruffians had thrown the _Herald of Freedom_ press and papers into the river. On the printed side of the papers was the article he had written about his last mob.,

Years afterwards I asked father what he was doing when he was gone from home in May and June, 1856. He replied: "I was organizing the Republican party in northern Kansas. I first went to Lawrence, and there the leaders insisted that I ought to visit various points in the northern part of the State, and organize the new party, and I did so."

Soon after father's return, in June, some of the neighbors announced a meeting for him at Bro. Elliott's, four miles from our house, of which he speaks in Chapter XVII. To that meeting the people came armed, for the report of the appointment had reached Atchison. They left their guns in their wagons, or set them in convenient corners, while they listened to the preaching; for they were determined to defend father in case of attack.

Mr. John Quiett, who is yet one of our neighbors, was one of three men who stood guard at the fence, watching for approaching enemies, while father preached. But no attack was made.

Uncle Milo had taken us to the meeting; and mother asked father to go home with us, and he replied, "Yes, I am going home once more."

Mother told him she would be glad to have him go with us, but she was afraid to have him stay all night.

"I am going to stay at home for one night, for I have some letters to write," was his reply.

Mother was very uneasy on the road home, for she said the Border Ruffians would be watching for us in the woods. But we reached home without molestation. Father sat up until after midnight, writing letters, and then went to bed and slept safely. The next day one of our neighbors told us that just at dark that evening she saw a band of men ride into the woods between her house and ours, but she was afraid to come over and tell us. Other neighbors saw them go out on Monday morning, and ride toward town. A few days afterwards, a neighbor, who stood "on both sides of the fence" in regard to politics, went to Atchison, and he told us that nine South Carolinians hid in our woods to take father that night, but they had seen his light burning so late that they were afraid, and went back and told that he had forty armed men, who stood guard all night, and they could not take him.

But father was not by any means the only one whom the Border Ruffians molested. They were continually riding around the country, frightening the people, and "pressing" horses--which was another name for stealing them. And the Free State man who made himself prominent was liable to be shot any time they could catch him. The Free State men kept their horses hidden in the brush, and often hid there themselves. Every time any of the neighbors saw several hors.e.m.e.n riding over the prairie, they thought it was the Border Ruffians.

One day Caleb May saw quite a company of men riding toward his place.

He and his son and hired man stationed themselves under the bank, where both the house and the ford would be within range of their guns.

Mrs. May was to talk to the hors.e.m.e.n as they rode past the house, and, if they were Border Ruffians, she was to shut the door, as a signal to the husband to be ready for attack. When they rode up, however, they proved to be Mr. Speck, and about twenty other neighbors from the lower neighborhood, who had brought their horses up to Mr. May's to guard them from the Ruffians, who stood in great fear of Caleb May.

When the Ruffians returned to Missouri, after one of their raids, some of them told in De Kalb, where Mr. May lived before coming to Kansas, that they had killed him. One of his old neighbors, named Jones, rode into De Kalb one day, and was accosted by on e of the returned Border Ruffians with "We've got Caleb May this time; got his head on a ten-foot pole."

"Anybody killed?" queried Mr. Jones.

"Oh, no."

"Anybody hurt?"