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NEW ENGLAND

EMIGRANT AID COMPANY

V •" - •••-.,* -- '•'-. -trt ' . ,1- ,---"•"'-''•" ~ i f'- . • • ,';•-, • - - -•• - - . ^ '. '••"'• - - "*. *

AND US INFLUENCE/ TKROUGH THE KANSAS CONTEST,
UPON NATIONALr HISTORY.

Y ELI THAYER.

1 1

Worcester,; Mass.:

PUBLISHED BY FRANKLIN P, RICE.

1887.

THK

NEW ENGLAND

EMIGRANT AID COMPANY

AND ITS INFLUENCE, THROUGH THE KANSAS CONTEST,
UPON NATIONAL HISTORY.

BY ELI THAYER.

\ViiRCESTKR, MASS. :

FRANKLIN P. RICE, Publisher.
Mnrcci.xxxvn

•
-

••

PRESS OF
WORCESTER PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY.

-X

The following pages comprise an abstract of two lectures given
before The Worcester Society of Antiquity in March, 1886. Some
notes have been added.

THE NEW ENGLAND EMIGRANT AID

COMPANY,

AND ITS INFLUENCE, THROUGH THE KANSAS CONTEST,
UPON NATIONAL HISTORY.

History gives abundant proof, that a brief period of time
has often determined the character and destiny of a nation.
Such a period is properly called its controlling or dominating
epoch.

In the history of our own country, the year 1854 holds this
commanding position, and governs all our subsequent years. It
was in this year that the Slave Power attained its highest emi-
nence, and demolished the last barrier that stood in the way
of its complete supremacy and its perpetual dominion. The
executive, the legislative and the judicial departments of the
Government, were entirely within its power. Not content, how-
ever, with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which opened
all our vast territorial possessions to Slavery ; not content
with its well assured and absolute power, within our national
boundaries, it aspired to annex other countries, and under
its direful rule, to build up a vast empire " on the corner-stone
of Slavery. '

In the same year, 1854, a power, before unknown in the
world's history, was created and brought into use, to save
to Freedom all our territories, then open by law to the posses-
sion and dominion of Slaver}'. This new power was an ORGAN-
IZED, SELF-SACKIFICING EMIGRATION. Its mission was to dis-
pute with Slavery every square foot of land exposed to its
control. A hand-to-hand conflict was to decide between the
system of free labor and the S3*stem of slave labor.

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, in May, 1854,
proved that the legislative restriction of Slavery was simply

a delusion, and that the contest between Freedom and Slavery,
if such a contest were yet possible, must be carried on out-
side of legislative halls. It must be a contest on the prai-
ries, and the power victorious there, would, in due time, govern
the country.

Was it possible to bring these two kinds of civilization
to a decisive struggle ? Was it possible to arouse the North to
effective resistance, after more than thirty years of contin-
uous defeat by the South ?

During all this period of the successful aggression and
increasing strength of Slavery, there was in the North cor-
responding apprehension and alarm. On the repeal of the Mis-
souri Compromise this apprehension became despondency, and
this alarm became despair.

There were in the Northern States two agencies professedly
hostile to Slavery. One was political, and opposed Slavery
extension in a legal way, by means of legislative restriction.
The other was sentimental and contended for the overthrow
of Slavery by revolutionary methods — advocating the dissolu-
tion of the Union as the best and only sure way to this re-
sult. The first of these two agencies was the Free Soil
party, which was first formed in 1848, and put into shape for
political action by the convention that nominated Martin
Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams. This new party-
drew its supporters, in about equal numbers, from the Whig and
Democratic parties, while it completely absorbed a feeble politi-
cal organization, which at the time had a kind of nebulous
existence under the name of the Liberty party.

From the time of its creation, in 1848, to the day of the re-
peal of the Missouri Compromise, in 1854, the Free Soil party
had scarcely increased at all, either in influence or numbers.
Its purpose was to insert in every act of Congress opening
a territory to settlement, a provision to forever exclude Slavery
therefrom.* This seemed to its supporters to be a legal, practi-
cal way of stopping the extension of Slavery, by preventing the

* The Wilmot Proviso.

making of more slave states. This new party had no sympathy-
whatever with disunionists, and proposed to act against Slavery
in accordance with the Laws, the Constitution and the Union.

But the Slave Power had acquired such ascendency in the
Government, that the new party never once applied its slavery-
excluding method. On the contrary, after six years of political
life, which were six years of active effort and earnest appeals
for free labor in our territories, it was obliged to witness
the complete overthrow and utter ruin of its cardinal princi-
ple, in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. This action of
Congress at once convinced the new party, not only of the fu-
tility of its methods, but also of its own feebleness and utter
inability to cope successfully with Slavery.

Its leaders were silent in their despair, or spoke only to
lament their defeat and the rapidly approaching calamities of
the nation. They had no plan to propose for future action.

" There was silence deep as death.
While we floated on our path ;
And the boldest held his breath
For a time. "

Of the matter involved in the repeal of the Missouri Com-
promise and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, Mr.
Sumner had said in the United States Senate, 24th of Feb-
ruary, 1854 :

"The question presented for your consideration is not surpassed in
grandeur by any that has occurred in our national history since the
Declaration of Independence. In every aspect it assumes gigantic pro-
portions,whether we simply consider the extent of territory it concerns,
or the public faith and national policy which it assails, or that higher
question — that Question of Questions, as far above others as Liberty is
above the common things of life — which it opt-ns anew for judgment. "

The following views of their ablest champions prove how
hopeless and humiliated they had become.

Said William H. Scwanl, in the United States Senate,
May 25th, 1854, the day of the repeal of the Missouri Com-
promise :

" The sun has set for the last time upon the guaranteed and
certain liberties of all the unsettled and unorganized portions of
the American Continent that lie within the jurisdiction of the
United States. To-morrow's sun will rise in dim eclipse over them.
How long that obscuration shall last, is known only to the Power
that directs and controls all human events. For myself, I know only
this, that no human power can prevent its coming on, and that its pas-
sing off will be hastened and secured by others than those now here,
and perhaps by only those belonging to future generations.

" Sir, it would be almost factious to offer further resistance to
this measure here. Indeed successful resistance was never ex-
pected to be made in this Hall. The Senate is an old battle ground,
on which have been fought many contests, and always, at least
since 1820, with fortune adverse to the cause of equal and univer-
sal freedom. "

Mr. Wade said :

"The humiliation of the North is complete and overwhelming. No
Southern enemy of hers can wish her deeper degradation. "

Mr. Chase said :

" This bill, doubtless paves the way for the approach of new, alarm-
ing and perhaps fatal dangers to our country. "

From the New York Tribune, 14th March, 1854 :

"We as a nation are ruled by the Black Power. It is composed of
tyrants. See then how the North is always beaten. The Black Power
is a unit. It is a steady, never-failing force. It is a real power. Thus
far it has been the only unvarying power of the country, for it. never
surrenders and never wavers. It has always governed and now gov-
erns more than ever."

The New York Tribune, in an editorial, on the 24th of June,
well expressed the feeling of despondency at the North :

" Not even by accident, is any advantage left for liberty in their bill.
It is all blackness without a single gleam of light, a desert without one
spot of verdure, a crime that can show no redeeming point. "

So much then for the political anti-slavery agency.

The other agency against Slavery was the sentimental one
established and led by William Lloyd Garrison. It was much
older than the one already considered, but inferior in numbers
and far more inferior in influence. Its champions advocated
Disunion 'as the 'l corner-stone of all true anti-slavery." They
shall speak for themselves.

Wendell Phillips at the A. A. S. Convention in the Taberna-
cle, New York City, May 4th, 1848, offered the following resolu-
tion which was passed :

"That this Society deems it a duty to reiterate its convictions that
the only exodus of the slave out of his present house of bondage is

OVKK THE RUINS OF TUK PKE8KNT AMERICAN ClIUKCH, AND THE PRES-
ENT AMERICAN UNION."

In May, 185G, Mr. Garrison offered the following resolution
at a meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society :

"Resolved: That the one great issue before the couutry is, THE
DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION, in comparison with which all other
issues with the Slave Power are as dust in the balance; therefore we
will give ourselves to the work of annulling this ' covenant with death '
as essential to our own iunocency, and the speedy and everlasting over-
throw of the Slave System."

The following was also adopted by the Abolitionists in New
York City in December, 1859 :

"•Renolved : That we iuvite a free correspondence with the Disunion-
ists of the South, in order to devise the most suitable way and means
to secure the dissolution of the present imperfect and inglorious union
between the free and slave States." *

• But \vhen Secession had become, in the minds of the enemies of the nation, an
accomplished deed, Mr. Garrison and his associates, in the face of the aroused people
of the North, had sense enough not to insult the outraged sentiment of their section
by further avowal of their sympathy with Disunion. They respected the halter too
much. Soon we see them on the other tack; and when the war was over they were
the loudest in the jubilee over the restoration of the "grand and glorious I'nion "
which they, and they alone, had saved!

After the war Mr. Garrison said: "Iain with the President [Johnson], and
desire to make treason infamous." — See ('riitiiry Magazine for February, 1887, Vol.
xxxiii., page 638, note.

With such views and purposes the people of the Northern
States bad no sympathy. The Abolitionists, no doubt, had
good motives, but their judgment was invariably bad. Their
methods were everywhere condemned. They never attained to
the dignity or influence of a party or even a faction. They
were a cabal, active, noisy and pugnacious, but never effective.
By their own showing a quarter of a century spent in denounc-
ing the church, the clergy and the Union bad accomplished noth-
ing. Slavery had grown stronger every day, while opposition
to it had not increased at all. Massachusetts was as sound an
anti-slavery state before they were born as it has ever been
since. But she was for legal and constitutional methods only,
and always for the Union.

In 1787, Nathan Dane, one of our representatives in Congress,
revived the ordinance, introduced three years earlier by Thomas
Jefferson, and secured its passage. This was to make the great
North- West free territory forever. All this was before Garri-
son was born ! But such anti-slavery action was not repeated
during the entire period of Mr. Garrison's efforts for disunion.
In all that time, Slavery was unrestricted, and made steady pro-
gress. But some say he was " the father of anti-slavery "
in the United States. Some say Lundy was. So there
is a dispute. Mr. A says, Ponce de Leon discovered America.
Mr. B says no ; it was Pizarro. While A and B get red in the
face, the rest of the alphabet can afford to remain unmoved.

Slavery never had a legal existence in Massachusetts.
The people never wanted it and always hated it. They
hated its adjuncts and attendants of manacles, blood-hounds
and auction blocks, as much before Garrison was born, as they
did after he had pictured them, in the Liberator, for twenty-five
years. This incessant pecking at the leaves and twigs of the
upas tree of Slavery, seemed to them to stimulate rather
than retard its growth. The Northern people ardently desired
to destroy the tree itself, and were ready to adopt any legal and
constitutional plan which might do this work. Garrison's
method of casting out a devil by splitting the patient in
two lengthwise, they did not approve — for two reasons :

1st, Because the patient would die ;

2nd, Because the devil would live.

Still the Abolitionists boasted constantly of increasing numbers.
Every new subscriber to the Liberator, every new face in
their annual or quarterly conventions, was proof to them of the
rapid increase of disunionists ; as if every one who reads
the flaming poster of the corning circus is an acrobat !
as if every one who witnesses the exhibition is an actor within
the ring !

Some friends of the Abolitionists still claim that Garrison and
his associates founded the Liberty and Free Soil parties. This
claim is the exact opposite of the truth. They opposed both of
these parties, and hated their champions more than they hated
the slaveholders themselves. They constantly abused every
leading anti-slavery man who was not a disunionist. Ample
proof of this can be seen in the editorials of the Liberator against
Horace Mann, Salmon P. Chase and Dr. Bellows. Lincoln,
Seward, Wade, Sumner and Wilson were not spared. * About
the time of Sumner's death, Mr. Garrison went before a com-
mittee of the Massachusetts Legislature to protest against ex-
punging some foolish resolutions on record denouncing that
famous senator, he claiming that Mr. Sumner had not amounted
to much in the anti-slavery struggle ! f

But why prolong the description? Let the Abolitionists draw
their own portraits. They still exist in the columns of the Lib-
erator, the birth-place and the sepulchre of all their plans and

* At a meeting of the Worcester County South Division A. S. Society held at
Worcester, Aug. 12, I860, Parker Pillsbury offered the following resolution, which
was adopted:

" Rvsolveil: That in the two recently published speeches of Charles Sunnier, we
see the blinding, bewildering and depraving effect of American politics, and of
contact with slave-holders — the former, made in the U S. Senate, being a four
hours' argument against the ' five-headed barbarism of slavery,' and repudiated by
many of the leaders of Republicanism; and the latter a full admission of the consti-
tutionality of slave-holding, and an eloquent argument in favor of the election of
Lincoln and Harulin, both of whom believe iu slave-hunt ing as well as sl;ue-/i «/<///«/,
and who virtually declare in their platform that the noble John liinwn \\as one of
the gravest criminals who ever died by a halter."

t See Warrinyton Ptn I'ortrnits, page ;j(JG.

purposes. That paper is also an arsenal, amply sullicient to
furnish arms to a million of their assailants. It gives abundant
proof of the following statements :

With all their keenness of vision, the Abolitionists never saw
anything as it was. With all their eloquence they never advo-
cated any cause to a successful issue. With all their prophetic
power and practice they never predicted any event which came
to pass. With all their love of freedom, they constantly in-
creased the burdens of the slaves. Demanding immediate eman-
cipation, they strove to retard the overthrow of slavery. Con-
tending for the dissolution of the Union as the only means of
destroying Slavery, they saw Slavery destroyed not only without
their aid, but against their protest, while the Union was preserved
and made permanent and harmonious.* Incessantly denouncing

* The following letter, written by Col. Asa H. Waters a short time before his
death, is so conclusive in its statements, that it may appropriately be given a place
here.

" MiLLitunY, Nov. 20th, 1886.

"Mlt. TlIAYKll,

"Dear Sir:— When the Free Soil Party was formed in '48 Garrison and
his party had labored seventeen years and failed to carry ;t single town in New
England. In one year we put ninety members into the Legislature, the second year
we carried Worcester County, and the third year put a Jupittr Tonnns — Charles
Sunnier — into the very citadel of the slave power. Then, at a convention in Wor-
cester, Wilson had the party christened the Republican Party with the same Free
Soil platform, and on that we elected Lincoln President, and he abolished Slavery.
" In all this, we had the bitter opposition of Garrison and his party, which finally
clasped hands with the Disunionists of the South, in a determined effort to break up
the Union. Had they succeeded, so far from abolishing slavery, they would have
vastly extended it. The design of the South was to cope in New Mexico, Arizona,
Indian Territory, I'tah and Southern California, and thus build up a great Southern
Empire founded on Slavery. I enclose the resolution, in which they proposed the
unholy alliance. A committee was chosen, and I think M. U Conway was chair-
man. The corres|>ondence was never published. Secession movements soon after
commenced, and in a little over a year the war broke out. It was suppressed and
slavery abolished by the patriotic Union Sentiment of the North, which always was
its predominant political sentiment. 'Down with the Disunionists;' 'Death to
traitors, slavery or no slavery,' were the cries that rang through the rankc; and for
a long time the army returned fugitive slaves. At length it was discovered that the
rebels were using their slaves as a means of strength, which made them contraband
of war and liable to confiscation. Then their obstinate resistance created a ' military
necessity,' and on these two principles rather than by any authority in the United
States Constitution, President Lincoln issued his proclamation.

the clergy and churches of the Northern States as the upholders
of Slavery, they lived to see them among the foremost leaders in
its destruction by the methods of the Emigrant Aid Company,
which the Abolitionists hated, ridiculed and opposed.

No other fraternity of mountebanks ever lived so long, or
worked so hard, or did so little.

During the winter of 1854 I was, for the second time, a Rep-
resentative from Worcester in the Legislature of Massachusetts.
I had telt to some degree the general alarm in anticipa-
tion of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but not
the depression and despondency that so affected others who re-
garded the cause of liberty as hopelessly lost. As the
winter wore away, I began to have a conviction which came to
be ever present, that something must be done to end the domi-
nation of Slavery. I felt a personal responsibility, and though
I long struggled to evade the question, I found it to be impossi-
ble. I pondered upon it by day, and dreamed of it by
night. By what plan could this great problem be solved ?
What force could be effectively opposed to the power that seem-
ed about to spread itself over the continent ? Suddenly,
it came upon me like a revelation. It was ORGANIZED AND
ASSISTED .EMIGRATION.* Then came the question, was it possi-

The abolitionists opposed his election, and being non-resistants, were rarely
found in the ranks, and they thus failed for the most part to become identified with
the active forces that abolished slavery.

'• And yet, for twenty years the press has been teeming with their effusions in
poetry and prose, to convince the world that they abolished slavery! They have
done much to falsify history, and produce wrong impressions on the rising genera-
tion. A duty devolves on those who know the facts, to conteract and set back this
tide. But how shall it be done? Where is the press that can be enlisted?

" I had a long controversy with Oliver Johnson; he finally jumped the fence and
cleared from the field, declaring he never made the issue that Garrison abolished
slavery. The editor (Slack) said he did. He boasted of being 'a member of the
Republican Party.' In the Greeley campaign of '72 against Grant, he labored with
his Southern allies and they carried six Southern states, but no Northern. That
shows his consistency. " Yours Respectfully,

" A. II. WATEKS."

* The Kansas emigration was emphatically a $e\f-sncrijiciny emigration — a pow-
er hitherto unknown in history. All previous emigrations hail been either foro-d m
voluntary, and if voluntary were s

ble to create such an agency to save Kansas ? I believed
the time for such a noble and heroic development had
come ; but could hope be inspired, and the pulsations of life be
started beneath the ribs of death? The projected plan would
call upon men to risk life and property in establishing freedom
in Kansas. They would be called to pass over millions of
acres of better land than any in the disputed territory was
supposed to be, and where peace and plenty were assured,
to meet the revolver and the bowie knife defending Slavery and
assailing Freedom. Could such men be found, they would
certainly prove themselves to be the very highest type of Chris-
tian manhood, as much above all other emigrants, as angels are
above men. Could such men be found?

It happened, that on the evening of the llth of March, 1854,
there was a large meeting in the City Hall in Worcester, to pro-
test against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. I attended the meet-
ing, and not having yet taken counsel of anyone, determined to
see how the plan would be received by an intelligent New Eng-
land audience without any preparation for the announce-
ment. Accordingly, making the last speech of the evening
I for the first time disclosed the plan. The Worcester Spy of
March 13th, has the conclusion of my speech as follows :

" It is time now to think of what is to be done in the event of the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Now is the time to organize an
opposition, that will utterly defeat the schemes of the selfish men
who misrepresent the nation at Washington. Let every effort be made
and every appliance be brought to bear, to fill up that vast and fertile
territory, with free 'men — with men who hate slavery, and who
will drive the hideous thing from the broad and beautiful plains where
they go to raise their free homes. [Loud cheers.]

"I for one am willing to be taxed one fourth of my time or of my
earnings, until this be doue — until a barrier of free hearts aud strong
hands shall be built around the land our fathers consecrated to freedom,
to he her heritage forever. [Loud cheers,] "

If instead of this impetuous, spontaneous and enthusiastic re-
sponse there had been only a moderate approbation of the plan,

you would never have heard of the Emigrant Aid Company.
The citizens of Worcester were sponsors at its baptism, and up-
on their judgment I implicitly relied, and 1 was not deceived.
I did not expect that all who applauded would go to Kansas, or
even that any of them would go, but I knew that whatever a
Worcester audience would applaud in that manner I could find
men to perform. There was no more doubt in my mind from
that time.

Without further delay I drew up the charter of the "Massa-
chusetts Emigrant Aid Company," and by personal solicitation
secured the corporators. I introduced the matter in the Legis-
lature and had it referred to the committee on the judiciary, of
which James D. Colt, afterwards a justice of the State Supreme
Court, was chairman. At the hearing I appeared before the
committee and said in behalf of the petition :

" This is a plau to prevent the forming of any more slave states. If
you will give ns the charter there shall never be another slave state ad-
mitted into the Union. In the halls of Congress we have beeu inva-
riably beateu for more than thirty years, and it is now time to change
the battle-ground from Congress to the prairies, where we shall inva-
riably triumph."

Mr. Colt replied :

•' We are willing to gratify you, by reporting favorably your charter;
but we all believe it to be impracticable and utterly futile. Here
you are fifteen Hundred miles from the battle ground, while the
most thickly settled portion of Missouri lies on the eastern border
of Kansas, and can in one day blot out all you can do in a year.
Neither can you get men who now have peaceful and happy homes
in the East to risk the loss of everything by going to Kansas. "

But Mr. Colt reported in favor of the charter, and it passed,
though it cost its author much labor, for not one member either
of the Senate or House had any faith in the measure.

The following is the first section of the charter :

'to

" SEC. 1. Benjamin C. Clark, Isaac Livermore, Charles Allen,
Isaac Davis, William G. Bates, Stephen C. Phillips, Charles C.
Hazewell, Alexander H. Bullock, Henry Wilson, James S. Whitney,

Samuel E. Sewall, Samuel G. Howe, James Holland, Moses Kimball,
James D. Greeu, Francis W. Bird, Otis Clapp, Anson Burlingame, Eli
Thayer aud Otis Rich, their associates, successors and assigns, are
hereby made a corporation, by the name of the Massachusetts Emi-
grant Aid Company, for the purpose of assisting emigrants to settle in
the West ; and for this purpose, they have all the powers and privi-
leges, and be subject to all the duties, restrictions and liabilities,
set forth in the thirty-eighth and forty-fourth chapters of the He-
vised Statutes.

The charter was signed by the Governor on the 26th day of
April. On the 4th of May a meeting was held at the State
House, by the corporators and others, and a committee chosen
to report a plan of organization and work. This committee con-
sisted of Eli Thayer, Alexander H. Bullock and Edward E. Hale
of Worcester, Richard Hildreth and Otis Clapp of Boston.
They made a report at an adjourned meeting showing the pro-
posed operation of the enterprise, of which the following is an
extract :

" The Emigrant Aid Company has been incorporated to protect emi-
grants, as far as may be, from the inconveniences we have enumerated.
Its duty is to organize emigration to the West and bring it into a sys-
tem. This duty, which should have been attempted long ago, is
particularly essential now in the critical position of the Western
Territories.

"The Legislature has granted a charter, with a capital sufficient for
these purposes. This capital is not to exceed §5,000,000. In no single
year are assessments to a larger amount than ten per cent, to be called
for. The corporators believe that if the company be organized at once,
as soon as the subscriptions to the stock amounts to $1,000,000, the
annual income to be derived from that amount, and the subsequent sub-
scriptions, may be so appropriated as to render most essential service
to the emigrants ; to plant a free state in Kansas, to the lasting advant-
age of the country ; and to return a handsome profit to the stockhold-
ers upon their investment.

"To accomplish the object in view, it is recommended, 1st, that the
Directors contract immediately with some one of the competing lines
of travel for the conveyance of twenty thousand persons from the
northern and middle states, to that place in the West which the Direc-
tors shall select for their first settlement.

" It is believed that passage may be obtained, in so large a contract,
at half the price paid by individuals. We recommend that emigrants
receive the full advantage of this diminution in price, and that they be
forwarded in companies of two hundred, as they apply, at these re-
duced rates of travel.

" 2d. It is recommended that at such points as the Directors select
for places of settlement, they shall at once construct a boarding-house
or receiving-house, in which three hundred persons may receive tem-
porary accommodation on their arrival — and that the number of such
houses be enlarged as necessity may dictate. The new comers or their
families may thus be provided for in the necessary interval which
elapses while they are making their selection of a location.

" 3d. It is recommended that the Directors procure and send for-
ward steam saw-mills, and such other machines as shall be of constant
service in a new settlement, which cannot, however, be purchased or
carried out conveniently by individual settlers. These machines may
be leased or run by the company's agents. At the same time it is de-
sirable that a printing press be sent out, and a weekly newspaper
established. This would be the organ of the company's agents ; would
extend information regarding its settlement; and be from the very first
an index of that love of freedom and of good morals which it is to be
hoped may characterize the State now to be formed.

"4th. It is recommended i that the company's agents locate and take
up for the company's benefit the sections of land in which the boarding-
houses and mills are located, and no others. And further, that when-
ever the Territory shall be organized as a Free State, the Directors
shall dispose of all its interests, then replace, by the sales, the money
laid out, declare a dividend to the stockholders, and

"5th. That they then select a new field, and make similar arrange-
ments for the settlement and organization of another Free State of this
Union.

" Under the plan proposed, it will be but two or three years before
the Company can dispose of its property in the territory first occupied —
and reimburse itself for its first expenses. At that time, in a State of
70,000 inhabitants, it will possess several reservations of 640 acres
each, on which are boarding houses and mills, and the churches and
schools which it has rendered necessary. From these centers will the
settlements of the State have radiated. In other words, these points
will then be the large commercial positions of the new State. If there
were only one such, its value, after the region should be so far peopled,
would make a very large dividend to the company which sold it,

besides restoring the original capital with which to enable it to attempt
the same adventure elsewhere.

" It is recommended that a meeting of the stockholders be called on
the first Wednesday in June, to organize the company for one year,
and that the corporators at this time, make a temporary organization,
with power to obtain subscriptions to the stock and make any neces-
sary preliminary arrangements.

" ELI THAYER,

For the Committee.'1

It will be seen by the above that the enterprise was intended
to be a money-making affair as well as a philanthropic undertak-
ing. The fact that we intended to make it pay the investors
pecuniarily brought upon us the reproaches and condemnation
of some of the Abolitionists, at least one of whom declared in
my hearing that he had rather give over ihe territory to Slavery
than to make a cent out of the operation of saving it to Freedom.
In all my emigration schemes I intended to make the results re-
turn a profitable dividend in cash.

In pursuance of the last recommendation of the above report,
the corporators made a temporary organization by the choice of
Eli Thayer as President pro tern,., and Dr. Thomas H. Webb, of
Boston, as Secretary ; and opened books of subscription in Bos-
ton, Worcester and New York.

The capital stock of the Massachusetts Company was origi-
nally fixed at $5,000,000, from which it was proposed to collect
an assessment of four per cent, for the operations of 1854, as
soon as $1,000,000 had been subscribed. Books for stock sub-
scriptions were opened and the undertaking was fairly started.
I felt confident that even a few colonies from the North would
make the freedom of Kansas a necessity ; for the whole power
of the free states would be ready to protect their sons in that
territory.

I at once hired Chapman Hall in Boston, and began to speak
day and evening in favor of the enterprise. I also addressed
meetings elsewhere, and labored in every possible waj' to make
converts to my theory.

Not only was a new plan proposed but it was advocated by
new arguments, some points of which were as follows :

The present crisis was to decide whether Freedom or Slavery
should rule our country for centuries to come. That Slavery
was a great national curse ; that it practically ruined one half
of the nation and greatly impeded the progress of the other half.
That it was a curse to the negro, but a much greater curse to
white men. It made the slaveholders petty tyrants who had no
correct idea of themselves or of anybody else. It made the poor
whites of the South more abject and degraded than the slaves
themselves. That it was an insurmountable obstacle in the way
of the nation's progress and prosperity. That it must be over-
come and extirpated. That the way to do this was to go to the
prairies of Kansas and show the superiority of free labor civiliz-
ation ; to go with all our free labor trophies : churches and
schools, printing presses, steam engines and mills ; and in a
peaceful contest convince every poor man from the South of the
superiority of free labor. That it was much better to go and do
something for free labor than to stay at home and talk of mana-
cles and auction-blocks and blood-hounds, while deploring the
never-ending aggressions of slavery. That in this contest the
.South had not one element of success. We had much greater
numbers, much greater wealth, greater readiness of organization
and better facilities of migration. That we should put a cordon
of Free States from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, and stop
the forming of Slave States. After that we should colonize the
northern border Slave States and exterminate Slavery. That our
work was not to make women and children cry in anti-slavery
conventions, by sentimental appeals, BUT TO GO AND POT AN END

TO 8LAVEBY.*'

* The Garrisonians opposed everybody and everything outside of their little clique,
and were led into many ridiculous inconsistencies. A specimen disunion resolution
is here given :

"Resolved: That in our judgment, the dissolution of the present Union with the
slaveholding states, presents the only peaceable remedy for the evils of slavery, and
the surest pledge of its entire abolition ; inasmuch as, then, the slaveholders, unable
alone to hold their slaves, must devise immediate measures for emancipation," etc.

At the close of one of the meetings in Boston, a man in the
rear of the hall arose and announced his intention of subscrib-
ing $10,000 towards the capital stock of the company. This
was John M. S. Williams of Cambridgeport, who was after-
wards prominently connected with the Emigrant Aid Company-
Charles Francis Adams came forward with a subscription of
$25,000, and others followed. It was at one of the Chapman
Hall meetings that I first saw Charles Robinson, (afterwards
Governor of Kansas,) and engaged him to act as agent of the
Emigrant Aid Company, in Kansas. A wiser and more saga-
cious man for this work could not have been found within the
borders of the nation.

Towards the end of May, leaving the subscription books with
the secretary of the company, I went to New York, to
secure the aid and cooperation of prominent gentlemen of
that city. I called upon Horace Greeley and set forth the plan
in all its details. The matter was entirely new to him,
and made a most favorable impression on his judgment.
He unhesitatingly gave it his heartiest support, and entered
into the scheme with great enthusiasm. The New York
Tribune of May 29th, 1854, contained a lengthy account of the
organization and purpose of the Massachusetts Emigrant
Aid Company, with the charter and report of the commit-
When, however, the Emigrant Aid Company announced its purpose to form
a cordon of free States around the slave territory, and thus prevent by actual occu-
pation, at least the spread of Slavery, the Garrisonians turned squarely around and
faced the other way, as witness the following "Resolution: "

"Resolved: That the idea of starving slavery to death by confining it within its
present limits, is, in view of the fact, that the larger part of the territory already se-
cured to the Slave Power, is, as yet, virgin soil, on which it can grow and fatten for
ages to come; a most dangerous delusion.*1

Prof. Spring, in his history of Kansas, ludicrously speaks of the Garrisonians as
" solitary knights bestriding —

• The winged Hippogriff, Reform.' "

He errs, however, in saying that the integration of the Northern Anti-Slavery sen-
timent was due to them. They never did anything but disintegrate it, by changing a
few weak-minded Anti-Slavery men into rabid Disuntonists. The integration of the
Northern sentiment was brought about by the Kansas contesj and the means that
sustained it.

tee, printed in full. The following is an extract from his edito-
rial :

" Such, in brief, is the plan offered to the earnest and philanthropic
men of the free states who desire to prevent the spread of slavery into
Kansas and Nebraska, and to secure the early admission of those terri-
tories into the Union as Free States. To all those who are anxious to
do something in the present crisis to repair the wrong just committed
at Washington, it offers a wide and hopeful field of effort. Here
is abundant opportunity for all who have money to invest or a heart to
labor in the great cause of Freedom. The scheme strikes us as singu-
larly well adapted to secure the objects in view. Properly man-
aged and in the hands of discreet and responsible men, it cannot fail to
accomplish the noble and generous purpose at which it aims, and
at the same time it promises to eventually return to every contributor,
all of his original outlay, with a handsome recompense for its use.
From this plan, thus briefly shadowed forth, we entertain a confi-
dent hope of the most satisfactory results, and cordially commend it to
public attention. "

This was followed by a series of powerful editorials, which
fully unfolded the new " Plan of Freedom, '* as Mr. Gree-
ley called it, and set forth its merits in" a forcible and con-
vincing manner, urging the formation of Emigrant Societies
throughout the North.

In the Tribune of May 30th, he says :

" THE PLAN OF FREEDOM set forth in yesterday's Tribune has been
eagerly seized upon by some of our best and most distinguished
citizens, and a private preliminary meeting will be immediately held in
furtherance of its suggestions

" The organization of a powerful association of large capital, in the
aid of human freedom, is a step in a new direction of philanthropic ef-
fort which may well enlist the sympathies of the unselfish and benevo-
lent, not only of this country, but of all mankind.

" IB view of the monstrous wrongs that slavery is at this hour med-
itating, in view of the enormity it has just perpetrated, the heart
of every man who has one spark of humanity in his bosom, must
be stirred, as with the sound of a trumpet, by the suggestion of a rem-
edy so simple, so comprehensive and so practical. . . .

" The great labors of the world have been performed by association.
Our societies for the spread of the Bible, and the diffusion of Christi
anlty — and our other varied combinations for benevolent objects —
all demonstrate the immense power of well-directed associative effort."

In New York I had no difficulty in enlisting supporters of the
scheme among the most prominent and influential citizens,
as the following names will show. These gentlemen atten-
ded my meetings, and aided liberally in a pecuniary way to fur-
ther the cause :

Cyrus Curtis, Moses H. Grinnell, George W. Blunt, John A.
King (President of Columbia College), E. D. Morgan, David
Dudley Field, Simeon Draper, Isaac Dayton, Benjamin W. Bon-
ney, Le Grand Lockwood, John Bigelow, William C. Noyes,
R. W. Blatchford, Lucius Robinson, H. A. Chittenden. These
gentlemen were the heartiest endorsers of the enterprise. They
were of all shades of political opinion.

At a meeting held in the parlors of George W. Blunt, after I
had explained the methods and purposes of the Emigrant Aid
Company ; how, if properly supported, it would secure freedom
to Kansas and to all the territories, and that Slavery thus cir-
cumscribed would lose its political power and be doomed to
speedy extinction, a tall and gaunt young man among my
hearers arose and said : " I have been called a ' Hunker Whig,'
but I am no friend to the extension of slavery. I have waited
for a chance to act against it in a legal and constitutional way.
Now for the first time in my life I have listened to a practical
elucidation of the slavery question involving no questionable
methods. So, 'Hunker Whig' though I am called, and poor
man though I am — for I am not worth more than four
thousand dollars — I will now give Mr. Thayer my check for
the Emigrant Aid Company for one thousand dollars." I
inquired the name of the gentleman, and some one replied:
" WILLIAM M. EVARTS." In 1877 Mr. Evarts sent a message
to me, saying: "Tell Mr. Thayer that that thousand dollar
subscription was the best investment I ever made in my life."

Editorial from the New York Tribune of May 31, 1854 :

"THE PLAN OF FREEDOM which we put forth in Monday's paper
already awakens an echo in the public mind. In addition to further
active steps of the gentlemen in the city who have taken hold of the
subject, we have received voluntary offers of subscription by letter,

together with the most fervent expressions of zeal and determinatioti
from all quarters to rally in defense of freedom and in opposition to the
gigantic schemes of aggression started by the slave power. The con-
test already takes the form of the People against Tyranny and Slavery.
The whole crowd of slave drivers and traitors, backed by a party
organization, a corrupt majority in Congress, a soulless partizan press,
an administration with its paid officers armed with revolvers, and sus-
tained by the bayonets of a mercenary soldiery, will all together prove
totally insufficient to cope with an aroused People.

" We extract from our correspondence as follows :
"To the Editor of The New York Tribune:

" ' Having watched with much interest the incipient movements in
Massachusetts to form the Emigrant Aid Society, and having great
faith in such an enterprise, if confided to proper hands, I am much
gratified to find by your paper of this day, that the organization is so
far completed as to admit the opening of subscriptions. Wishing to
aid the enterprise out of my feeble ability, I request you to Insert my
name in the subscription for five hundred dollars ($500.) ....

" ' The day of deliverance dawns. The spirit of freedom shall
awake.

" 'Yours for liberty.'"

"Another correspondent, who sends a subscription for $10,000,
writes as follows :

" ' Need I say how delighted I am at the prospect of the ' PLAN OF
FREEDOM? ' In a work so just, so hopeful, so grandly comprehensive,
so prophetic of results potential, victorious and final, I enter with a
fall soul, heart, hand and purse — and sink or swim, live or die, survive
or perish, I give myself to this great work, in the full confidence that
souls are here enlisted who know no tie but that of universal brother-
hood—no ends but that of unselfish devotion to common humanity.
May I ask of you the favor to hand in my subscription for one hundred
shares of stock of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company? The
golden age — the blessed age of peace is not for us ! Patience and
faith and combat, labor and toil are ours. Let us accept the gifts
meekly but manfully — rejoicing that our Master counts us worthy to
follow him in the mighty travail of a world's regeneration.' "

From the New York Tribune of June 1, 1854 :

"THE PLAN OF FREEDOM.

" The friends of this measure who have had the subject in hand, held
a meeting at the Astor House last evening, at which President King of

•24

Columbia College presided. There was quite a full attendance of gen-
tlemen who Celt a deep interest in the subject. A committee was
appointed to superintend the business of obtaining subscriptions, and
to represent the subscribers in the meeting of the Society to be held in
Boston on Wednesday next.

We are in receipt of additional letters, making inquiries ami tendering
further subscriptions. The plan is received by all with preeminent
favor, and enlists the warmest sympathies of the friends of Freedom.

The plan is no less than to found free cities, and to extemporize free
states. Let it be made the great enterprise of the age."

Other meetings were held in New York which were well
attended, and subscriptions to a large amount were received.
Among the largest subscribers were Horace B. Claflin and
Rollin Sanford, — each six thousand dollars. In my efforts to
stimulate as much as possible the interest, both commercial and
philanthropic, which the cities of New York and Brooklyn had
in making free states of Kansas and all our territories, I made
on my first visit ten addresses — five in halls and five in private
meetings of capitalists, like the one in Mr. Blunt's house. On
two successive Friday evenings I addressed very enthusiastic
audiences in Henry Ward Beecher's vestry. One Sunday Rev.
Mr. Frothingham allowed me the use of his pulpit and the time
allotted for his sermon, to make a speech for Kansas and free
labor.

Later' I had several conferences with William Cullen Bryant,
and urged him to write editorials in his paper, the Evening
Post — a financial organ of high authority — against the state
bonds of Missouri every time the border ruffians raided Kansas.
This he did on several occasions, and so well, that the bonds of
the state, amounting to twenty millions, depreciated to such
an extent that the holders interfered in every way they could to
stop the raids, principally through the merchants of St. Louis.
In consequence, the Missouri river was opened to our emigrants

in the fall of 1856 after it bad been closed all summer by
the border ruffians.*

The above operations in New York extended over several
months, but I have spoken of them here, as I may not have oc-
casion to refer to them again. I will also say here that
in the many different localities in which I spoke during the Kan-
sas troubles, I never failed to interest the foremost influen-
tial men : Benjamin Silliman, of New Haven ; Horace
Bushnell, of Hartford ; John Carter Brown, of Providence ;
the venerable Eliphalet Nott, at Albany ; Joel Parker, Henry
W. Longfellow, C. C. Felton, J. E. Worcester, Emory Wash-
burn, John G. Palfrey and F. D. Huntington, of Cambridge ;
Josiah Quincy and William H. Prescott, of Boston, are repre-
sentative names $ and many others of equal weight can be
adduced. The clergy were almost unanimous in their support
and the scheme was greatly indebted to them for its success.

During my first visit to New York, news came from Boston,
that the charter of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Com-
pany was thought to be defective ; that some of £he corpora-
tors feared that they might become personally responsible, and
had withdrawn,! so that the undertaking was to be abandoned.
This was a shock like a thunder-bolt, for I had anticipated noth-
ing of the sort. Over one hundred thousand dollars had been
subscribed in New York, and by the timidity of the Boston men
all this was to be lost. 1 exerted myself in every possible way
to prevent the surrender of the charter, but without avail, and I
had to submit to the inevitable, with as good a grace as possi-
ble. I returned to Boston, where a voluntary organization was
formed with a capital of two hundred thousand dollars un-
der trustees, with Amos A. Lawrence, J. M. S. Williams and'
Eli Thayer as trustees. The new organization was known
as the New England Emigrant Aid Company, and its operations
were restricted in proportion as compared with those of the old
company.

* See editorials in New York Evening Post of Feb. 14, 1856, and others about that
time.
t This was a sad mistake, and it made the Rebellion possible.

Prof. Spring in his History of Kansas, says : (page 30.)

" No organization was ever effected under the first charter. It sad-
dled objectionable monetary liabilities upon the individuals who might
associate under it, aud was abandoned. The whole business then pas-
sed into the hands of Thayer, Lawrence and J. M. S. Williams,
who were constituted trustees, and managed aftairs in a half per-
sonal fashion until February, 1855, when a second charter was obtained
aud an association formed with a slightly rephrased title — ' The New
England Emigrant Aid Company ' — aud with John Carter Brown, of
Providence, Rhode Island, as president. In the conduct of the com-
pany, the trustees who bridged the interval between the lirst aud
second charters, continued to be a chief directive and inspirational
force. Mr. Thayer preached the gospel of organized emigration, with
tireless aud successful enthusiasm, while Mr. Lawrence discharged the
burdensome but all important duties of treasurer. Among the twenty
original directors were Dr. Samuel Cabot, Jr., John Lowell and
William B. Spooner, of Bostou ; J. P. Williston, Northampton;
Charles H. Bigelow, Lawrence; aud Nathan Durfee, Fall River.
The list of directors was subsequently enlarged to thirty-eight,
and included the additional names of Dr. S. G. Howe, Rev. Edward
Everett Hale, Boston ; George L. Stearns, Medford ; Horace Bush-
iiell, Hartford, Connecticut ; Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Sr., New
Haven, Connecticut ; and Moses H. Grinnell, New York. The com-
pany in its reorganized shape receded, at least, temporarily, from
all wholesale projects, aud devoted itself to the problem of plant-
ing free-labor towns in Kansas."*

Although, greatly disappointed at the turn affairs had taken,
the managers were by no means discouraged, and the}' resolved
to persevere in the work. Mr. Lawrence nobly pledged
himself to sustain the company by supplying the sinews

* The following is a full list of officers of the New England Emigrant Aid
Company:

PRESIDENT: John Carter Brown, Providence; VICE-PRESIDENTS: Eli Thayer,
Worcester, J. M. S.Williams, Cambridge; TREASURER: Amos A. Lawrence,
Boston; SECRETARY : Thomas H. Webb, Boston ; DIRECTORS: Win. B. Spooner,
Samuel Cabot, Jr., John Lowell, C. J. Higginson, Le Baron Russell, Boston,
Win. J. Rotch, New Bedford, J. P. Williston, Northampton, W. Dudley Pick-
man, Salem, R. P. Waters, Beverly, Reuben A. Chapman, Sprin<ifdd, John Nes-
mith, Lowell, Charles H. Bigelow, Lnu-rence, Nathan Durfee, Foil Nicer, Wm.
Willis, Portland, Me., Franklin Muzzy, Banyor, Me., Ichabod Goodwin, Ports-
mouth, N. II., Thomas M. Edwards, Keene, N. H., Albert Day, Hartford, Ct.

of war to the extent of a very large sum, and others were
not backward in this respect, though he was by far the largest
contributor.*

When it was announced that Boston had decided to make a
voluntary organization under trustees, with a possible capital
of $200,000, the New York men said Boston could do that
alone, and took no further part at that time. Mr. Greeley
seemed also to lose heart, and said nothing more till the middle
of June. In the New York Tribune of June 16, 1854, was
printed the following :

"THE PLAN OF FREEDOM.

"All persons who desire particular information in relation to the
plans, purposes and progress of the Emigrant Aid Company, are
requested to send their communications to the ' Secretary of the Emi-
grant Aid Company,' Boston, Mass.

" We are informed that the Company intend to send the first train-
load of emigrants to Kansas about the first of August next. The
Company will forthwith forward mechanics and machinery for manu-
facturing lumber, and proceed to erect houses for emigrants.

" The Company is now organized, and books are opened for sub-
scriptions to the capital stock. The original design of having so large
a capital as five millions has been abandoned, and in lieu of annual
contributions to the capital, as at first proposed, it is now designed to
reduce the capital stock to the sum that will really be needed as an
immediate working capital, and to change the character of the sub-
scriptions, so that the whole amount of them shall be at the call of the
trustees. It is now supposed that a paid-up capital of $200,000 will
answer all the purposes of the Company. Such an alteration in the
charter as this change necessitates, it is the intention of the Company
to obtain immediately on the meeting of the Massachusetts Legisla-
ture. At the same time a change will be made in the title of the
association, which will more fully denote the national character, and
comport with the wide scope of its efforts."

I again entered upon the work with renewed courage, and
spoke nightly, and sometimes oftener, to large and enthusiastic
audiences. The effort now was to form a colony as soon as

* The Company expended about $140,000 in the Kansas work.

possible and start them on their way to carry freedom to Kan-
sas. But few volunteered to join the first colony. After
making a great number of speeches, after great efforts to influ-
ence by the strongest appeals the young men to join our colony,
we had gathered a party numbering twenty-four ; and on the 17th
of July, 1854, I started with them towards Kansas. The colony
was put on board a boat at Buffalo, having received an addition
of two at Rochester.* To one of the emigrants — Mr. Mallory
of Worcester — I gave a letter directed to Charles H. Brans-
comb (who with Charles Robinson had been sent on in advance
to receive the emigrants at St. Louis) saying : " Take this
colony through the Shawnee reservation and locate them on the
south bank of the Kansas, on the lirst good town site you find
west of the reservation." Mr. Branscomb followed literally
the instructions of the letter and founded the city of Lawrence.

Leaving the colony at Buffalo, I returned to the East, and
two weeks later the Company sent another colony several times
larger than the first ; and then .the entire North and West
began to be aroused, and to prepare to go if needed or to help
others to go, and from this time the emigration continued to
move on with increased activity. I was sent to raise colonies
and to organize Kansas leagues, and I travelled all over New
England, some parts of it more than once, and also spoke in all
the principal places in New York State.

The effect of the influx of free state settlers into Kansas soon
began to be manifested. What had at first been viewed by the
Missourians with contempt and derision, and by many at
the East with indifference, now became to the friends of
the South a matter of serious alarm, and aroused the most ma-
lignant passions of the Missouri border ruffians. It created
a feeling that spread through the entire slave-holding communi-
ty, and excited an intense opposition towards a scheme which it
was plain to them, was to establish an effectual barrier to
the extension of slavery, and in time exterminate the insti-
tution. The South saw that it was impotent in a struggle of

* D. R. Anthony and Dr. Doy.

this kind with the North ; that the latter with its resources
of wealth and population and its spirit of enterprise, would in-
evitably overwhelm them in this contest. All the powers
of press and rostrum were brought to bear against the new
scheme, and bluster and threats were resorted to in the endeav-
or to stem the current that was to engulf them. More extreme
methods were applied on the scene of action, but it is not my
purpose in this paper, to give any narration of what took place
in Kansas ; that has already become a part of national history.

Soon the greatest enthusiasm was excited in the North.
Immense crowds gathered along the route of our emigrant
companies, and the jpurneys through New England, and as far
west as Chicago, were continued ovations. This spirit was
shown even in the domestic circle. " I know people," said
R. W. Emerson, "who are making haste to reduce their
expenses and pay their debts, not with a view to new accumu-
lations, but in preparation to save and earn for the benefit ot
Kansas emigrants."

The Christian Examiner of July, 1855, characterized the
movement as follows :

"It was reserved to the present age and to the present period, to
afford the sublime spectacle of an extensive migration in vindication

of a principle Neither pressure from without, nor the

bickerings of ambition, nor the monitions of avarice control the great
Kansas migration. ... In the unselfishness of the object lies its
claim ... to the highest place in the history of migrations ! "

Loud threats of disunion were indulged in ; and the South-
ern papers teemed with abuse of the Emigrant Aid Com-
pany and its supporters. Rewards were offered for the head of
the author of the plan.* But there were those among them,

*The following notice was posted in Kansas and Missouri:

"$200 Reward. We are authorized by responsible men in this neighborhood to
offer the above reward for the apprehension and safe delivery into the hands of the
squatters of Kansas Territory, of one Eli Thayer, a leading and ruling spirit among
the abolitionists of New York and New England. Now, therefore, it behooves all
pocxl citizens of Kansas Territory and the State of Missouri, to watrh the advent of
this :tgeiit of Abolitionism — To arrest him, and deal with him in such a manner ax

who, as the movement broadened, contemplated it in a
more serious light, and gave evidence of their appreciation
of the real character of the crisis. The following editorial from
the Charleston Mercury well represents the views of this class :

" First. By consent of parties, the present contest in Kansas, is
made the turning point in the destinies of slavery and abolitionism.*
If the South triumphs, abolitionism will be defeated and shorn of its
power for all time. If she is defeated, abolitionism will grow
more insolent and aggressive, until the utter ruin of the South is con-
summated.

" Second. If the South secures Kansas, she will extend slavery into
all the territory south of the fortieth parallel of north latitude, to the
Rio Grande, and this, of course, will secure for her pent-up institutions
of slavery an ample outlet, and restore her power in Congress. If
the North secures Kansas, the power of the South in Congress will
gradually be diminished, the states of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Arkansas and Texas, together with the adjacent territories, will grad-
ually become abolitionized, and the slave population confined to
the states east of the Mississippi will become valueless. All depends
upon the action of the present moment. "

It may be well here to cite some further testimony as
to the influence and work of the Emigrant Aid Company in es-
tablishing free colonies in Kansas.

In his evidence before the Howard Congressional Committee,!
John H. Stringfellow, having been duly sworn, said :

" At the time of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and prior
to that time, I never heard any man, in my section of Missouri, express
a doubt about the character of the institutions which would be estab-
lished here, provided the Missouri restriction was removed ; and
I heard" of no combination of persons, either in public or private, prior
to the time of the organization of the Emigrant Aid Society, and indeed

the enormity of his crimes and iniquities shall seem to merit. Representing all the
Abolitionists, he consequently bears all their sins; and the blood of Batchelder is
• upon his head crying aloud for expiation at the hands of the people."

DeBow's Review called the movement " Thayer's Emigration ; " and the South-
ern press spoke of the Emigrant Aid Company as " Eli Thayer & Co." — ED.

* By "abolitionism" the editor intended the whole anti-slavery element. He
had no reference to Garrisonism

t House Doc., 34th Congress, No. 200.

for months afterwards, for the purpose of making united action,
to frustrate the designs of that Society in abolitionizlug, or making a
free state of Kansas. The conviction was general, that it would be a
slave state. The settlers who came over from Missouri after the pas-
sage of the Bill, so far as I know, generally believed that Kansas would
be a slave state. Free-state men who came into the territory after the
passage of the bill were regarded with jealousy by the people of wes-
tern Missouri, for the reason that a society had been formed for
the avowed purpose of shaping the institutions of Kansas Territory, so
as to make it a free state in opposition to the interests of the people
of Missouri. If no Emigrant Aid Societies had been formed In the
Northern States, the emigration of people from there, known to be in
favor of making Kansas a free state, would have stimulated the emi-
gration from Missouri. Had it not been for the Emigrant Aid Socie-
ties, the majority in favor of slave institutions would, by the natural
course of emigration, have been so great as to have fixed the institu-
tions of the Territory without any exciting contest, as it was in the
Settlement of the Platte Purchase. This was the way we regarded the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and this was the reason why we
supported it."

Isaac M. Edwards : (sworn.)

" It is my opinion that all the difficulties and troubles have been pro-
duced by the operations of the Emigrant Aid Society. I am satisfied
that if the Emigrant Aid Society had not sent men out to the Territory
of Kansas for the purpose of making it a free state, there would be no
trouble or difficulties in the Territory. "

Scores of other witnesses before the Howard Commission
testified in nearly the same words, that there would have
been no contest whatever in Kansas, had it not been caused
by the efforts of the Emigrant Aid Company to make Kansas a
free state, by sending thither organized colonies of free-state
men.

This was not the testimony of Missourians alone, nor of pro-
slavery settlers in Kansas. You will find it in all the pro-
slavery papers of the time and in nearly all the anti-slavery
journals.

Throughout the South, the Emigrant Aid Company, often
under the name of " Eli Thayer & Co.," was charged with the

euormous crime of making Kansas a free state. In Missouri,
various sums, in several localities, were publicly offered for the
head of the founder of that Company.

Even in the Halls of Congress, pro-slavery senators and rep-
resentatives denounced this Company as the power which
had robbed the slave-state party of Kansas, and had put in peril
the very existence of slavery.

In 1861, though the battle had been fought in Kansas and the
victory won by the free-state men years before, Senator Green,
of Missouri, said in the Senate : " But for the hot-bed plants
that have been planted in Kansas, through the instrumentality
of the Emigrant Aid Society, Kansas would have been with
Missouri this day. "

Stephen A. Douglas, in his report to the U. S. Senate,
in 1856, said : "Popular Sovereignty was struck down by
unholy combinations in New England. "

Senator J. A. Bayard, of Delaware, said : " Whatever evil,
or loss, or suffering, or injury, may result to Kansas, or to
the United States at large, is attributable, as a primary cause, to
the Emigrant Aid Society of Massachusetts. "

If further testimony be needed to show the power of the Emi-
grant Aid Company in Kansas, it can be found in quantities al-
most without limit, in the Congressional Globe, in the reports
of Congressional Committees, in thousands upon thousands
of letters from the Kansas settlers to their friends in the states,
in the editorials of all the Southern and of nearly all the North-
ern journals, in the reports of thousands of election speeches,
and in all contemporaneous and general records of whatever
kind.

While the Emigrant Aid Company, was, by its operations,
creating such a well-founded alarm in the Southern States, and
was receiving the commendation and gratitude of every true
lover of freedom for the practical results it had accomplished,
let us see how it. was regarded by that peculiar clique, known as
the Garrisonian Abolitionists. At the time of the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill, these men had been absolutely silent ; and in the period of

gloom and despair at the North that followed that iniquity, they
had no words, either of counsel, encouragement or commisera-
•tion, to otter. No sooner, however, was a feasible and practi-
cal plan of retrieving the disaster set forlh, than Mr. Garrison
and his associates opened their batteries of vituperation upon it
and its authors, as the}' had always assailed every practical and
feasible measure, and everybody who proposed to DO something
for the cause of freedom ; and as the}' continued to assail every-
body and every thing except DISUNION, until in spite of them
and without their aid, the great object was achieved, when they
and their admirers turned about and coolly said : We did all
this ourselves ! The present generation has, in consequence of
the persistent clack and endless scribbling of that class, come to
believe that Mr Garrison was the Alpha and Omega of the anti-
slavery struggle, and that he and his small party of followers
were the leaders and directors of the great movement that
brought about the overthrow of Slavey. These men and
women have never exhibited any diffidence or modesty in
sounding their own praises. They formed a mutual admiration
society of unusual malignity towards those who did not belong
to it ; yet, not content with fighting the outside world, they fre-
quently snarled and quarrelled among themselves, and attempt-
ed to destroy each other. The persecution they endured was
not wholly on account of the Anti-Slavery principles they
maintained, but it was their abusive and insulting manner, and
particularly, their offensive obtrusion of the unpopular and un-
patriotic doctrines of secession and disunion upon everv occa-
sion, that principally excited the passions of the mob.

In fact, the little company of Abolitionists had come to be
despised at the North, and they were neglected and shunned by
the better element for the reasons above given. Almost inva-
riably in presenting my plan of emigration, the question would
come, Has Garrison anything to do with this? Is there any
taint of abolitionism in it? and I had to assure my hearers
that it was entirely free from that objectionable element. How-
ever, as Mr. Garrison and his friends have been elevated into
such a prominent position, and as an exaggerated and distorted

idea of their services largely prevails, some even believing that
they aided in the saving of Kansas, it is proper for me to show
here, in what manner they viewed an undertaking which had for
its object the extermination of Slavery by peaceful, lawful and
practical methods, and how they treated those who honestly and
earnestly gave to it their support. The following extracts and
quotations, will show their kind of wisdom and power of
prophecy.

Mr. Garrison (Liberator, 30th June, 1854, commenting on
the address to the people by the anti-Nebraska members of
Congress), says :

"If this is all that is proposed to be done, the address will prove
utterly abortive. To talk of ' restoring the Missouri Compromise' and
preventing ' the further aggressions of Slavery ' while the Union holds
together, is the acme of infatuation. We must separate. The North
must form a new, independent, free republic, or continue to be the tool
and vassal of the Slave Power, making it to accomplish all its direful
designs of conquest, annexation and perpetuation, having the mighty
resources of the whole country at. its command, without which it
would be as poor as a pauper and as feeble as an infant." *

In the Liberator of Feb. 16, 1855, is a letter from its corre-
spondent, C. Stearns, dated, Lawrence, Kansas, Jan. 20, 1855,
in which we find this :

" It is true we denounce the Emigrant Aid Company, because we
believe it to be a great hindrance to the cause of freedom, and a mighty
curse to the Territory; but we are the only ones who have taken a
decided ground on the anti-slavery question. I have never heard of
the Lawrence Association ever passing any anti-slavery resolutions.

" Another point of importance is, that this association, with Robin-
son at its head, advocates brute force in opposing the Missourians.
Said Mr. R. to the Marshal, in reference to some Missouriaus arrested
for threatening the Yankees, 'If they tire, do you make them bite the
dust and I will find coffins.'"

In a letter one month later, published in the Liberator of the
10th of March, 1855, the same correspondent says :

* Compare this with the resolution iu which they say that slavery can grow and
fatten upon the territory already secured to it for ages to come.

" Do uot advise people to emigrate here in companies. Let them
come very few at a time. This sending large companies is a very fool-
ish business for many reasons."

In another paper Mr. Garrison says, in substance : Kansas
cannot be made a free state, and even if it should be, such a re-
sult would be a great injury to the anti-slavery cause, for the
reason that it would quiet the Northern conscience. The follow-
ing is from the Liberator (editorial) of June 1, 1855 :

" Will Kansas be a free state ? We answer— No. Not while the ex-
isting Union stands. Its fate is settled. We shall briefly state some
of the reasons which force us to this sad conclusion.

" 1. The South is united in the determination to make Kansas a
slave state — ultimately, by division, half a dozen slave states, if neces-
sary. She has never yet been foiled in her purposes thus concentrated
and expressed, and she has too much at stake to allow free speech, a
free press, and free labor, to hold the mastery in that Territory.

"2. Eastern emigration will avail nothing to keep slavery out of
Kansas. We have never had any faith in it as a breakwater against
the inundation of the dark waters of oppression. Hardly an abolition-
ist can be found among all who have, emigrated to that country.* Un-
doubtedly the mass of emigrants are in favor of making Kansas a free
state, as a matter of sound policy, and would do so if they were not un-
der the dominion of Missouri ruffianism, or if they could rely upon the
sympathy of the general government in this terrible crisis, but they
have not gone to Kansas to be martyrs in the cause of the enslaved ne-
gro, nor to sacrifice their chances for a homestead upon the altar of
principle, but to find a comfortable home for themselves and their chil.
dren. Before they emigrated they gave little or no countenance to the
anti-slavery cause at home t : they partook of the general hostility or
indifference to the labors of radical abolitionism; at least they could
only dream of making ' freedom national and slavery sectional after the
manner of the fathers; ' J and they were poisoned more or less with the
virus of colorphobia. If they had no pluck here, what could be ration-
ally expected of them in the immediate presence of the demoniacal
spirit of slavery? They represent the average sentiment of the North §

* This was literally true ; there was not a Garrisonian among them.
t That is, to Mr. Garrison's peculiar dogmas.
{ A fling at Charles Sumner.

§ A thoughtless and careless admission by Mr. Garrison that his labors had
amounted to nothing.

on this subject — nothing more — and that is still subservient to the
will of the South.

" 3. The omnipotent power of the general government will cooper-
ate with the vandals of Missouri to crush out what little anti-slavery
sentiment may exist in Kansas, and to sustain their lawless proceedings
in that Territory. This will prove decisive in the struggle.*

"4. On the subject of slavery there is no principle in the Kansas
papers ostensibly desirous of making it a free state. Here, for in-
stance, is the Herald of Freedom of May 12th, published in Law-
rence, which claims to be, and we believe is, the most outspoken
journal in Kansas in regard to the rights of bona-fide settlers. What
does its editor say? Listen! 'While publishing a paper in Kansas,
we feel that it is not our province to discuss the subject of freedom or
slavery in the States.' f Is not this the most heartless inhumanity, the
most arrant, moral cowardice, the clearest demonstration of unsound-
ness of mind?

"These are some of the reasons why we believe Kansas will inev-
itably be a slave state."

Liberator, Sept. 28, 1855. Editorial :

" Talk about stopping the progress of slavery and of saving
Nebraska and Kansas! Why the fate of Nebraska and Kansas was
sealed the first hour Stephen Arnold Douglas consented to play his
perfidious part."

In the Liberator of August 10, 1855, is a speech of Wendell
Phillips, from which the following is extracted :

* Did it prove so ?

f G. W. Brown established the Herald of Freedom, and maintained it as the organ
of the Emigrant Aid Company through the Kansas troubles. It was ever true to the
principle and purpose of making Kansas a Free State. Mr. Garrison and his friends
complained because the editor refused to enter into controversy upon the general
subject of Slavery in the States, and would not fill his columns with "Resolutions"
and complaints about blood-hounds, manacles and auction blocks. The paper was
ably conducted, and was of inestimable value to the cause in furnishing and dissemi-
nating information about the Territory, much of which was given by the actual set-
tlers. The Emigrant Aid Company advanced $3000 to aid Dr. Brown in establish-
ing this journal, which sum he repaid. Dr. Brown knew "Old John Brown" inti-
mately while he was in Kansas, and his reminiscences of that worthy, published
a few years since, created something of a stampede among the admirers of the Hero
of Harper's Ferry.

" Why is Kansas a failure as a free state? I will tell you. You sent
out there some thousand or two thousand meu — for what ? To make
a living; to cultivate a hundred and sixty acres ; to build houses; to
send for their wives and children; to raise wheat; to make money; to
build saw mills; to plant towns. You meant to take possession of
the country, as the Yaukee race always takes possession of a country,
by industry, by civilization, by roads, by houses, by mills, by churches;
but it will take a Ions; time — it takes two centuries to do it.*

" The moment you throw the struggle with slavery into the half-
barbarous West, where things are decided by the revolver and bowie
knife, slavery triumphs.

" What do I care for a squabble around the ballot-box in
Kansas ? " [ ! ! ! ]

Liberator, 2d May, 1856. Meeting of A. A. Society at Provi-
dence, R. I. Mr. Garrison said :

" While the Union continues, the slave power will have everything
its own way, in the last resort.

" ' But (they say) we are going to have a glorious victory in Kan-
sas.'

" It is all delusion to suppose -that Kansas is safe for freedom,
t We are just to late ! f We have been betrayed by the general govern-
ment itself, which is now on the side of ' border ruffianism ! ' Slavery
is certain to go into Kansas, nay, slaves are now carried there daily,
and offered for sale with impunity. Even the free state men have
voted to let slavery continue in the Territory till the 4th of July next,
and that no colored man shall be allowed to set his foot upon the soil
of Kansas; thus trampling under foot the Constitution of the United
States. " I

Annual statement adopted at the May Convention of the A.
A. S., Massachusetts, 1856 :

"Yet we cannot conceal it from ourselves that the too probable
result will be, if Kansas be secured to freedom, that the vile American
spirit of compromise will take possession of its counsels, control its

* This was a remarkable prophecy.

t Before this, in speaking of the movements in Kansas it had been " You " with
Mr. Garrison. When, however, it became evident that Kansas was sure to be se-
cured to freedom, he speedily changed his " you " to " We. "

t Patriotic Mr. Garrison! How he loved the Constitution of his country!

internal aft airs, and govern its intercourse with the neighboring slave
states ; while, as a still more lamentable consequence, apathy will settle
upon the whole Northern mind, satisfied with their seeming victory,
but the end of which will be only to Invite fresh insults and aggressions
from the Southern despotism. No! there is no safety as there is no
honor and no right in our union with men-stealers. No advantage
gained while in that fatal fellowship can be of any value."

From a speech of Wendell Phillips, printed in the Liberator
of July 11, 1856 :

"Now I have great hopes.* I think Fremont will be defeated. I
think there is great chance that Buchanan will be elected. I have no
hope for Kansas. How can I have ? Where are the hundred men who
went from Chicago ? Why, they went through Missouri, and laid
down their arms at the feet of a mob ! Fifty men from the city of
Worcester met the same fate. A thousand dollars from the town of
Concord alone, gone into the treasury of the Missouri mob ! . . . .
Fifty per cent, of the muskets bought in New England are to-day in the
hands of Missourians."f

From a speech of Wendell Phillips, printed in the Liberator
of August 14, 1857:

" But Kansas — her battle will not be fought in the West, but on the
chess-board at Washington, and in midnight session she will be
betrayed. This administration will see Kansas, possibly Oregon and
Nebraska, possibly the southern half of California — admitted as slave
states; and then, with four or six more votes in the Senate, with the
prestige of success, how will you meet another Presidential election? " J

Rev. T. W. Higginson, minister of the Worcester Free
Church, said : (See Liberator of June 1G, 1854)

"Here, for instance, is the Nebraska Emigration Society; it is
indeed a noble enterprise, and I am proud that it owes its origin to a
Worcester man. But where is the good of emigrating to Nebraska, if
Nebraska is to be only a transplanted Massachusetts, and the original
Massachusetts has been tried and found wanting?"

* Most rational men would not have hail "great hopes " in the face of the crisis
he portrayed.

t This well exhibits the ridiculous style of exaggeration which characterized the
utterances of the Abolitionists.

t Here was another remarkable prophecy.

Liberator, 16th May, 1856, 23d anniversaj- of the A. A. So-
ciety, New York city. Mr. Garrison offered this among other
resolutions which was unanimously passed :

" Resolved: That (making all due allowance for exceptional cases)
the American Church continues to be the bulwark of Slavery, and
threfore impure in heart, hypocritical in profession, dishonest in prac-
tice, brutal in spirit, merciless in purpose, — ' a cage of unclean birds'
and ' the synagogue of Satan. ' "

At the same meeting Samuel May, Jr., said :

" That he thought that both duty, and a sound and just expediency
utterly forbade our identifying ourselves, for an instant, with the mere
non-extension-of-Slavery-movement. Especially would he protest
against our identifying ourselves, as a Society, with the Kansas free
state movement, so long as it stands upon its present low and com-
promising level

" We cannot join in the present movement for Kansas because it, is
false in principle. That is a sufficient reason why we should take no part
in it."

Here is another of Mr. Garrison's resolutions against the
church :

"Resolved; That such a church is, in the graphic language of
Scripture 'a cage of unclean birds' and the 'synagogue of satan,'
and that such religious teachers are ' wolves in sheep's clothing,'
' Watchmen that are blind,' ' Shepherds that cannot understand,' ' that
all look to their own way, every one to his gain from his quarter.' "

This is a good specimen of Mr. Garrison's utterances against
those who would not endorse and countenance his own unreas-
onable and sensational doctrines. Among those whom he
characterizes as " unclean birds," may be mentioned Leonard
Bacon, Eliphalet Nott, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher,
Edward Everett Hale, and the 3,050 clergymen of the North
who protested against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill.
It was this kind of abuse that more than anything else brought
the Abolitionists into disrepute. After reading the above

extracts it is not necessary to say that they not only did nothing
to save Kansas, but opposed all the efforts of others to make it
a free state.

Unfortunately the Garrisonians were not the only ones who
whined and carped at the condition of affairs. Many at the
North were involved in the gloom of despondency and were dis-
posed to look upon the contest between Freedom and Slavery
with doubt as to the result. The managers of the Emigrant
Aid enterprise did not participate in this feeling, bat prosecuted
their work with a. firm conviction that Slavery would be over-
come. In 1856, when doleful predictions were made, that if
Buchanan was elected, Kansas would be lost, I said in a public
speech in Worcester : " It will make no difference whether Fre-
mont, Buchanan or the devil is President. Kansas is going to
be a Free State anyhow. " At a dinner at Mr. Seward's in
Washington, some time before, I rather startled the guests, who
were mostly Republicans, by proclaiming tbat under any cir-
cumstances there would never be another slave state in this
Union — NEVER! In my speeches in Congress and elsewhere,
between 1856 and 1861, I always treated Slavery as a " mori-
bund institution. ' I do not speak of this with any idea of self-
glorification, but I mention it because it was a fact. From the
time that the first colony was successfully planted in Kansas, I
felt sure of the cause, and when the first tidings of lawless ag-
gression against the settlers came, I KNEW that the death knell
of Slavery was sounded. The old Saxon spirit, so long dor-
mant and forbearing under insult and persecution when commit-
ted within the law, could not brook this wilful outrage, and it
needed but this spark to arouse its fury.

The Latin races claim that their founders were nursed by a
wolf. The Saxons have a higher origin. Their founder was
nursed by a polar bear. Deep in the nature of this race is
found that untamable ferocity, which fears nothing, but can
endure everything.

It was no Saxon sculptor who chiseled Prometheus writhing in
torture, while the vulture fed upon his vitals. A Latin but not a
Saxon could make a Laocoon showing pitiable contortions of

feature and of limb, in the embrace of the serpents. A Saxon
in both cases, would have shown a calm and defiant endurance,
affording neither comfort nor exultation to the tormentor.

This sublime endurance, this proud defiance, this unvarying
courage, all based on a sort of savage ferocity, give assurance
that the Saxons will make law and language for the world.

These qualities may be usually concealed under the various
coverings of all the Christian amenities. We may appear to be
perfect examples of amiable submission, and of Christian humil-
ity. We may be sympathetic or even philanthropic ; but under
all this gentle and genial exterior, there slumbers the grizzly fe-
rocity. It is in every Saxon breast. The old blind poetof Eng-
land knew all this, when he made the hero of Paradise Lost —

" With courage never to submit or yield,
Aud what is more not to be overcome."

A hundred baptisms cannot drown it ; a thousand sacraments
cannot eliminate it It was with Cromwell and his Ironsides.
Wellington felt it as he stood under the elm at Waterloo and re-
ceived unmoved the repeated charges of Ney and the Imperial
Guard. In peace and in war, this quality is found wherever
there is Saxon blood. Hampden and Sydney and Gordon and
millions of others have illustrated it. It fills histories. It
makes libraries. It remodels nations. It will govern the
world.

In 1856 this ferocious quality was fully aroused in the North-
ern States. We had long endured, with calmness and patience,
the aggressions of the Slave Power when made according to law.
But these later aggressions against all law, we would not
endure. The North became a unit against slavery in Kansas.
The North triumphed and Slavery was destroyed.

One other matter and I will close.

In 1879 the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the founding of
Lawrence, Kansas, was celebrated by a reunion of the early
settlers and others connected with the first Kansas movement.
The occasion was one of great interest, and naturally many

recollections and reminiscences were exchanged, some of which
found their way into newspapers. The press of the country
reviewed the great struggle which saved Kansas for freedom,
and awarded due credit to the Emigrant Aid Company as the
prime force in that movement. This brought out the following
from a "Radical Abolitionist," which appeared in the Boston
Daily Advertiser of September 9th, 1879 :

"To the Editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser :

" Will you allow one who was not unfamiliar with the early Kansas
emigration to criticise your two valuable editorials on that subject as
being written too exclusively from the point of view of the 'Emigrant
Aid Society.'

" No one can deny the important influence exerted by that associa-
tion, though it always seemed to me that its ' organized emigration ' in
a strict sense, was a failure, as must be all attempts to control from a
distance the settlement of a new community. Its associated emigrants
were apt to separate on reaching Kansas.

"When its saw-mills broke down there had to be negotiations across
half the continent before they could be repaired; and meanwhile pri-
vate enterprise had perhaps set up a better saw-mill not far off.

" What the ' Society ' really did was to advertise Kansas, and to
direct thither a really superior class of settlers. This was a very
important first step. But these early settlers were, like most Northern
men at that period, men of peace. When civil war came, new leaders
had to come to the front, and new instrumentalities proved necessary.
The real crisis of Kansas was in 1856, after your brief record termi-
nates. That year brought a state of things in which the 'Emigrant
Aid Society ' was practically paralyzed, and it was necessary to form
new organizations which had no objection to buying Sharp's rifles.
The formation of these 'Kansas Committees' in the free states, and
the leadership of Brown, Lane and Montgomery within the territory,
were what finally saved Kansas to freedom.

"But for these influences the Missourian invasion would have swept
away every trace of the 'Emigrant Aid Society' and its work.

" My criticism of your series of articles is, therefore, that they stop
where the real Kansas trouble began.
" CAMBRIDGE. "T. W. H "

The author of the above is said to be a writer of "Pure
English," but there is one thing about this production purer
than its English, and that is, its nonsense. The qualities of a

"professional novelist" are not quite submerged in the amateur
historian, and the above induces the belief that its author would
make Charles Lee the hero of the battle of Monmouth. Should
he ever enlarge the sphere of his labors so as to include the
writing of sacred history, we shall probably learn that Barabbas
and the two thieves were the founders of the Christian religion.

As for Brown, Lane and Montgomery, we will leave them
where Professor Spring, in his History of Kansas, leaves them ;
and posterit}" will find them there in all future time.

In regard to the " New Organizations," and " Kansas Com-
mittees," it probably did not occur to " T. W. H." that there
would have been no occasion for such bodies had it not been for
the foundation laid by the Emigrant Aid Company. They sus-
tained the same relation to that body as the branches of a tree
do to its trunk and roots. If it was his purpose to rob those
connected with the Emigrant Aid Company of their just credit
by giving the impression that they were not concerned in the
later organizations which he claims saved Kansas, the following
from the Boston Daily Advertiser of July 17, 1856, will show
how trustworthy are his premises :

[Leading Editorial ]
"THE SYSTEMATIC RELIEF OF KANSAS.

"The arrangements made last week at the national convention at
Buffulo, of the friends of Kansas, for giving system to the general
desire of the northern states to assist the free men of Kansas, are such
as promise an immediate concentration of action and seem to us to
evince great practical wisdom.

"For this purpose the convention named the national executive
committee, having a quorum of its members in the city of Chicago, to
act as a disbursing committee of the funds collected iu the different
parts of the country for the benefit of Kansas settlers and emigrants.

"For the object, equally important, of securing a universal contri-
bution to these funds, the convention adopted a measure which also
has our decided approval. On motion of Mr. Gerrit Smith, Mr. Eli
Thayer of this state, was appointed a committee of one to take charge
of the systematic organization of all the states friendly to Kansas, for
her relief. We believe the convention was wise in making this com-

mittee consist of one person. We believe it particularly fortunate in
appointing Mr. Thayer to a duty which he can discharge so efficiently.
The service which he has rendered to Kansas, first by creating the
Emigrant Aid Company, in the face of great depression, and next, by
constant public and private appeals in behalf of Kansas, is well under-
stood in New England and New York city. The work now entrusted
to him is very clearly the work for one man and not for many.

" We are glad to be able to announce this morning, that Mr. Thayer
has already entered upon his work, with the promptness which the oc-
casion demands.

"He has perfected a plan which may carry the cause of Kansas to
every hearth-stone in the free states.

" It proposes that there shall be formed two classes of Kansas Com-
mittees; a state committee for every state, and a county committee
for every county. Some of these committees already exist. Each
county committee should then appoint a town agent for every town in
the county, with authority to appoint a solicitor (male or female)
for every school district in the town. These district solicitors apply
to every man, woman and child, if possible, in their respective dis-
tricts ; and make returns of their collections, with a duplicate of the
subscription books, to the town agent. By applying to this agent, any
subscriber can ascertain whether his subscription has been duly
forwarded. The town agents make returns to the treasurer of the
County Committee, who makes regular returns to the treasurer of the
State Committee, who in turn remits to the National Committee.

" In this way every cent contributed can be traced from the hand of
the donor to the treasury of the General Committee, without any
charge or expenses. And by this plan the General Committee deals
only with State Committees, these with County Committees, and these
only with school districts, and they only with individuals.

" If this plan were faithfully carried out, we should have three or
four millions of subscribers as the result, with scarcely any expense
for agencies.

" We publish these details, in extenso, thus, in the hope that they may
be at once copied through the country, and that the different arrange-
ments may be put at once in motion. We hope to announce soon, that
a regular series of remittances to the Chicago National Committee has
begun.

" We observed in our report of the Buffalo Convention, that a member
of that convention expressed the feeling that Mr. Thayer's connection
with the Emigrant Aid Company would make his appointment unpopu-
lar with the country. We confess our surprise at this suggestion.
We believe that the unanimous feeling of the free states of this Union

towards that company, of which he is the founder, is one of profound
gratitude for its efforts at a time when every one beside was in despair
as to the fate of Kansas.

"The Convention at Buffalo would never have existed, had not that
company acted when it did. There would have been no free state
party in Kansas without it. There may be many men there from the
free states who did not go under its auspices, but there are very few
who did not go influenced by the assurance that the company gave,
that Kansas should be free.

"We can understand why President Pierce and Dr. Striogfellow de-
nounce it; but we do not see why the unpopularity of its founder with
them should act in the Buffalo Convention.

" Mr. Thayer defended the company with spirit before the Conven-
tion, and the Convention showed no fear of its unpopularity. He
referred to the enthusiastic praise it has received abroad and at home.
Styled by the London Times ' The greatest American movement of
this age,' it has been welcomed here by our ablest statesmen, scholars
and business men.

"After his speech no sort of opposition was made to his appoint-
ment; and the Convention commissioned him to the work we have
described."

This Buffalo Convention was composed of delegates from the
Kansas Leagues throughout the North and East. These
Leagues were formed entirely through the influence of the
Emigrant Aid Company. About five hundred representatives
attended the convention. The delegates from Worcester were
Dwight Foster, George F. Hoar and EH Thayer.

As for " Sharpe's rifles," I know man}* went along with the
emigrants sent by the Company, and these men knew how
to use them when the emergency demanded, as those familiar
with Kansas history well know. No organization openly pro-
vided such implements at first, but they generally formed a part
of the equipment of our colonies. The directors furnished them
on their individual responsibility. Mr. Lawrence and others of
the Company provided a large quantity of arms and ammunition
and sent them to Kansas in 1855.* I, myself, bought two
cases of rifles of Waters & Co., in the spring of 1855, months

» See Transactions Kansas Historical Society, Vols. I. and II., pp. 221-224.

before "T. W. H.'s" •' Later organizations ' were thought of. *
These went to Kansas.

The complaint of the Abolitionists themselves, early in 1855,
that we were ready to repel force by force, is a sufficient refuta-
tion of the insinuation that the early emigrants would not fight.
But they did not believe in shedding blood wantonly. Dr. Rob-
inson's firm and decided policy, and the fact that the settlers
were well armed with Sharpe's rifles and ready to use them,
caused the retreat of the Missourians from Lawrence in Decem-
ber, 1855. Probably " T. W. H. " did not know of these facts.

Again, I would ask " T. W. H." if it is reasonable for him to
maintain, that private enterprise would be better provided with
tools and materials to repair broken-down saw-mills, than a
well-organized corporation with managers who took into con-
sideration all the wants, needs and circumstances of the under-
taking?

Professor Spring in his History of Kansas, says : (page 32)

" The work of the Boston organrzat'ou cannot be adequately exhibi-
ted by arithmetical computations. A vital, capital part of it lay
in spheres where mathematics are ineffectual — lay in its alighting upon
a feasible method, which was copied far and wide, of dealing with
a grave political emergency, and in the backing of social and monetary
prestige that it secured for the unknown pioneers at the front. "

The work of saving Kansas, was done before the eyes of the
whole world. We said we would do it, and stop the making of
Slave States. We also laid down our methods ; we went on
just as we had promised and used the methods proposed, and
accomplished the results aimed at, without the help of politicians,
and in spite of the active hostility of the abolitionists.

No man, unless he is ignorant of the facts in the Kansas
struggle, or is completely blinded by malice or envy, will ever
attempt to defraud the Emigrant Aid Company of the glory of
having saved Kansas, by defeating the Slave Power, in a great
and decisive contest.

•During the Kansas troubles I eipended of ray own money $4,500 for the pur-
chase of rifles and cannon.

The results of the Kansas contest may be briefly summarized :

1. It stopped the making of Slave States.

2. It made the Republican Party.

3. It nearly elected Fremont and did elect Lincoln.

4. It united and solidified the Northern states against
slavery, and was a necessary training, to enable them to subdue
the Rebellion. *

5. It drove the slave-holders, through desperation, into
secession.

6. It has given us a harmonious and enduring Union.

7. It has emancipated the white race of the South, as well as
the negroes, from the evils of Slavery.

8. It is even now regenerating the South.

In lK.r>4, there floated, in careless security, the staunch old
battle-ship SLAVERY. She was then undisputed mistress of all
American waters For more than thirty years, she had been
victorious in every contest. She had seen the power of her ene-
mies constantly diminishing, while her own had been constantly
increasing. At this time, from the top of her tallest mast,
was displayed the broad pennant of the Commodore — from
the other masts floated other pennants and streamers bearing
the legends of her many victories. On one was the inscription

•The wonderful increase of the Anti-Shivery vote in '55 and '56 was brought
about l.y the illegal assaults of the Slave power upon the citizens of Kansas. The
figures in New England and New York from 1S48 to 185(j are here given. It will be
seen that the fall elections of 1854 were little influenced by the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise.

NEW ENGLAND NEW YORK.

1848 . 72,368 . . 120,479

1849 . . . 7!l,454

1850 . . . 42.27(1

1851 . . 43,401

1852 . . . 57,143

1853 . . . 63,668

(Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, a Lnirful act.)

1854 . . 79,632

(After Unlawful aggression in Kansas.)

185r' • 184,850 . . 136,698

186(5 • . 307,417 . . . 276,004

1,311
3,410

000
25,359

000

''THE ADMISSION OF TEXAS;" on another, "THE FUGITIVE
SLAVE BILL : " there " THE DRED SCOTT DECISION ; " while here
was haughtily displayed, the record of her latest triumph " THE
REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE." Her officers, in com.
placent mood, were proudly pacing her decks, recounting the
unvarying success of the past, and laying plans for new tri-
umphs in .the future : — Cuba to be acquired ; Central America
and Mexico to be secured ; and all to be devoted to the buildin^

up of a colossal slave empire.

While in this blissful security, in this paradise of memory
and hope, a billow from Boston harbor struck her side. It was
not a heavy wave, but it made the old ship tremble and aroused
the attention of officers and crew. All hands on board soon
had enough to do. Billow after billow came.

For three whole years these boundfhg billows came with
increasing strength and most destructive force, while the brave
old ship pitched and groaned and quivered more and more with
each successive shock. Her joints were loosened and the waters
rushed in. Her officers were utterly disheartened and ran her
for safety upon the shoals of Secession. At length the dark
waves of the Rebellion swept her fragments away, and not one
vestige was left in 1865, of the famous craft, which was queen
of all American waters in 1854.

That staunch old battle-ship was the hideous " BLACK POWEK''
which had ruled the United States with despotic sway, for more
than thirty years. The billows which struck her, were the self-
sacrificing organized colonies of sturdy Northern Yeomen, who
had determined that Slavery should be no more. These were
the billows that destroyed the old ship.

But some say it was not the billows at all, but the foam on
their crests that made the wreck. Some say it was not the
thousands upon thousands of brave patriotic Union-loving citi-
zens, organized for this very work, and risking their all for
Freedom, that brought this speedy end to Slavery, but that it
was three or four adventurers and sensationalists — all haters of
the Union and friends of anarchy — that achieved this great
victory. Let the country judge upon the evidence of the facts.

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