Chapter II: The Contest for Free Soil

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA STRUGGLE.

At the period now reached by our story the political sense of the people, in all things touching the national life, was represented by the Whig and Democratic parties. There was yet another body formed to prevent the coming in of any more slave States, and therefore called the Free-Soil party. This last party had only come into being since the war with Mexico, and was not yet strong enough to successfully cope with the older ones for control in national affairs; but it was growing stronger every day.

Neither of the two great parties was divided by geographical lines. Both called themselves national parties, but since the extension of slavery was become the vital question of the hour, the Whig party was losing ground to the Free-Soil party, which indeed mostly grew up from the defection of those Whigs who determined henceforth to stand with the opponents of slavery until that question should be settled forever. So while the Whig party was strongest in the free States, it was beginning to go to pieces because it no longer represented the growing feeling against slavery in those States, though it was still led by able statesmen like Daniel Webster, whom the country had always looked to in the past for safe counsel and guidance through all the perils of party strife.

The Democratic party, on the contrary, being most numerous in the slaveholding States, was more firmly united than ever by the agitation about slavery, which their great leader, Calhoun, had told them could only be maintained by being extended, and could only be extended by becoming aggressive.

Here, then, we have the political situation after the admission of California, in a nutshell. In the South the Democratic party stood solid and defiant in support of slavery extension; in the North it favored popular sovereignty, as defined by Mr. Douglas. The Free-Soil party declared its purpose to oppose the making of any more slave States, and under the lead of Sumner of Massachusetts, Chase of Ohio, and Seward of New York, prepared to make head against its formidable opponents. The Whigs were now looked upon as the party of vacillation, weakness, and compromise. Though in nominal opposition to the Democrats, its leadership was no longer trusted, because it was felt to have surrendered the one principle[1] on which the coming struggle inevitably would turn.

The Democratic party succeeded in electing Franklin Pierce[2] to the Presidency, for the term running from 1853 to 1857.

His administration is chiefly memorable for the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, by which two new Territories were formed of the Louisiana Purchase, and thrown open to settlement. In framing this Act its authors left it to the people to choose for themselves whether they would have slavery or not, as Douglas urged they should; and in order that they might do so, the compromise of 1820 was set aside. This measure was largely the work of Mr. Douglas, who, arguing that the people are sovereigns, viewed a reference of the slavery question back to them, as the only true way of settling the agitation about it. It had a certain fair-play look that won many to its support in the North. In this form Congress passed the Act, May 30, 1854.

To repeal the Missouri Compromise, was held by many at the North and some at the South,[3] to be a violation of the pledge so sacredly made to the whole people, not to admit slavery north of 36° 30´. We shall see what it led to.

Let us look first at the new Territories as the organic Act found them. From the Missouri on the east, they reached to the Rocky Mountains on the west. They contained the most fertile lands of the public domain. The great thoroughfares to Oregon, California, and New Mexico, traversed them in their whole length, so making it clear, even at this early day, that the great movement of the people from east to west must be along the lines of these thoroughfares, strewing its pathway with populous cities and towns as it went.

Already we have led the explorers through this magnificent land. Through them much knowledge had been gained of its natural features, its fine climate, and of the unequalled fecundity of its soil. The West was its neighbor and knew most about it. The East knew it only through the accounts of Pike, Long, and Fremont, from the reports of emigrants, or in the stories of travel written by Irving, Latrobe and others, all of which gave it a kind of romantic interest with their readers.

Upon the virgin soil of Kansas the fragments of many of the one-time powerful red nations of the East had been colonized. Here, at last, we meet again the Wyandots of Lake Huron,[4] the Delawares of Pennsylvania, the Sacs and Foxes, Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Piankeshaws and other warlike peoples whose race as nations had been run. To this point they had at length been rolled back by the ever-advancing tide of white emigration. They probably far outnumbered the original owners of the soil,—the Missouris, Kansas, Otoes, Pawnees, Osages,—and all maintained their tribal organization unimpaired within the limits Government had set for them. Here these wrecks of once powerful peoples peacefully lived on the bounty of the nation which had told them Kansas was to be their permanent home.

Among most of these tribes missions and schools had been planted by various religious denominations. One of the richest and seemingly most prosperous ones was that founded by the Methodists[5] among the Shawnees, who were half-civilized, and also held a few slaves.

To protect its emigrants who were constantly passing over the great routes toward the Pacific, Government had established the military posts of Fort Leavenworth[6] on the Missouri, Fort Riley at the junction of the two chief branches of the Kansas, and Fort Kearney on the Platte. Fort Scott was also founded in the south, on the road leading to the Indian Territory.

Set against these new Territories were two States,—one slave and the other free. It was thought that Kansas would mostly take her settlers from Missouri, and so easily be a slave State, while Nebraska in a like manner would become a free State through the influence of Iowa, its neighbor. Moreover the soil and climate of Kansas were thought favorable to the employment of slave labor, while Nebraska was considered to lie north of the line beyond which such labor could be made profitable. Hence it was to Kansas that the efforts of those favoring slavery were turned; and as the best part of it was occupied by Indians, their removal or restricting within smaller tracts was provided for, so making way for the coming settlement.

FOOTNOTES

[1] SURRENDERED THE PRINCIPLE. The two great Whig leaders,
Webster and Clay, advocated the compromise measures of 1850.
Clay was a Southern man, though no slavery propagandist, like
Calhoun; but Webster, a Northern man, disappointed many of his
constituents, and lost his old influence over them from that
time onward.

[2] FRANKLIN PIERCE was a native of New Hampshire, a lawyer
by profession, who had served in the Mexican War. He was not
in the front rank of Democratic statesmen, but was selected
as a compromise candidate, after thirty-five ballots had been
divided between Cass, Douglas, and Buchanan.

[3] SOME IN THE SOUTH. Benton of Missouri and Houston of
Texas opposed the repeal.

[4] WYANDOTS OF LAKE HURON. Look back to "Westward by the
Great Waterways." For the other tribes, see index.

[5] METHODIST MISSION. This was a mission of the Methodist
Church South. Other missions of this denomination were planted
among the Omahas, Kickapoos, Kansas, and Delawares. The
Baptists and Quakers also had missions among the Shawnees,
the Baptists to the Delawares, and the Catholics (St. Mary's)
among the Kansas.

[6] FORT LEAVENWORTH, founded by Colonel Henry Leavenworth,
1827, for whom it is named. It was the great frontier
dépôt of supply for the other military posts on the Santa
Fé and Oregon routes, which were converted into military
roads by Government. Forts Riley, Kearney, and Scott, were
similarly named for General Bennet Riley (military governor
of California), General Stephen W. Kearney (conqueror of New
Mexico), and General Winfield Scott (conqueror of Old Mexico).

KANSAS THE BATTLE-GROUND.

When Congress decreed that freedom and slavery should compete for control in Kansas, the decision reminds us of the judgement given by the wise king of history, who, having to decide which of two mothers a child belonged to, ordered one of his guards to cut it in two with his sword, and give the half to each claimant.

In this contest Congress and the President stood with the South. The law-making power had first removed every restriction to making Kansas a slave State, and now the executive branch was to appoint governors[1] over the people who should go there to live, and give orders to the military commanders to aid them when called upon to do so.

There was another very potent means working to the same end, which in the hands of lawless men proved a serious obstacle to the peaceful going-in of settlers from the free States. The great avenue of travel into the disputed territory was the Missouri River, whose banks were already lined with a population holding many slaves, and therefore easily aroused to active enmity by the fear that the planting of a free State next their border would cause their negroes to run away, and so deprive them of their property. Moreover, as we have already said, the Missourians had confidently looked upon Kansas as theirs whenever it should be opened to settlement, and could not bear the thought of having it snatched from them by a people whose politics they detested, and whose presence they feared.

Under these conditions the movement of settlers into Kansas began at the North and South. It was no peaceful march of peaceful citizens under the protecting hand of the nation, but was turned by sectional rivalry into a political crusade. Public meetings were held all over the North and South to encourage the going of the adventurous young men of both sections, as in time of war. Sectional passions were aroused and inflamed. Large sums were raised in the churches to arm these emigrants for the conflict which it was clear must take place sooner or later. So the war of the sections that so long had threatened the national peace was begun at last. Congress had left the question to the people to settle, less in the spirit of statesmanship than as a way out of the difficulty; and the people, seeing that its peaceful settlement was impossible, were getting ready to fight it out, not with the ballot as Douglas believed they would, but as men who are convinced that force, and force only, can decide the justice of their cause.

Missourians began the settlement of Kansas. June, 1854, Leavenworth[2] was laid out two miles below the fort of that name. Another town was also begun twenty-five miles farther up the Missouri, and named for Senator Atchison[3] of Missouri. These two, with St. Joseph on the north and Kansas City on the south, not only controlled all the river-front of Kansas, but the roads leading into it as well, as St. Joseph and Kansas City were the established starting-points for crossing the plains, from which the great overland routes diverged. Missouri settlers also shortly began a third town, in the Kansas Valley, to which they gave the name of Lecompton,[4] and soon made it the capital of the Territory.

Thus the North entered the conflict to obtain control of Kansas under every disadvantage which remoteness, prior occupation, or unyielding determination to exclude all who did not favor slavery, could bring into it.

New England was the focus of anti-slavery thought and action, to which the rest of the North undoubtedly looked for leadership. It was, therefore, in New England that active steps for throwing free-State settlers into Kansas first originated. This was effected through an association known as the New-England Emigrant Aid Company,[5] which was the parent or forerunner of many similar ones subsequently organized throughout the free States. The New-England Company acted with much method. It formed little colonies which were put under competent leaders, were furnished with farming-tools, and even took out saw-mills for the making of new settlements. Some colonists took their families along with them, but most of the first comers were single men whom the desire to see Kansas a free State, rather than a thoughtless spirit of adventure, took from the orderly communities of the Far East. To this work they confidently went forth accompanied by the prayers and good wishes of their friends and neighbors, though as little used to the rude encounter with border men and border life as the two kinds of civilization each presented in itself were removed one from the other.

These emigrants made a lodgement in the Kansas Valley, where they founded Lawrence[6] (August, 1854), Topeka, Manhattan, and Wabaunsee. Later settlements were begun along the Osage waters, of which Osawatomie was the chief, and most famous in the annals of Kansas.

The directing head of this free-State movement on the spot was Charles Robinson, than whom no more fitting representative of the spirit of his mission, or one possessed of the ability to make head against the multiplied difficulties of time and place, could well have been chosen.

FOOTNOTES

[1] GOVERNORS OF KANSAS. In four years Kansas had five
governors; viz., Reeder, Shannon, Geary, Walker, and Denver.
Reeder refused to enforce the bogus Territorial laws, and was
removed. Shannon tried to put down the free-State movement,
but resigned in despair. Geary fell into line with it, had his
life threatened, and fled the Territory in disguise. Walker
proved too honest to sustain fraudulent voting, and left the
Territory when he found himself deserted by those who sent
him there. Denver found the controversy practically settled
in favor of a free State. Kansas was therefore not inaptly
called the "graveyard" of governors.

[2] LEAVENWORTH is finely enclosed by a high ridge on the
west which forms a natural amphitheatre. Its site is hardly
surpassed by that of any city of the Missouri Valley. Its
vicinity to the fort soon made it the first commercial city of
Kansas, as it was the most populous. Kansas missed the golden
opportunity for having a great city within her own borders.

[3] SENATOR DAVID R. ATCHISON was the head of the
pro-slavery movement on the spot. Atchison was the residence
of Senators Samuel C. Pomeroy and John J. Ingalls, and is now
a thriving city.

[4] LECOMPTON took its name from Samuel D. Lecompte, Supreme
Territorial Judge of Kansas.

[5] NEW-ENGLAND EMIGRANT AID COMPANY was a chartered
organization under the laws of Massachusetts. Its history
is being written by Eli Thayer, one of its earliest
promoters. The men who composed it were representative of the
anti-slavery sentiment at large, rather than as politicians.
All were of unimpeachable character. Their colonies were the
embodiment of the New-England idea, as interpreted by the
motto of Massachusetts, "_Ense petit placidum sub libertate
quietam_:"—

"This hand, the rule of tyrants to oppose,
Seeks with the sword fair freedom's soft repose."

[6] LAWRENCE, named for Amos A. Lawrence of Massachusetts.

THE BATTLE FOUGHT AND WON.

It was the doom of slavery that it should require the destruction of every thing that stood in its way. This being conceded, a resort to lawlessness—more especially on the part of a rude population like that of the Missouri border—was sure to follow the attempt to set up a free commonwealth in Kansas.

From the moment the organic Act became law, the future of Kansas was ever and foremost a national question. The Southern leaders had told the Missourians, if they would not see political power wrested from the South, they must secure Kansas to slavery at any cost. The North had met the challenge in the words of Senator Seward, who said, "Come on, then, gentlemen of the slave States! Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf of freedom. We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side that is stronger in numbers, as it is in the right."

The people of Western Missouri, of whom glimpses have been given in former chapters, were typical American borderers, rude of manner and speech, scarcely touched by the refining influences of the older East, open-handed and hospitable to a fault, but capable of committing brutal excesses when their passions were aroused, as they now were by the overwrought appeals of their most trusted leaders to make an end of abolitionism, if they would not see it become a menace to their domestic peace,—an incitement to insurrection or ceaseless turbulence along their border. Their character may be guessed from the name which in a spirit of bravado they took from their opponents' mouths,—that of border ruffians. They were expert with the rifle, daring riders, accustomed to out-of-door life from infancy, and hardened by experiences drawn from the vicissitudes of frontier life, into the bone of a self-asserting Americanism of the Davy Crockett school. Then, inasmuch as public opinion justified the settlement of private quarrels with the pistol or bowie-knife, the taking of life was held cheaply as compared with communities where the enforcement of law is the safeguard of the citizen. Add to this the frontiersman's habitual scorn for those reared in cities, or who shunned a resort to violence in support of their principles, and we have the measure of those adversaries whom the free-State men of the North were to face on their own ground, and with their own weapons in their hands.

The events flowing from this state of things may be briefly summed up.

While the free-State movement was steadily gaining ground by the coming-in of actual settlers, the Missourians made determined efforts to stay it, first by seizing upon the government of the Territory, and next by intimidating or driving out all who opposed their lawless acts. Thus an election for members of the Territorial Legislature (March, 1855) was controlled by Missourians who, in the most open manner, came into the voting precincts with arms, cast their ballots unchallenged, and then went home again to Missouri, so returning a law-making body by unlawful votes. This Legislature enacted laws establishing slavery. The free-State men refused to recognize it or its laws. They proceeded to form a constitution[1] prohibiting slavery, with which they asked admission into the Union. They also elected State officers, and a legislature which they meant to put in operation if worst came to worst. Meantime they organized themselves to repel force with force if necessary. All those who were opposed to making Kansas a slave State, now came together as the free-State party.

This party, which had just elected Charles Robinson governor, refused to pay taxes, obey writs, or in any way abide by the acts of the so-called bogus legislature. The pro-slavery party declared this treason. Congress rejected the Topeka Constitution, the House voting for its admission, the Senate against it.

In consequence of the rescue of a free-State man from the hands of the sheriff, Lawrence was soon besieged by a large force of Missourians, assembled under color of law, but in reality invaders of the Territory. The people of Lawrence prepared to make a sturdy defence by building earth-forts at all the approaches to the town, in which men armed with Sharpe's rifles were constantly stationed. Seeing them determined to fight, the Missourians left without venturing to attack them.

Finding the free-State men thus firm, the other party next invoked the judicial power to aid them in breaking up the combination made against the enforcement of illegal laws. Governor Robinson and many other free-State leaders were indicted for treason[2] by a grand jury, acting upon instruction of the chief justice, who defined the acts of the free-State men as levying war against the Federal Government. Robinson and others were arrested and imprisoned. Some of the leaders escaped out of the Territory.

Bills of indictment had also been found against the two newspapers printed at Lawrence, as well as the hotel in which the free-State men were in the habit of holding their meetings. These were declared public nuisances. Under the color of law, an armed posse proceeded to Lawrence, threw the presses into the river, gutted the hotel, and burned Governor Robinson's house to the ground. This took place May 20, 1856.

The next act of the actual government was the calling-in of United States troops to disperse the free-State legislature, which met at Topeka, July 4. All these proceedings had aroused the keenest interest throughout the Union, and while in Kansas opposition to oppression was momentarily quelled, it was acquiring greater strength[3] in all the free States.

Among the free-State men were some who believed such acts as had been committed at Lawrence called for reprisals in kind. Of these, James H. Lane[4] obtained a wide notoriety; but the animating spirit was undoubtedly John Brown of Osawatomie,[5] who held that the policy of submission was all wrong, and that the pro-slavery men too must be made to fear for their own safety before peace could be had. He avowed himself in favor of giving blow for blow. This idea found much favor with the fighting portion of the free-State men. On the question of slavery, Brown's mind was surely unsettled by the all-engrossing idea that slavery was a thing of violence which must die a violent death. To bring this about was now the one purpose of his life, and in pursuit of it he was as inexorable as fate. For its accomplishment he possessed certain qualities that make either the hero or martyr according as the purpose is weighed by history. An iron will, religious fervor amounting to fanaticism, were joined to a calm but resolute courage which no danger could daunt or turn from its purpose. He was a seventeenth-century Puritan of the Cromwellian stamp—a man of iron belonging to an iron age.

Brown soon had the border in terror of his deeds. The blows he struck were swift, secret and deadly. It was now the pro-slavery men who were driven out or assassinated, or had their homes fired at dead of night. Men sent to take him were themselves taken and held as prisoners. These acts led to retaliation, retaliation to fresh outrages, and for a time Kansas was given over to violence.

Believing Congress would admit them to the Union, the slavery party also formed a State Constitution at Lecompton, the capital. But an election for a new legislature had overwhelmingly defeated them, thus giving control of the Territorial body to the free-State men at last. So the Lecompton men now saw no hope for themselves except in their State Constitution. As they refused to submit the whole instrument to the people, the free-State men refrained from voting for or against the single proposition of "slavery" or "no slavery," seeing they must get the detested Constitution in any event. The returns showed the old determination still strong to fasten slavery on the people against their will. A large majority was obtained for the Constitution by stuffing the ballot-boxes with fraudulent votes. Of six thousand and odd votes (6,226), nearly half (2,720) were illegally cast. The Lecompton Constitution was, however, sent to Congress by President Buchanan with his approval. In Congress it provoked a stormy debate, was sent back to the people of Kansas for final ratification, and by them decisively rejected at the polls, August, 1858.

Though Kansas was kept out of the Union three years longer, her attitude in respect to slavery was now so little doubtful that the pro-slavery men gave up the contest in despair.

To maintain their cause with the country at large, and make it one on which the opponents of slavery could unite, the free-State men of Kansas lived for a time nearly in chaos rather than forfeit the name of law-abiding people. In this they showed admirable self-restraint. To maintain themselves in Kansas they were forced to adopt the tactics of their assailants at last, and deal blow for blow. Cultured people were roughened by this sort of life. It made them reckless. It weakened respect for law, even with the law-abiding. It brought material progress to a standstill, and engendered lifelong enmities among men who were to live together as neighbors. Social improvement was put back years. The very existence of a conflict had the tendency to bring bad men to the front, whose influence proved a hinderance to the settling of order in the State. The contest in Kansas proved Douglas wrong and John Brown right, in so far as the question of peaceful competition for the soil was involved in it. In a national sense it was therefore but the prelude to the great Civil War of the century.

FOOTNOTES

[1] CONSTITUTION PROHIBITING SLAVERY, known in history as
the Topeka Constitution. The State finally came into the Union
under a Constitution framed at Wyandotte in 1859, ratified
October of that year at the polls.

[2] INDICTED FOR TREASON. The courts were supported by
Federal troops with whom the free-State men would not risk
a conflict. Robinson and other "treason prisoners" suffered
several months' imprisonment. It was a clever plan for
depriving the free-State party of its leaders.

[3] ACQUIRING STRENGTH. Since its publication in 1852,
people everywhere had been reading Mrs. H. B. Stowe's "Uncle
Tom's Cabin," a book which perhaps did more to consolidate
public opinion against slavery, by directing attention to its
worst evils, than all the political discussions of the time
put together. In this view it deserves a place in the train of
events following upon the compromises of 1850. Another episode
of like tendency was the assault made on Senator Sumner by
Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina, in the Senate Chamber,
arising out of the Kansas troubles (1856). Still another was
the decision of Justice Taney in the case of Dred Scott, a
slave, declaring that slavery had a right to exist everywhere
in the public domain until forbidden by State laws.

[4] JAMES H. LANE of Indiana had served with credit in
the Mexican War. He came to Kansas a pro-slavery man, but
soon joined the free-State party, in which he obtained much
influence—perhaps more than any man in it. Lane was a born
leader of men. This explains his advancement in the face
of the other fact that he never had the confidence of other
eminent free-State leaders. With the agricultural settlers
he was strong. Lane's great popularity elected him to
the United States Senate from Kansas. In the Rebellion he
commanded a brigade. His public and private integrity have
been equally called in question. Though once the popular hero
of his day, Lane was the product of abnormal conditions and
died with them.

[5] OSAWATOMIE is a jumbling together of Osage and
Pottawatomie.

TWO FREE STATES ADMITTED.

Minnesota came into the Union in 1858, and Oregon in 1859, thus strengthening it by the addition of two young and sturdy commonwealths, both of which were primeval wildernesses within the memory of men now living.