Worcester County, Massachusetts - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 81 of those read), 1889

The Settlement Of Kansas By Edward Everett Hale, D.D.

The movement by which the State of Kansas was settled under the influence of organized emigration, began in the forethought and energy of a citizen of Worcester. Many of the details of that movement belong in the history of the city and county.

The act throwing open to emigration the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska repealed what was known as the Mis'souri Compromise. This "Compromise" was the act of 1820, in which the Southern States, with the assistance of indifferent partisans from the Middle States, had provided that the State of Missouri, and all States henceforward to be formed south of the parallel which is its southern line, might be open to the institution of slavery, but that north of that line the Territories should always be free, as had been the Northwestern Territory, under the ordinance of 1787. After very strong protest at the time, the " Compromise " was acquiesced in by everybody. In later days it has been decided by the Supreme Court to have been unconstitutional.

This compromise-line, established under the protest of the Northern States, and in face of the votes of most of them, was now set aside. It was evident, after February in 1854, that the act opening Kansas and Nebraska to settlement would include a proviso, introduced by Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, that the institutions of each State should be determined' by the votes of the first settlers. This system was familiarly known as "Squatter Sovereignty."

The Southern heads of the Government absolutely directed Congress and the administration of General Pierce. Their determination to abolish the antislavery provision of the "Compromise " aroused the indignation of all persons in the Northern States who were not bigoted partisans, and put it in the power of men of all shades of opinion to act

Worcester was represented in the General Court at that time bv Mr. Eli Thayer, who was then at the head of the Oread Institute, which has been described in another chapter of this book. He saw at once that, under the "squatter sovereignty" provision, the North had it in its power to work its will. And Mr. Thayer did not make the great mistake of supposing that separate emigrants, not supported by the public opinion of those around them, could achieve anything. He devised a plan for the organization of emigration, which, in a series of years, without the slightest change in the principles which he had laid down at the very first, proved remarkably successfuL Before the " Nebraska Bill," as it was universally called, had passed Congress, Mr. Thayer announced his plan. In a public meeting held in Worcester on the nth of March, to protest against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Mr. Thayer brought forward this practical proposal. The conclusion of his speech was in these words :

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. (Cheers.)

I, for one, am willing to be taxed one-fourth of mv time or of my earnings, until this be done - until a barrier of free hearts and strong hands shall be built around the laud our fathers consecrated to freedom, to be her heritage forever. (Loud cheere.)

Mr. Thayer himself says of this : " If, instead of this impetuous, spontaneous and enthusiastic response, there had only been a moderate approbation of the plan, you would never have heard of the Emigrant Aid Company. The citizens of Worcester were sponsors at im baptism, and upon their judgment I implicitly relied, and I was not deceived."

We have this reason for saying that to the people of this city, and especially to Mr. Thayer, who acted as their leader from the beginning to the end in this matter, is the country indebted for the prompt emigration to Kansas, which eventually decided, not only the question of freedom in the Territories, but the question of freedom in the nation. Mr. Thayer at once drafted a petition for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. At the hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature he said :

This IS H plan to prevent the forming of any more slave States If you will give us the charter there shall never be another slave State admitted into the Union. In the halls of Congress we have been invariably beaten for more than thirty years, and it is now time to change the battle-ground from Congress to the prairies, where we shall invariably triumph.

Probably not a single person in the Judiciary Committee believed his plan in the least practical^ The general feeling was that we were fifteen hundred miles from the battle-ground, and that every effort made would be overwhelmed by the unfriendly neighbors of the emigrants in Missouri before it could be renewed. But Mr. Thayer persevered, and the Legislature granted him, without opposition', the charter of the Ma>sachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. In point of fact, no ultimate action was ever taken under this particular charter; but the same persons were subsequently incorporated under more convenient arrangements, and it is right to regard this company as that which took the initial steps in this matter. The reader mu=t observe that the Kansas- Nebraska Bill had not yet passed. Although Kansas was not named in the charter, it was understood that organized emigration to Kansas was the object for which the company was formed. The corporators met at once, on the 26th of April, and named a committee of five to report a plan of organization and work. This committee consisted of Eli Thayer, Alexander H. Bullock and Edward E. Hale, of Worcester ; and Richard Hildreth and Otis Clapp, of Boston. The three first were Worcester men. I had myself been interested in plans for organized emigration in the interests of freedom, since the annexation of Texas. Mr. Bullock, afterwards Governor, gave himself cordially to the plan. In practice the meetings of the committee of five were meetings of these three gentlemen, generally in Governor Bullock's office in Worcester. At his own charge Mr. Thayer hired Chapman Hall in Boston for frequent meetings, and on the 10th of May engaged Dr. Thomas H. Webb as the secretary of the company. The plan was very simple. It proposed that the agents of the company should deal with the various transportation companies and make favorable arrangements for taking groups of the emigrants in " parties." We foresaw that a body of men and women who were together would sustain each other, would maintain public opinion and would not be overawed ; if necessary, they could defend each other by arms'. On the other hand, such separate emigration of distinct families, as had filled the Northwest, would never be undertaken, even into a region as fine as Kansas, with the prospect of controversy and bloodshed. In the aroused condition of public feeling, Mr. Thayer believed, and the event proved, that a body of people going together would be comparatively strong and less exposed to insult. The company did not propose to intervene between the government and the settler; it only proposed to bring the settlers to the spot in groups, to establish mills and other necessities for a settlement; but were to leave to the settler such profit as he might make for himself, as the town in which he was, increased in population and his lands increased in value. In such a colony the associated settlers were glad enough to give to the Emigrant Aid Company a central position for the establishment of a saw-mill or other property for the common use. This simple organization, strange to say, was never devised before and had never been carried out before; it is a Worcester County invention, and the inventor is Eli Thayer.

What proved of as much value, perhaps, as any of the early steps in the enterprise, was the engagement by Mr. Thayer of Charles Robinson, also a Worcester County man, to go out and explore the country. Dr. Robinson was a physician in Fitchburg. He had long lived in California, where he had been an eager advocate of the rights of squatters. It may be said that what he did not know of a new community of settlers was not worth knowing. He was one of the few men in Massachusetts who had passed through Kansas. He was an earnest anti-slavery man, and committed himself, body aud soul, to the new enterprise from the beginning. With the assent of the other gentlemen of the committee Mr. Thayer engaged him at once to go to the Territory, that, by his personal information, he might assist the committee in taking the first steps. All this was done, be it observed, before the Kansas-Nebraska Bill became a law by passing Congress. Meanwhile, in public meetings and through the press, the directors of the new company were making use of all the information possible to interest the community in this movement.

On the 4th day of May a convention was called to meet in the Town Hall of Worcester, of a character much more practical than most of the conventions which met there. It was of men who were as much in earnest as Mr. Thayer had expressed himself to be in his speech in the month of March. That is to say, those persons were called who wished to unite for the purpose of going to Kansas. Mr. Thayer had, in the mean while, been occupying every moment of the day and the night in the interests of the new colony. On this morning he was too ill to leave the house, - worn out, as I suppose, by the constant exertions of two months. He sent me a note, which I still have and value highly, asking me to meet the convention in his place. I have never forgotten the occasion. In the great Town Hall, in which I had often spokeu to audiences of twelve hundred people, there were perhaps one or two hundred men. They had the look of determination which belongs to the New Englander when he is well wound up and ready to start. People who were engaged at their daily business did not come to the meeting. As I recollect, there were very few persons there whom I had ever seen before; but I made some friends there who have been my friends to this day. A heavy storm was raging out-doors. There was no "buncombe" nor "popcock" in what we said; I was there to explain to them the practical method of going to Kansas, and, as well as I knew how, I did so. These men asked questions, and I gave them the best answers that I could. The drift of my speech may be inferred from the pamphlet written by myself, which, almost at the same time, the Executive Committee of the Emigrant Aid Society published. It lies before me as I write these words. It was printed by a Worcester printer, and went broadcast over New England and the West. It is the basis of a series of similar pamphlets, enlarged and changed as the occasion required, which were issued by the society in the next two years. The convention which met that day passed the following resolutions:

Whereas, The diinger is imminent and pressing that slavery will succeed in its andaoious and determined assaults upon freemen, and by a repeal of the Missouri Compromise subject the vast and fertile territories of Nebraska and Kansas to its blighting and desolating influences ; therefore

Besolved, That it is the right and the duty of the people of the free Stftos to neutralize the efforts ol the slave power and its Northern confederates by the immediate occupancy of these territories with men hostile to slavery, and in favor of basing the institutions of those territories upon the great principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

Resoloed, That whatever may be the final action of Congress upon the Nebraska Bill (so called), now under consideration, that we ought not to leave the territories as they are. We ought, by acting in the territories, by our emigrants in the territories, by our moral influence in the territories, by our votes in the territories, to continue there the contest of freedom until its sure and final triumph is secured therein.

Itetohed, That we regard a systematic and united effort t.) colonize in these territories free labor and free instilutions as the best and most certain means of guarding them against the encroachments of slavery propagandiam, and that we hail with pleasure all the movements now in progress having reference to such an object, whether in the West or in the East ; whether they have their origin among the sons of the Pilgrims or those fugitives from the oppression of other lands, who are resolved to fight against slavery in all its forms in the country of their adoption.

ItMohed, That inasmuch as many persons in all parts of Massachusetts have signified their desire to unite in an Emigrants' League, for the purpose of locating themselves and their families in the new territories, that it is expedient to form, as soon as practicable, an association of this kind, and that until such a time all persons desirous of joining in such plan of emigration be requested to send their names and addresses to a committee of this convention, that some estimate may be formed of the extent of the desire in favor of such emigration, under such auspices and as a preli.ninary step to the organization of the first New Eugland Company of Nebraska and Kansas Emigrants.

Resolved, That the incorporation of an Emigrants' Aid Society; by the Legislature of Massachusetts, with a view to directing a systematic emigration to these territories, upon a gigantic scale, is a noble step in the right direction, and that we have the fullest confidence that that society will be a powerful instrument in advancing the cause of freedom and humanity.

EeMlned, That such efforts as are now being made by this and kindred societies to introduce free labor and free institutions on the virgin soil of these territories must command the sympathy of freemen and Christians the world over-that it must arouse to the full the zeal of all who are embarked in it who would labor, not only as adventurers in a new land, but as the pilgrims who were the pioneers there of a great principle.

Bemlved, That it would be as unjust as it would be impolitic in laboring for the perfection of a great and good object, to do anything not in accordance with the principles of true Christianity to attain our object, and that, so far as our influence can extend, the natural and guaranteed rights of the aboriginal inhabitants shall be sacredly regarded.

In the brief of my speech I find that I stated the plans of the company as I have explained them above. I said that we should arrange for parties of two or three hundred to go together, that we propose to build for each colony a central boarding-house, or boarding-houses, in which men could live while they were preparing their houses, and that we should make ourselves responsible for saw-mills, printing-presses and other necessary machinery. All these promises we kept. Mr. Thayer bade me say that there would be two thousand men from Massachusetts there in a short time. The prophecy of this was more than fulfilled. I met Dr. Robinson for the first time that day. He has been for many years my dear friend. But I always associate the thought of him with the wet india-rubber coat which he wore on that bleak May morning in that cold town-hall. Recollecting what followed from this meeting, it is pathetic to see how slight is the notice given of it by the Worcester papers of the day. The other speakers besides those named above were Mr. Mallory and Mr. Fay, but their speeches are not reported.

From this moment forward all of us who could speak were engaged in addressing public assemblies, and all of us who could write were writing for the press. I remember very well that I had the friendly cooperation of twelve leading newspapers in different parts of New England, the editors of which were gl.ad to print anything which we could send them regarding Kansas. My father permitted me to print whatever I chose in the Daily Advertiser, which was the leading Whig newspaper in New England ; and Mr. Horace Greeley printed whatever we sent him as editorial in the New York Tribune.

At the same time I was engaged, with my brother and my wife, in preparing the book called " Kansas and Nebraska," which is, I think, the first published book in the large literature of the history of that State. This book could hardly have been written conveniently anywhere excepting in Worcester. I had the cooperation of Samuel Foster Haven, the accomplished librarian of the Antiquarian Society, and I had the advantage of using all the stores of that invaluable collection. I doubt if I could anywhere else have written up the early history of the discovery of the Territory. Certainly we had great advantages in the public documents there, following along the history of its successive surveys. The reader should remember that up to this time there was not a white man legally settled in the Territory of Kansas, unless ia the capacity of an Indian agent or under some other appointment from the General Government.

As to Worcester County, I do not venture to say in how many places Mr. Thayer addressed audiences in that eventful summer. I find on my own memorandum-book that I spoke at Bolton, from which, under the lead of our friend Mr. Wilder, an organized company went to the territory ; in my own church ; at Uxbridge ; at a public meeting in Worcester on the 25th of August; at Northboro'; at Leominster; at New Bedford; at Shrewsbury; at Northboro' a second time; at Millbury and at Milford.

Of the interest taken in New England, the upshot was that several hundred clergymen became life members of the Emigrant Aid Society. I think that every settled clergyman in Worcester subscribed twenty dollars for this purpose. The first colony, of forty-three persons, left Boston on the 17th of July. It was under Dr. Robinson's lead and included many men from Worcester County; no women went with that colony. They established themselves at Lawrence, now the city of Lawrence, at the mouth of the

Wakarusa River. In the second colony, led by Mr. Branscombe, went their wives and children. So the business of filling Kansas with organized companies went on for two or three years. It was in the course of this summer that I learned from Mr. Thayer one of the secrets of his success. It is the same which Poor Richard gave to Paul Jones, in the words, " If you want anything done, do it yourself." But I think I am right in ascribing to Mr. Thayer the formula which says that "personal presence moves the world."

After the very first, it proved that the charter of the Massachusetts Company did not satisfy men who were to subscribe money. My impression is that there was an individual liability danger, which no man could afford to meet. To meet this difficulty, Mr. Thayer, Mr. Amos Lawrence and Mr. J. M. S. Williams were made the trustees of all contributions, and as a board of trustees they conducted the affairs of the company, with the assistance of such committees of stockholders as they appointed, until the organization of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which lasted for eleven or twelve years. The first meeting of the trustees was on July 24th, 1854. They assumed the responsibility for everything which had been done by Mr. Thayer and the other gentlemen interested in the ma:ter, from the beginning. And the real work of the company dates, therefore, back to the beginning of the mouth of May.

Mr. Thayer had the loyal assistance and pecuniary backing of the two gentlemen who have been named. At one of the meetings in Chapman Hall, in Bosten, Mr. Williams, who was a stranger to him, rose and said he was willing to give ten thousand dollars for the purposes of the company. Mr. Amos Lawrence made a subscription as large. At the request of Dr. Webb, Mr. John Carter Brown, of Providence, made a similar subscription, and was afterwards the president of the company for the whole period of its existence. Mr. Batchelder, a Worcester County man, subscribed ten thousand dollars. It should be remembered that none of these gentlemen ever received a cent back for the money thus paid, which became a successful sacrifice on the altar of freedom. There may have been other ways in which the problem of the freedom of Kansas could have been wrought out, but in fact it was wrought out by the plans conceived and executed by a citizen of the city of Worcester, with the loyal assistance of his neighbors, who trusted him and valued him.