can " leaders, rejecting all offers to run combined tickets, per-
sisted in runnino; distinctive Fillmore tickets for Electors in
each of these (as in most otlier) States, it w^as clear that we
were doomed to defeat, — all the States that we could stiU
rationally hope to carry casting less than half the Electoral
votes. Yet we fought on with much resolution, tliougli with
little hope ; giving Fremont and Dayton the six New England
States, by clear majorities ; New York, by 80,000 plurality ;
and Ohio, by nearly 17,000 ; while ]\Iichigan, Iowa, and Wis-
consin went decidedly for us, as Illinois would have done h3,d
there been no third ticket. Pennsylvania and Indiana each
gave IMr. Buchanan a bare majority over the two opposing
tickets. Mr. Fillmore received the 8 electoral votes of Mary-
land only ; Colonel Fremont had 114 votes, — those of eleven
Free States ; while Mr. Buchanan was elected by 112 votes
from fourteen Slave States, and 62 from five Free States, —
174 in all, or a clear majority. The aggregate popular vote
stood : Buchanan, 1,838,232 ; Fremont, 1,341,514 ; Fillmore,
874,707. Buchanan's inauguration (March 4, 1857) was



FREMONT. — B UCHANAN. — DO UGLAS. 355

swiftly followed by tlie since famous Dred Scott decision of
the SuiOTeme Court, which denied the right of Congress to
prohibit slaveholding in the Territories of the Union, and
proclaimed it the notion of our Eevolutionary fathers that
Blacks have no rights that Wliites are bound to respect. ]\Ir.
Buchanan foreshadowed tliis decision in his Inaugural, gave
it his hearty indorsement, and commended it to general ap-
proval.

Kansas had begun to be settled in 1854, directly after the
passage of the iSTebraska bill, and had inevitably become an
arena of strife and ^d-olence. Colonies were sent thither from
the Free States expressly to mould her to the uses of Free La-
bor ; while weaker colonies -were sent thither from the South,
to bind her to the car of Slaver}^ These would have been
of small accoiuit had they not been largely supplemented
by the incursions of Missourians, who, thoroughly armed,
swarmed across the unmarked border whenever an election
was impending ; camping in the vicinity of most of the polls,
whereof they took unceremonious possession, and voting till
they were sure that no more votes were needed ; when they
decamped, and returned to their Missouri homes. As the
Free-State settlers refused to be thus subjugated, there were
soon two Territorial legislatures, with sheriffs and courts to
match ; and these inevitably led to collisions of authorities
and of forces, resulting in general insecurity and turmoil, with
occasional sacrifices of property and of life. CongTess had tried
to end these disorders ; but no plan could be agreed upon by
the two Houses, and nothing was effected. At length, in the
Summer of 1857, the pro-Slavery minority, powerfully aided
by the " Border Euffians," elected a Convention, framed a Pro-
Slavery Constitution, adopted it after their fashion, and sent
it to Congress for approval and ratification. It was knoAvn as
the " Lecompton " Constitution, from the place where it was
fabricated.

Air. Buchanan at first hesitated to indorse or be complicated
ynih. this procedure ; so that there Avas trouble in the camp ;



35G RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.

and it was currently reported that his less scrupulous Secre-
tary of the Treasury, — Howell Cobb, of Georgia, — being
asked by a visitor what was the matter, carelessly replied,
" 0, not much ; only Old Buck is opposing the Administra-
tion." Senator Douglas, on the one hand, at first seemed
inclined to the side of the Missourians, whose cause he had
upheld with signal ability and energy in the preceding Con-
gress ; but he soon demonstrated in favor of genuine " Popular
Sovereignty," in Kansas, which was his more natural and con-
sistent position. Reports of this change had preceded his
appearance in Washington as a member of the XXXVth Con-
gress ; so that, on his calling to pay his respects to the Presi-
dent, an animated and spicy colloquy on the ruling topic was
at once commenced by his host. " Mr. Douglas," said the
President, " how are we to allay the contention and trouble
created by this strife over the Lecompton Constitution?"
" Why, Mr. President," replied his guest, " I do not see how
tjou should have any trouble in the premises. The Constitu-
tion says, ' Congress shall make all needful rides and regida-
tions respecting the Territories,' &c., but I cannot recall any
clause which requires the President to make any." Thus the
conversation ran on, mitil the President, waxing warm, saw
fit to warn his visitor that his present course woidd, if per-
sisted in, soon carry him out of the Democratic party. " Mr.
Senator," he inquired, " do you clearly apprehend the goal to
which you are now tending ? " " Yes, sir," promptly responded
the Little Giant ; " I have taken a through ticket, and checked
all my baggage." Further discussion being obviously useless,
Mr. Douglas soon left the White House, and I believe he did
not visit it agam during Mr. Buclianan's administration.



The XXXVth Congress, which had been mainly cliosen
simultaneously with Mr. Buchanan, or nearly so, was decid-
edly Democratic, and still more strongly pro-Slavery, — the
Senate impregnably so, by about two to one, — and yet, so
flagrant were the enormities of the Lecompton measure, and so



FREMONT. — BUCHANAN. — DOUGLAS. 357

conspicuous the ability and tlie energy of Mr. Douglas, who led
the resistance to it, and threw his whole soul into .the work,
that the attempt to make Kansas a Slave State under the
Lecompton Constitution (which her people were forbidden to
change to the detriment of Slavery for several years to come)
was fairly beaten ; being vitally amended in the House by a
vote of 120 to 112, after it had passed the Senate by 35 to 23.
The Senate at first refused to concur by 34 to 22 ; whereupon
a conference was had, and an equivocal compromise measure
thereby devised and carried through both Houses by nearly a
party vote. But, as this measure gave the people of Kansas
a chance indirectly to vote upon and reject the Lecompton
scheme, such a vote was thereupon had, and the scheme re-
jected by an overwhelming majority. Kansas thus remained
a Territory until after the secession from Congress of most of
the Southern Senators, early in 1861, when she was admitted
as a Free State, with the heai'ty assent of three fourths of her
inhabitants.

Mr. Douglas's second term as Senator expired with the
Congress in which he made his gallant and successful struggle
against what I deemed a great and perilous wrong, — a wrong
so palpable that the eminent Senator Hammond, of South
Carolina, who supported it at every step, afterward publicly
declared that the Lecompton bill should at once have been
kicked out of Congress as a fraud. It seemed to me that not
only magnanimity, but policy, dictated to the Eepublicans of
Illinois that they should promptly and heartily tender their
support to Mr. Douglas, and thus insure his reelection for a
third term with substantial unanimity. They did not concur,
however, but received the suggestion with passionate impa-
tience. Having for a quarter of a century confronted Mr.
Douglas as the ablest, most alert, most effective, of tlieir ad-
versaries, they could not now be induced to regard liim in a
different light ; and, beside, their hearts were set on tlie elec-
tion, as his successor, of their own especial favorite and cham-
pion, Abraham Lincoln, who, though the country at large



358 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.

scarcely knew him as for a single term a Eepresentative in
Congress, was endeared to them by his tested efficiency as a
canvasser and his honest worth as a man. Four years before,
tlie Whig porticfn of them had wished to make him Senator ;
but the far fewer anti- Nebraska Democrats held the balance
of jDower, and they decisively said, " You will elect our leader,
Lyman Trumbull, or you will not elect at all." Having given
way then, the great body of the party had fully resolved that
Lincohi should be their candidate now, and that, at all events,
Douglas should not be. So Lincoln was nominated, and ac-
cepted in a memorable speech ; and the State was canvassed
by him and Douglas as it had never before been, — they re-
peatedly spealdng alternately from the same stand to gather-
ings of deeply interested and intently listening thousands.
In the event, Mr. Douglas secured a small majority in either
branch of the Legislature, and was reelected ; but Mr. Lincohi's
friends claimed a considerable majority for their favorite in
the aggregate popular vote. They did not, for a while, incline
to forgive me for the suggestion that it would have been wiser
and better not to have opposed Mr. Douglas's return ; but I
still abide in that conviction.



I^Ir. Dou2;las was the readiest man I ever knew. He was
not a hard student ; if he had been, it would have been diffi-
cult to set liiTuts to his power. I have seen him rise in the
Senate quite at fault with regard to essential facts in contro-
versy, and thence make damaging blunders in debate ; but
he readily canght at and profited by any suggestion thrown
out by friend or foe ; and no American ever excelled him in
off-hand discussion : so that, even if \vorsted in the first stages,
he was apt to regain his lost ground as he went on. Once,
as I sat with the senior Francis P. Blair and one or two others
oiitside the bar of the Senate in 1856, he made us the text of
an amusing dissertation on the piebald, ring-streaked, and
speclded materials whereof the new Eepublican party was
composed ; and, passing us soon afterward, he hailed me famil-



FREMONT. — BUCHANAN. — DOUGLAS. 359

iarly T\dth the interrogation, " Did n't I give you a good turn
just now ? " At a later day, -when the Lecompton struggle
was in progress, a mutual friend, remembering that my stric-
tures on Mr. Douglas in former years had been of a vert/
caustic sort, inquii'ed of him whether he had any objections,
on account of those strictures, to meeting me on a friendly
footing. " Certainly not," was his instant response ; " I always
pay that class of debts as I go along." Our country has often
been called to mourn severe, untimely losses ; yet I deem
the death of Stephen A. Douglas, just at the outbreak of our
great Civil War, and when he had thrown his whole soul into
the cause of the country, one ' of the most grievous and ir-
reparable.

Mr. Buchanan, though born nearly a quarter of a century
earlier, survived Mr. Douglas by fully seven years ; dying in
1868, when he had long outlived whatever influence or con-
sideration he may once have enjoyed. Alike ambitious and
timid, his conduct throughout the initial stage of the liebel-
lion is yet unaccountable on any hypothesis but that of
secret pledges, made by him or for him, to the Southern
leaders when he was an aspirant to the Presidency, that
fettered and paralyzed him when they perverted the power
enjoyed by them as members of his Cabinet to the disruption
and overthrow of the Union. That, during those last moui-n-
ful months of Ms nominal rule, he repeatedly said to those
around him, " I am the last President of the United States,"
I firmly believe; that he proclaimed and argued that the
Federal government had no constitutional right to defend its
own existence against State secession, is matter of pubHc
record. Though he had spent what should have been the
better part of a long life in working his way up to the Presi-
dential chair, I think the verdict of history must be that it
would have been far better for his own fame, as well as better
for the country, that he had failed to obtain it.



XLIII.

A RIDE ACROSS THE PLAINS.

FEOM the hour when,late in 1848, the discovery of rich gold
•placers in California had incited a vast and eager migra-
tion thither; insuring the rapid growth of energetic and thrifty-
settlements of our countrymen on that remote and previously
unattractive, thinly peopled coast, the construction of a great
International Eailway from the Missouri to the Pacific seemed
to me imperative and inevitable. I could not deem it practi-
cable to retain permanently under one government communi-
ties of many millions of intelligent, aspiring, imperious people,
separated by fifteen hundred miles of desert, traversed by two
great mountain-chains, beside innumerable clusters, spurs
and isolated summits, and compelling a resort, for compara-
tively easy, cheap, and speedy transit, to a circuit of many
thousands of miles. A- Pacific Eailroad was thus accepted by
me at a very early day as a National necessity, alike in its
political and its commercial aspects ; and, while others were
scofiingiy likening it to a tunnel under the Atlantic or a
bridge to the moon, I was pondering the probabilities and
means of its early construction. I resolved to make a journey
of observation across the continent, with reference to the
natural obstacles presented to, and facilities afforded for, its
construction ; but no opportunity for executing this purpose
was afforded me prior to the year 1859. I then hoped, rather
than confidently expected, that, on publicly announcing my
intention, some friend might offer to bear me company on this
journey ; but my hope was not realized. One friend did pro-
pose to go ; but his wife's veto overruled his not very stubborn



A RIDE ACROSS THE PLAINS. 361

resolve. I started alone, on the 9th of May, and travelled rap-
idly, via Cleveland, Chicago, Quincy, and the North Missouri
Eailroad, to St. Joseph ; thence dropping down the jSIissouri
to Atchison, and traversing Kansas, by Leavenworth and
Wyandot, to Osawatomie ; thence visiting Lawrence and re-
turning to Leavenworth, whence the " Pike's Peak " stage
carried me, through Topeka, Manhattan, and Port Eiley, to
Junction City, then the western outpost of civilization in that
quarter.

We stopped overnight at the said cit)^, and I visited a
brother editor, who was printing there a little Democratic
w^eekly, for which he may possibly have had two hundred
subscribers ; but, if so, I am confident that not one half of
them ever paid him the first cent. He was, primarily, as I
remember, a Texan; but, having spent two years in California,
he gave me the most rapturous commendations of the beauties,
glories, and delights of that region. " It is the greatest, the
finest, the most attractive country that man ever saw," he
concluded. " Then why are you not still in California ? " I
inquired, glancing around his doleful little shanty. " Because
I am a great fool," he bluntly replied. I did not see how
profitably to protract the discussion.



We left Junction City on a luight morning late in ]\Iay,
following a new trail, which kept mthin sight of the Solo-
mon's or middle fork of the Kansas Eiver for the next two
hundred miles. The country was, in the main, gently rolling
prairie, covered with luxuriant young grass, and fairly glow-
ing with flowers. Antelopes, though shy, were frequently
seen at a distance, which they rapidly increased. Streams
running into the Solomon, across our track, were at first fre-
quent, and often skirted with trees ; but grew scarcer and
more scanty as we proceeded. There was some variety of
timber in the wet bottoms at first ; but soon the species
dwindled to two, — Cottonwood and a low, wide-branching
W^ater Elm ; at length, upon passing a wide belt of thin soil.



362 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.

covering wliat seemed to be a reddish sandstone, both wood
and water almost entirely vanished, save as we descried the
former at intervals in the bottoms of the Solomon, some miles
to the left (south) of us. The Cayota or Prairie Wolf (a mean
sort of stunted or foreshortened fox) was infrequently seen ;
the bolder and quite formidable Gray WoK more rarely ; soon,
the underground lodges of the Prairie Dog (a condensed gray
squirrel) covered roods of the ground we traversed, — our
newly located path lying right across several of their " towns,"
which it had not yet impelled them to desert. I refused, at
first, to credit the plainsmen's stories that an Owl and a Eattle-
snake were habitually, if not uniformly, fellow-tenants of his
" hole " with the Prairie Dog, though I had already seen many
Owls sitting, as we came near, each at the mouth of a hole,
after the Prairie Dog had barked his quick, sharp note of
alarm at our approach, and dropped into it ; but I was finally
compelled to succumb to testimony that could not be gain-
sayed. The rationale of the odd partnership is this : the
Rattlesnake wants a lodging, and cannot easily dig one in that
compact soil ; the Prairie Dog docs 11 1 want to be dug out and
eaten by the Cayota, as he quickly and surely would be but
for the protection afforded by the Rattlesnake's deadly fangs.
What the Owl (a small particolored one) makes by the asso-
ciation, I do not so clearly comprehend ; but I suspect the
Hawk would pounce upon and devour him but for the ugly
customer presumed to be just at hand, and ready to " mix in,"
if any outsider should venture to meddle with the Owl ; whose
partnership duties are plainly those of a watch-dog or lookout.



Beyond the sterile sandstone belt, we struck a wide stretch
of almost woodless, gently rolling prairie, thickly reticulated
by tortuous buffalo paths, with frequent skeletons and still
more plenteous skulls, — the soil being covered by a n\ere
sward of the short, strong buffalo-grass ; and soon we came in
sight of galloping, fleeing herds of first three and four, then
twenty to a hundred and fifty, buffaloes, generally running



A RIDE ACROSS THE PLAINS. 363

southward, in their alarm at our appearance, to seek safety in
more familiar haunts, — the entire host being at this time in
movement northward. Twenty or tliirty miles farther on,
having reached the smnmit of a gentle slope, we looked dowTi
its western counterpart to the pretty brook at its base, per-
haps five miles distant, and thence up the opposite " rise," —
the eye taking in at a glance at least a hundred square miles
of close-fed velvet glade, whereof nearly or quite half was
covered by buffalo, not " as thick as they could stand," but as
close together as they could comfortably feed. Say that
there were but twenty (instead of fifty) square miles of buf-
faloes in sight, and that each one had four square rods of
ground to himself, the number in sight at once was 512,000.
And for three days we were oftener in than out of sight of
these vast herds, and must have seen several millions of buf-
faloes. In fact, we could \viih. difficulty avoid them, — our
driver being once obliged to stop his team, or allow it and us
to be overwhelmed and crushed by a frightened, furious herd,
which, having commenced its stampede southv\-ard across our
path forty or fifty rods ahead of us, continued to follow each
other in blind succession until we must have gone do%vn and
rolled over beneath their thundering charge (as an empty
stage did a few days afterward), if we had not halted, and so
avoided them. A day or two before, an agent of the line,
who was riding a horse along the track, unthinking of danger,
was borne down by a herd started by some emigrants the
other side of an elevation, and instantly hurled to the earth.
Though badly hurt, he saved himself from death by firing all
the barrels of his revolver at the great brutes careering madly
over his prostrate form ; but liis horse was instantly killed.

Emerging from the buffalo region, the soil became visibly
thinner, and the vegetation poorer and poorer, until — the
head sources of the Solomon having been passed — we bore
rather north of west across several tributaries to the Eepub-
lican or main nortliern branch of the Kansas, which we found
here a rapid, shallow stream, perhaps a hundred yards wide
by one to two feet deep, rippling over a bed of coarse sand



364 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.

and gravel, with a very few cottonwoods thinly dotting its
banks at long intervals, — precious little thin, coarse grass
being occasionally discernible. A mule, bitten in the jaw by
a rattlesnake, lying dead beside a station-tent, was one of the
fresher features of this dreary region. A stunted cactus —
which reared its small, prickly leaves l^arely above the
ground — here began to be manifest. Following up the
dwindling river, we soon came to a " sink," — the entire
stream percolating for fifteen or twenty miles hence through
its gravelly bed far below the surface of the earth, — a team-
ster, who dug through eight feet of sand and gravel in quest
of water for his fainting beasts, being obliged to desist with-
out finding any. Most of the tributaries we crossed on the
Eepublican were simply broad beds of coarse, loose, dry sand,
into which our mules often sank to a depth of several inches ;
though in Winter and Spring I presume these are consider-
able brooks. Wood here became so scarce that, to supply
one station, it had to be carted sixteen miles. At length, we
left the head springs of the Eepublican on our right, and
struck, a few miles on, a northern tributary of the Arkansas,
kno^^^l as tlie " Big Sandy," which we ascended some twenty
or thirty miles ; finally leaving it on our left. Its bed was
dry, of ratlier coarse sand, and often covered with a white,
alkaline efflorescence ; but, occasionally, a small stream ran
gently aboveground, under one of its banks, where the chan-
nel had been worn exceptionally deep.

Soon after leaving the Big Sandy, we crossed the head wa-
ters of Bijou Creek, which runs northward into the South
Platte. " Pike's Peak," snow-crowned, had for some time
been visible nearly west of us ; soon, we found deeper ra-
vines and steeper hills than we had seen since we left the
IVIissouri, with thin clumps of Yellow or Pitch Pine, — out-
posts of the Rocky Mountain forests, — occasionally covering
patches of their sides or crests : the soil being sterile, and tlie
grass too scanty to nourish sweeping fires at any season.
After a few hours of this, we descended to the valley of
Cherry Creek, near the point where it emerges fj-om the



A RIDE ACROSS THE PLAINS. 365

moimtains, and, following down its east bank to its entrance
into the South Platte, saluted, one bright morning in June,
after a rough, chilly, all-night ride, the rising city of DExyER.



Denver was then about six months old ; but the rival city
of Auraria (since absorbed by it), lying just across the bed
of Cherry Creek (which suddenly dried up at this point dur-
ing one night of my brief sojourn), had already attained an
antiqidty of nearly a year. As there was no saw-mill within
several hundred miles, none of the edifices which composed
these rival cities coidd yet boast a groimd-floor ; but I
attended Divine worship the next Sunday (in Auraria) on the
first second-story floor that was constructed in either of them.
It may at first blush seem odd that a second-floor should pre-
cede a first ; but mother Earth supplied a first-floor that did
very well, while nature has not yet condescended to supply
man-made dwellings with chamber-floors.

I suppose there were over a hundred dwellings in the two
cities, when I reached them. I judge that they averaged
fully ten feet square, though probably the larger number fell
short of that standard. In material, none coidd boast over
its neighbors, as all were built of cottonwood logs from the
adjacent bank of the South Platte ; but some of these were
rudely squared on one side, with an axe ; while others were
left as God made them. I believe there was a variety in
roofs also, — some being constructed of "shooks," or pieces
split with an axe from a cottonwood log, while others were of
cottonwood bark. I seem to remember that all the chimneys
were of sticks and mud ; bvit then some were without chim-
neys ; and, while several had windows (I mean one apiece)
composed of four to six lights of seven-by-nine glass, others
were content with the more primitive device of a rude wooden
shutter, closed at night, and during severe, windy, driving
storms. Most of these cabins had known as yet only male
housekeepers ; and nearly half of them had been deserted by
their creators and owners, some of whom were off prospecting



366 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.

for gold; while quite a niimLcr — disappointed, hopeless,
homesick — had left for the States early in Spring, convinced
that gold in the Eocky ]\Iountains was a myth, a humbug, or
that (in the vernacular) " Pike had n't got any peak." But