1857.]

ALL VARIETIES OF PASSENGERS.

25

At the same moment the dim lights shine upon a serious group holding a prayer-meeting at the other end of the cabin, and we hear the faint, subdued tones of hymn, exhortation, and prayer. Was there a Missouri steamer pictured in the prophetic soul of old Daniel Defoe when he wrote,

'Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation?'

Our passengers exhibit life in every phase. Here are young men and young married couples from eastern and middle States, seeking fairer opportunities and broader fields of effort in the ample, generous West. Here is the youthful Missourian with slouched hat, whose red flannel shirt is decorated with black anchors and glaring scarlet braid; the sallow, nervous merchant with his summer stock of goods; the well-to-do planter, tall and portly, with large, brunette wife, and two or three white-eyed coal-headed young Topseys-all returning from trips to St. Louis. Mingling with them are the young missionary in solemn black, and white cravat; the irrepressible agent of a new Kansas town proving incontestably by statistics and diagrams that his will become the largest city west of New York; the eager-eyed speculator bound for the land sales, with wonderful stories of his uncle who became a millionaire from Chicago investments, or his wife's cousin who made forty thousand dollars in six months upon. Michigan pine-lands; the enthusiastic German whose blue eyes sparkle as they catch the gleam of a golden future, or grow tender in the subduing moonlight, as he talks of his boyhood's home on the Rhine. So our boat moves on, bearing its measure of hope and joy and sorrow-a little world, but holding in nice proportion all the elements of the great world without. Ruled by the same sweet love, and the same restless ambition-by memory whose tender sorrow no future can turn into gladness, and hope, the light of whose eager eyes no darkened past can quench.

We reached Kansas City, Missouri, in two days from St. Louis, and thought it excellent time. Once afterward, in low water, J

26

ARRIVAL IN KANSAS CITY.

[1857.

was nine days making the journey. The cars now accomplish it in fourteen hours.

Kansas City perching on a high bluff commanding a fine view of the river for miles below, was a very important point-in a neck-and-neck race with Leavenworth and St. Joseph for the rich prize of the great commercial metropolis of the far West. In front of the town the broad bouldered landing sloping down to the water's edge presented a confused picture of immense piles of freight, horse, ox, and mule teams receiving merchandise from the steamers, scores of immigrant wagons, and a busy crowd of whites, Indians, half-breeds, negroes and Mexicans.

There were solid brick houses and low frame shanties along the levee, and scattered unfinished buildings on the hill above, where 'the Grade' was being cut fifteen or twenty feet deep, through

abrupt bluffs. Carts and horses wallowed in the mud of these deep excavations; and the houses stood trembling on the verge as if in fear of tumbling over. Drinking saloons abounded, and every thing wore the accidental, transition look of new settlements.

But there was much stir and vitality, and the population, numbering two thousand, had unbounded, unquestioning faith that here was the City of the Future. A mile and a half from the river building lots one hundred feet by fifty were selling

at from three hundred to seven hundred dollars. Lots three blocks. from the landing commanded one thousand dollars, and a single warehouse on the levee rented for four thousand dollars per

annum.

The proprietor of the local newspaper was an old editorial asso

1857.] ENCOUNTERING AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.

27

ciate of mine. Four years earlier we had been connected with the Cincinnati Daily Unionist. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was then pending in Congress. With strong anti-slavery convictions, my co-laborer wrote pungent editorials against it; and headed the daily telegrams recording its progress, 'Latest from Washington: The Nebraska Infamy.' Now, his paper was emphatically 'border ruffian.'

He received me with cordiality, after the manner of the country instantly inviting me into the nearest saloon and, What would I drink? To my suggestion of lemonade, he replied with a glance at the rough crowd about us,

Then we took a quiet evening stroll beside the strong, noiseless river, which shone and sparkled in the moonlight. He not only declared that denouncing the pro-slavery aggressions, would have ruined him pecuniarily; but seemned at heart thoroughly in sympathy with the community where he had cast his fortunes. Upon the organization of Kansas and Nebraska, societies for organized emigration sprang up in the North. Under their auspices many settlers, going in a body, obtained passage at lower rates. In a few cases, the fare of needy emigrants was paid by these societies. The South attempted similar movements, but with indifferent success, only 'Buford's men' from Georgia, and one or two other bands going in large parties. In the North, after the troubles began, there was a rage for armed emigration. Even churches and Sunday schools, took up collections for it, and the Quakers of Pennsylvania and Indiana found their peace doctrines yielding to their anti-slavery sentiments, and contrib uted money to buy Sharpe's rifles for emigrants. Whittier's lines, written at this period, were very expressive of northern sentiment:

'We cross the prairie as of old

The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West as they the East
The household of the free.

We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom's southern line,

And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged northern pine.

28

BORDER RUFFIANS IN KANSAS.

[1857.

Upbearing like the ark of old

The bible in our van,

We go to test the truth of God,
Against the fraud of man.'

My friend thought the aid societies of New England war upon the institution of Missouri, and full justification for the hordes which had poured into Kansas, overawed the ballot-box and taken possession of the Territorial legislature. I asked if there was any doubt about the border ruffian incursions.

'O, no,' he replied, 'I have seen thousands of armed Missourians cross the Kansas river two miles from here to vote at an election, and return home the next day.'

He could not comprehend that the New Englander—who came as an actual settler to spend his life, and establish a home for his children—had a right to vote, whether helped by an aid society or not: while the Missourian, crossing the border for a day to put in his ballot by force and then returning to his home in another State was a criminal invader, striking at the foundation of free government.

I spoke of the wrong of slavery: of the fact that it was fight ing all the agencies of modern civilization which must inevitably conquer it sooner or later. He replied:

are.

'O yes; I thought so once: I was just as fanatical as you

But I have learned better. It is a mere question of political economy. Kansas, like Missouri is adapted to hemp and tobacco,, which can be raised only by slave labor. The negro is far better off here than in the so-called freedom of the North. These Missourians, too, are in dead earnest; they will fight and be killed to the last man, rather than let Kansas become a free State. And you know the whole South is behind them.'

Months afterward, when as a citizen of Kansas, I tried to help in her struggle for freedom, my friend rebuked me with great bitterness. But time at last makes all things even: he learned his error, became an eloquent advocate of emancipation, and springing to arms in our great civil war, shed his blood for freedom and the Union. Missouri, redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled, recognized his talents and services, and while I write he is one of her representatives in the Congress of the United States.

1857.] A GLANCE AT WYANDOTTE, KANSAS.

29

CHAPTER II.

AFTER a single night in Kansas City, a morning walk of two miles up the south bank of the Missouri, over the richest black soil, shaded by stately sycamores, brought me to the Kansas or Kaw River.

'Kansas,' signifying 'smoky,' is the name of a degraded and nearly extinct Indian tribe. Lewis, and Clark, and all other early explorers, spelled it as pronounced, with a 'z.' It was first familiarized to American ears by the bill of Senator Douglas, repealing the Missouri Compromise-that little fire which kindled so vast a conflagration. Then many official documents and newspapers followed the early orthography, and to this day a few journals spell it 'Kanzas;' but the later mode is irrevocably established. At its mouth the river is three or four hundred yards wide. Its waters would be called muddy, east of the Alleghanies; but by contrast with the turbid Missouri they are pure and transparent. Crossing in a skiff I stood upon the soil of Kansas, already classic, and baptized in blood, a battle-ground of warring ideas.

I landed on the tented field, not of sanguinary strife, but of the city of Wyandotte. This prophetic Babylon was four months old, with a population of four hundred. Its beautiful site on a gentle, symmetric eminence, overlooks low wooded bottom-lands of Missouri on the east, Kansas City on the south, and the Missouri river for miles below. A few pleasant white warehouses and residences, and unpainted plank shanties were erected. Many

were going up; and meanwhile waiting settlers dwelt under heaven's canopy or in snowy tents. Everywhere busy workmen were plying ax, hammer, and saw; and the voice of the artisan was heard in the land. The settlers were merry over