Half a Century Part 19

During the heat of that Lincoln campaign, Galusha A. Grow, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, came to St. Cloud to speak, and found me ill with quinsy; but I went to the meeting. It was held in Wilson's Hall, which was on the second floor of a frame building, and was so packed that before he began fears were felt lest the floors should give way. But the speaker told the audience that the floor would "hold still" if they did; and any one who felt uneasy had better leave now. No one left, and for two hours and a half he held that packed a.s.sembly in close and silent attention. He was very popular on the frontier on account of his homestead bill, yet the hall was surrounded all the time he spoke by a howling Democratic mob, who hurled stones against the house, fired guns, shouted and yelled, trying to drown his voice. To make it more interesting and try to draw out the audience, they made a huge bonfire and burned me in effigy as--

"The mother of the Republican party."

The result of that campaign is known, for in it Minnesota was made so thoroughly Republican that the party must needs split, in order to got rid of its supremacy.

CHAPTER XLII.

RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES.

The _St. Cloud Democrat_ found in orthodoxy a foe almost as powerful and persistent as slavery itself. In a local controversy about dancing, I recommended that amus.e.m.e.nt as the only subst.i.tute for lascivious plays, and this was eagerly seized upon by those who saw nothing wrong in wholesale concubinage of the South. A fierce attack was made on _The Democrat_ by a zealous Baptist minister; to which I replied, when it was announced and proclaimed that on a certain Sabbath, at 10 A.M., this minister would answer _The Democrat_. At the appointed hour the house overflowed, and people crowded around the doors and windows, while Gen.

Lowrie occupied a prominent seat in the audience.

It surely was an odd sight to see that preacher mount the stand, carrying an open copy of _The Democrat_, lay it down beside the Bible, and read verse about from the two doc.u.ments. The sermon was as odd as the text. It disposed of me by the summary mode of denunciation, but also disposed of David, Solomon and Miriam at the same time. When I gave the discourse a careful Scriptural criticism, I carried the community, and was strengthened by the controversy. But another, more serious and general dispute was at hand.

When Theodore Parker died, the orthodox press from Maine to Georgia, handed him over to Satan to be tormented; and then my reputation for heresy reached its flood-tide.

Rev. John Renwick, one of our Covenanter martyrs, was my ideal of a Christian, and when he lay in the Edinburg prison under sentence of death, his weeping friends begged him to conform and save his life. They said to him:

"Dinna ye think that we, who ha' conformit may be saved?"

"Aye, aye. G.o.d forbid that I should limit his grace."

"An' dinna ye think, ye too could be saved and conform?"

"Oh, aye aye. The blood of Christ cleanseth fra all sin."

"Weel, what mair do ye want, than the salvation o' yer saul?"

"Mair, mickle mair! I want to honor my Master, and bear witness to the truth."

To satisfy this want, he died a felon's death. The central idea of that old hero-making Westminster theology was, that man's chief end is to glorify G.o.d first, and enjoy him forever when that is done. In all the religious training of my youth, I had never heard the term "seek salvation." We were to seek the privilege of serving G.o.d; yet I was willing to be dead-headed into heaven, with the rest of the Presbyterians.

A Protestant Episcopal convention had pointedly refused to advise members of that church to respect the marriage relation among their slaves, and so had dimmed the Elizabethian glory of a church which once stood for freedom so n.o.bly that the winds and waves became her allies, and crowned her with victory. The General a.s.sembly had laid the honor of its martyrs in the dust by endorsing human slavery; and I must be false to every conviction if I did not protest against calling that Christianity which held out crowns of glory to man-thieves and their abettors, and everlasting torments to those who had spent their lives glorifying G.o.d and bearing witness to the truth. My defense of Parker and unwillingness to have all Unitarians sent to the other side of the Great Gulf, won for me a prominent place among those whom the churches p.r.o.nounced "Infidels."

But there came a time when "Providence" seemed to be on the side of the slave.

Rev. J. Calhoun was a highly-cultured gentleman, a Presbyterian clergyman, and one of those urbane men who add force and dignity to any opinion. His wife was Gen. Lowrie's only sister. He preached gratuitously in St. Cloud, and Border Ruffianism and Slavery gained respectability through their connection, when he and his wife made that fatal plunge off the bridge in St. Cloud--a plunge which sent a thrill of horror through the land. I accompanied my sympathetic, respectful obituary notice, with the statement that the costly cutter wrecked, and the valuable horse instantly killed, were both purchased with money obtained by the sale of a woman and her child, who had been held as slaves in Minnesota, in defiance of her law, and been taken by this popular divine to a Tennessee auction block.

The accident was entirely owing to the unprecedented and unaccountable behavior of that horse, and people shuddered with a new horror on being reminded of the price which had been paid for him--bodies and souls of two citizens and the honor of that free State.

CHAPTER XLIII.

FRONTIER LIFE.

The culture which the pale faces introduced into that land of the Dakotas was sometimes curious. The first sermon I heard there was preached in Rockville--a town-site on the Sauk, twelve miles from its confluence with the Mississippi--in a store-room of which the roof was not yet s.h.i.+ngled. The only table in the town served as a pulpit; the red blankets from one wagon were converted into cus.h.i.+ons for the front pews, which consisted of rough boards laid on trussles. There was only one hymn book, and after reading the hymn, the preacher tendered the book to any one who would lead the singing, but no one volunteered. My scruples about psalms seemed to vanish, so I went forward, took the book, lined out the hymn, and started a tune, which was readily taken up and sung by all present. We were well satisfied with what the day brought us, as we rode home past those wonderful granite rocks which spring up out of the prairie, looking like old hay-ricks in a meadow.

There were people in our frontier town who would have graced any society, and with the elasticity of true culture adapted themselves to all circ.u.mstances. At my residence, which adjoined the _Democrat_ office, I held fortnightly receptions, at which dancing was the amus.e.m.e.nt, and coffee and sandwiches the refreshments. At one of these, I had the honor to entertain Gov. Ramsey, Lieut.-Gov. Donnelly, State Treas. Shaeffer, and a large delegation from St. Paul; but not having plates for seventy people, I subst.i.tuted squares of white printing paper. When Gov. Ramsey received his, he turned it over, and said:

"What am I to do with this?"

"That is the ticket you are to vote," was the answer.

In our social life there was often a weird mingling of civilization and barbarism. Upon one occasion, a concert was given, in which the audience were in full dress, and all evening in the princ.i.p.al streets of St.

Cloud a lot of Chippewas played foot-ball with the heads of some Sioux, with whom they had been at war that day.

In those days, brains and culture were found in shanties. The leaders of progress did not shrink from a.s.sociation with the rude forces of savages and mother nature.

St. Cloud was the advance post of that march of civilization by which the Northern Pacific railroad has since sought to reach the Sascatchewan, a territory yet to be made into five wheat-growing States as large as Illinois. All the Hudson Bay goods from Europe pa.s.sed our doors, in wagons or on sleds, under the care of the Burbanks, the great mail carriers and express men of Minnesota, and once they brought a young lady who had come by express from Glasgow, Scotland, and been placed under the charge of their agent at New York, and whom they handed over to the officer she had come to marry on the sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay.

But their teams usually came east with little freight, as the furs sent to Europe came down in carts, not one of which had so much iron as a nail in them, and which came in long, creaking trains, drawn by oxen or Indian ponies.

In each train there was generally one gorgeous equipage--a cart painted blue, with a canvas cover, drawn by one large white ox in raw-hide harness. In this coach of state rode the lady of the train--who was generally a half-breed--on her way to do her shopping in St. Paul. Once the lady was a full-blooded Indian, and had her baby with her, neatly dressed and strapped to a board. A bandage across the forehead held the head in place, and every portion of the body was as secure as board and bandages could make them, except the arms from the elbow down, but no danger of the little fellow sucking his thumb. His lady mamma did not have to hold him, for he was stood up in a corner like a cane or umbrella, and seemed quite comfortable as well as content. She had traveled seven weeks, had come seventeen hundred miles to purchase some dresses and trinkets, and would no doubt be a profitable customer to St.

Paul merchants, for the lady of the train was a person of wealth and authority, always the wife of the commander-in-chief, and her sentence of death might have been fatal to any man in it.

In these trains were always found Indians filling positions as useful laborers, for the English government never gave premiums for idleness and vagabondism among Indians, by feeding and clothing them without effort on their own part. Their dexterity in turning griddle cakes, by shaking the pan and giving it a jerk which sent the cake up into the air and brought it down square into the pan other side up, would have made Biddy's head whirl to see. The "Gov. Ramsey" was the first steamboat which ran above the falls of St. Anthony, and in the spring of '59 she was steamed and hawsered up the Sauk Rapids, and ran two hundred miles, until the falls of Pokegamy offered insurmountable barriers to further progress. It was thought impossible to get her down again, there was no business for her, and she lay useless until, the next winter, Anson Northup took out her machinery and drew it across on sleds to the Red River of the North, where it was built into the first steamboat which ever ran on that river.

Before starting on his expedition, Mr. Northup came to the _Democrat_ office to leave an advertis.e.m.e.nt and ask me to appeal to the public for aid in provisions and feed to be furnished along the route. He was in a Buffalo suit, from his ears to his feet, and looked like a bale of furs.

On his head he wore a fox skin cap with the nose lying on the two paws of the animal just between his eyes, the tail hanging down between his shoulders. He was a brave, strong man, and carried out his project, which to most people was wild.

Nothing seemed more important than the cultivation of health for the people, and to this I gave much earnest attention, often expressed in the form of badinage. There were so many young housekeepers that there was much need of teachers. I tried to get the New England women to stop feeding their families on dough--especially hot soda dough--and to subst.i.tute well-baked bread as a steady article of diet. In trying to wean them from cake, I told of a time when chaos reigned on earth, long before the days of the mastodons, but even then, New England women were up making cake, and would certainly be found at that business when the last trump sounded. But they bore with my "crotchets" very patiently, and even seemed to enjoy them.

CHAPTER XLIV.

PRINTERS.

The printer's case used to be one of the highways to editorial and congressional honors; but the little fellows of the craft invented a machine which goes over it like a "header" over a wheat-field and leaves a dead level of stalks, all minus the heads, so that no tall fellows are left to shame them by pa.s.sing on from the "stick" to the tripod or speaker's mallet. Their great Union rolling-pin flattens them all out like pie-crust, and tramps are not overshadowed by the superiority of industrious men. But the leveling process makes impa.s.sable mountains and gorges in other walks of life--makes it necessary that a publisher with one hundred readers must pay as much for type-setting as he with a hundred thousand. The salary of editors and contributors may vary from nothing to ten thousand a year; but through all mutations of this life, the printer's wages must remain in _statu quo_. So the Union kills small papers, prevents compet.i.tion in the newspaper business, builds up monster establishments, and keeps typos at the case forever and a day.

I knew when the _Visiter_ started that it could not live and pay for type-setting the same price as paid by the New York _Tribune_, and the day the office became mine, I stated that fact to the printers, who took their hats and left. In '52, I had spent some part of every day for two weeks in a composing room, and with the knowledge then acquired, I, in '58 started the business of practical printer. I took a proof of my first stick, and lo, it read from right to left. I distributed that, but had to mark the stick that I might remember.

The first day I took two boys as apprentices. First, Wesley Miller, who had spent two months in a Harrisburg office, and knew something of the art, but did not like anything about it except working the press.

Second, my nephew, William B. Mitch.e.l.l, who was thirteen, knew nothing of types, but was a model of patient industry.

Our magnanimous printers hung around hotels, laughing at the absurdity of this amateur office. We might set type, but when it came to making and locking up a form, ha, ha, wouldn't there be sport? That handsome new type would all be a mess of pi, then somebody would be obliged to come to their terms or St. Cloud would be without a paper. It was their great opportunity to display their interest in the general welfare, and they embraced it to the full; but of the little I had learned in that short apprentices.h.i.+p six years ago, I retained a clear conception of the principles of justification by works. I brought these to bear on those forms, made them up, locked them, and sent for Stephen Miller to carry them to the press, when each one lifted like a paving stone; but alas, alas, the columns read from right to left. I unlocked them, put the matter back in the galleys, made them up new, and we had the paper off on time.

From that time until the first of January, '63, I carried on the business of practical printer, issued a paper every week, did a large amount of job work, was city and county printer for half a dozen counties, did all the legal advertising, published the tax lists, and issued extras during the Indian ma.s.sacres.

CHAPTER XLV.