THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
More than two thousand men, women and children waited on the Missouri
for the green fully to tinge the grasses of the prairies farther west.
The waning town of Independence had quadrupled its population in thirty
days. Boats discharged their customary western cargo at the newer
landing on the river, not far above that town; but it all was not
enough. Men of upper Missouri and lower Iowa had driven in herds of
oxen, horses, mules; but there were not enough of these. Rumors came
that a hundred wagons would take the Platte this year via the Council
Bluffs, higher up the Missouri; others would join on from St. Jo and
Leavenworth.
March had come, when the wild turkey gobbled and strutted resplendent in
the forest lands. April had passed, and the wild fowl had gone north.
May, and the upland plovers now were nesting all across the prairies.
But daily had more wagons come, and neighbors had waited for neighbors,
tardy at the great rendezvous. The encampment, scattered up and down the
river front, had become more and more congested. Men began to know one
another, families became acquainted, the gradual sifting and shifting in
social values began. Knots and groups began to talk of some sort of
accepted government for the common good.
They now were at the edge of the law. Organized society did not exist
this side of the provisional government of Oregon, devised as a _modus
vivendi_ during the joint occupancy of that vast region with Great
Britain--an arrangement terminated not longer than two years before.
There must be some sort of law and leadership between the Missouri and
the Columbia. Amid much bickering of petty politics, Jesse Wingate had
some four days ago been chosen for the thankless task of train captain.
Though that office had small authority and less means of enforcing its
commands, none the less the train leader must be a man of courage,
resource and decision. Those of the earlier arrivals who passed by his
well-organized camp of forty-odd wagons from the Sangamon country of
Illinois said that Wingate seemed to know the business of the trail. His
affairs ran smoothly, he was well equipped and seemed a man of means.
Some said he had three thousand in gold at the bottom of his cargo.
Moreover--and this appeared important among the Northern element, at
that time predominant in the rendezvous--he was not a Calhoun Secesh, or
even a Benton Democrat, but an out and out, antislavery, free-soil man.
And the provisional constitution of Oregon, devised by thinking men of
two great nations, had said that Oregon should be free soil forever.
Already there were mutterings in 1848 of the coming conflict which a
certain lank young lawyer of Springfield, in the Sangamon
country--Lincoln, his name was--two years ago among his personal friends
had predicted as inevitable. In a personnel made up of bold souls from
both sides the Ohio, politics could not be avoided even on the trail;
nor were these men the sort to avoid politics. Sometimes at their camp
fire, after the caravan election, Wingate and his wife, their son Jed,
would compare notes, in a day when personal politics and national
geography meant more than they do to-day.
"Listen, son," Wingate one time concluded. "All that talk of a railroad
across this country to Oregon is silly, of course. But it's all going to
be one country. The talk is that the treaty with Mexico must give us a
slice of land from Texas to the Pacific, and a big one; all of it was
taken for the sake of slavery. Not so Oregon--that's free forever. This
talk of splitting this country, North and South, don't go with me. The
Alleghanies didn't divide it. Burr couldn't divide it. The Mississippi
hasn't divided it, or the Missouri, so rest assured the Ohio can't. No,
nor the Rockies can't! A railroad? No, of course not. But all the same,
a practical wagon road from free soil to free soil--I reckon that was my
platform, like enough. It made me captain."
"No, 'twasn't that, Jesse," said his wife. "That ain't what put you in
for train captain. It was your blamed impatience. Some of them lower
Ioway men, them that first nominated you in the train meeting--town
meeting--what you call it, they seen where you'd been plowing along here
just to keep your hand in. One of them says to me, 'Plowing, hey? Can't
wait? Well, that's what we're going out for, ain't it--to plow?' says
he. 'That's the clean quill,' says he. So they 'lected you, Jesse. And
the Lord ha' mercy on your soul!"
Now the arrival of so large a new contingent as this of the Liberty
train under young Banion made some sort of post-election ratification
necessary, so that Wingate felt it incumbent to call the head men of the
late comers into consultation if for no better than reasons of courtesy.
He dispatched his son Jed to the Banion park to ask the attendance of
Banion, Woodhull and such of his associates as he liked to bring, at any
suiting hour. Word came back that the Liberty men would join the Wingate
conference around eleven of that morning, at which time the hour of the
jump-off could be set.