Steamboat Cataract
aground on a bank in
the Missouri River
October 9, 1856
I know you would enjoy going to Kansas, for it is as genuine
a sensation as we expect it to be; things and people are very real there. It is
precisely like waking up some morning and stepping out on the Battle of Bunker
Hill; one learns in a single day more about Greeks and Romans and English
Puritans and Scotch Jacobites, and Hungarians and all heroic peoples, than any
course of history can teach. The same process is producing the same results
before your eyes, and what is most striking the same persons whom you saw a
year ago in Boston, indolent and timid, are here transformed to heroes. Perhaps
this brings down the dignity of our courage a little, showing it to be the
child of circumstances, but still one sees great differences of temperament in
Kansas as elsewhere. What struck me most was the unconscious buoyancy of the
people. Living in the midst of danger, they recognize it as the normal
condition of existence, and talk of it in the sort of way that sailors do. In
the intervals of dinner (if dinner there be), they talk over the last fight as
if it were a picnic. In fact it was plain that the excitement had become a
necessary stimulus to them, and during the partial peace which existed while I
was there, they confessed that they missed something. Women complained that there
wasn't much to talk about. At Lawrence, when the evening drum beat to call out
the guard (of United States troops, placed there by Governor Geary, for
protection) somebody would always exclaim, “That sounds good!” And the patience
is about as remarkable as the courage. People would describe their way of
living, sick wife and children perhaps . . . and always end, “But we shall live
or die in Kansas.” Of course there are exceptions; but the more men sacrifice
there, the more they seem to love the country. The difficulty is, that there is
not much left to sacrifice; everybody has grown poor. I hope nothing from
Governor Geary; he means well and has energy of will, but no energy of character;
he can take efficient single steps, but not carry out any systematic plan
of action. . . . I have less hope that Kansas will be a free State than before
I came here. Before this last interference of Governor Geary, the Kansas men
under General Lane (who is a very remarkable man) had driven out the
Missourians in all directions; but it is their policy not to resist the United
States Government, and the Missourians are always ready to take the slightest
advantage which that affords them. After the Presidential election the invaders
will make a desperate effort; their success is certain if Buchanan is elected,
and probably if Fremont is.
. . . On board I have thus far met no annoyance, though
there is a company of young Virginians and Carolinians returning to their homes;
they are of the race of “poor white folks,” commonly. My copy of “Dred”
occasions some remarks. I trust your father will feel a becoming reverence when
I say that I am a General in the Kansas Army, having been immediately presented
with a commission to that effect by the redoubtable “Jim Lane” himself, the “Marion”
of the age. I keep it as a valuable autograph, or to be used on my next visit
to Kansas.
SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters
and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 142-4
