Part 18 (1/2)
CHAPTER XL.
A FAMOUS VICTORY.
The day after the Stearns House meeting, I was thought to be dying. All that medical skill and loving hands could do was done to draw me from the dark valley into which I seemed to have pa.s.sed; while those men who had planted themselves and their rifles between me and death by violence, came on tip-toe to know if I yet lived. When I was able to be out it was not thought safe for me to do so--not even to cross the street and sit on the high green bank which overlooked the river. Harry was constantly armed and on guard, and a pistol shot from his house, night or day, would have brought a score of armed men in a very short time.
A printing company had been formed to re-establish the _Visiter_. In it were forty good men and true, and they sent an agent to Chicago to buy press and type. The St. Cloud _Visiter_ was to begin a new life as the mouthpiece of the Republican party, and I was no longer a scout, conducting a war on the only rational plan of Indian warfare. I begged my friends to stand abide and leave Lowrie and me to settle the trouble, saying to them:
”I cannot fight behind ramparts of friends. I must take the risks myself, must have an open field. Protect me from brute force and give me moral aid, but stand aside.”
But they were full of enthusiasm, and would bear the brunt of battle.
There were open threats of the destruction of the new press, and it was no time to quit the field. Of the first number of the resurrected _Visiter_, the St. Cloud Printing Co. was publisher, and I sole editor.
I prepared the contents very carefully, that they might not give unnecessary offense, dropped the role of supporting Buchanan, and tried to make a strong Republican paper of the abolition type, and in the leader gave a history of the destruction of my office.
The paper gave great satisfaction to the publishers, who had not thought I could be so calm; but Lowrie threatened a libel suit for my history of that outrage, and I said to the printing company:
”You must get out of my way or I will withdraw.”
At once they gave me a bill of sale for the press and material, and of the second number I was sole editor and proprietor, but it was too late.
The libel suit was brought, damages laid at $10,000, and every lawyer in that upper country retained for the prosecution.
This was in the spring of '58. The two years previous the country had been devastated by gra.s.shoppers, and no green thing had escaped. There was no old grain, the ma.s.s of people had been speculating in town lots, and such had been the demand for city charters, that a wag moved in legislature to reserve one-tenth of the land of Minnesota for agricultural purposes. The territorial had just been exchanged for a state government, which was not yet in working order. The capital of every man in the printing company was buried in corner lots, or lots which were not on a corner. The wolves and bears cared nothing for surveyor's stakes, and held possession of most of the cities, howling defiance at the march of civilization. The troops were still in Kansas establis.h.i.+ng slavery, and we lived in a constant state of alarm. The men were organized for defense against Indians, and must do picket duty. All the money was in the hands of the enemy. Citizens had everything to buy and nothing to buy it with. Provisions were brought up from St. Paul by wagon, except when a boat could come from St. Anthony. Those men of the company who were especially marked, were men of families, and it is hard to starve children for the freedom of the press. The nearest court was St. Anthony. Any defense of that suit must be ruinous to those men, and I advised them to compromise.
A committee was appointed to meet six lawyers, and were in despair when they learned the ultimatum of the great Dictator. With the terms demanded, they had no inclination to comply, but sent J. Fowler to me with the contract they were required to sign.
This bound the company in a bond of $10,000 actual payment, that the _St. Cloud Visiter_ should publish in its columns a card from Mr.
Shepley, of which a copy was appended, and which stated that the destruction of the office was not for any political cause, but was solely on account of an attack made by its editor on the reputation of a lady. Also, that said _Visiter_ should never again discuss or refer to the destruction of its office.
Fowler burned with indignation, and was much surprised when I returned the paper, saying that I would comply with these demands. He protested that I should not--that they had set out to defend the freedom of the press.
”Which you cannot do,” I remarked. ”You sign that paper just as you would hand your money to a robber who held a pistol to your head and demanded it. There is a point at which the bravest must yield, where resistance is madness, and you have reached this point. The press is mine, leave its freedom to me. Defend me from brute force and do your duty to your families.”
He returned to the consultation room, where every one was surprised at my compliance. They had all given me credit for more pluck, but since I surrendered, the case was lost. The contract was signed, the bond executed, and everything made tight and fast as law could make it. The friends of free press were indignant, but bided their time. Stephen Miller, a nephew of my mother-in-law, and afterwards governor of Minnesota, was on a visit to Harrisburg during all this trouble, and when he returned, he flew into a towering rage over what he termed the cowardly backdown of the printing company, and published a card in the St. Paul papers, was.h.i.+ng his hands of it.
But to the victors belong the spoils and glory, and now they made much of them. Ladies got out their silks, their jewels and their laces. There were sounds of revelry by night, where fair women and gallant men drew around the social board, on which sparkled the wine-cup and glimmered the yellow gold, to be taken up by the winner. Champagne was drunk in honor of the famous victory, hands were shaken over it, stray sheep were brought back into the true Democratic fold, and late opinions about presses and types were forgotten.
Though, among all the rejoicings, the Bar had the best of it. For once its members had not been like the blades of a pair of scissors; had not even seemed to cut each other, while only cutting that which came between. For once its members were a band of brothers, concentrated into one sharp, keen dagger, with which they had stabbed Freedom to the heart. That triumphant Bar stroked its bearded chin, and parted its silky mustache; hem'd its wisest hem; haw'd its most impressive haw.
”If Gen. Lowrie had ah, but ah, taken legal advice ah, in the first instance ah, all would have been well ah!”
They were the generals who had won this famous victory, and wore their laurels with a jaunty air, while a learned and distinguished divine from the center of the State, in a sermon, congratulated the Lord on having succeeded in ”restoring peace to this community, lately torn by dissensions,”--and all was quiet on the Mississippi.
On its bank sat poor little I, looking out on its solemn march to the sea, thinking of Minnesota; sending a wail upon its bosom to meet and mingle with that borne by the Missouri from Kansas; thinking of a sad-faced slave, who landed with her babe in her arms here, just in front of my unfinished loft, performed the labor of a slave in this free Northern land, and embarked from this same landing to go to a Tennessee auction block, n.o.body saying to the master, ”Why do ye this?” Against the power which thus trampled const.i.tutional guarantees, congressional enactments and State rights in the dust, I seemed to stand alone, with my hands tied--stood in a body weighing just one hundred pounds, and kept in it by the most a.s.siduous care. I was learning to set type, and as I picked the bits of lead from the labeled boxes, there ran the old tune of St. Thomas, carrying through my brain these words:
”Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale, Yet will I fear none ill.”
Why did the heathen rage and kings vex themselves? G.o.d, even our G.o.d, should dash them together like potsherds. What an uneven fight it was--G.o.d and I against that little clique--against a world!
I rented the office to the boys, who at once gave me notice that I was no longer wanted in it. They issued a half-sheet _Visiter_, with ”the Devil” as editor and proprietor. His salutatory informed his readers, that he was in full possession and was going to have a good time; had taught the _Visiter_ to lie, and was going to tunnel the Mississippi.