_"The shears of destiny."_--Shakespeare.
War! war! war! The great election was over. The bitterness of faction
and of section had only intensified. The inevitable had at last come.
Mobs, riots, and confusion followed threats, and at last the shot that
struck Fort Sumter echoed in every village and hamlet in the country.
The beginning of the struggle with arms to adjust the differences
between two irreconcilable doctrines--two antagonistic social and
economic policies--had culminated. The adjustment must, indeed, now
come. "Seventy-five thousand troops for three months!" The President's
call rang out, and almost before the echo died away the quota was
full. The young, the adventurous, and the hot-headed, supplemented the
patriotic and sprang into line. To these it was to be a three months'
camping-out lark. Of course the South would back down at the show of
armed strength and firm resistance to disunion. The martial spirit,
the fighting instinct inherent in the race--that legacy from our brute
ancestry--was fanned into flame like fire in a summer wind. College
classes were depleted. Young lads hastened to force themselves into the
ranks. Drum and fife and bugle sounded in every street. LeRoy Davenport
was one of the first to enlist. The company of college boys elected him
their second lieutenant, and they left at once for Camp Morton to be
ready to march to the front at the first order for troops from the west.
He looked very fine and soldierly and handsome in his uniform, and with
the straps upon his shoulders. Beverly wrote that he should stick to
his editorial chair. He slept in the office, to be ready to receive and
write up every scrap of news the moment it came. He wrote a series of
fiery editorials, denouncing the "outrage on the flag at Fort Sumter."
An anonymous letter was pushed under his office-door warning him to
desist. He published the letter and appended to it a more vigorous
article than before. That night, as he lay on the bed in the little
back room of the office, he thought he detected a strange odor. He went
softly to the window and looked out. The moon was just rising on the
river. His little row-boat, in which his fishing and pleasure trips were
taken, bobbed idly up and down on the waves just under the corner of the
building. The strange odor grew stronger and more distinct in character.
He began to suspect that he understood it. He opened the door into the
front room and passed on to the compositors' room. He was sure now that
it was the smell of smoke and oil-soaked cloth. His first impulse was to
open the front door and shout fire, but he remembered Lovejoy's fate and
paused. He stepped to the front window and turned the old slats of the
heavy green blinds so that he could see out into the narrow street.
There were three forms crouching near the door. He thought he saw the
gleam of steel. Flames had begun to creep under the door and from the
compositors' room. Suddenly the flimsy pine partition burst into a sheet
of flame. He knew that to open the front door was to meet death at the
hands of desperadoes. He caught up the only implement of defense he
saw--a pair of great, sharp, clipping-shears, and started for the door.
He intended, at least, to mark his man so that others could deal with
him afterward. Suddenly he remembered that he could drop from the back
window into the river. If they had not taken his oars he could escape.
The room was as light as day now, and he knew that to hesitate was to be
lost. He dropped the curious weapon he had in his hand, and ran to the
back room. The only rope there was the support of the old-fashioned
bed. He hastily unwound it and fastened it to the bed-post nearest the
window. He wanted to make the drop as short as possible, lest the splash
of the water attract the men from the front of the house. He smiled when
he climbed into the boat and found the oars safely in its bottom. In an
instant he was pulling gently, softly, slowly out into the stream. He
could almost hear the beating of his own heart Then in the moonlight a
shot rang out on the clear air, and a sharp crack, as the ball struck
the side of the boat, told him that he was discovered. No need for
caution now! Need only for haste and strength! He pulled with all his
young vigor--with the stroke of an accustomed hand. The sky was livid
with the flames from his burning office--the dream and hope of his first
manhood was melting before his eyes. "God damn'em!" he said, between his
set teeth, as two more shots followed him, "they won't dare stay longer
now--and I'm out of range. God damn'em!" He let the oars fall by his
side. He could see numbers of men running about now, shouting, swearing,
vainly trying to check the flames. Some one yelled, "Shoot again, he's
in that skiff!" He heard and understood that the victim was being
made out the culprit. The would-be assassins were covering retreat. He
decided that it would not be safe to pull back to the Missouri side just
then. He would land on the Kansas shore. Morning found him near a small
village. He landed and made his way directly to the newspaper office.
It was one of his own exchanges, and a free-soil paper like his. He told
his story, and the editor made a lurid article out of it and called
for his townsmen to gather in a public meeting. He issued an extra, and
Beverly was the hero of the hour. Rough frontiersmen--some of whom had
seen his paper--looked at the slender stripling and volunteered to cross
the river and "clean out the town." They called on Beverly for a speech.
They were bent upon making him a leader. The war fever was in the
frontier blood. He began his speech in a passion of personal feeling,
but ended in an appeal for volunteers, "not to fight _my_ battle, not to
avenge my wrong, not to repair my loss, but to fight this great battle
for liberty and freedom in the great northwest! It seems we will have to
fight for the freedom of speech and press, as well as for free soil! I
will be frank: I had not intended to enlist in this war. I had hoped to
do more good by argument than I could hope to do by arms. I had hoped to
see the end of it at the end of the three months for which the President
called for troops; but I do not stand on that ground any longer.
Yesterday, as you all know, there was issued a new call for five hundred
thousand more men! I want, now, to be one of the first of those, and
I shall enlist for three years or for ten years or as long as this war
lasts; and I don't want to come out of it alive if I have got to come
out into a country where free speech is throttled and a free press
burned up! I shall enlist, I tell you, and since I had to fly to Kansas
for protection, I hope that Kansas will enroll me as _her_ son, and if
it may be, as her very first volunteer!"
The idea took the fancy of his listeners. "Raise a regiment!" "I'll go
with you!" "Three cheers for the editor!"
They were given with a will, and the enthusiasm for himself put a new
idea into his head.
"I am only twenty-three years old," he said laughing, "and not much
bigger than the right arm of some of you great, fine, muscular fellows;
but if you are willing to trust me, I would ask nothing better than to
take the lead of such a body of men. If enough of you will enlist here
and now, I'll go with you as private or as captain. I'll take the lead
and the responsibility, or I'll follow any better qualified man you may
name, and we'll go up to the capital and offer ourselves as the first
Kansas volunteers for this war!"
Almost before he had spoken the words cheer after cheer rent the air.
Men signified their willingness to enlist, and before night on the first
day he had spent on Kansas soil he found himself marching toward the
capital at the head of one hundred determined, rough, strong, fearless
frontiersmen to ask for a commission as their captain, and for arms and
ammunition for his men.
Mr. Davenport was surprised that day to receive this dispatch:
"Am elected Captain, Company A. First Kansas Vols. Will write.
"Beverly."
They could not imagine at home why Beverley should be in a Kansas
company, but when the _Gazette_ came that night with an account of
the burning of the obscure newspaper-office out in Missouri, they
understood, and Katherine felt faint and sick when she realized that two
of her boys had gone to fight against her people. She knew that her own
brothers and nephews would all be on the other side, and that Griffith's
were there too. Griffith had gone with Roy's company to Camp Morton and
had sorrowfully consented to his enlistment; but if war there must be
and if his son must go, Griffith felt that he was on the right side. He
held back, himself, from the idea that fighting was necessary, even yet.
At the very worst, it would all be over very soon, he thought, and he
hoped and believed that a few demonstrations of determination on the
part of the Government would undoubtedly settle the matter without any
real or serious fighting. He was unalterably opposed to a division of
the Union, and he believed that the South would see its mistake on
that question and reconsider it. But as State after State seceded, his
perplexity deepened. He and Katherine had all these years kept up a
fond and constant correspondence with the old home friends and kinsmen,
several of whom, from time to time, had visited them. All these had felt
that Griffith had made a grievous mistake in following the course he had
taken, but until now no real bitterness had resulted. Now, all letters
ceased. They had heard, somehow, in the old home, that Griffith's sons
had enlisted in the Union army--to fight against them! That was more
than they could bear. Even before the line of communication was finally
closed against letters, theirs had ceased to come--and Katherine
understood. Many a night she sobbed herself to sleep.
"How terrible this all is, Griffith! How terrible! Why should they fight
over it? Why don't they let the slave states go, if they want to, and be
one government, and the others be free states and another government--as
Canada and we are, or as Mexico and we?"
Griffith had tried to explain the difficulties and the inevitable
clashing of interests that would be forever resulting--the constant and
eternal clashing. He pointed out that no country would allow itself to
be divided. He read to her long arguments in support of the maintenance
of the Union; but she said:
"Yes, I see it is desirable if all want it so; but if they do _not_,
why--why--I wouldn't fight to compel them to stay with me if they want
to go. You never do that way with your children, Griffith, you know you
don't. You never did try to conquer one of them and force him to think
your way. You always felt that way about freeing the slaves, too. You
said you did not judge for other people--only for yourself. And when you
saw how terribly hard it was to do it, and that most people could not
do as you did even if they wanted to--you always said that you did not
blame them in the least."
"I say so yet. I know all that; but governments are very different. Some
one has got to decide for others. If they didn't, everything would go
to smash in very short order. I suppose I am a good deal of a coward.
I can't bear to judge for other people. But I do believe in maintaining
this government at any and all cost--but I'd leave slavery alone in the
South. I wouldn't let it spread. That is Lincoln's policy now. He said
so in his message--his inaugural. If it will stay where it is, he says
he won't disturb it--and that suits me; but if it will not----"
"Well, it won't," put in Howard. "I heard Governor Morton say so in his
speech last night. He said that this fight had all along been really to
extend and not to retain slavery, and when that was lost then the South
proposed to smash the Union. That's exactly what he said; but, 'We'll
rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again,'" he sang, and
banged the door behind him.
That night Howard disappeared. He had ran away, sworn that he was
eighteen years old and enlisted under another name, as a gunner in a
battery! It was ten days before a trace of him was found. Then he was on
his way to the front whence news had come thick and fast of skirmishes,
battles and tremendous preparations for a terrible and bloody struggle.
Excitement was at fever heat. The streets were crowded with soldiers
fend echoed with martial music night and day. War, indeed, was upon
them, and fair July was here.