in former chapters, were typical American borderers, rude of manner
and speech, scarcely touched by the refining influences of the older
East, open-handed and hospitable to a fault, but capable of committing
brutal excesses when their passions were aroused, as they now were by
the overwrought appeals of their most trusted leaders to make an end
of abolitionism, if they would not see it become a menace to their
domestic peace,—an incitement to insurrection or ceaseless turbulence
along their border. Their character may be guessed from the name which
in a spirit of bravado they took from their opponents' mouths,—that
of border ruffians. They were expert with the rifle, daring riders,
accustomed to out-of-door life from infancy, and hardened by experiences
drawn from the vicissitudes of frontier life, into the bone of a
self-asserting Americanism of the Davy Crockett school. Then, inasmuch
as public opinion justified the settlement of private quarrels with the
pistol or bowie-knife, the taking of life was held cheaply as compared
with communities where the enforcement of law is the safeguard of
the citizen. Add to this the frontiersman's habitual scorn for those
reared in cities, or who shunned a resort to violence in support of
their principles, and we have the measure of those adversaries whom the
free-State men of the North were to face on their own ground, and with
their own weapons in their hands.
[Illustration: A SQUATTER MOVING HIS CLAIM.]
The events flowing from this state of things may be briefly summed up.
While the free-State movement was steadily gaining ground by the
coming-in of actual settlers, the Missourians made determined efforts
to stay it, first by seizing upon the government of the Territory, and
next by intimidating or driving out all who opposed their lawless acts.
Thus an election for members of the Territorial Legislature (March,
1855) was controlled by Missourians who, in the most open manner, came
into the voting precincts with arms, cast their ballots unchallenged,
and then went home again to Missouri, so returning a law-making body
by unlawful votes. This Legislature enacted laws establishing slavery.
The free-State men refused to recognize it or its laws. They proceeded
to form a constitution[1] prohibiting slavery, with which they
asked admission into the Union. They also elected State officers, and
a legislature which they meant to put in operation if worst came to
worst. Meantime they organized themselves to repel force with force if
necessary. All those who were opposed to making Kansas a slave State,
now came together as the free-State party.
This party, which had just elected Charles Robinson governor, refused to
pay taxes, obey writs, or in any way abide by the acts of the so-called
bogus legislature. The pro-slavery party declared this treason. Congress
rejected the Topeka Constitution, the House voting for its admission,
the Senate against it.
In consequence of the rescue of a free-State man from the hands of the
sheriff, Lawrence was soon besieged by a large force of Missourians,
assembled under color of law, but in reality invaders of the Territory.
The people of Lawrence prepared to make a sturdy defence by building
earth-forts at all the approaches to the town, in which men armed with
Sharpe's rifles were constantly stationed. Seeing them determined to
fight, the Missourians left without venturing to attack them.
Finding the free-State men thus firm, the other party next invoked the
judicial power to aid them in breaking up the combination made against
the enforcement of illegal laws. Governor Robinson and many other
free-State leaders were indicted for treason[2] by a grand jury,
acting upon instruction of the chief justice, who defined the acts
of the free-State men as levying war against the Federal Government.
Robinson and others were arrested and imprisoned. Some of the leaders
escaped out of the Territory.
[Illustration: MUD FORT, LAWRENCE.]
Bills of indictment had also been found against the two newspapers
printed at Lawrence, as well as the hotel in which the free-State men
were in the habit of holding their meetings. These were declared public
nuisances. Under the color of law, an armed posse proceeded to Lawrence,
threw the presses into the river, gutted the hotel, and burned Governor
Robinson's house to the ground. This took place May 20, 1856.
The next act of the actual government was the calling-in of
United States troops to disperse the free-State legislature, which
met at Topeka, July 4. All these proceedings had aroused the keenest
interest throughout the Union, and while in Kansas opposition
to oppression was momentarily quelled, it was acquiring greater
strength[3] in all the free States.
[Illustration: JOHN BROWN.]
Among the free-State men were some who believed such acts as had been
committed at Lawrence called for reprisals in kind. Of these, James
H. Lane[4] obtained a wide notoriety; but the animating spirit was
undoubtedly John Brown of Osawatomie,[5] who held that the policy
of submission was all wrong, and that the pro-slavery men too must
be made to fear for their own safety before peace could be had. He
avowed himself in favor of giving blow for blow. This idea found much
favor with the fighting portion of the free-State men. On the question
of slavery, Brown's mind was surely unsettled by the all-engrossing
idea that slavery was a thing of violence which must die a violent
death. To bring this about was now the one purpose of his life, and
in pursuit of it he was as inexorable as fate. For its accomplishment
he possessed certain qualities that make either the hero or martyr
according as the purpose is weighed by history. An iron will, religious
fervor amounting to fanaticism, were joined to a calm but resolute
courage which no danger could daunt or turn from its purpose. He was
a seventeenth-century Puritan of the Cromwellian stamp—a man of iron
belonging to an iron age.
Brown soon had the border in terror of his deeds. The blows he struck
were swift, secret and deadly. It was now the pro-slavery men who were
driven out or assassinated, or had their homes fired at dead of night.
Men sent to take him were themselves taken and held as prisoners. These
acts led to retaliation, retaliation to fresh outrages, and for a time
Kansas was given over to violence.
[Illustration: BROWN'S LOG HOUSE.]
Believing Congress would admit them to the Union, the slavery party
also formed a State Constitution at Lecompton, the capital. But an
election for a new legislature had overwhelmingly defeated them, thus
giving control of the Territorial body to the free-State men at last.
So the Lecompton men now saw no hope for themselves except in their
State Constitution. As they refused to submit the whole instrument to
the people, the free-State men refrained from voting for or against
the single proposition of "slavery" or "no slavery," seeing they must
get the detested Constitution in any event. The returns showed the old
determination still strong to fasten slavery on the people against
their will. A large majority was obtained for the Constitution by
stuffing the ballot-boxes with fraudulent votes. Of six thousand and odd
votes (6,226), nearly half (2,720) were illegally cast. The Lecompton
Constitution was, however, sent to Congress by President Buchanan with
his approval. In Congress it provoked a stormy debate, was sent back
to the people of Kansas for final ratification, and by them decisively
rejected at the polls, August, 1858.
Though Kansas was kept out of the Union three years longer, her attitude
in respect to slavery was now so little doubtful that the pro-slavery
men gave up the contest in despair.
To maintain their cause with the country at large, and make it one
on which the opponents of slavery could unite, the free-State men of
Kansas lived for a time nearly in chaos rather than forfeit the name
of law-abiding people. In this they showed admirable self-restraint.
To maintain themselves in Kansas they were forced to adopt the tactics
of their assailants at last, and deal blow for blow. Cultured people
were roughened by this sort of life. It made them reckless. It weakened
respect for law, even with the law-abiding. It brought material progress
to a standstill, and engendered lifelong enmities among men who were to
live together as neighbors. Social improvement was put back years. The
very existence of a conflict had the tendency to bring bad men to the
front, whose influence proved a hinderance to the settling of order in
the State. The contest in Kansas proved Douglas wrong and John Brown
right, in so far as the question of peaceful competition for the soil
was involved in it. In a national sense it was therefore but the prelude
to the great Civil War of the century.
FOOTNOTES
[1] CONSTITUTION PROHIBITING SLAVERY, known in history as
the Topeka Constitution. The State finally came into the Union
under a Constitution framed at Wyandotte in 1859, ratified
October of that year at the polls.
[2] INDICTED FOR TREASON. The courts were supported by
Federal troops with whom the free-State men would not risk
a conflict. Robinson and other "treason prisoners" suffered
several months' imprisonment. It was a clever plan for
depriving the free-State party of its leaders.
[3] ACQUIRING STRENGTH. Since its publication in 1852,
people everywhere had been reading Mrs. H. B. Stowe's "Uncle
Tom's Cabin," a book which perhaps did more to consolidate
public opinion against slavery, by directing attention to its
worst evils, than all the political discussions of the time
put together. In this view it deserves a place in the train of
events following upon the compromises of 1850. Another episode
of like tendency was the assault made on Senator Sumner by
Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina, in the Senate Chamber,
arising out of the Kansas troubles (1856). Still another was
the decision of Justice Taney in the case of Dred Scott, a
slave, declaring that slavery had a right to exist everywhere
in the public domain until forbidden by State laws.
[4] JAMES H. LANE of Indiana had served with credit in
the Mexican War. He came to Kansas a pro-slavery man, but
soon joined the free-State party, in which he obtained much
influence—perhaps more than any man in it. Lane was a born
leader of men. This explains his advancement in the face
of the other fact that he never had the confidence of other
eminent free-State leaders. With the agricultural settlers
he was strong. Lane's great popularity elected him to
the United States Senate from Kansas. In the Rebellion he
commanded a brigade. His public and private integrity have
been equally called in question. Though once the popular hero
of his day, Lane was the product of abnormal conditions and
died with them.
[5] OSAWATOMIE is a jumbling together of Osage and
Pottawatomie.
TWO FREE STATES ADMITTED.
Minnesota came into the Union in 1858, and Oregon in 1859, thus
strengthening it by the addition of two young and sturdy commonwealths,
both of which were primeval wildernesses within the memory of men now
living.
III.
THE CROWN OF THE CONTINENT.
GOLD IN COLORADO, AND THE RUSH THERE.
It had long been predicted by those most familiar with the general
characteristics of the Rocky Mountains, that eventually they would be
found rich in mineral wealth. One of the earliest and most sanguine
advocates of this idea was Colonel William Gilpin of Missouri, whose
predictions, when viewed in the light of later knowledge, seem like the
gift of prophecy. Reports were indeed more or less current at Salt Lake
of the finding of gold among the mountain streams of the Great Basin, as
far back as 1848, but all search for it was discouraged by the Mormon
leaders as tending to bring upon them a swarm of adventurers whose
presence would inevitably work the ruin of their isolated republic, and
so render all previous toil and hardship of no avail. We have seen that
such reports had reached the Mormons in California, who were preparing
to go to Salt Lake in consequence of them.
Then, the existence of rich silver-mines among the mountains of New
Mexico, which the Spaniards had been working for an unknown period of
time, in the rudest possible way, was a thing of common knowledge from
the time of La Salle, though the secrecy observed in regard to them
effectually shut out inquiry as to whether the business were profitable
or not. But California was so long the goal of all seekers after gold,
that it was not until her gold-fields began to give out, and people
began to ask "What next?" that the great backbone of the continent, over
which the emigration had rushed so long and heedlessly, suddenly stopped
them with the question, as one might say, "Why not search me?"
[Illustration: GATE, GARDEN OF THE GODS.]
The first report of the finding of gold at the eastern base of the Rocky
Mountains reached the Missouri River in July, 1858, but did not gain
much credit till several months later. By October, however, the fever
was at its height on the frontier, and had made some progress toward the
east. Though several parties started out from the border towns of Kansas
and Missouri, the lateness of the season prevented many from going
at this time. Meanwhile, however, reports continued to come in, each
seemingly well authenticated and more conclusive, as to the main fact
that gold existed in paying quantity not far from the foot of Pike's
Peak. The region where report located the discoveries therefore took to
itself the name of this magnificent mountain, whose sides were vaguely
supposed to be veined with the precious metal found in the sands of the
Platte.
After much prospecting, the ground along Cherry Creek, a small tributary
of the South Platte, was fixed upon as one promising the best results to
the miner. It accordingly became a base for future operations which were
to be pushed up into the heart of the mountains. First known simply as
Cherry Creek, the camp of the earliest comers soon took to itself the
name of Denver City,[1] from James W. Denver, governor of Kansas, of
which this gold region then formed part.
[Illustration: HUMORS OF THE ROAD.]
With the coming of spring, and opening of navigation on the Missouri,
emigrants began to pour into the various points of departure for the new
gold region. From Omaha to Independence unprecedented bustle prevailed
all along the border. Many started off on a journey of seven hundred
miles on foot. Some put their worldly goods in hand-carts to which they
harnessed themselves. One man is said to have trundled a wheelbarrow
from Kansas City to Cherry Creek. Most emigrants, however, went in
wagons over the now well-marked roads of the pioneers, and by night the
prairies were lighted up far and near with their camp-fires.
[Illustration: DENVER IN 1859.]
[Illustration: OVERLAND STAGE.—IN CAMP.]
In view of the rush to Pike's Peak, the firm of Russell, Majors &
Waddell, which had for years transported supplies to the military posts
of Kansas, Utah, and New Mexico, now put on a line of daily coaches from
Leavenworth to Denver, which were run up the Republican, and thence
to the Platte. Thus, after the Indian pony, the trapper's caravan,
the explorers' and emigrants' cavalcade, comes at last the modern
stage-coach with its promise of greater things to follow in its track.
On the 21st of May the first coach reached Leavenworth on its return
from the mountains, bringing only a few thousand dollars in dust; but in
that month John H. Gregory, an old Georgia miner, found rich deposits
of gold in the mountains among the headwaters of Clear Creek. This
discovery established the value of Colorado as a gold-bearing region.
[Illustration: GOING IN.]
When visited in 1859 the Gregory Diggings were found in a gulch along
which log cabins, tents and camps, hastily covered in with boards or
pine boughs, were scattered for miles. There were then five thousand
people in them, and more were coming in every day.
Here the experiences of California life were repeated. Some men were
taking out two hundred dollars a day; others who worked equally hard did
not get five dollars a day for their labor. It resulted that a stream
of confident and cheerful ones were constantly going in, while not a
few who had failed to find fortune in the diggings were as constantly
coming out, crestfallen and in rags.
[Illustration: COMING OUT.]
In 1859 Denver had about one thousand people, who lived in three hundred
rough-hewn log houses. Very few of them had glass windows, or doors, or
other floors than the bare ground. Hearths and fireplaces would be built
of adobe, as in New Mexico, and chimneys of sticks laid crosswise one on
the other, with the interstices filled with mud, as the New-Englanders
of 1630 were accustomed to make theirs. As no rain falls except during
the summer months, life in the open air caused little discomfort to
people who, being obliged to make the most of every thing, easily
learned to do without what are called luxuries.
[Illustration: OFFICE OF "ROCKY-MOUNTAIN NEWS," DENVER.]
Picturesquely set up among these homely dwellings of the whites, one
saw many skin lodges. These belonged to a band of Arapaho Indians, who
had thus pitched their camp in the heart of the growing city. Golden
City in the north and Colorado City in the south were soon founded. The
first was an intermediate point on the route to the Gregory Diggings;
the second was started at the foot of Pike's Peak, near to the famous
_Fontaine qui bouille_,[2] or Boiling Spring, and on the route to
Santa Fé.
[Illustration: COLORADO CITY, 1859.]
In a few months more Denver had grown to a city of brick and frame
buildings, with two theatres, a mint coining the gold of its own mines,
and rival daily newspapers. It had quite reached the second stage of
development of frontier cities.
[Illustration: QUARTZ STAMPING-MILL.]
The surface, or placer, diggings of Colorado were soon exhausted, but
in their place belts of gold mixed with quartz were struck all the way
from Pike's Peak in the south to Long's Peak in the north. Above this
gold belt, rich silver ores were sometimes found on the very summits
of the mountains. These discoveries soon changed mining from a pursuit
in which every one could engage, and which had drawn such numbers into
Colorado in the beginning, to the larger operations of capital, with
all the appliances modern science brings to its aid.
FOOTNOTES
[1] DENVER CITY. Green Russell, a Georgian, with a company
of gold-seekers, pitched the first camp on Cherry Creek in the
summer of 1858. They called it Auraria after a mining town of
Georgia. The party which named Denver City came with General
Larimer, of Leavenworth, Kan., in the winter of 1858-59. The
gold region first formed a county of Kansas called Arapaho,
though distant six hundred miles from Junction City, then the
nearest settlement of Kansas. The nearest post-office was Fort
Laramie, two hundred and twenty miles north of Denver.
[2] FONTAINE QUI BOUILLE, French. "The three fountains
bubbling up from the ground, and not boiling with heat,
are strongly impregnated with soda." They were visited and
described by Pike, Long, Fremont, and others.
THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.
_In time of war prepare for peace._
In about half a century we have seen the great body of the nation moving
more than five hundred miles westward. It has moved forward like an army
taking the field, planting its outlying settlements before it at all
strategic points, the possession of which was essential to the success
of its peaceful mission. This army has marched at the rate of ten miles
a year, mostly along the thirty-ninth parallel, to which the advantage
of soil and climate was its infallible guide. Its destination was the
Pacific Ocean.
[Illustration: QUAKER GUN AT STAGE STATION.]
We have also witnessed the occupation of the Pacific coast, the rise
of two great States there whose people were already stretching their
hands out toward the East as if to hasten its coming. The genius of
civilization hovered over and directed this grand march, which never
halted but to re-form its lines and go forward again with stately tread.
We have further seen a third body firmly plant itself among the
fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains, whose mission was to extend its own
civilization both to the East and West, as the pebble which is dropped
into a pool sends out its ever-broadening circle upon the surface of the
waters. Thus the people of New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, were already
throwing out little colonies into the later Territories of Nevada,
Arizona, Idaho, and Montana. Thus these Territories were the heralds of
the coming East. And in this manner the vigorous West had secured in
advance the strongholds which, in a physical sense, impeded the march
toward the Pacific.
As it went forward, the East brought all the appliances of civilization
with it, and set them working all along the line. In 1859[1] the
locomotive and telegraph reached the eastern frontier of Kansas. There
was now a gap of two thousand miles remaining to be closed up between
the Missouri and the Pacific. How to bridge this over, and by so doing
bring widely separated sections together, was a question now assuming
national importance in men's minds.
The West demanded it should be done without more delay; the older
sections responded in the spirit of national progress.
Private enterprise had already accomplished something toward the desired
object. In the summer of 1859 the same energetic firm that had sent the
first stage-coach across the wastes of Western Kansas to Denver, put on
a pony express[2] to run between the Missouri River and the Pacific.
Stations were established twenty-five miles apart on the open prairie,
where fresh animals and riders were kept ready saddled and equipped for
the road. Mounted on his hardy little Indian pony, the courier rode with
whip and spur to the next station, where, whether by night or day, he
stopped only long enough to snatch a mouthful, mount a fresh pony, and
secure his letter-pouch behind him. He then dashed on again at the top
of his speed. Though one of the oldest known methods of carrying news,
the difficulties were here such as seldom have been overcome. By dint of
hard riding, despatches were sometimes delivered in Denver in less than
three days, and in Sacramento in eight days, from the time of setting
out.
The Butterfield Overland Stage Company[3] established between St.
Louis and San Francisco (1859) was a more serious undertaking. It ran
coaches every day in the year, over the longest stage-route in the
world, traversing a distance of near three thousand miles from end to
end.
[Illustration: PONY EXPRESS AND OVERLAND STAGE.]
Even such achievements as these were regarded as make-shifts which
the coming railway should set aside. That and that only would solve
the problem how permanently to unite and hold together such remote
sections of the Union. In the East the country has always been settled
before railways were built: in the West railways are expected to
bring settlement with them, or even to go before it in a case like the
present one. But without a country to support it, the proposed Pacific
Railway[4] was something too vast for private enterprise to grapple
with. From the time it was first talked of, the enterprise, therefore,
assumed a national character and importance.
But the slavery question had now brought on a national crisis. Too long
it had hung over the land like a storm-cloud that is to overwhelm it
with ruin. The election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency (1860) was
followed by the secession of most of the slave-holding States (1861),
secession by civil war, and civil war by the abolition of slavery in
the land. All the resources of the country being needed to carry on the
war, it would seem, at first sight, no time could be worse chosen for
pressing the claims of the Pacific Railway than when men so doubted and
feared for the nation itself.