It is said, "There are two sides to every question." In my association
with men in the free States I had learned one side of this question; now
I was learning the other side, and began to be able to put in
intelligible shape to myself those reasonings by which these men
justified their action. They reasoned thus: "War is a state of violence
and always involves a trenching upon what we call natural rights; and
its decisions depend not so much on who is right or wrong, as on who
wields the longest sword and commands the heaviest battalions. And if in
carrying on a war some evil comes to innocent parties, this is only one
of its necessary consequences, and is justified by the final result;
provided always that the war, as a whole, is right and just. And in such
a strained and unnatural condition of affairs men can not be governed by
the same scrupulous regard for others' rights by which they are governed
in time of peace. But the North and South are already practically in a
state of war. This comes of the mistakes made at the formation of our
government. Thomas Jefferson and the fathers of the Revolution were
mistaken in holding slavery wrong. It is a rightful and natural
relation, as between an inferior and superior race. The black race is
far better off here in America, in slavery, than they would be in
Africa, in freedom and in paganism; and if there is something of
hardship in their lot, it is only because there is hardship in the lot
of every human being."
These men also said: "Consequent on these erroneous views held by Thomas
Jefferson and others, the settlement made as between the North and South
has been wrong, from the beginning, It was wrong to close the Northwest
Territory, embracing Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, against
slavery. So also it was wrong to close Kansas against this institution
by what was called the Missouri Compromise Line, agreed upon on the
admission of Missouri into the Union."
So these men reasoned, and they said: "Now we propose to go and take by
the strong hand those rights of which we have been wrongfully deprived
since the beginning of the American Government. A little severity now--a
resolute seizing on our rights now, in this golden opportunity--will be
worth more than the shedding of rivers of blood by and by. Therefore the
primary and rudimental legislation of this infant Territory will be
worth everything to us in the final settlement of this question. It is
certain that the law is against us; but the law itself is wrong, and has
been wrong from the beginning. The right that belongs to us is the
material and inalienable right of revolution."
We have no right to assume that a majority of the people of Missouri
held the sentiments we have here indicated: probably they did not. But
the dissent was generally unspoken. The men of this stamp commonly
adopted the policy of the man with whom I had just parted. But there was
dissent in some cases, bitter and vehement, followed sometimes by
bloodshed.
Before I had gone to Iowa, and while I yet lived in Ohio, I had visited
Kentucky. An Ohio colony had gone down into Kentucky and located in the
counties of Wayne and Pulaski, on the Cumberland River. A brother of
mine had gone with them, and I had made him a visit. I thought then, and
think now, that there is no region on which the sun shines, more
desirable to live in than the region of the Cumberland Mountains. At
Crab Orchard I found a man that was born in the State of New York. He
had been a soldier at Hull's surrender, at Detroit, in the war of 1812,
with Great Britain. From Detroit he had made his way into Kentucky, had
married a rich wife with many slaves, and had become a vehement partisan
for slavery. But because he was born in the same State with myself, and
because I could tell him much about that people that were once his
people, he was glad to have me stop with him. Being old and choleric, he
would go off into a fierce passion against the abolitionists. He would
say: "These men are thieves! Our niggers are our property, and they
steal our property. They might as well steal our horses." After awhile
he would begin to talk about his children. He would say: "These niggers
are ruining my children! My girls are good for nothing! They can not
help themselves! They are so helpless they can not even pick up a
needle. And my boys! These niggers are ruining my boys! My boys won't
work!" And then he would _go_ on to tell the nameless vices the young
men of the city were drawn into through their intimacy with the blacks.
I thought, but did not say, "My dear sir, if slavery is working such a
ruin on your own children, would not the abolitionists be doing you a
kindness if they would steal every nigger you have got?"
But there was a still graver aspect that this question was beginning to
assume: A woman that is a slave has neither the motive nor the power to
protect her own virtue; and the land was threatened to be filled with a
nation of mulattoes. But this mixed race would possess all the pride,
ambition and talent of the superior race; at the same time they would
feel all that undying hatred that a subject people feel toward the men
by whom they are subjugated. We would then be sleeping on a volcano,
such as may at any hour engulf the empire of Russia.
All this I pondered in my heart as I slowly made my way toward St.
Joseph, on the Missouri River, which flows along the western border of
Kansas. And now this question was coming to the front and forcing a
settlement, and in Kansas would be the first real conflict. In Congress
they had only paltried with, it; now the people were to try their hand.
And what should I do? Had I any right as a Christian and as an American
citizen, when providentially called to this work, to withdraw myself
from aiding in its settlement? And should I turn my horse in the
opposite direction, go back to my Bro. Graves at Chillicothe, and say to
him: "You are a man of undoubted courage, but I am a paltroon and a
coward, and I am going to hunt a hole and hide myself, where I will be
out of danger when this battle is fought between freedom and slavery."
I did not turn back, but revolving all these matters in my mind, reached
the city of St. Joseph. Here I had been commended by a friend to a
merchant in the city, a member of the Christian Church. He received me
kindly and treated me courteously, but his partner in business did not
seem to be of that mind. He was all out of sorts, and gruffly said,
"Kansas is a humbug. It will not be settled in thirty years."
In revolutions men live fast. I had been ten days on my journey, and the
man that now crossed the Missouri River at St. Joseph was not just the
man that ten days before crossed the Mississippi at Quincy. He was a
wiser and a sadder man.
On the Kansas side the first company I met was a two-horse wagon load of
men that had been exploring the Territory and were returning. They
seemed thoroughly disgusted, and said: "The wind blows so hard in
Kansas, it would blow a chicken up against the side of a barn and hold
it there for twenty-four hours."
"Kansas will not be settled in thirty years." So said my not very
amiable friend in St. Joseph. It is now somewhat more than thirty years,
and Kansas has more than a million of inhabitants. But the State has a
higher boast to make than that it has so increased in wealth and
population. It has been the first State in the Union--indeed, it has
been the first government in the world--to incorporate prohibition into
its fundamental law; and this is the best possible criticism by which to
mark its comparative progress in a Christian civilization.