Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/349

 ADMINISTRATION OF FRANKLIN PIERCE. 317

furnish what was necessary for their support, not forgetting rifles and ammuni- tion, to resist the attempts of the border rultians, as the people of western Missouri were called, to fasten slavery on this fair domain. But the leaders and managers of this movement at the North were not entirely governed by a desire to make Kansas a free state, and their statements regarding the emigra- tion from Missouri, made in their harangues to the people and in their news- papers, were not entirely fair or truthful. They had no reason to doubt but that, in the ordinary course of emigration, Kansas was destined to be a free state, as, in our experience, the North had furnished nearly all the emigrants to the new territories in which, as in Kansas, white labor could be successfuly employed. The originators of the Emigrant Aid Company in Massachusetts had more knowledge of the state of things in Kansas, in 1S54, than any other persons at the North. In the latter part ot the year 1854, this company issued a pamphlet entitled '' Organization, Objects and Plan of Operations of the Emigrant Aid Company ; also a Description ot Kansas for the Information of emigrants." Its officers were Amos A. Lawrence, Boston ; J. M. S. Williams, Cambridge ; and Ely Thayer, Worcester, trustees : Amos A. Lawrence, treas- urer ; and Thomas H. Webb, of Boston, secretary. In this pamphlet, the trustees state that they have several agents in Kansas, and tiiey publish several letters which they state are written by very reliable men. From the known character of the men composing this board, we may rely upon the statements made, so far as they relate to facts within their knowledge, and upon what is given on information as coming from good authority. In the pamphlet the trustees say that, in return for the advantages the company will give to emi- grants, the stockholders will "secure satisfaction by an investment which prom- ises large returns at no distant day ;" that, within two or three years, it can dispose of its property in the territory first occupied, and reimburse itself for its first expenses ; that then " it will possess several reservations of six hundred and forty acres each, on which its boarding houses and mills stand, and the churches and school-houses which it has rendered necessary. From these centres will the settlement of the state have radiated. In other words these points will 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 its orig- inal capital." Among the letters published, is one dated Independence, Mo., July 17, 1854, ■• written by a gentleman well known to the secretary, and upon whose opinion reliance may be placed." From this letter we give the follow- ing extract, italicised as in the pamphlet : " Rather is it not strange and won- derful that at least one hundred thousand persons from New England are not on their way to this garden of the world at this moment? Th ;t such would be the case, I have no doubt, if the good qualities of the land, climate, &c., were understood by them as well as they are by those in Missouri on the borders. The rush from this state (/. e. Missouri) to Kansas territory is not so much to secure a foothold for slavery there as to secure a fortune, notwithstanding what the newspapers say about it." From another letter, from a member of the pioneer party sent out by the company, dated St. Louis, July 24, 1854, we make the following extract : " Nowhere has the party been more kindly received than in St. Louis. We are visited daily by intelligent citizens, who express a warm in- terest in the movement. We are assured that throughout the state the great bulk of the honest inhabitants desire just such a neighbor state as an encouraged emi- gration from the respectable inhabitants of the North would make of Kan- sas."

From these extracts it is plain that the managers of the Emigrant Aid Com- pany understood that the emigration of people from western Missouri into

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