A FAMOUS VICTORY.
The day after the Stearns House meeting, I was thought to be dying. All
that medical skill and loving hands could do was done to draw me from
the dark valley into which I seemed to have passed; while those men who
had planted themselves and their rifles between me and death by
violence, came on tip-toe to know if I yet lived. When I was able to be
out it was not thought safe for me to do so--not even to cross the
street and sit on the high green bank which overlooked the river. Harry
was constantly armed and on guard, and a pistol shot from his house,
night or day, would have brought a score of armed men in a very short
time.
A printing company had been formed to re-establish the _Visiter_. In it
were forty good men and true, and they sent an agent to Chicago to buy
press and type. The St. Cloud _Visiter_ was to begin a new life as the
mouthpiece of the Republican party, and I was no longer a scout,
conducting a war on the only rational plan of Indian warfare. I begged
my friends to stand abide and leave Lowrie and me to settle the trouble,
saying to them:
"I cannot fight behind ramparts of friends. I must take the risks
myself, must have an open field. Protect me from brute force and give me
moral aid, but stand aside."
But they were full of enthusiasm, and would bear the brunt of battle.
There were open threats of the destruction of the new press, and it was
no time to quit the field. Of the first number of the resurrected
_Visiter_, the St. Cloud Printing Co. was publisher, and I sole editor.
I prepared the contents very carefully, that they might not give
unnecessary offense, dropped the role of supporting Buchanan, and tried
to make a strong Republican paper of the abolition type, and in the
leader gave a history of the destruction of my office.
The paper gave great satisfaction to the publishers, who had not thought
I could be so calm; but Lowrie threatened a libel suit for my history of
that outrage, and I said to the printing company:
"You must get out of my way or I will withdraw."
At once they gave me a bill of sale for the press and material, and of
the second number I was sole editor and proprietor, but it was too late.
The libel suit was brought, damages laid at $10,000, and every lawyer in
that upper country retained for the prosecution.
This was in the spring of '58. The two years previous the country had
been devastated by grasshoppers, and no green thing had escaped. There
was no old grain, the mass of people had been speculating in town lots,
and such had been the demand for city charters, that a wag moved in
legislature to reserve one-tenth of the land of Minnesota for
agricultural purposes. The territorial had just been exchanged for a
state government, which was not yet in working order. The capital of
every man in the printing company was buried in corner lots, or lots
which were not on a corner. The wolves and bears cared nothing for
surveyor's stakes, and held possession of most of the cities, howling
defiance at the march of civilization. The troops were still in Kansas
establishing slavery, and we lived in a constant state of alarm. The men
were organized for defense against Indians, and must do picket duty. All
the money was in the hands of the enemy. Citizens had everything to buy
and nothing to buy it with. Provisions were brought up from St. Paul by
wagon, except when a boat could come from St. Anthony. Those men of the
company who were especially marked, were men of families, and it is hard
to starve children for the freedom of the press. The nearest court was
St. Anthony. Any defense of that suit must be ruinous to those men, and
I advised them to compromise.
A committee was appointed to meet six lawyers, and were in despair when
they learned the ultimatum of the great Dictator. With the terms
demanded, they had no inclination to comply, but sent J. Fowler to me
with the contract they were required to sign.
This bound the company in a bond of $10,000 actual payment, that the
_St. Cloud Visiter_ should publish in its columns a card from Mr.
Shepley, of which a copy was appended, and which stated that the
destruction of the office was not for any political cause, but was
solely on account of an attack made by its editor on the reputation of a
lady. Also, that said _Visiter_ should never again discuss or refer to
the destruction of its office.
Fowler burned with indignation, and was much surprised when I returned
the paper, saying that I would comply with these demands. He protested
that I should not--that they had set out to defend the freedom of the
press.
"Which you cannot do," I remarked. "You sign that paper just as you
would hand your money to a robber who held a pistol to your head and
demanded it. There is a point at which the bravest must yield, where
resistance is madness, and you have reached this point. The press is
mine, leave its freedom to me. Defend me from brute force and do your
duty to your families."
He returned to the consultation room, where every one was surprised at
my compliance. They had all given me credit for more pluck, but since I
surrendered, the case was lost. The contract was signed, the bond
executed, and everything made tight and fast as law could make it. The
friends of free press were indignant, but bided their time. Stephen
Miller, a nephew of my mother-in-law, and afterwards governor of
Minnesota, was on a visit to Harrisburg during all this trouble, and
when he returned, he flew into a towering rage over what he termed the
cowardly backdown of the printing company, and published a card in the
St. Paul papers, washing his hands of it.
But to the victors belong the spoils and glory, and now they made much
of them. Ladies got out their silks, their jewels and their laces. There
were sounds of revelry by night, where fair women and gallant men drew
around the social board, on which sparkled the wine-cup and glimmered
the yellow gold, to be taken up by the winner. Champagne was drunk in
honor of the famous victory, hands were shaken over it, stray sheep
were brought back into the true Democratic fold, and late opinions about
presses and types were forgotten.
Though, among all the rejoicings, the Bar had the best of it. For once
its members had not been like the blades of a pair of scissors; had not
even seemed to cut each other, while only cutting that which came
between. For once its members were a band of brothers, concentrated into
one sharp, keen dagger, with which they had stabbed Freedom to the
heart. That triumphant Bar stroked its bearded chin, and parted its
silky mustache; hem'd its wisest hem; haw'd its most impressive haw.
"If Gen. Lowrie had ah, but ah, taken legal advice ah, in the first
instance ah, all would have been well ah!"
They were the generals who had won this famous victory, and wore their
laurels with a jaunty air, while a learned and distinguished divine from
the center of the State, in a sermon, congratulated the Lord on having
succeeded in "restoring peace to this community, lately torn by
dissensions,"--and all was quiet on the Mississippi.
On its bank sat poor little I, looking out on its solemn march to the
sea, thinking of Minnesota; sending a wail upon its bosom to meet and
mingle with that borne by the Missouri from Kansas; thinking of a
sad-faced slave, who landed with her babe in her arms here, just in
front of my unfinished loft, performed the labor of a slave in this free
Northern land, and embarked from this same landing to go to a Tennessee
auction block, nobody saying to the master, "Why do ye this?" Against
the power which thus trampled constitutional guarantees, congressional
enactments and State rights in the dust, I seemed to stand alone, with
my hands tied--stood in a body weighing just one hundred pounds, and
kept in it by the most assiduous care. I was learning to set type, and
as I picked the bits of lead from the labeled boxes, there ran the old
tune of St. Thomas, carrying through my brain these words:
"Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill."
Why did the heathen rage and kings vex themselves? God, even our God,
should dash them together like potsherds. What an uneven fight it
was--God and I against that little clique--against a world!
I rented the office to the boys, who at once gave me notice that I was
no longer wanted in it. They issued a half-sheet _Visiter_, with "the
Devil" as editor and proprietor. His salutatory informed his readers,
that he was in full possession and was going to have a good time; had
taught the _Visiter_ to lie, and was going to tunnel the Mississippi.
Those were bright boys, and they had a jolly week. Mr. Shepley's card
appeared, as per agreement, and thus far the terms of release for the
printing company complied with, and the contract with the _Dictator_
filled. But what next? Had I actually given up the publication? Of
course I had. Its finances were desperate, and what else could I do?
What motive could I have for attempting to go on with it? Oh, what a
famous victory. The next publication day passed and no _Visiter_. There
was a dress parade of triumphant troops, and that most famous victory
was bearing fruit.
Next day the _St. Cloud Democrat_ made its appearance, and I was sole
editor and proprietor. Into the first editorial column I copied
verbatim, with a prominent heading, the article from the _Visiter_ on
which the libel suit was founded, and gave notice that I alone was
pecuniarily responsible for all the injury that could possibly be done
to the characters of all the men who might feel themselves aggrieved
thereby. Of the late _Visiter_ I had an obituary; gave a short sketch of
its stormy life; how it was insulted, overborne, enslaved; that it could
not live a slave, and died in its new chains.
It seems strange that those lawyers should have been so stupid, or
should have accredited me with such amazing stupidity when they drew up
that bond; but so it was, and the tables were completely turned. To sue
me for libel was folly, for in St. Paul or St. Anthony I should have had
the gratuitous services of the best legal talent in the state, and they
and their case would have been ground into very small and dirty dust. No
famous victory was ever before turned into a more total rout by a more
simple ambush, and by it I won the clear field necessary to the
continuance of my work.
I still had protection from physical violence, but had no fear of legal
molestation, and after the next fall election, border ruffianism fell
into such disrepute in St. Cloud that loaded guns seemed no longer
necessary to sustain the freedom of the press.