Part 20

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.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The people, however, thought otherwise, and they were to rule. Indeed, at the moment the Union was most seriously threatened with dissolution, the idea of binding the Great West more firmly to it seemed dictated by a wise forecast, since, if remoteness were to be an element of weakness to the nation, then the sooner that remoteness were done away with, the better for its security.

Congress made liberal offers of moneys and lands, and work began both in California (1862) and Nebraska[5] (1863). The route from the Missouri first begun followed the old emigrant trail up the Platte Valley, thence crossing the mountains into the Utah Basin, where the road from the west was expected to join it. As the Platte Valley is nearly a dead level from the Missouri to the mountains, the work went on rapidly over this part of the line. Twelve thousand men were employed on it. In front gangs of laborers shovelled up the loose earth to form the embankment; after these came the tie-layers and track-layers; who were again closely followed by the locomotive, with the cars in which the workmen slept and ate since leaving the settlements behind them.

When the track neared the Black Hills, the Indians tried to stop its farther progress. They looked upon its coming as destined to drive away the buffalo from their old feeding-grounds, and so starve them out of their country. In this belief they attacked the laborers, tore up the tracks, and so harassed the builders that the work could only go on under the protection of United States soldiers. Some well-meaning people thought it wrong thus to invade the Indians' hunting-grounds for any purpose whatsoever, and Wendell Phillips rejoiced that they had risen in defence of them. Said he, "All hail and farewell to the Pacific Railroad! Haunt that road with such dangers that none will dare use it!"

The work, however, steadily went on. On the 10th of May, 1869, the two ends came together at Promontory Point, Utah, and with impressive ceremonies the Pacific Railway was opened to the traffic of the world. The way to the Indies had been found. Senator Benton's prophecy was fulfilled.

FOOTNOTES

[1] THE LOCOMOTIVE REACHED St. Joseph, Mo., over the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. The telegraph came up the Missouri River from St. Louis. The telegraph crossed the plains in advance of the railroad.

[2] PONY EXPRESS followed the old Platte route, _via_ Forts Kearney, Laramie, the South Pass, Fort Bridger, to Salt Lake.

[3] BUTTERFIELD OVERLAND COMPANY'S route went through the Indian Territory, Texas, and Arizona, with a branch line coming from Memphis, Tenn., _via_ Fort Smith, Ark. The coaches ran day and night, ordinarily making the trip in twenty-five days.

[4] THE PACIFIC RAILWAY. A bill authorizing it was carried through Congress in 1859. It provided for three great lines, namely, the Northern, Southern, and Central, all of which have been built. The coming on of civil war checked the enterprise at this time. Government had already caused all the practicable routes to be surveyed. As far back as 1846 Lieutenant Emory noted down the practicability of the route up the Arkansas, down the Rio Grande and Gila to San Diego or Los Angeles, while on the march for California. This is, practically, the Southern Pacific route of to-day.