I have not yet learned to like it.

Atchison gives me my first foothold on Kansas. It was long a

Border-Ruffian nest, but has shared the fortunes of many such in being

mainly bought out by free-state men, who now rule, and for the most part

own it. For the last year, its growth has been quite rapid; of its four

or five hundred dwellings, I think, two-thirds have been built within

that period. The Missouri at this point runs further to the west than

elsewhere in Kansas; its citizens tell me that the great roads westward

to Utah, &c., from St. Joseph on the north and from Leavenworth on the

south, pass within a few miles of Atchison when thrice as far from their

respective starting-points. Hence the Salt Lake mail, though made up at

St. Joseph, is brought hither by steamboat and starts overland from this

place; hence many trains are made up here for Laramie, Green River, Fort

Hall, Utah, and I hear even for Santa Fé. I have seen several twelve-ox

teams, drawing heavily-loaded wagons, start for Salt Lake, etc., to-day;

there are others camped just outside the corporate limits, which have

just come in; while a large number of wagons form a _corral_ (yard,

inclosure or encampment) some two miles westward. A little further away,

the tents and wagons of parties of gold-seekers, with faces set for

Pike’s Peak, dot the prairie; one of them in charge of a grey-head who

is surely old enough to know better. Teamsters from Salt Lake and

teamsters about to start, lounge on every corner; I went out three or

four miles on the high prairie this afternoon, and the furthest thing I

could see was the white canvas of a moving train. I have long been

looking for the West, and here it is at last.—But I must break off

somewhere to prepare for an early start for Leavenworth and Lawrence

to-morrow, in order to reach Osawatamie next day in season to attend the

Republican Convention which is to assemble at that place on Wednesday,

the eighteenth.

II.

NOTES ON KANSAS.

LAWRENCE, Kansas, _May 20, 1859_.

It resumed raining in Kansas, after a few dry days, on Thursday, the

12th inst., and rained “off and on” till Saturday night. Sunday, the

15th, was cloudy and chilly, but without rain, until evening, when

thunder-showers came up from every side, and kept flashing, rumbling,

and pouring nearly throughout the night. Kansas brags on its thunder and

lightning; and the boast is well founded. I never before observed a

display of celestial pyrotechny so protracted, incessant and vivid as

that of last Sunday night. The country, already saturated with water,

was fairly drenched by this deluge, which rendered many streams

ordinarily insignificant either dangerous or for a season impassable.

At 6 A. M. on Monday morning, four of us left Atchison in a two-horse

wagon, intent on reaching Osawatamie (some eighty miles rather east of

south—one hundred by any practicable route) next evening. The sky was

still threatening; we knew that the streams were swelled beyond reason;

but our pilot was a most experienced pioneer, who had forded, been

ferried over or swam every stream in Eastern Kansas, and was confident

of his ability to go through by some route or other. So we went ahead in

a southerly direction, across swells of prairie rather steep-sided for

Kansas, and through ravines in which what were usually rills were

swelled into torrents. From the high level of the prairies, little but a

broad sweep of grass on every side was visible; but soon we were

descending into a new ravine, and now belts and spurs of timber were

seen, generally widening as they tend toward the Missouri. I noted that

these woody spurs, composed mainly of black-oak and cotton-wood (the

latter a very poor but quick-growing timber, ranging somewhere between

poplar and basswood), began to spread on every side wherever the annual

fires were repelled from the adjacent prairie, whether by the

interposition of a road or otherwise, and that the young trees that thus

spring up along the sides of the ravines and run out into the level

prairie, are quite often hickory, white-ash, etc., even where none such

are visible among the adjacent timber. I was fully convinced that wood

becomes more abundant with the progress of settlement and cultivation.

Of course, there is timber enough to-day in the Territory; but the

better portion of it is too generally confined to the intervales of the

larger streams, too far for their comfort from most settlers on the

prairies. Could prairie-fires be wholly arrested, the increase of timber

would overbalance tenfold the annual use and waste; and the quality

improves even faster than the quantity. This is real progress. For,

though there is quite enough in Kansas, and a pretty good variety of all

species except the evergreens, which are lamentably deficient, there are

points at which there is none within several miles—the little that

formerly ran up the small ravines which here cut in upon the great high

prairies being soon exhausted by use for building, fuel, and fencing,

and requiring years for its reproduction.

Twelve or fifteen miles south of Atchison, we struck the great

California trail from Leavenworth, and thence followed it east by south

into that city, some fifteen to eighteen miles. I should have liked

Gerrit Smith as one of our party, that I might show him the practical

working of his theory that Government has no other legitimate business

than to keep one man’s fingers off another man’s throat and out of any

pocket but his own. The great California trail, like the Santa Fé and

all other primitive roads through this prairie country, keeps along the

highest “divides” or prairie swells, avoiding the miry “bottoms” of the

streams and (so far as possible) the ravines which the water falling on

the high prairie has cut down to them, of course winding considerably,

but making the best and most serviceable natural road that can be, and

one that in dry weather is excellent, and in wet as good as possible.

But each settler along this trail, in the absence of any legal

establishment of the trail as a highway, is at liberty to run his fences

right across it as the line of his land runs, and so crowd it off the

high “divides” into all manner of angles and zigzags, across this ravine

and into that slough, until the trail is fast becoming the very worst

road in all Kansas. I have had a pretty full experience of bad roads

during this week; but the very worst and miriest was that portion of the

California trail (and United States military road from Fort Leavenworth

west to other forts) which works its sinuous way through the region

generally settled by thrifty farmers, lying directly west of

Leavenworth. And the worst hill for teams I have seen in Kansas is

traversed by this road within five miles of Leavenworth, between the

fort and the rich but miry valley of Salt Creek on the west. This road,

unless it can be restored, will soon have to be abandoned, and thence

Leavenworth must suffer.

As we neared the California trail, the white coverings of the many

emigrant and transport wagons dotted the landscape, giving the trail the

appearance of a river running through great meadows, with many ships

sailing on its bosom. Most of the independent wagoners were still

encamped by the wayside, unable or unwilling to brave the deep mud;

their cattle feeding on the broad prairie; the emigrants cooking or

sitting beside the wagons; women sometimes washing, and all trying to

dry their clothing, drenched and soaked by the pouring rain of the past

night. One great wagon-train was still in _corral_ with its cattle

feeding and men lounging about; the others might better have been, as it

was clearly impossible to make their lean, wild-looking oxen (mainly of

the long-horned stripe, which indicates Texas as their native land, and

which had probably first felt the yoke within the past week) draw them

up the slightest ascent through that deep, slippery mire. A great deal

of yelling, beating, swearing, was being expended to little purpose, as

I presume each train corraled for the ensuing night within a mile of the

point it left in the morning. These contractors’ wagons are very large

and strong, each carrying a couple of good extra axles lashed under its

body, to be used in case an old one gives way under a heavy jerk; the

drivers are as rough and wild-looking as their teams, though not quite

so awkward at their business; but to keep six yoke of such oxen in line

in the road, and all pulling on the load, is beyond human skill. It is a

sore trial to patience, that first start of these trains on their long

journey—to Utah, Fort Hall, Green River, and some of these to New

Mexico, though this is not the Santa Fé trail. The loads are generally

fifty hundred weight; the wagons must weigh at least fifteen hundred

each; and, though this would seem moderate for twelve oxen, it must be

remembered that they are at this season poor and at first unbroken, and

that the road is in spots a very bad one. A train consists of ten to

thirty wagons; each train has its reliable and experienced master or

director; and when a team is stalled, another is unhitched from its own

wagon and sent to the aid of the one in trouble. The rate of progress is

necessarily snail-like; these trains will do very well if they make

twenty miles the first week, considering the weather. But then the

feeding of the teams (like the lodging of the men) costs nothing, as

they live on the broad prairie, and though they will often be fearfully

hungry or dry in traversing grassless tracts on their route, they are

said generally to gain in flesh (for which there is ample room) during a

journey of three or four months. Of course, they improve in docility and

effectiveness, being at first so wild that, in order to be yoked, they

have to be driven into the _corral_ (formed, as I may have explained, by

the wagons closely ranged in hollow square, the tongue of each being run

under its next neighbor, for defense against Indians or other prowlers).

Very few wagons or cattle ever come back; the freighting is all one way;

and both wagons and cattle are usually sold at or near their point of

destination for whatever they will fetch—to be taken to California or

disposed of as they best may.

We drove into Leavenworth City about 11 A. M., and found that the

delegates from this county had generally given up the idea of reaching

Osawatamie, judging that the Convention would have to be adjourned or

postponed on account of the swollen and impassable streams. Stranger

Creek barred all egress by way of Lawrence, which we had intended to

make our resting-place for the night; a creek nine miles south of

Leavenworth had turned back the stage running in that direction; in

fact, no stage made its way out of Leavenworth that day in any direction

which was not forced to return, baffled by the high water. So at 3 P. M.

we shipped our horses and wagons on board the steamboat D. A. January,

and dropped down the Missouri some fifty miles, past the bleaching bones

of several dead cities (not including Quindaro, which insists that it is

still alive) to Wyandot, in the lower corner of Kansas, with Kansas

City, Missouri, three miles off, in plain sight across the mouth of the

Kansas or Kaw River. Wyandot, though hemmed in and impeded, like

Quindaro, by an Indian reserve back of it, is alive, and is becoming,

what it ought fully to be, the outlet and inlet between Southern Kansas

and the Missouri River. It has a beautiful location, and decided natural

advantages over Kansas City, which, with other Border-Ruffian

strongholds south of it, has hitherto engrossed too much of the travel

and trade of Kansas. We halted at Wyandot over night, had an improptu

Republican gathering and some off-hand talk in the evening, and set

forth at six next morning for Osawatamie (forty-six miles a little west

of south by a bee-line, but over fifty by any practicable route), which

we were desirous of reaching before night, as the Convention was to be

held next day.

Our route led south-west over rolling woodland through the Wyandot

Reserve, descending into the bottom of the Kansas or Kaw River—said

bottom being from one to two miles wide, and very heavily timbered with

elm, yellow oak, black-walnut, hickory, cotton-wood, sycamore, basswood,

etc. Nearly all the rivers and larger creeks of Kansas rim through

similar bottoms or intervales, from half a mile to three miles wide, and

timbered much like this. These intervales are composed of a dark, rich

mold, oftener over than under three feet in depth, but they are so level

that they could hardly be cultivated without drainage, even were it

advisable to strip them by wholesale of timber, as it decidedly is not.

The houses and barns that shall yet thickly dot the adjacent prairies

are now mainly growing in these bottoms, and should stand there as trees

till they are wanted. When cleared and drained—and in some places the

rotting out of the stumps, and thorough plowing thereafter will go far

toward effecting the drainage required—they will yield bounteous crops

of almost anything that does not dread frost. Though it seems hardly

possible that their soil should be richer than that of the prairies, it

is deeper, and probably contains a more varied and choice admixture of

the elements of vegetation. But the Kansas or Kaw bottom was not only

soaked but covered with water—for it had rained here smartly only the

preceding morning after it ceased at Atchison, and the road across the

bottom was for the time an all but impassable morass. I trust the

citizens of Wyandot will not long leave it thus.

We crossed the Kaw on a fair wooden toll-bridge, one thousand two

hundred feet long, just erected—or, rather, not quite completed. In

default of a toll-house or gatekeeper, a man at work on the bridge in

his shirt-sleeves, took the toll. I believe no other bridge across the

Kaw is now standing, though there has been one at Topeka, fifty miles

up, and perhaps at other points. Bridges are sorely needed throughout

Kansas, not only because the streams are addicted to rapid and vast

augmentations from thaws or rains, but because their banks are almost

perpendicular, and often miry toward the bottom, while the streams are

nearly as deep at either shore as in the middle, making the attempt to

ford difficult, even when it is not dangerous.

The Kaw was, of course, nearly full (all the rivers of Kansas have low

banks), and was running very swiftly; still, it seems of moderate size,

for a river which leads about six hundred miles westward of its mouth;

but all the rivers of this region, the Missouri included, seem small,

considering the area drained by them. The facts that they run rapidly,

are apt to be deep, and that their depth, is nearly uniform from side to

side, account in part for this appearance.

Half an hour after crossing the Kaw, we emerged from the road and the

Reserve upon the high prairie, the clouds of the morning broke away, and

the day was henceforth perfect. The young grass of the prairie,

refreshed by the heavy rains, appeared in its freshest, tenderest green;

the delicate early flowers were abundant, yet not so numerous as to pall

by satiety the pleasure of looking at them, and the panorama presented

was magnificent. Passing Shawnee, a prairie village of twenty or thirty

houses, with a large hotel, our road bore more directly south, and soon

brought us in sight of the great Santa Fé trail, with its white-topped

emigrant wagons, and three great contract trains, one of them still in

_corral_, the others with six pair of mules to each wagon, attempting to

make progress toward New Mexico—attempting it, for the most part, in

vain. The mules were small, and new to work—to _this_ work, at all

events—and drew badly; while the wheels cut so deeply into the yielding

paste beneath them that little or no advance was made. I presume they

all corraled for the night within two miles of the places where we saw

them.

Crossing the trail almost at right angles, we left the smart village of

Olathe (county seat of Johnson county) a mile or so to the west, and

struck off nearly due south, over high prairies sloped as gently and

grassed as richly as could be desired, with timber visible along the

water-courses on either hand. Yet there was little or no settlement

below Olathe—for the next twenty miles that we traveled there was hardly

an improvement to each four square miles of the country in sight. And

yet, if the Garden of Eden exceeded this land in beauty or fertility, I

pity Adam for having to leave it. The earth was thoroughly sodden with

rain, so that temporary springs were bursting out on almost every acre,

while the water-courses, including those usually dry, ran heavy streams,

each of them requiring skill in the charioteer and good conduct on the

part of the horses to pass them without balk or break. We must have

crossed over a hundred of these “runs” in the course of this day’s

travel, each of them with a trying jerk on the carriage, and generally

with a spring on the part of the horses. These water-ways have generally

a limestone bottom not far below the surface of their bed; but their

banks are apt to be steep, and are continually growing more so by reason

of the water washing away the earth which has been denuded of grass and

worked loose by hoofs and wheels. Traveling by jerks like this is not so

pleasant as over a macadamized road, yet our day was a bright and

pleasant one.

Thirty miles of progress, twenty of them over prairie, brought us to

Spring Hill, a hamlet of five or six dwellings, including a store, but

no tavern. Our horses needed food and rest—for the wagon with its four

inmates, was a heavy drag over such going—so we stopped and tried to

find refreshment, but with limited success. There was no grain to be

had, save a homœpathic dose sold us for a quarter by a passing wagoner,

and thankfully received; we gave this to our steeds, regaled our selves

on crackers and herring, and pushed on.

Our direct route led due south to Paoli, county seat of Lykins; but

persons we met here assured us that there was no crossing Bull Creek on

this road, and that we must bear away to the west through Marysville (a

village of perhaps a dozen houses, including a store and a tavern), so

as to cross at Rock Ford, three miles beyond, which opened the only

chance of getting over. We did so, and crossed in safety, with the usual

jokes when we were fairly over; but I confess that the wide, impetuous

stream, so impenetrable to the eye, and so far above its average level,

wore a vicious look to me when we approached and plunged into it. Its

bottom is here hardly half a mile wide, but is capitally wooded with

hickory, oak, black-walnut, etc. Emerging from it, we rode over twelve

miles more of high, gently rolling prairie, with wood in the ravines on

either side, which brought us to the village of Stanton (of twenty or

thirty houses, including two stores and a tavern) which we reached

before sunset, having traveled at least fifty miles since we started in

the morning. Night and the Marais des Cygnes—here brought us to a

halt—the creek being at this time impassable—and we had to forego our

determination to reach Osawatamie before sleeping. So we halted at the

little tavern, where we found five or six others bound to Osawatamie,

like ourselves, at least one of whom had swam three creeks since the

morning. Fifteen or twenty others drove up during the evening; we had

supper, a neighborhood meeting and a Republican talk at the

school-house, and adjourned to fill all the beds and floors of the

tavern as full as they could hold. The kind, active, efficient landlady

did her best, which was good enough; and all were snugly bestowed except

another editor and myself, who accepted the kindly proffered hospitality

of a Republican farmer, and were capitally entertained at his house,

half a mile distant.

As night fell, the lightning had begun to gleam and flash nearly around

the horizon; by ten o’clock, the thunder rolled; at twelve, a high gale

could be heard sweeping over the prairies some moments before it struck

us. The lightning blazed almost incessantly for hours; yet the rain-fall

at Stanton was very slight. But there were heavy showers at Marysville,

at Paoli, and almost everywhere else around us, still further raising

the streams, so that many who had come part way were unable to reach

Osawatamie next day.

We were early on the bank (a mile from Stanton) of the Marais des

Cygnes, which was running heavy drift-wood, and otherwise misbehaving

itself. It had buried up the ferry-rope, without whose aid the boat

could not be propelled across its sweeping current; one of the trees to

which that rope was attached was now nearly in the middle of the stream;

and there had been no crossing for a day or two. But a new rope had been

procured and somehow stretched across the stream; whereby we were taken

across in our turn, after waiting somewhat over an hour. A mile or so of

well timbered and too well watered bottom brought us again to prairie,

over which we drove rapidly into Osawatamie, which we reached before ten

A. M.

Osawatamie is a village of at most one hundred and fifty houses,

situated in the forks of the Marais des Cygnes and Potawatamie, a

somewhat smaller creek, which comes in from the south-west. The location

is a pleasant and favorable but not a commanding one; the surrounding

country is more considerably cultivated than any I had passed south of

the Kaw. The two creeks supply abundant and good timber; an excellent

steam saw-mill has taken the place of that which the border-ruffians

burned; a flouring mill, tannery, brewery and a large hotel, are being

erected or completed. I presume there is a larger town somewhere in what

is known as Southern Kansas, though I do not know which it is.

But Osawatamie has a higher interest than any other spot in Kansas,

except possibly Lawrence, because of her honorable eminence in the

struggle which has secured Kansas to free labor. She was long the only

settlement near the Missouri border which was avowedly, decidedly

free-state; the only free-state village that could be reached by a

night’s march from Missouri. To be known as a free-state man at Topeka,

Wanbonsee, Emporia, or any other post well inland, involved struggles

and sacrifices; to be one at Osawatamie, was to live in nightly and

well-grounded apprehension of robbery, arson and murder. The pro-slavery

settlements in the neighborhood were strong and malignant; and they had

only to draw upon Missouri at sight for any amount of force, and the

draft would be honored. Yet to surrender this outpost was virtually to

give up all Kansas south of the Marais des Cygnes; and, though its

maintenance was sure to cost property and blood, it was not surrendered,

for OLD JOHN BROWN was among its early settlers. Twice was it sacked and

laid in ashes, once after a desperate fight of two hours, in which Old

Brown with forty of his neighbors held at bay four hundred well-armed

Missourians, who had the advantage of a cannon. So fearfully

outnumbered, Old Brown, after seeing his son and several of his

neighbors shot dead by his side, and after killing at least as many

Missourians as there were of his own party altogether, was gradually

driven back through the open timber north of the village, and across the

Marais des Cygnes, the ruffians not venturing to pursue their victory,

though they had attacked from the west, and so were driving the

free-state men toward Missouri.

The women and children had meantime fled to the woods on the south; the

village was burned after being robbed, the only iron safe therein having

been blown open by firing a cannon into its side, and so plundered of

some silver-ware and a considerable sum in money Osawatamie was thus a

second time “wiped out.” But it has risen again from its ashes, and is

once more the home of an undaunted, freedom-loving people, who are

striving to forget their bereavements and sacrifices in view of the rich

fruits they have borne to liberty and human good. They have gathered the

dust of their martyred dead into a common grave on a prairie-knoll just

west of their village, and propose to erect there a monument which shall

teach their children and grandchildren to love and cherish the cause for

which those heroes joyfully laid down their lives. I beg leave to

suggest an enlargement of the scope of this enterprise—that this

monument be reared to _all_ the martyrs of freedom in Kansas, and that

the name of each be inscribed upon it, and his mortal remains, if his

relatives make no objection, be placed beneath the column which shall

here be reared as a memorial of the struggle which secured Kansas to

free labor, and is destined finally to hasten the expulsion of slavery

from Missouri. Should a monument be proposed on this basis, I feel

confident that subscriptions in aid of its erection might reasonably be

asked of all who prefer freedom to slavery, and would not be asked in

vain.

III.

MORE NOTES ON KANSAS.

LEAVENWORTH, _May 23, 1859_.

THE convention at Osawatamie was of course very slow in assembling, and

I think not more than half the organized counties were represented at

all. Hardly any were present from the southern counties, for whose

benefit that place of meeting had been selected. Those who did come got

there by swimming many dangerous creeks; but from most localities

attendance was a physical impossibility. Ferry-boats are scarce in

Kansas, bridges, of course, nearly unknown; and the water runs off these

rolling prairies so rapidly that a stream which a three-year old child

might ford at night will be running water enough to float a steamboat

before morning. Obviously, there can be no ferries maintained on such;

and, until bridges can be erected, those whose way lies across them have

no further alternative when they are in flood than either to swim or

wait. But to swim an angry, turbid, rushing torrent, perhaps a dozen

rods across, and running drift-wood in a perfectly reckless manner, is a

job requiring nerve and skill; so the greater number have simply to stay

at home or camp on the bank, and wait until the flood runs out, which it

usually will in twelve to thirty-six hours, according to the size of the

stream, unless the rain or thaw continues. But it had rained nearly half

the time for a week prior and up to the eighteenth, so that few even of

those who supposed the convention would be held could reach it. Yet

there gathered on the afternoon of that day nearly a thousand of the

pioneers, mainly of the immediate neighborhood, to whom, in an interlude

of the convention’s discussions concerning their organization and

platform, I had the satisfaction of setting forth the republican faith

as I understand it, and by whom it was heartily received. It was a labor

of love so to speak, but rather a tax to write the speech out, even

imperfectly, as I was obliged to do during the next two days in the

intervals of riding and speaking, in order that all those people of

Kansas who care to do so may consider my notions of “Free-State

Democracy” and “Squatter Sovereignty.”

The twin curses of Kansas, now that the border-ruffians have stopped

ravaging her, are land speculation (whereof the manufacture of

paper-cities and bogus corner-lots, though more amusingly absurd, is not

half so mischievous as the grasping of whole townships by means of

fraudulent pre-emptions and other devices familiar to the craft) and

one-horse politicians. Many of these latter were driven into the

free-state movement by the enormity of the border-ruffian outrages, by

their own terror or indignation, and by the overwhelming force of public

sentiment; but, being essentially demagogues, they gravitate

irresistibly toward the sham-democracy, in whose embraces the whole

tribe will bring up, sooner or later. Their prototype is Mr. H. Miles

Moore of this city, who, after having been one of the noisiest and most

conspicuous free-state men in 1855–6, after having been driven down the

river by the border-ruffians, who gave him his choice between leaving

Kansas and instant death, and after having been once strung up by the

neck by them and choked till nearly dead, is now hard at work trying to

put Kansas once more into their hands, and figuring in conventions and

on committees with those who didn’t quite hang him, as fellow democrats!

His case reminds me strongly by contrast of that of the man who observed

that, for the first month after marriage, he loved his wife so that he

wanted to eat her, while ever since he had wished he had.

The controlling idea of the one-horse politicians is that the

republicans must not let their adversaries have a chance to raise the

cry of “nigger” against them—that hence they must be as harsh, and

cruel, and tyrannical, toward the unfortunate blacks as possible, in

order to prove themselves “the white man’s party,” or else all the mean,

low, ignorant, drunken, brutish whites will go against them from horror

of “negro equality.” To which I reply that this sort of cattle are

against the republicans any how, and never can be permanently otherwise.

They may be driven by circumstances to vote once or twice with us, but

the virus of sham-democracy is in their blood, and must come out. That

democracy, from long practice and an experience that it pays, can dive

deeper, stay under longer, and come up nastier, in this business of

negro-hating, than any other party that ever was or ever can be

invented. There is nothing that more strikingly exposes the radical

baseness of slaveholding than the fact that its votaries so hate those

whom they have long injured, that, beaten in their desperate struggle to

force negroes into Kansas as slaves, they now turn a short corner and

insist that, if they cannot come in as slaves, they shall be shut out,

and even driven out, altogether.

I apprehend that it will be necessary for the republicans of Kansas, in

view of the inveterate western prejudices of a large portion of her

population, to concede, for the present, that the right of suffrage

shall be exercised only by white males, or men of European lineage,

excluding, on account of their imperfect moral and intellectual

developments, Indians, negroes, and their descendants. Further than

this, I would not go, no matter how great the inducement. Leave the

democrats alone in their glory, when they come to propose and support—as

they are certain to do—propositions that negroes shall be expelled and

excluded from Kansas—shall be precluded from testifying against a white

man—shall be debarred from attending schools frequented by white

children, etc., etc. Let any city or district that sees fit, make

adequate provision for the education of colored children by themselves;

but, in default of this, let the schools be open to all who need their

ministrations. Such, I hope, will be the determination of republicans

generally; and, if Kansas has to be lost in consequence, then let her

go!

I left Osawatamie on the morning of the nineteenth, in the Lawrence

stage, crossing the Marais de Cygnes at Bundy’s ferry (where we crossed

the day before), and finding the water considerably lower, though still

over its regular northern bank, and the access on either side most

detestable. Passing Stanton, we kept still west of north into the Ottawa

Reserve, so as to leave a mail at Ottawa Jones’s, where we struck due

north to Prairie City, leaving Peoria City and Ohio City some miles

distant on our left, either upon or near the Marais des Cygnes. (It

takes three log houses to make a city in Kansas, but they begin

_calling_ it a city so soon as they have staked out the lots.) I stopped

at Prairie City and talked to a republican gathering of four hundred

people, though where on earth so many could have been scared up, within

a reasonable ride of this point, one who merely runs over the country

could not imagine. True, we had here “Prairie City,” “Baldwin City,” and

“Palmyra” in a string, all within three miles; but they could not all

have mustered half this audience; and I was forced to conclude that the

country is really better peopled than it seems to a mere traveler—that,

while the favored roads traverse the high “divides,” or middle of the

prairies, in order to avoid, so far as possible, the miry bottoms and

water-courses, the settlers are nested in the edge of the timber, and

down the water-courses, where fencing and fuel are far more accessible.

The country I traversed between Stanton and Prairie City was a little

more rolling, and considerably better timbered, than that between

Shawnee and Stanton, already described. The oaks often covered

considerable tracts of upland, while young timber was visibly spreading

on all hands, under cover of the universal hazel-bushes of those Kansas

uplands which are not burned over every year. Our next post-office above

Jones’s was Hickory Grove, which reminds me that I saw more good hickory

this day than in any former day of my life. Some of the oak, also, was

very serviceable. These, with the black-walnut, are the settler’s main

reliance for timber, rails included. The elm, cotton-wood, sycamore,

etc., warp so badly when sawed into boards and seasoned, that very

little use can be made of them, though I think I saw a few cotton-wood

rails. The grass was abundant and superb; the soil generally deep and

excellent.

We had another smart thunder-shower on Friday morning (20th), after

which I came from Prairie City to Lawrence, fifteen miles north. My

companion was a young pioneer from southern Missouri, reared among

slaves and slaveholders, but free-state from the time he could fairly

see, who assured me that he knew a large portion of the people of

Missouri to condemn and hate slavery, even while they shout and vote in

its favor. He came out here in 1855 to be rid of the curse, and had had

a pretty fair experience of the struggle, having been with Lane at Bull

Creek, when eight hundred Missourians did not venture to attack three

hundred and fifty free-state men, but, after being separated by night,

beat a retreat across the line, leaving some of their arms and camp

equipage behind them. He was also at the somewhat noted “Battle of Black

Jack,” which he described to me substantially as follows:

On the 1st of June, 1856, Henry Clay Pate, at the head of a pro-slavery

band, emerging suddenly from the Indian Reserve, which then covered most

of the region between this point and the Missouri border, surprised the

little settlement of Palmyra, which they sacked without resistance. Next

morning, they proposed to extend their operations to Prairie City, which

would probably have shared the same fate, had not Old Brown, lately

driven from Osawatamie by an overwhelming force, been camped, with ten

of his tried men, in the woods on Black Jack, a little creek four miles

eastward. Strengthened by these, Prairie City resolved on resistance,

and mustered its sixteen Sharp’s rifles, in addition to those of Old

Brown’s party, and when the ruffians sent in six of their men to sack

the place, presuming there would be no resistance, they took four of

them prisoners, and chased the other two back to their band, with

bullets whistling by their ears. They found the ruffians encamped on the

open prairie, but drawn out in line for battle, where they stood

perfectly still as the free-state men neared them, firing as they neared

to get the range of their rifles. As they approached, a small ravine

only lay betwixt them, but the two lines could be and were distinctly

counted on either side—fifty-four men in rank composing the pro-slavery

and twenty-six the free-state party. Soon, two or three of the ruffians

went down badly wounded, and one after another of their comrades were

seen tailing off, making tracks for Missouri at a 2:40 gait, until

barely twenty-two of them remained, when Pate raised a white flag and

surrendered at discretion, to just fourteen men standing in the

free-state array at that moment. Seven horses, two wagons well laden

with the plunder of Palmyra, two drums, and about forty stand of arms,

were among the “spoils of victory” and though Colonel Sumner with his

United States troops came down on hearing of the affray, liberated the

prisoners, and restored what they claimed as their property; the booty

taken from Palmyra was left and restored to its rightful owners. Not one

free-state man was killed or badly wounded. The wounded Missourians were

kindly nursed at Prairie City till they were well enough to travel, when

they were recommended to resume that wholesome excercise—a suggestion

which they promptly and gladly heeded. Two of those who got away died of

their wounds. And, though there were many alarms, and a year of

marching, camping, scouting, riding, after that, to the destruction of

all industry and progress, Prairie City has seen no organized company of

border-ruffians at her doors since that 2d day of June, 1856.

The road from that city to Lawrence (fifteen miles) passes over a

rolling country, mainly prairie, crosses the great Santa Fé trail, now

horribly cut up by many heavy wagons passing in bad weather, then takes

over a high “divide” and along a limestone ridge which runs out into the

valley of the Wakarusa, and affords a magnificent view of the country

for an area of twenty miles in each direction, with the prairie in good

part cultivated, gleaming in sunlight on every bend, and the Wakarusa

with its belt of timber making its way through them to join the Kaw,

with its still larger belt, on the north. Spacious mounds or spurs of

limestone covered with soil and grass rise to a height of two or three

hundred feet on every side, on one of which, visible for many miles on

every side, a flag, when raised, used to give warning of invasion and

danger in the troublous days now happily passed away. At the base of one

of these spurs, by the side of the Kaw, sits Lawrence, clearly

discernible from a distance of ten miles. Descending from the ridge, and

passing over a lower prairie two or three miles, we cross the Wakarusa

(a moderate creek, hardly twenty yards wide, but very deep and with

high, steep banks) on a good toll-bridge, traverse its wide, wet bottom,

here in good part prairie-marsh, and pass over two miles of superb

prairie into the renowned citadel of free-state principle, the

first-born of northern resolution that Kansas should not be tamely

yielded to the slaveholders, and which does not deny its parentage.

Lawrence can only grow with the more thorough development of the

surrounding country. Across the Kaw on the north, a large Indian

reservation (the Delaware) impedes its progress, while town-sites, and

very good ones are so abundant in Kansas, that no location but one where

navigable water is abandoned for land transportation can be of very much

account. I should say Lawrence has now five hundred dwellings and

perhaps five thousand inhabitants; and these figures are more likely to

be over than under the mark. She has a magnificent hotel (the Eldridge

House)—the best, I hear, between the Missouri and the Sacramento—far

better, I fear, than its patronage will justify—though it has nearly all

that Lawrence can give. She _is_ to have a great University, for which a

part of the funds are already provided; but I trust it will be located

some distance away, so as to give scope for a Model Farm, and for a

perfect development of the education of the brain and the hands

together. In our old states, the cost of land is always assigned as a

reason for not blending labor with study authoritatively and

systematically; here there can be no such excuse. I trust the

establishment of the Lawrence University will not be unduly hurried, but

that it will be, whenever it does open its doors to students, an

institution worthy of its name.

I passed into the town over “Mount Oread,” a considerable eminence on

the south-west, on whose summit the free-state fortress of other days

was constructed. It is now dilapidated, but is a place of considerable

natural strength as a defensive position, and, in the hands of the

grandsons of the men who defended Bunker Hill, would have cost something

to whoever might have taken it. As it was, the ruffians, though often in

the neighborhood in overwhelming force, and anxious enough for its

destruction, never got possession of it but once, and then by marching

with federal officers at their head and federal writs in their pockets.

For one, I regret that even these were suffered to shield them, and thus

allow printing-presses to be destroyed and houses battered down and

burned with impunity.

I did not speak long in Lawrence, for I trust words are not there

needed. Her people have had practical illustrations of the great issue

which divides the country, and are not likely soon to forget them. Of

course, her pioneers will die or become dispersed; new men will come in

or rise up to fill their places, and “another king arose who knew not

Joseph,” will find its parallel in her future. Thus, among her

new-comers is the gentleman who led over one thousand armed Missourians

from Jackson County in March, 1855, and returned by their votes and

revolvers pro-slavery men to represent her in the bogus Legislature of

that year. He is, of course, an “Old-Line-Whig” of the Buchanan stripe,

and will make a first-rate “Free-State Democrat” in due season.

By-and-by, when the grogshops, already too numerous in Lawrence, shall

have manufactured or attracted thither a sufficient number of

ground-tier Democrats, and mortified pride or disappointed ambition

shall have wrought its perfect work with quite a number of sometime

free-state men, he may be chosen mayor of the city of his young love,

and _The Constitution_ (or whatever may then be the name of the

pro-slavery organ at Washington) may announce with guns and trumpets

that “National Democracy has triumphed at last in the great stronghold

of Kansas Abolition.” But that will not probably happen just yet.

While I was in Lawrence, the little steamboat “Gus Linn,” Captain

Beasley, came down the Kaw from Fort Riley, some thirty miles above the

fork of the Big Blue, two hundred and thirty-five (I believe) from the

mouth of the river, and over one hundred in a bee-line. She reached the

fort in a little over two days from Kansas City, discharged her cargo,

and loaded on her way down with corn, whereof Kansas has a large surplus

of last year’s growth, after supplying this year’s heavy emigration to

Pike’s Peak. As the Territory has little or nothing else to sell, and

almost everything to buy, she would like to export her corn if she had

any way by which to get it to the Missouri without costing all it will

fetch, so that this pioneer passage of a steamboat above Topeka and

Manhattan was hailed with general exultation. Her burthen is three

hundred tons, and she draws when full but thirty inches (when light,

scarcely ten), and, in the present stage of water, I presume she might

easily go up to the Falls, twenty miles further. Of course, she can only

do this to any purpose when the water is very high; but, in the absence

of passable roads, the fact that this river can be navigated at all

throughout the most thickly-peopled portion of Kansas, is of some

consequence.

I left Lawrence by stage on Saturday morning, crossing the Kaw by a good

ferry directly at the city, and rising to a wide and well-timbered

bottom on the north. It is probably well for Lawrence ultimately that

this timber is in Indian hands, and therefore sure to be preserved for

some years, though for the present the Reserve is a nuisance to her.

Beyond the Kaw bottom, stretches beautiful and gently undulating

prairie, checkered by belts of timber on the creeks which traverse it,

across the Reserve and beyond, until we begin to descend the Missouri

bluffs to Leavenworth.

Coming to “Turkey Creek,” the passengers were turned out (as once or

twice before), to lighten the coach, which was then driven cautiously

through the steep-banked ford, while the passengers severally let

themselves down a perpendicular bank by clinging to a tree, and crossed

a deep and whirling place above the ford, on the vilest log I ever

attempted to walk—twisty sharp-backed, and every way detestable. One of

the passengers refused to risk his life on it, but hired one of the lazy

Indians loafing on the further bank to bring over a pony, and let him

ride across the ford. At “Big Stranger,” we changed coaches with the

passengers from Leavenworth—who had been waiting our arrival here two

hours, and must have been glad to see us—our baggage being first taken

across the deep, ugly stream in a skiff, and the passengers next, either

coach returning the way it came. We left Lawrence at nearly 10, and

arrived here (thirty-five miles) about 6 P. M.

Leavenworth is, of course, much the largest place in Kansas, containing

(I judge) one thousand houses and ten thousand inhabitants. The Fort,

three miles up the Missouri, is not included in this estimate; though

that is a city of itself, with extensive barracks, capacious

store-houses, several companies of soldiers, many fine houses for

officers, sutlers, etc., and a farm of twelve hundred acres, which Uncle

Sam cultivates, I presume, to much the same profit with other gentlemen

who have fancy farms and do not oversee them very closely. It is a nice

place, that Fort, with many excellent people about it; but I can’t help

asking what it costs, and who pays, and whether that little bill might

not be somewhat docked without prejudice to the public interest. I

believe it could. Whenever our people shall have grown wise enough to

maintain no standing army whatever but the barest skeleton of one, to be

clothed with flesh whenever needed by calling out volunteers, the annual

expenditures maybe reduced at least one-fourth, and we may build a

railroad to the Pacific with the savings of three or four years.

But Russell, Majors & Waddell’s transportation establishment, between

the fort and the city, is the great feature of Leavenworth. Such acres

of wagons! such pyramids of extra axletrees! such herds of oxen! such

regiments of drivers and other employees! No one who does not see can

realize how vast a business this is, nor how immense are its outlays as

well as its income. I presume this great firm has at this hour two

millions of dollars invested in stock, mainly oxen, mules and wagons.

(They last year employed six thousand teamsters, and worked forty-five

thousand oxen.) Of course, they are capital fellows—so are those at the

fort—but I protest against the doctrine that either army officers or

army contractors, or both together, may have power to fasten slavery on

a newly organized territory (as has just been done in New Mexico) under

the guise of letting _the people_ of such territories govern themselves.

Yet this is just what “Squatter Sovereignty,” unmodified by a fiery

anti-slavery agitation in the free-states, will in practice amount to.

Whether the three great cities of America are to be New York, St. Louis

and Leavenworth, as one set of friends seem to think, or New York, St.

Louis and Atchison, as another set assure me, I do not pretend to

decide. If Atchison had the start that Leavenworth now has, I think she

would probably keep it. But not having it, you see, alters the case

materially. The fort is here as a fixed fact; the United States goods

are landed at the fort; so the trains are made up there; and so

Leavenworth is Leavenworth, and Atchison (for the present) only

Atchison.

I saw a great mule train started from the fort to-day, and another will

start soon, filled with one hundred and sixty soldiers’ wives and

babies, on their way to join their husbands in Utah, from whom they have

been separated nearly two years. I argue from this fact that Uncle Sam

expects to have use for his army in Utah for some time yet.

There has been no rain for three days; the sun is bright and hot; the

prairie-wind from the west is a gale; the streams are down—all but “Big

Muddy,” which does not give an inch, but rushes by Leavenworth almost

bank-full and turbid as ever. The roads which so lately were mud, are

now blowing dust in clouds; and there is a fair prospect of settled

summer weather. I turn my face westward to-morrow.

IV.

MORE OF KANSAS.

MANHATTAN, _May 24, 1859_.

I left Leavenworth in the Fort Riley stage at 6 A. M. on Tuesday, a day

in advance of the “Pike’s Peak Express,” which crosses the U. S.

military road at this point, in order to gain time to visit Topeka and

Manhattan, and sum up my impressions of Kansas for THE TRIBUNE. Our road

from Leavenworth lay over the heavy hill westward (which Leavenworth

must soon cut down or it will cut _her_ down materially), passing thence

through the rich valley of Salt Creek and over a “divide” into that of

the Stranger, which we forded at Easton, a village of thirty to fifty

houses, famous for border-ruffian outrages and murders in 1856. The

bluffs of the Stranger are here one to two hundred feet high, generally

timbered with oak, etc., and so covered with limestone bowlders that

scarcely more than half the ground is visible. These bowlders are

generally oblong and irregularly flat, making the best of stonewall. I

am informed that nine rods of capital wall is regarded as but a fair

week’s work for a good wall-builder, working by himself. We pass out of

the valley just beyond Easton, rising to the slightly rolling prairie;

and henceforth for forty miles to Topeka our way lies through a gently

heaving sea of grass, with timber generally visible along the

water-courses on either side. Occasionally, however, we descend from the

crest of the prairie into a barely perceptible hollow, and now nothing

but grass and sky are visible, the two meeting at the horizon on every

side. I do not like this region quite so well as the more rolling

country south of Olathe and Prairie City, across Bull Creek and the

Marais des Cygnes; but it is very fertile, fairly wooded, and

sufficiently irregular in surface to carry off the water and leave few

or no marshes or sloughs except in the road, where the frequent crossing

of unbridged water-courses is attended by a jolt and a jerk which render

a doze dangerous and scarcely possible. In riding over such roads, all

the pleasure must be drank in through the eyes alone.

We stopped for dinner at the crossing of Grasshopper Creek, at the

village of Osawkee, once the seat of Jefferson County’s public buildings

and a land office, both now removed. Grasshopper Falls, I believe, next

obtained the coveted distinction of being shire town; both another

popular vote removed it thence to Oskaloosa on the road from Leavenworth

to Lecompton, on the north line of the Delaware Reserve, which still

covers a good part of Jefferson as well as of Leavenworth and Wyandot

Counties. Osawkee, now probably four years old, is therefore in a state

of dilapidation and decay, like a good many Kansas cities which figure

largely on the map. Its business having left it, its great hotel was

very mysteriously burned, and I presume the insurance on it was duly

paid. We dined here at a very modest but comfortable tavern, kept by a

kind and worthy Pennsylvania Dutchman, who recognized me from our having

met at the “Whig National Convention at Harrisburg, nearly twenty years

ago. Bearing south of west from Osawkee, we crossed Rock and Muddy

Creeks (neither of them more rocky nor muddy than the other), and were

obliged by the lack of a bridge (now being repaired) over Halfday Creek,

to keep on west to a petty village called Indianola, whence we turned a

sharp angle through the magnificently fertile and admirably timbered

bottom of the Kaw or Kansas to the Topeka ferry, which we reached a

little after sundown, but were delayed by a great contractor’s train

which had been all day crossing, and was likely to be a good part of the

morrow, so that we did not get across and into Topeka till nearly dark.

I noticed with sorrow that the oxen which draw these great supply-wagons

are often treated very cruelly, not merely in respect to the beating and

whaling which every human brute delights in bestowing on every live

thing over which he domineers, but with regard to food and drink. Here

were cattle that had stood in the yoke all that hot, dry day with

nothing to eat or drink; and, when they came down to the river mad with

thirst, they were all but knocked down for trying to drink. I was

assured that oxen are sometimes kept in the yoke, without food or drink,

for two days, while making one of these river crossings. There can be no

excuse for this. Those which have long to wait ought to be taken off and

driven a mile or more if necessary to grass and fed there; at all

events, they should be watered at least twice a day. How can a competent

train-master—to say nothing of humanity—overlook the policy of this?

The river is here wider than at Lawrence or Wyandot below, is nearly as

muddy as the Missouri, and runs with a swift current even to its banks.

An attempt had been made during the day to swim across a drove of

cattle; but the strong current carried them below the ferry landing on

the south, whence the steep bank forbade their getting out, so that they

went down the river several miles, and three of them were drowned. The

experiment of swimming proved wretched economy, alike in time and money.

Topeka is a village of probably one hundred houses and one thousand

inhabitants, situated on the north line of Shawnee County, which has the

Sac and Fox Reserve on the south, the Potawatamie on the north-west, and

the Delaware at a little distance on the north-east. Along the north

bank of the river opposite, a party of half-breeds have a reserve a mile

wide by twenty miles long, and I give the good-for-nothing rascals

credit for admirable judgment in selecting their land. There is probably

not an acre of their tract that could not be made to produce one hundred

bushels of shelled corn by the application of less labor than would be

required to produce thirty bushels on the average in New York or New

England. The soil is a river deposit four to six feet deep; the timber

large and choice—oak, elm, bass, black-walnut, sycamore, etc., with wild

grape-vines four to six inches through, and a thick undergrowth of

shrubbery and annuals. I begin to comprehend, though I do not excuse,

the covetous impatience wherewith Indian reservations are regarded by

their white neighbors.

Topeka was one of the strongholds of the free-state cause throughout the

dark days of Kansas. Here assembled the first convention chosen by the

people to frame a state constitution as a rallying point for defense and

mutual protection against the border-ruffian usurpation of 1855; here

the free-state legislature, peacefully assembled in 1856 to devise and

adopt measures looking to a redress of the unparalleled wrongs and

outrages under which Kansas was then writhing, was dispersed by federal

bayonets and cannon; here the guns of the U. S. troops were pointed

against a mass-meeting of the people of Kansas, assembled in the open

air to devise and adopt measures for the redress of their intolerable

grievances, and that meeting compelled to disperse under penalty of

military execution. And here I renew my vows of hostility to that

federal standing army until it shall have been disbanded. It is utterly

at war with the genius and perilous to the existence of republican

institutions. The regular soldier is of necessity the blind, passive,

mechanical instrument of power. If ordered to shoot his own father, he

must obey or be shot himself. Twice has the French Republic been crushed

by Bonapartean usurpation—crushed by the bayonets of a standing army

pointed at the breasts of her faithful legislators. A republic whose

citizens are not willing to do their own fighting—all that is necessary

and proper—but must have a standing army to do it for them, lies at the

mercy of any bold, unscrupulous adventurer who can work his way to the

command or the favor of that army. I trust ours is near its end.

After greeting friends and speaking in Topeka, I learned with surprise

that the stage for Fort Riley would start at three in the morning,

leaving but a narrow margin for sleep. On rising, however, I found that

the high wind would not allow us to cross the river yet, and it was

nearly six o’clock when we actually started.

We had now enjoyed three dry, bright, warm days, which had turned most

of the mire of the roads to a sort of _adobe_, or sun-burned brick,

though enough still remained in sunken holes and brook-crossings to

remind us of what had been. But the lightning had flashed, and the

clouds gathered throughout the night; and, as we drove out through

Indianola and took the military road westward, the thunder gave

indications of the shower which burst upon us a little before nine

o’clock and poured till eleven, turning the brick of the road to mire

again. And, though the rain ceased, the day remained sullen and

lowering, with transient glimpses of weak sunshine, to the end.

Our route lay for thirty miles through the Potawatamie Reserve, and was

no longer encumbered with great army supply-trains, as they were either

north of us on the California trail to Laramie, or south on the road

crossing at Topeka and leading to Fort Union and Santa Fé. A few of the

wagons we passed this day may have been heading for Forts Riley and

Kearney; while “Pike’s Peakers,” both going out, and returning

disheartened, were in considerable numbers. I do not see how those

returning could well resist the temptation to halt and make claims, as I

hear many have done, generally seeking them in the south part of the

territory, where speculation has been less rampant than in the vicinity

of the Kaw. With a wagon-load of provisions and three or four yoke of

oxen, a squatter might, even yet, by the help of a good plow, get in

twenty acres of sod-corn this season, cut hay for winter, and break a

glorious breadth of prairie before hard frost could stop him next fall.

Whoever does this judiciously and resolutely will have reason for

gratitude to Pike’s Peak, even though he never see the color of its gold

nor get nearer to it than the Big Blue.

We traveled all day with the timber of the Kaw visible on the south,

sometimes quite near us, then one to two or three miles distant. Our

road lay for a considerable distance along the bank of what seemed a

deserted bed of the river, which has since made a new and deeper channel

more to the south. At one point this old bed is so deep that it still

retains water, and now figures as a narrow lake. We traversed the

prairie, of course, except where it was cut by the creeks coming down

from the north to lose themselves in the Kaw. The Soldier, the Red

Vermillion, and another Rock Creek, were the principal of these streams.

Our road passed St. Mary’s (Catholic) Mission, where there is quite an

Indian village and a very large improvement, which I guess white men

were paid to make. Yet, whether to their credit or otherwise, I believe

the truth cannot fairly be disputed, that Catholic Missions have been

more successful in establishing a permanent influence over Indians than

any others, except, perhaps, those of the Moravians.

At the Red Vermillion—still on the Potawatamie Reserve, but near its

western edge—we dined; the landlady a half-breed—the dinner the hardest

I ever yet paid half a dollar for. Doubtless, however, my eyes will be

opened to an appreciation of cold hog and corn dodger as delicacies,

long before they are blessed with a sight of the Sacramento.

A wide, marshy bottom—over which each charioteer seeks an untraversed

path, since a rut buries him so much deeper in the mire—lies just west

of the Vermillion (which, with two or three other steep-banked streams,

we crossed on Indian toll-bridges, cheaply built and very profitable to

their owners;) whence the land rises into rolling sandy ridges, some of

them thinly wooded up their sides with white and burr-oak. Thence we

strike the old-fashioned deep, black prairie again—most inviting to the

cultivator, but not so grateful to the traveler, just after a soaking

rain—and, passing the stakes and ruinous cabin or so of one or two

still-born cities, we reach the Big Blue, which here joins the Kansas

from the north. It is nearly as wide as the Kansas or Kaw at Lawrence,

but of course neither so swift nor so deep. It is far clearer, even just

after a heavy shower, than the Kansas; as is strikingly evinced at and

below the junction, where the two streams run for some distance side by

side in the same channel without mingling.

The Big Blue rises near the Platte, in what is now Nebraska, but which

will be included in Kansas if the Platte is made her northern boundary,

as it seems likely to be. Its general course is a little east of south;

its length one hundred and fifty miles. I understand that there is a

good deal of settlement already along its course and on its tributaries,

though I judge from the relative purity of its water that some part of

this region must be less fertile than those of Kansas I have seen.

Manhattan is an embryo city of perhaps one hundred houses, of which

several were unroofed and three or four utterly destroyed by a tornado

on the wild night I passed at Atchison (15th inst.) So violent was the

tempest, that a large sign-board was carried across the Blue and thrown

down fully half a mile from the spot at which it was taken up; and other

heavy articles were swept away which have not since been found. Several

families deprived of home and shelter by the hurricane are temporarily

lodged in the basement of the new hotel just erected here—a three-story

building 55 by 33, with limestone walls and black-walnut finishing—an

establishment of which there is urgent need. The embryo city is located

on the flat, deep bottom in the forks of the rivers, with a high

limestone bluff, affording capital material for building, just behind

it. The Kansas comes hither from the south-west, and has Fort Riley and

its large military reservation fifteen miles distant on its north bank,

with the intended city of Ogden just east and “Junction City” just west

of it, at the forks of the Kansas, whence its more northerly branch is

known as the Republican, and its more southerly as the Smoky Hill.

At Junction City, is a newspaper—the most westerly, I presume, in

Kansas, apart from the Pike’s Peak region—founded and kept alive by an

army sutler, and of course “Democratic” in its inculcations. In

opposition to it, _The Manhattan Express_ is about to be issued here by

M. Vivalde, an Italian exile and a devotee of universal liberty, who

will of course sustain the republican cause. I commend him and his

journal to the confidence and patronage of all who would like a weekly

bulletin from the Far West. I spoke here last evening in the midst of

another gathering tempest, which burst in rain as I closed, and it

continued to flash and roll all night, with considerable rain, and is

cloudy and blowing a gale to-day. I fear we shall be stopped by high

water on the plains.

I had hoped to sum up my impressions of Kansas in this letter, but that

would make it too long. Let me close with an incident which is currently

reported throughout this region as having recently taken place at a

crossing of the Big Blue, known as Marysville (of course not the

Marysville of Bull Creek), some sixty miles north of this place:

A party of disheartened gold-seekers, it is said, were returning from

the plains, and came to this ferry, which they insisted on crossing

without payment, saying they had no money. The ferryman refused to take

them over until paid—(another account says he asked them an exorbitant

price)—when they attempted to take his boat and put themselves

across—whereupon he drew his revolver, they drawing almost at the same

instant. He was of course riddled with balls, and fell dead, but not

till he had either killed or severely wounded five of his assailants.

One more illustration of border life: A quarrel recently arose about a

“claim”—that fruitful source of frays and lawsuits in new settlements—on

one of the creeks a few miles from this place. The stronger party,

composed of several who are known here as bad fellows, told the resident

he must leave, which he, in fear for his life, consented to do. His

wife, however, more resolute, resolved to hold possession, and bade them

defiance, turning as she did so to go into the house and bar the door.

As she turned, she was fired at and fatally wounded. She died two hours

thereafter, having first made a statement of the affair, which was taken

down from her dying lips. The adverse party came down at once to the

nearest justice and told their story, expecting to clear their leader,

who fired the fatal shot; but the justice, after hearing them through,

considered that it implicated the whole party (five), and consequently

held them to answer to the charge of murder.

V.

SUMMING UP ON KANSAS.

MANHATTAN, _May 26, 1859_.

I like Kansas—that is, natural Kansas—better than I had expected to. The

soil is richer and deeper; the timber is more generally diffused; the

country more rolling, than I had supposed them. There are of course

heavy drawbacks in remoteness from the seaboard, heavy charges for bulky

goods, low prices for produce, Indian reserves, and the high price of

good lumber. For instance, pine boards used in building at this place

came from Alleghany County, N. Y., and were rafted down some mill-stream

to the Alleghany, thence down the Alleghany to Pittsburgh, and the Ohio

to Cairo; were thence taken up the Missouri to St. Louis, the Missouri

to Kansas City, and the Kansas to this place, which has but twice or

thrice been reached by a steamboat. When here, they were dog cheap at

one hundred dollars per thousand superficial feet, or ten cents for

every square foot. In the absence of steamboat navigation on the Kansas,

they must here be richly worth one hundred and twenty-five dollars per

thousand feet. And, while there is pretty good timber here for other

purposes, there is little—and that mainly black-walnut—that will make

good boards. The ready cotton-wood along the banks of the streams cuts

easily, but warps so when seasoned that it will draw the nails out of

the side of a house. Elm is of course equally perverse; and I have seen

few indigenous boards that were not either black-walnut or oak. But much

of the oak is small, short, and gnarly; while the black-walnut is likely

to be exhausted. I see young ones coming up thickly in some of the river

bottoms; but these have much to contend with, and will not at best be

large enough to saw for many years. No doubt, the timber of Kansas

increases each year, and will increase still faster as roads and

improvements are multiplied, limiting the sweep of the prairie-fires;

but it will always cost more to build a decent house of wood in the

interior of Kansas than in any part of New York or New England—I think

twice as much. This is a heavy tax on a new country, where not only

houses but barns are a general, primary, and pressing need. I rejoice to

see the new timber creeping up the bluffs of the streams; I note with

pleasure that much of this is hickory and some of it white-ash; I doubt

not that there will always be wood enough here for fencing and fuel; but

if the Pike’s Peak region can send a good lot of pine lumber (even

yellow-pine) down the Platte and the Arkansas, it will be worth more to

Kansas than all her gold.

I consider Kansas well watered—no prairie-state better. I do not confine

this remark to the present, when everything is flooded, and likely to be

more so. I mean that springs, streams, creeks, rivers, are quite

universal. For my own private drinking, I should like a supply not so

much impregnated with lime; but, for limestone water, this is generally

quite good.

And the limestone itself is among the chief blessings of Kansas. I

presume it underlies every foot of her soil I have yet traversed, with

nearly every square mile that will be comprised within the state of

Kansas. You see it cropping out from almost every bluff; it lies thickly

strewn in bowlders over the surface of every headland or promontory that

makes out into the bottoms, low prairies, or ravines; so that if you

want to use it, it is always to be drawn (or rolled) down hill. Though

not here needed as a fertilizer, it can everywhere be quarried with

little labor into building-stone, or burned for use in putting up

chimneys and plastering walls. Though somewhat decomposed (I presume, by

the action of water upon it through thousands of years) and readily

cleaving into blocks of suitable size for house-walls, it is said to

harden by exposure to the atmosphere, and make a very durable wall. It

is the constant though unobserved decomposition of this stone that has

contributed so largely to the fertility of this soil, and now

countervails the enormous waste through the rivers. I presume all the

guano imported yearly into our country does not equal in fertilizing

value the annual outflow from the Kansas river alone.

I judge that Indian corn can be grown here as cheaply as anywhere on

earth. Thousands of acres last year produced their hundred bushels of

shelled grain per acre, at a very moderate cost for labor and none at

all for manure. An extensive farmer, who grew many thousands of bushels

near Leavenworth, assured me that the cost of his corn, cribbed in the

ear, was just six cents per bushel of ears, equal to nine cents per

bushel of grain—three half bushels of ears of the great Ohio kind here

cultivated making a bushel of grain. Of course, this estimate excludes

the cost of land, breaking, and fencing; but, making a fair allowance

for these, the net cost of that corn cannot have exceeded twenty cents

per bushel. I presume it would now sell in his crib for forty cents,

while here in the interior it is worth from twenty-five to thirty-five

cents per bushel.

I met at Osawatamie an old Whig and now Republican friend who left New

York City (where he had been an industrious mechanic) and settled

between Lawrence and Topeka two years ago. He had last year eighty acres

in corn, which yielded four thousand bushels, worth to him thirty-five

or forty cents per bushel. His clear profit on this corn, above the

immediate cost of growing it, can hardly have been less than one

thousand dollars. He will grow more this year, with wheat, potatoes,

etc.; yet he is one of a class who are popularly supposed incapable of

making money by farming. I suspect few life-long farmers of similar

means will have good buildings over their heads and fruit-trees and

other elements of material comfort around them sooner than my friend.

Wheat and oats did badly last year, owing to the heavy summer rains

which rusted and blighted them. Too little of either have been sown for

this year’s harvest, yet I find both winter and spring wheat looking

remarkably well almost everywhere. Oats are scarcely more than out of

the ground; yet they, too, promise well, so far as can now be foreseen.

But an unpleasant truth must be stated: There are too many idle,

shiftless people in Kansas. I speak not here of lawyers, gentlemen

speculators, and other non-producers, who are in excess here as

elsewhere; I allude directly to those who call themselves settlers, and

who would be farmers if they were anything. To see a man squatted on a

quarter-section in a cabin which would make a fair hog-pen, but is unfit

for a human habitation, and there living from hand to mouth by a little

of this and a little of that, with hardly an acre of prairie broken

(sometimes without a fence up), with no garden, no fruit-trees, “no

nothing”—waiting for some one to come along and buy out his “claim” and

let him move on to repeat the operation somewhere else—this is enough to

give a cheerful man the horrors. Ask the squatter what he means, and he

can give you a hundred good excuses for his miserable condition: he has

no breaking-team; he has little or no good rail-timber; he has had the

“shakes;” his family have been sick; he lost two years and some stock by

the border-ruffians, etc., etc. But all this don’t overbear the facts

that, if _he_ has no good timber, some of his neighbors have it in

abundance, and would be very glad to have him work part of it into rails

on shares at a fair rate; and if he has no breaking-team, he can hire

out in haying and harvest, and get nearly or quite two acres broken next

month for every faithful week’s work he chooses to give at that busy

season. The poorest man ought thus to be able to get ten acres broken,

fenced, and into crop, each year. For poor men gradually hew farms out

of heavy timber, where every fenced and cultivated acre has cost twice

to thrice the work it does here.

And it is sad to note that hardly half the settlers make any sort of

provision for wintering their cattle, even by cutting a stack of

prairie-hay, when every good day’s work will put up a ton of it. If he

has a corn-field, the squatter’s cattle are welcome to pick at that all

winter; if he has none, they must go into the bottoms and browse through

as best they can. Hence his calves are miserable affairs; his cows unfit

to make butter from till the best of the season is over; his oxen,

should he have a pair, must be recruiting from their winter’s famine

just when he most urgently needs their work. And this exposing cattle

all winter to these fierce prairie-winds, is alike inhuman and wasteful.

I asked a settler the other day how he _could_ do it? “I had no time to

make a shelter for them.” “But had you no Sundays?—did you not have

these at your disposal?” “O, yes? I don’t work Sundays.” “Well, you

_should_ have worked every one of them, rather than let your cattle

shiver in the cold blasts all winter—it would have been a work of

humanity and mercy to cut and haul logs, get up a cattle-stall, and

cover it with prairie-hay, which I will warrant to be more religious

than any thing you did on those Sundays.” But the squatter was of a

different opinion.

How a man located in a little squalid cabin on one of these rich

“claims” can sleep moonlit nights under the average circumstances of his

class, passes my comprehension. I should want to work moderately but

resolutely, at least fourteen hours of each secular day, until I had

made myself comfortable, with a fence around at least eighty acres, a

quarter of this partitioned off for my working cattle, a decent, warm

shelter to cover them in cold or stormy weather, a tolerable habitation

for my family, at least forty acres in crop, and a young orchard

growing. For one commencing with next to nothing, I estimate this as the

work of five years; after which, he might take things more easily,

awaiting the fruit from his orchard and the coming up of his boys to

help him. But for the first four or five years, the poor pioneer should

work every hour that he does not absolutely need for rest. Every hour’s

work then will save him many hours in after life.

For the farmer who comes in with liberal means, the task is obviously

much easier. Let us suppose one to be worth $5,000 the day he lands on

the Kansas shore of the Missouri, and see how quickly he can make a farm

and a home. He arrives, we will say, in August, when he can see just

what the country produces, whether in a state of nature or under

cultivation. He buys a quarter-section (which is land enough for any

man) in a choice locality, including thirty or forty acres of timbered

river or creek bottom, say for $10 per acre, charges $1,000 of the

$1,600 thus called for to the account of the pro-slavery democracy, for

defeating the free land bill, and sets to work, with two good hired men.

He buys five yoke of oxen for a breaking-team, a span of good

wagon-horses, a cow in fresh milk, and three heifers which will be cows

next spring, puts up a cabin that will just do, and is ready to commence

breaking by the 1st of September. As his men break, he follows with the

horses, sowing and harrowing in wheat so long as that will answer, but

does not stop breaking till the ground is frozen. Now he begins to cut

and draw timber for a fitter habitation to which to welcome his family

in the spring. Having done this, he gets good mechanics to finish it,

while he and his men go to work at fencing, by cutting saw-logs for

light, narrow boards, if there be a saw-mill convenient; if not, then by

cutting for and splitting rails. So soon as the dryest land will answer

for it, he begins to put in spring wheat, then oats, then corn, putting

up fence whenever the soil is too wet for plowing. Let him not forget to

have a few acres seasonably set in fruit-trees, some of them dwarfs for

early bearing. Thus his money will not have been exhausted by the

ensuing fall, when he will have crops coming in and more than a hundred

acres of his land broken and subdued for future cultivation. I see no

reason why a resolute, good manager should not be comfortable after his

first year or two, and henceforth take the world as easily as need be.

He who comes in with but $2,000, $1,000 or $500, must of course be much

longer in working his way to a position of comfort and independence; but

if he will work right ahead, wasting neither days nor dollars, and

keeping clear of speculation and office-seeking, he can hardly fail to

do well.

As to the infernal spirit of land speculation and monopoly, I think no

state ever suffered from it more severely than this. The speculators in

broadcloth are not one whit more rapacious or pernicious than the

speculators in rags, while the latter are forty times the more numerous.

Land speculation here is about the only business in which a man can

embark with no other capital than an easy conscience. For example: I

rode up the bluffs back of Atchison, and out three or four miles on the

high rolling prairie, so as to have some fifteen to twenty square miles

in view at one glance. On all this inviting area, there were perhaps

half a dozen poor or middling habitations, while not one acre in each

hundred was fenced or broken. My friend informed me that every rood I

saw was “preëmpted,” and held at thirty up to a hundred dollars or more

per acre. “Preëmpted!” I exclaimed; how preëmpted? by living or lying?”

“Well,” he responded, “they live a little and lie a little.” I could see

abundant evidence of the lying, none at all of the living. To obtain a

preëmption, the squatter must swear that he actually resides on the

quarter-section he applies for, has built a habitation and made other

improvements there, and wants the land for his own use and that of his

family. The squatters who took possession of these lands must every one

have committed gross perjury in obtaining preëmption—and so it is all

over the territory, wherever a lot is supposed likely to sell soon for

more than the minimum price. I heard of one case in which a squatter

carried a martin-box on to a quarter-section, and on the strength of

that martin-box, swore that he had a house there “eighteen by twenty”—he

left the officer to presume the feet. So it is all over; the wretched

little slab shanty which has sufficed to swear by on one “claim,” is now

moved off and serves to swear by on another, when the first swearing is

done. I am confident there is not at this hour any kind of a house or

other sign of improvement on one-fourth of the quarter-sections

throughout Kansas which have been secured by preëmption. The squatter

who thus establishes a “claim” sells it out, so soon as practicable, to

some speculator, who follows in his wake, getting from $50 to $300 for

that which the future bona-fide settler will be required to pay $250 to

$1,500 for. Such, in practical operation, is the system designed and

ostensibly calculated to shield the poor and industrious settlers from

rapacity and extortion: but which, in fact, operates to oppress and

plunder the real settler—to pay a premium on perjury—to foster and

extend speculation—to demoralize the people, paralyze industry and

impoverish the country.

But the fierce, chilly gale has blown away the tempest of last

night[1]—the clouds fly scattered and brassy—it is time to look for the

Leavenworth Express, whereof two stages west from this point will bear

me beyond the bounds of settlement and civilized life. Adieu to friendly

greetings and speakings! Adieu for a time to pen and paper! Adieu to

bed-rooms and wash-bowls! Adieu (let me hope) to cold rains and flooded

rivers! Hurrah for Pike’s Peak!

Footnote 1:

There was a heavy snow storm that night at Denver, and throughout its

vicinity.

VI.

ON THE PLAINS.

Station 9, Pike’s Peak Express Co., }

PIPE CREEK, _May 28, 1859_. }

I was detained at Manhattan nearly a day longer than I had expected to

be by high water. Wildcat, five miles west, and Rock Creek, seventeen

miles east, were both impassable on Thursday, so that an express-wagon

from Pike’s Peak was stopped behind the former, while five mail-coaches

and express-wagons faced each other through part of Thursday and all of

Thursday night across the latter. Next morning, however, each stream had

run out, so that they could be forded, and at one P. M. I took my seat

in the Pike’s Peak express, and again moved westward.

Our way was still along the United States military road, crossing

Wildcat, now a reasonable stream, and winding for some miles over

rugged, thin-soiled limestone hills, then striking down south-westward

into the prairie bottom of the Kansas, which is as rich as land need be.

A few miles of this brought us to Ogden, a, land-office city of thirty

or forty houses, some of them well built of stone. Just beyond this

begins the Fort Riley reservation, a beautiful tract of prairie and

timber stretching for four or five miles along the northern bank of the

Kansas, and including the sad remains of Pawnee City, at which Gov.

Reeder summoned the first (bogus) legislature of Kansas to meet—then

fifty to one hundred miles westward of anywhere. They obeyed the

summons, but forthwith adjourned to Shawnee Mission, a pro-slavery

stronghold on the Missouri border. Pawnee City is now of the things that

were.

Fort Riley is a position which does credit to the taste of whoever

selected it. It is on high, rolling prairie, with the Kansas on the

south, the Republican on the west, heavy limestone bluffs on the north,

and the best timber in middle or western Kansas all around. The barracks

are comfortable, the hospital large and well placed, the officers’

quarters spacious and elegant, and the stables most extensive and

admirable. I hear that two millions of Uncle Sam’s money have been

expended in making these snug arrangements, and that the oats largely

consumed here have often cost three dollars per bushel. I have seen

nothing else at all comparable to this in the way of preparations for

passing life agreeably since I left the Missouri.

We here crossed by a rope ferry the Republican or northern fork of the

Kansas, which, like the Big Blue, twenty-five miles back, seems nearly

as large as the Kansas at its mouth, though the Smoky Hill, or southern

fork at this point, is said to be the largest of the three. We met at

the ferry a number of families, with a large herd of cattle, migrating

from south-western Missouri to California, and crossing here to take the

road up the right bank of the Republican to Fort Kearney and so to

Laramie. They had exhausted their patience in trying to swim their

cattle, and would hardly be able to get them all ferried over till next

day. All day, as on preceding days, we had been meeting ox-wagons loaded

with disheartened Pike’s Peakers, returning to their homes, but some of

them going down into southern Kansas in search of “claims.” Most of

those we interrogated said they had been out as far as Fort Kearney

(some two hundred miles further, I believe), before they were turned

back by assurances that Pike’s Peak is a humbug.

Across the Republican, between it and the Smoky Hill, is Junction City,

as yet the most western village in Kansas, save that another has been

started some fifty miles up the Smoky Hill. We stopped here for the

night, and I talked republicanism in the church for an hour or so.

Junction has a store, two hotels, and some thirty or forty dwellings,

one of which is distinguished for its age, having been erected so long

ago as 1858. A patriotic Junctioner excused his city for not possessing

something which I inquired for, but which its rival, Manhattan, was

supposed to have; “for” said he, “Manhattan is three years old.” As

Junction is hardly a year old yet, the relative antiquity of Manhattan,

and the responsibilities therein involved, were indisputable. Junction

is the center of a fine agricultural region, though timber is not so

abundant here as I wish it were. This region is being rapidly shingled

with “claims;” I hope it is likewise to be filled with settlers—though

that does not always follow. Our landlord (a German) had tried

California; then Texas; and now he is trying Kansas, which seems to

agree with him.

We started again at six this morning, making a little north of west, and

keeping the narrow belts of timber along the Republican and the Smoky

Hill respectively in full view for several miles on either side, until

the streams diverged so far that we lost them in the boundless sea of

grass. A mile or two of progress carried us beyond any road but that

traced only this spring for the Pike’s Peak expresses; for ten miles

onward, no house, no field, no sign of human agency, this road and a few

United States surveyors’ stakes excepted, was visible; at length we came

to where a wretched cabin and an acre or so of broken and fenced prairie

showed what a pioneer had been doing through the last two or three

years, and beside it was a tavern—the last, I presume, this side of

Pike’s Peak. It consisted of a crotched stake which, with the squatter’s

fence aforesaid, supported a ridge-pole, across which some old

sail-cloth was drawn, hanging down on either side, and forming a cabin

some six by eight feet, and perhaps from three to five and a half feet

high—large enough to contain two whisky-barrels, two decanters, several

glasses, three or four cans of pickled oysters and two or three boxes of

sardines, but nothing of the bread kind whatever. The hotel-keeper

probably understood his business better than we did, and had declined to

dissipate his evidently moderate capital by investing any part of it in

articles not of prime necessity. Our wants being peculiar, we could not

trade with him, but, after an interchange of courtesies, passed on.

Two miles further, we crossed, by a bad and difficult ford, “Chapman’s

Creek,” running south to the Smoky Hill, bordered by a thin streak of

timber, and meandering through a liberal valley of gloriously rich

prairie. Here we passed the last settler on our road to Pike’s Peak. He

has been here two or three years; has seventy-five acres fenced and

broken, grew three thousand bushels of corn last year, has a fine stock

of horses and cattle about him, with at least eight tow-headed children

under ten years old. His house, judged superficially, would be dear at

fifty dollars, but I think he neither needs nor wishes to be pitied.

Our road bore hence north of west, up the left bank of Chapman’s Creek,

on which, twenty-three miles from Junction, we halted at “Station 8,” at

11 A. M., to change mules and dine. (This station should be five miles

further on, and three or four miles further south, but cannot be for

want of wood and water.) There is, of course, no house here, but two

small tents and a brush arbor furnish accommodations for six to fifteen

persons, as the case may be. A score of mules are picketed about on the

rich grass; there is a rail-pen for the two cows; of our landlady’s two

sun-browned children (girls of ten and six respectively) one was born in

Missouri, the other at Laramie. I was told that their father was killed

by Indians, and that the station-keeper is her second husband. She gave

us an excellent dinner of bacon and greens, good bread, apple-sauce and

pie, and would have given us butter had we passed a few days later; but

her cows, just arrived, have been over-driven, and need a few days rest

and generous feeding. The water was too muddy—the prejudices of

education would not permit me to drink it—the spring being submerged by

the high water of the brook, which was the only remaining resource. She

apologized for making us eat in her narrow tent rather than under her

brush arbor, saying that the last time she set the table there the high

prairie-wind made a clean sweep of table-cloth and all upon it, breaking

several of her not abundant dishes. I have rarely made a better dinner,

though the violent rain of the second previous night came nigh drowning

out the whole concern.