98

A LITTLE LEGENDARY LORE.

[1858. little grocery, for settlers were already encroaching upon his domain. He was plunged in profoundest gloom, and refused to drink or talk.

A white loafer, knowing his disappointment, congratulated him upon the new arrow added to his domestic quiver. With a look of unutterable disgust, he ejaculated 'She-boy-'gin!' (she-boy again!) strode from the house, and never again returned to the scene of his broken hopes. And when a flourishing town sprang up around the little grocery, it was named by common consent Sheboygan.

'I cannot tell how the truth may be;

I say the tale as 'twas told to me.'

1857.] GOVERNOR DENVER MAKES HIS DEBUT.

99

CHAPTER VIII.

EXCITEMENT now ran high. Force was almost the only law. Civil war seemed ready to blaze forth again at any moment. The fierce strife had lasted for three years, and the end was not yet. According to Daniel Webster, our fathers fought seven years for a preamble; a later writer declares that the people of Kansas battled four years to veto an act of Congress. Every newspaper, North and South, teemed with Kansas reports, received by telegraph and mail, from exchanges or resident correspondents. According to a popular story, a country subscriber stepped into the Tribune counting-room, desiring to purchase a back number. 'Which edition?' asked the clerk.

'The Weekly.'

'Do

you know the date?'

'Not exactly,—about a year ago.'

'How can you identify it?'

'Well, it contained something about Kansas !'

As that description applied to every issue of the Tribune for the last three years, the countryman went away empty-handed.

This winter Buchanan appointed James W. Denver governor, superseding Robert J. Walker, who had refused to become a party to the bad faith of the administration. Denver was an Ohioan by birth, and had been a California pioneer, once representing the latter State in Congress. In 1852 he killed in a duel Edward Gilbert, editor of the Alta California and member of the Congres sional delegation.

Denver came to Kansas as a national democrat, and entered upon his new duties on the twenty-second of December, 1857. His first official experience was novel. A year before, the

100

AND HAS A SPIRITED RECEPTION. [1857.

Territorial authorities had seized one hundred and fifty mus kets and carbines from a Free State emigrant train, and they were now stored at Lecompton in the basement of the governor's office.

Sixty citizens of Lawrence, under Colonel Eldridge, called upon Denver the morning after he reached Lecompton, and demanded that the arms be given up. Denver declined, on the ground that he had no authority, and that the Free State men wanted them to overawe the ballot-box at the approaching election of January fourth. Eldridge offered to give any required security that the guns should be used for no such purpose. His excellency still refusing, Eldridge remarked:

'Governor, those guns are private property; taking them from us was an outrage; keeping them there has been an outrage. We have come here fully armed, and we are going to have them!'

This was a final argument, and proved effective. The arms were carried triumphantly to Lawrence. In Delaware City a hundred United States muskets were stored in the office of a physician. At midnight the doctor was roused by a messenger who implored him to visit a dying man several miles distant. He saddled his horse and rode to see his suppositious patient, but no dying man was found. When he returned the arms were gone. Delaware was a Pro-slavery town, and this ruse was adopted by Free State men from another settlement to obtain the guns without bloodshed. In January, a party of Free Soilers from Leavenworth, visited Kickapoo, and captured a brass twelve-pounder belonging to the Kickapoo Rangers. Harnessing six horses to the gun, they adorned it with flags, and brought it home, bearing the label, 'Election returns from Kickapoo.' This inscription was the key to much bitter feeling. At two provisional elections under the Lecompton constitution the most glaring frauds had been practised. The figures from a few precincts will illustrate:

1857.]

WONDERFUL ELECTION RETURNS.

101

Of seven thousand votes polled for the Lecompton constitution in December, less than two thousand were legal. In Kickapoo the voters formed a ring which enclosed the polls and a whisky saloon. As it slowly revolved, one man deposited his ballot, while another on the opposite side of the circle, improved the halt by taking a drink. Many voted half a dozen times under ficticious names; the

returns from

one precinct of

Johnson county contained

more than a

FDeard

VOTING IN KICKAPOO.

thousand names copied alphabetically from an old Cincinnati business directory.

The legislature, now under Free State control, passed a law submitting the Lecompton constitution to a vote of the people on the fourth of January. The same day was set apart by the Proslavery authorities for electing State officers under it, to be ready to serve the moment Congress should ratify it and change the Territory into a State.

There was much discussion among the Free Soilers as to whether they should vote for these State officers, that in the possible contingency of Congress admitting Kansas into the Union,

102

TO VOTE OR NOT TO VOTE.

[1858. under the Lecompton constitution, the power might still remain in their hands. A Territorial convention of three hundred delegates met in Lawrence and discussed the question for two days. One party favored voting to get possession of the government. The other opposed it on the grounds that all the Free Soil settlers had steadily repudiated the Lecompton constitution as illegal and fraudulent; that to vote under it would recognize its validity; and that all the election judges, being Pro-slavery, they would surely be defeated by false returns.

This warm debate continued hour after hour. The convention was nearly equally divided, but the trembling scale was suddenly turned. Lane was in the field near Fort Scott, where of late there had been much bloodshed. At midnight, on the last day of the convention, while the flaring candles in the unfinished church where it was held, lit up hundreds of anxious unwearied faces, messengers arrived in hot haste from the camp and were instantly called upon the stand. They stated that Lane's men were intrenched ready to resist the Border Ruffians and, if the Territorial authorities attempted to make them lay down their arms before their enemies were dispersed, they would fight the United States troops. This startling report was received with tremendous applause; and the convention decided not to vote. But the next morning the blood of the members had somewhat cooled, and prudence prevailed over impulse.

When the fourth of January came they did vote. And despite some glaring frauds, Free Soilers were elected to every office under the Lecompton constitution. These newly-chosen officers, from governor down, united in a memorial to Congress, protesting against the admission of the State under that fraudulent instrument-perhaps the only instance on record of Americans petitioning themselves out of office. The people of Kansas, also, repudiated it at the polls by a majority of about eleven thousand; (the entire vote of the Territory was thirteen thousand,) but the Pro-slavery men had refused to participate in this election. J. T. Henderson, late editor of the Leavenworth Journal, had been secretary of the convention forming the Lecompton constitution. Now he was charged with tampering with the returns from Delaware Crossing, by inserting '5' before 35,' and thus