white men, coming down the Missouri, has been
attacked by Blackfeet Indians, who exchanged
shots with them, and swam after them, but were
distanced by the rapidity with which the white
men plied their boats. The party thus escaping
from the tomahawk report that seven white men,
coming in a boat -down the same river, have been
captured and killed by Crows, an Indian tribe
who have recently made a treaty of peace with
the government ; but in consequence of some slight,
as they allege, have burned their treaty, put on
ochre and vermilion, and gone out, like their
brethren the Cheyennes and Sioux, on the war
path.
A tall, swashing fellow, bickering with rifle,
bowie-knife, and six-shooter, lounges into the room,
and is introduced to us as Captain Walker; " the
famous Captain Jem Walker, sir ; who has crossed
12 NEW AMERICA.
the Plains seven-and-twenty times ; after whom
Walker s Creek is named " a creek of which we
blush to think that we know nothing, not
even the famous name. Captain Walker is of
opinion that we shall be fools if we trust our
scalps along the Smoky Hill route. The Platte
road is the only safe one. When we object that
as the mail no longer runs along that safer
path, we can hardly travel by it, he opines
that we shall do well to stay a few days in
Atchison, during which he will put us up to the
ropes, and fix us generally in Prairie politics. If
we don t know what is best for ourselves, he has
no objection to our being damned, as we certainly
shall be after making unpleasant acquaintance with
a Cheyenne knife.
It is clear that these men of Atchison have but
a poor opinion of the Leavenworth route when
compared against their own.
Hearing that a small steamer is going down the
river to Leavenworth in the afternoon, we send for
our bills, and have our boxes put on board. It is
now nine in the morning, and as we have nothing
to do, our new friends think proper to stay and
help us ; a courtesy on their side to which we
should offer no objection if it were not for their
THE WESTERN COUNTRY. 13
frequent and sardonic allusions to the fact of our
having been taken in. About noon an accident
raises us in their good opinion to a height yet
higher than that from which we had evidently
fallen ; enabling us to quit the town, morally
speaking, sword in hand and with flying colours.
Sauntering down the street, enjoying our gossip
and cigar, we note the word Post-office on a
shop-front, and on going inside we find there is
one letter with my name on the cover, written in
an unknown hand, on which three cents are due.
Paying the money, and breaking the seal, I find
the letter is not for me ; on which I fold and
restore it to the postmaster, saying it is not mine,
and should be kept for the owner, to whom it is
perhaps of moment. Eyeing me in a queer way,
the postmaster takes the letter, and gives me
back my change of three cents. " Do you see ? "
says the Sheriff to his nearest friend ; " damned
smart that read his letter and got his money
back! Hang me if I think they are Yanks after
all."
One touch of roguery, it would seem, is enough
to make the whole world kin !
14 :NEW AMERICA.
CHAPTEE II.
BLEEDING KANSAS.
"WELL, Sam," say I to a blithe young negro of
thirty-five years, a boy with quick eye and delicate
razor-hand, as he powders my face and dabs the
rosewater on my hair, in the shaving-room of
Planter s House, Leavenworth, " where were you
raised ? "
" Me riz in Missouri, sar."
" You were born a slave, then ? "
" Yes, sar, me slave in Weston ; very bad boss :
always drunk and kicking poor nigger boy."
" And how did you get your freedom, Sam
did you go and fight ? "
" No, sar ; me no fight ; tink fighting big
sin ; me swim."
" Swim ! Oh, yes ; you mean you swam across
the Missouri into Kansas, from a slave state into
a free state ? "
BLEEDING KANSAS. 15
" Dat true, sar. One bery dark night, me slip
away from Western ; run through the wood along
river bank, down stream ; get into de water by dem
trees, and push over to de mud bank " (pointing to
the great ridge of slime which festers in front of
Leavenworth when the water runs low) ; " there
wait till morning, looking at the stars ob heaven
and de lights in dese houses all about ; and when
daylight come, creep out of de rushes and wade
ober to the levee."
" Then you were free ? " Sam answers this
question only by a grin.
" Had you any help in your escape from men
on this side the river the slaves had always good
friends in Kansas ? "
" No, sar ; me got no help to scape ; for me
neber tell no one, cause me neber know afore the
moment when me slip away. The Lord put it
in my head. Me Methodist, sar ; most nigger-
boy in Missouri, Methodist ; me just come home
from chapel, tinking of de wonderful ways of
de Lord, when some one say, close in my ear,
Eise up, Sam ; run away and be a man. It was
de voice of de Lord ; I know it well. At first, I
not see what to do ; me tink it quite wrong to
run away and steal myself from boss, twelve
16 NEW AMERICA.
hundred dollars. Den me link, it must be right to
obey de voice of de Lord, for me belong more to
de Lord than to boss, and den I slip away into de
woods."
" Of course, you were followed ? "
" Yes, sar," says Sam, putting the last of his
fine flourishes upon my face ; " boss come ober
into Leaven worth, where he find me in de street.
Come here, you damned nigger, he say, pulling
out his revolver, and catching me by de neck. He
got a boat all ready : den some people come up,
You let dat nigger go alone, say one ; Put a
knife into de damned nigger, say another. Den
come a big row ; dey fight for me all day ; and
my side win."
The date of this little history was six short
years ago. Missouri, the fertile state beyond the
river, the forests of which I have before me as
I write, was then a slave state, with a sparse
but fiery population of slave-breeders and slave-
dealers. Nine years before that time that is to
say, so late as 1851, when the world was gathering
for its jubilee of progress in Hyde Park all this
wide region, lying westward of the Missouri, from
this river bank to the Eocky Mountains, was
BLEEDING KANSAS. 1 7
without a name. A host of wild Indian tribes,
Kansas, Cheyennes, Arappahoes, hunted over the
great Plains ; following the elk, the buffalo, the ante
lope, to their secret haunts. Two great lines of travel
had been cut through the Prairies ; one leading
southward to Santa Fe in New Mexico, the other
running westward, by the Platte river, towards
Salt Lake and San Francisco ; but the country
was still an Indian hunting-ground, in which the
white man could not lawfully reside. Half-a-dozen
forts had been thrown up by the Government in
this Indian country Fort Bent, Fort Laramie,
Fort Leavenworth, Fort Calhoun, Old Fort but
rather with a view to guarding the red man s
rights than to helping the white traveller and trader
in their need. But while the people of all nations
were assembling in Hyde Park, and wondering at
the magnificent country which had even then to
be represented by an empty space, a swarm of
settlers crossed the Missouri on rafts and in canoes,
seized upon the bluffs between Fort Calhoun and
Fort Leavenworth, threw up camps of log-huts,
staked out the finest patches of land, especially
those on the banks of creeks and pools, and so laid
the foundation of what are now the populous and
VOL. i. c
18 NEW AMERICA.
flourishing towns of Omaha, Nebraska, Atchison,
and Leavenworth cities of the free Territory of
Nebraska, of the free State of Kansas.
Then commenced along the whole line of the
Missouri river, that fitful, sanguinary strife, which
earned for this region the mourning epithet of
Bleeding Kansas. It lasted six years, and was a
prelude to the civil war.
Lawrence and Leavenworth were the results
of this battle, of which Sam s little story may be
taken as a sample.
Every one is aware that in the great feud be
tween the free-soilers and the slaveholders of Ame
rica, a truce had been made in 1820, which is known
in history as the Missouri Compromise ; by which
act it was arranged between the parties that slavery
should never be introduced into any western region
lying beyond 36 30 of north latitude, excepting
into such portion of Missouri as happened to
stand above that line. For thirty years that truce
held good, and even when the war of freedom
raged against slavery on other fields, the Missouri
Compromise was respected in the west. As the
final conflict neared, the two parties in the struggle
showed an equal discontent with that act of
truce. The slave-owners in Missouri, having an
BLEEDING KANSAS. 19
exceptional advantage in their state of settling
with their slaves above the prohibited line, de
sired to carry their domestic institution straight
backward through the country in their rear to the
foot of the Eocky Mountains, even if they should
not be able to carry it thence to the Pacific Ocean.
All the South went with them in their plans ;
though their action was in open conflict with the
law. Secret societies sprang up in many states
Blue Lodges, Social Bands, Sons of the South, and
many more all pledged to aid these planters
in carrying slavery westward of the Missouri
river, in the teeth of their own Compromise, in
violation of their own truce.
The slave-holders of Missouri won one victory
without a shot ; in quietly, by a local act, which
attracted no attention either in Boston or in New
York, extending their own frontier westward, from
the line drawn north and south through Kansas
City, up to that of the river bank ; adding six
large and now populous counties to their state,
and consequently to the area of the slave empire.
This act was absolutely illegal ; but no one in the
eastern cities noted it until the bills effecting the
change had become law, and the district had been
peopled with masters and their slaves. The
c 2
20 NEW AMERICA.
game appeared to be wholly in their hands. From
this new slave soil, which lies on the opposite
bank, in front of my window, Blue Lodges, Social
Bands, and Sons of the South streamed over into
these Delaware reserves, into these Kansas hunt
ing-grounds; each boss, accompanied by his sons
and his negroes, proceeding to help himself to
the choicest lots. From St. Louis to New Or
leans their courage was applauded, their success
predicted. In Washington the slave-dealing sen
ators, instead of calling these Missourian planters
to account, and carrying out the law against them,
sustained them in this outrage on the free states.
By a course of partisan agitations they procured
a fresh compromise, in which it was agreed that
the question of slavery should be referred back,
generally, to the people of any unorganised
country claiming to come within the Union either
as a Territory or as a State. Such an act was
supposed by the planters of Missouri and Ken
tucky to be an open declaration that Kansas and
Nebraska were to be organised as slave terri
tories. But now New England came into the
field. The conversion of Nebraska from free soil
into slave soil would have carried the line of
slavery, in the western country, as high north
BLEEDING KANSAS. 21
as Boston! A Northern Emigrant Aid Society
was founded in Massachusetts ; sturdy farmers,
fervent professors, youthful poets, yoked horses
to their waggons, and pushed across the continent
towards the Missouri, sworn to settle on the
new Indian lands, to accept the compromise of
Congress, and, in their quality of free citizens,
to vote a free constitution for Kansas. The Blue
Lodges were already hutted at Leaven worth and
Atchison ; and when the first New Englander
crossed the stream, being unable to answer these
sentinels that he owned any niggers, they placed
him in an open boat, without food, without oars,
and sent him floating down the river amidst de
risive shouts and threats. A meeting of Sons of
the South was called in Westport, on the Kansas
border, but within the limits of Missouri, at
which, after fiery eloquence, the following resolu
tion was unanimously carried :
" That this association will, whenever called
upon, by any of the citizens of Kansas Territory,
hold itself in readiness together to assist and re
move any and all immigrants who go there under
the auspices of the Northern Emigrant Aid Society.
The Squatter Sovereign, a news sheet, pub
lished in the town of Atchison (founded and
22 NEW AMERICA.
named by David Atchison, Senator of Missouri),
put forth in an early number this declaration cf
the planters :
" We will continue to lynch and hang, tar and
feather, and drown, any white-livered abolitionist
who dares to pollute our soil."
In July, 1854, thirty New England free-soilers
crossed the river in open boats ; they were well
armed, and brought with them tents and provi
sions. Pushing up the Kansas river, they rested
at the foot of a fine bluff, in the midst of a rolling
prairie, covered with flowers. Pitching their tents,
and beginning to fell wood for shanties, they called
the place at which they camped the city of
Lawrence, from the name of their popular purse-
holder. In August they were joined by seventy
more : men like themselves, well armed and reso
lute prepared to found that city, and to free that
soil. Now had arrived the time for the Missouri
men to show their spirit ; a hundred Yankees, se
parated from their friends by six great States, had
come into their midst; daring them to carry out
their threat of either hanging, lynching, or drown
ing every one who should cross into Kansas with
out a negro slave in his train. Three hundred and
fifty Sons of the South took horse, dashed over
BLEEDING KANSAS. 23
the shallow stream, and, having early in the
morning formed a camp and thrown out piquets,
sent word into Lawrence that these new settlers
must quit the Territory, promising never to re
turn. Three hours were given the free-soilers in
which to pack their things and get ready to
march. A Yankee bugle summoned the immi
grants to arms ; a civil but decisive answer was
returned to the Missouri camp ; and when the
Sons of the South perceived that the Yankees
were ready for the fray, and would be likely to
fight it out so long as a man could hold his piece,
they began to suspect each other, to doubt the
goodness of their carbines, and to steal away.
Dusk found their camp much thinned, dawn found
it broken up and gone.
From that day Lawrence has grown and pros
pered. More than once it has fallen into Missou-
rian hands, and the marks of grape and canister
are seen upon some of its buildings ; but its
free-soil people have never been driven out, and
it is now a charming little city, with the bright
ness of a New England town. It is the capital
of a free State.
In these streets of Leavenworth many a fierce
battle has been fought ; the Sons of the South
24 NEW AMERICA.
living close at hand, in a score of villages on yon
wooded banks. Blood has been shed in almost every
lane, especially at the voting times, when thou
sands of the Missourians used to come across in boats,
take possession of the polling-booths, and return an
overwhelming but fictitious majority in favour of a
slave constitution. One good citizen, William
Phillips, an advocate, was seized by Sons of the
South for having signed a protest, as a lawyer,
against the frauds which had disgraced the election ;
was forced into a boat, and pulled up the river to
Weston, on the Missouri side ; where he was first
tarred and feathered, then ridden on a rail, after
wards put up to auction as a slave, and finally
knocked down, amidst frantic yells and menaces,
to a negro. On his escape from Weston, Phillips
returned to Leavenworth, resolute in his free-soil
faith, and ready for the post of danger in every
fray.
In another week from this date, it will be just
ten years since a gang of Blue Lodges started from
the opposite bank, landed on this levee, took pos
session of the town, which lay completely at their
mercy for many hours, and under pretence of
searching for arms an utterly illegal search on
their part plundered and insulted the free-soilers
BLEEDING KANSAS. 25
in every house. Phillips refused to allow these
fellows to come inside his door ; on which the
house was attacked and its owner killed. Before
he fell, Phillips had shot two of his assailants dead.
His house was burned to the ground, along with
many other dwellings ; and every free-soiler who
could be found in Leavenworth was put on board
a steamer and sent down the river.
Yet the New Englanders rallied to their flag,
with growing numbers and glowing passions ; be
coming genuine settlers on the land, which the
Missouri men were not. Here, and elsewhere, it
has been shown that slavery, as a social system,
lacked the solid fibre of a colonising power. Slaves
could not work the prairie land to profit ; negroes,
toiling under a master s eye and whip, require
the rich soils of Mississippi and Alabama. With
a pistol in one hand, a hoe in the other, these stout
New Hampshire and Massachusetts lads fought on,
toiled on, not only until they had gained a fair
majority in the ballot-boxes, but won a full
ascendancy in the open field.
One of the comic incidents of this war was the
Battle of Black Jack, when Captain Clay Pate,
(ominous name !) a Virginian, who gave himself
as a professional soldier, put himself at the head
26 NEW AMEKICA.
of fifty-six Sons of the South, and threatened to
eat up old John Brown, of Osawatomie (afterwards,
unhappily, of Harper s Ferry) and his band of twenty-
seven free-soilers. Pate had organised his force
like a little army, with its horse and foot, its camp
equipage, and its luggage train ; and having just
then been plundering Palmyra, a free-soil city, his
baggage mules were heavily laden with the spoils of
war. Brown made a fair fight, by going out into
the open plains. After a lusty tug, Clay Pate sur
rendered to the tough old fellow himself, with his
sword, his luggage train, all the spoils of Palmyra,
twenty-one hale men, the whole of his dead and
wounded, and his gorgeous tent.
In 1861, a few months after these citizens of
Leavenworth had fought the battle for my friend
Sam on this levee under my windows, the wounds
of Bleeding Kansas were staunched and healed by
her admission into the Union as a free state.
27
CHAPTEE III.
OVERLAND MAIL.
CHE Overland Mail is one of the many great facts
)f the Great Eepublic. The postal returns tell
rou how many, you can imagine how important,
are the letters going westward from the Atlantic
cities to the Pacific cities. This mail is an Im
perial institution.
While we were yet in London, dreaming of the
details of our trip to the Eocky Mountains, it was
always comforting to know that in going out
among the wild Cheyennes and Sioux, we should
find ourselves travelling in company with the Im
perial Mail. Glancing at maps, scanning the vast
spaces over which Cheyenne, Sioux, Comanche and
Arappahoe roam, one is apt to think there may lurk
some spice of danger in such a journey ; but then
comes in the assuring thought that all along this
route across the Prairies, across the Mountains, the
:>$ NEW AMERICA.
American mails are being daily sent under powerful
escorts of mounted men. Magic lie? in this won!
% daily/ That which is daily done must be safely
done. Would he not be considered a sorry fellow
who should fear to travel even along a iv>ad infested
bv Sioux and rattlesnakes, under escort of United
lip
Slates trvx^ps in company with the Imperial Mail r
When Speaker Oolfax drxvce across the Plains last
fell, to study the Indian question, the Mining
question, and the Mormon question, among living
Indians, Miners and Mormons* instead of reading
about them in government reports*, he had only one
general otfioer, one colonel, and twenty-four sabres
galloping round his coach : yet he has publicly
coufesstxl that although the red-skins tightened
him a little, and delayed his journey much, by
plundering the stations in his front* and threatening
every moment to hare his $ealf he got safely
thresh to Denver and Sah Lake.
Ool&x, it is true* was a state ofctti and
havii^ his e<<ru he had afeo widi him a
party of wdlaimui men. We are
only two in number (so fcr as we can
: wo are but s%hdy nMd with Colts ee
haw all along been iTuMM^g, thm it any
OVERLAND MAIL. 29
iit escort^ riding by our sides in defence of
Imperial Mail,
At Leavenworth we find the mail-agents to
whom we have letters from their chief in New
York as we have to every one employed by the
Overland Mail Company along these tracks.
Nothing am be more polite, more teasing, than
their answers to our questions. Everything shall be
done for us that can be, under the circumstances.
have come at an unlucky time. If we had
only started a month sooner if we had only
A a month later all would have been right,
As it is, they will do their best ; we may tind
things a little rough in the Plains, but the agents
have hardly any doubt that we shall get through
to our journey s end.
Such words rather pique our fancies ; since
qur health, our comfort, nay our lives, depend
on the state of these Plains. The fact is,
the old road by way of the Platte Eiver
has been changed, by order of Congress, for a
shorter cut through the vast Indian region of the
xv Hill Fork; a shorter course, perhaps a
: one, if the road had only first been made,
bridged, and levelled ; and if the Indian tribes who
hunt buffalo and antelope across it had been either
30 NEW AMERICA.
driven away or negotiated into peace. None of
these things have yet been done.
Two great lines of travel have been driven by
the white men through these Plains : (1) the
Platte road from Omaha and Atchison, by way
of Kearney, Denver, and Salt Lake City, to San
Francisco; (2) the Arkansas route, starting from
Kansas City, and running by Fort Atkinson
and Fort Wise to Puebla, the gold regions of
Colorado, and -thence to San Francisco. To
the existence of these two roads the Indians seem
to have submitted in despair. To the Platte road,
they have ceased to show any strong opposition ;
having fought for it and lost it ; first to the Mor
mon pilgrims, afterwards to the gold-seekers, men
who came into their country, driving before them
trains of waggons, in bands of eighty or a hundred,
and being armed with rifles and revolvers. To
the Arkansas road they nurse a sharper antipathy ;
since it is mainly a trial road, the right to travel over
which has been purchased from their chiefs. Still,
though it may be with a bad grace, and with many
murmurs and protests, they have shown, and they
still show, themselves ready to respect the white
man as he passes through their lands by either of
these two routes. But in the vast prairies between
OVERLAND MAIL. 31
these tracks lie the great buffalo runs, with the
pastures feeding nearly all that remains in the
Indian Territories of the elk, the antelope, and
the black-tailed deer. The buffalo-runs are also
theirs, say the Cheyennes and the Arappahoes, and
they must either keep them free from whites or
else die like dogs. They say they will not die
before the pale-faces ; therefore, they must keep
the buffalo-runs of Kansas and Colorado (as the
white men have begun to call the plains on paper)
free from intrusion of mail and train.
Now the new route chosen by Congress for
the Overland Mail, beyond all question a shorter
line from St. Louis to San Francisco, cuts these
buffalo-runs, these elk and antelope pastures, into
two halves, and, as the Cheyennes and their allies,
the Comanches, Arappahoes, Kiowas, Sioux and
Appaches, know very well, a railway is being built
in the rear of this new mail ; a railway which has
already reached Wamego, near Fort Eiley. Now
the red men, knowing that the Mail is only a
herald of much worse, and that the railway bell
will quickly follow the crack of a driver s whip,
have called a council of their tribes, and some say
have concluded to try a war against the whites for
the possession of these buffalo-runs. When a railway
32 NEW AMEKICA.
engine, say the braves, shall have whistled away
buffalo and antelope, it will be idle to raise the
hatchet and draw the bow. Now is the time for
them to strike ; now or never ; and, even if a few of
the old men, grey with years and sad with sorrow,
should recommend peace with their white neigh
bours, resignation to the will of their Great Spirit,
the young braves, proud of their own strength, ig