Nebraska City, September 16,1856
I know you will particularly like a word from the Border. .
. . Various camping grounds are scattered along from twenty-five miles north to
the same distance south, of various parties, and in a day or two more it will
be “Boot, saddle, to horse, and away,” as Browning has it. Only just at this
moment things look discouragingly safe, and the men are beginning to fear
marching in without a decent excuse for firing anything at anybody. But we
shall take in arms and ammunition and flour and groceries and specie, and shall
be welcomed even if we go through safe. As one approaches Kansas, it becomes
more and more the absorbing topic and every one here talks it all day, while
waiting for real estate to rise. Then comes a cloud of dust on the western road
and two or three horsemen come riding wearily in, bearded and booted and
spurred and red-shirted, sword and pistol by their side — only the sword is a
bowie-knife — wild, manly-looking riders, and they are the latest from Kansas
and we get them quickly into a private room to hear the news — how the road is
peaceful just now, and they need flour and lead woefully at Lawrence, and how
four hundred men chased seven hundred.
. . . The wells are nearly dry, though I can't conceive that
enough has ever been drawn from them to produce the effect, and the dirtiest
thing in the landscape is the river. . . . The most discouraging thing I have
heard for liberty in Kansas is that the Kansas River is just like the Missouri.
SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters
and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 140-1
No comments:
Post a Comment