Part 19 (1/2)

After a while the friends of this young man buried him. The doctors gave his sickness a respectable name, and reported that he had died of such a disease as decent people may die of, but his friends, with heart-breaking sorrow, knew they were burying a man who had died of a drunken debauch.

I have spoken freely of the evils wrought by our border troubles; but now we had to realize that, taking all the men murdered in our early feuds, and comparing them with the men murdered by strong drink in the city of Atchison, counting man for man, there have been more men murdered by strong drink than by all our border troubles. There have been more women that have had their hearts broken, more children turned into the streets, more fortunes squandered, in the single city of Atchison than in all the Kansas war. But there is another point of comparison. The men who wrestled with each other in that early conflict verily thought they were right. They may have been mistaken, but they thought they were in the right; they therefore maintained their own self-respect. But those who have died in this battle of the bottles and the beer gla.s.ses have lost everything--self-respect, reputation, honor, everything; and they went to the dogs and their souls went to perdition.

I have been a somewhat voluminous writer on many subjects now for forty years, but all this would scarce exceed in amount what I have written in Kansas newspapers, during a series of years, on the single subject of temperance. Besides, I spent much time in lecturing, for the welfare of the church and of the nation was at stake; and yet, what was done by myself was only a drop in the bucket compared with what went to make up, year after year, a great agitation. At length the people became so aroused that the lawmakers at Topeka came to understand that something must be done in the way of temperance legislation; and they gave us a local option law. But crafty politicians obtained that cities of the first and second cla.s.s should be exempted. This was nothing but mockery.

The cities were the very places where the law was most needed, for men from the country went into the city and there they encountered their old enemy, the saloon. And so we kept up the agitation, and demanded that the saloon should be prohibited throughout the State. At length the pressure became so great that the politicians understood a second time that something must be yielded to the popular demand, and they tried another dodge. They said: ”We will give you the privilege to vote an amendment to the const.i.tution incorporating prohibition into the const.i.tution of the State.” This would at least put off the evil day for two years, for it would take two years before such an amendment could go into operation. But here again was seen the usual treachery. The amendment to be voted on read as follows: ”The manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors shall be forever prohibited in this State, except for medical, scientific and mechanical purposes.” This was a stumbling-block laid in the way of feeble-minded Christians, for was not this an attack on their Christian liberty to use intoxicating wine at the Lord's table, and would not this be awful? Moreover, it forbade a farmer to manufacture _hard_ cider from his own orchard, and would not this be a _hard_ and tyrannical law? This was vexatious, for we were fighting the saloon, and were not seeking to palter with such frivolous and intermeddling legislation. Nevertheless, in spite of these crafty attempts to excite popular odium against the amendment, it was adopted by a majority of more than eight thousand, and it became the duty of the next Legislature to enact a law enforcing the amendment. Then some of us waited on these ”conscript fathers” at Topeka, and entreated them, and supplicated them, and almost got down on our knees to them, beseeching- them to use a little courage and common sense. The House of Representatives was largely made up of farmers and men from the country, and was overwhelmingly in favor of an honest temperance law; but the Senate was largely made up of lawyers and men from the city, and was full of treachery and open and secret enmity. And so the Senate took the lead in making the law, and got up a bill that they purposely made as full of imperfections as a sieve is full of holes, and sent it down to the lower house. It was manifestly the duty of the House of Representatives to amend the bill, but now a great scare was got up. The cry was raised: ”There is treachery! treachery! You must adopt this Senate bill without amending it, to the extent of changing the dot of an _i_ or the crossing of a _t_; for if it goes back to the Senate it will certainly be killed.” _And yet the Senate had adopted it by an almost four-fifths majority!_

The fact was, that these Senators, with all their bl.u.s.ter and bravado, were trembling in their boots, and dared not face their const.i.tuents at home while voting against any temperance law, however stringent, and this gave the friends of the law good warrant to make just such a law as was needed. And so the bill became a law; and then there followed such a farce in the courts as might make us lose faith in our Christian civilization and in our civilized jurisprudence. And it came to be understood that a coach-and-four could be driven through the loopholes that had been left in the law, and saloonkeepers began to remark, ”Prohibition don't prohibit.” But from this evil we had what must be regarded a providential deliverance. A judge was found who made up in his own integrity and courage whatever was imperfect in the provisions of the law, and his good example was followed throughout the State.

John Martin, a lawyer, resident in Topeka, is a solid, sensible and honest man. His brethren of the Democratic persuasion wanted to make him a candidate for Governor, but because they would not insert in their platform a plank affirming that the law--because it was the law--ought to be enforced, he declined to accept the nomination, and Geo. W. Glick was nominated and elected. Then Mr. Glick, to reciprocate this courtesy, appointed Martin to a vacant judges.h.i.+p in the Topeka judicial district; and a whisky case came before Judge Martin. The princ.i.p.al witness undertook to play the usual dodge of perjury and equivocation, but Judge Martin stopped the witness and said: ”Sir, you are to tell whether the liquor you bought was whisky.”

The witness again began to repeat his story of equivocation: ”Well, I called for _cold tea_, and I suppose I got what I called for.”

”Stop!” said the Judge in a voice of thunder. ”This witness is lying!

Sheriff, take the witness and lock him up in jail.”

The Sheriff had got as far as the door when the witness called out: ”Judge, are you going to lock me up?”

”Yes, and I will keep you there till you rot unless you tell the truth.”

”Well, I will tell.”

The witness was placed again in the witness box. ”Now,” said the Judge, ”was it whisky you bought of this saloonkeeper?”

”_Yes, it was whisky_.”

The example of Judge Martin was imitated by all the courts, and incredible sums of money have been collected as fines from the saloonkeepers, who, with the brewers, fought the battle to the bitter end, and appealed their cases to the Supreme Court of the United States. But it has ended in their absolute defeat, and even these gentlemen do now admit that prohibition does prohibit--in Kansas.

Since that time the law has been greatly amended, and the saloons have been driven out of the State.

One evil yet remains. Just across the Missouri River from Atchison is East Atchison, and here whisky and beer are as free as water. Of course, this is a great calamity to us, but we wait in expectation and hope that prohibition will yet be achieved in Missouri.

John A. Brooks lives in Missouri; we live in Kansas. This man was once a rebel; we were loyal men. Yet we pray the Father of Mercies to spare the life of this man, to prosper him and keep him, until he shall achieve this great good, not only to Missouri, but to ourselves.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

This reformation in the rapidity of its growth is without parallel in the history of Protestant parties. Those acquainted with its history need not be told that a large number of its members were at first drawn from the Baptists. It is indeed a matter of wonder that a Presbyterian minister, but a short time identified with the Baptists, should exert such an influence over them as to induce a great mult.i.tude _of_ churches and church members to resolve that when he was driven out of the Baptist Church they also would share his fortune, and accept loss of reputation and exclusion from their former brotherhood for the sake of the principles they had learned from him.

Now, when we reflect that this embraced not only young men, but old men--men already arrived at that period of life at which it is most difficult to change our habits of thinking and acting, it becomes a question of profoundest interest; were these men able to make a change so radical as to plant themselves completely on reformation principles, and to abandon everything in their old Baptist order incompatible therewith?

When we remember that this movement embraced gray-haired Baptist ministers, who all their lifetime had been accustomed to lead and not to follow, we curiously inquire, Did they do this, or did they locate themselves on a sort of half-way ground which was a compromise between reformation principles and old Baptistism?

Let us briefly notice wherein they changed, and wherein they did not change.

1. They laid aside the name Baptist and took the name Christian.

2. They built upon the Bible alone, instead of the Philadelphia Confession of faith.

3. They taught that the church began at Pentecost, rather than with the preaching of John the Baptist.