stripped off his clothes, and put him through the horrible ordeal of tarring and feathering. This being completed, they rode him on a rail for a mile and a half, and finally put him up at auction, a negro acting as auctioneer, and went through the mockery of selling him, not at the price of a slave, but for the sum of one dollar. Eight days after this outrage a public meeting was held, at which the following resolution was unanimously adopted :-"That we heartily endorse the action of the committee of citizens that shaved, tarred and feathered, rode on a rail, and had sold by a negro, William Phillips, the moral perjurer." The meeting was presided over by Mr. Rees, a member of Council in the Kansas Legislature, and the resolution was offered by Mr. Payne, a Judge and also member of the House of Representatives! The outrage committed against Mr. Phillips was not, therefore, the hasty act of a few murderous ruffians, but one advisedly carried out and afterwards deliberately endorsed by a number of citizens and by members of both Houses of Legislature. Mr. Phillips returned to Leavenworth, but has since, according to accounts received in the autumn of 1856, been shot.

To return, however, from this digression. It was

DISCORDANT ELEMENTS.

93

out of elements thus discordant that the social life of Kansas had to develop itself. The settler from the North brought his shrewd intelligence and hardworking industry; the man of the South his fearless spirit and cavalier independence. Both were animated by a determination to conquer. United they might have made of Kansas a garden of plenty and an advance-post of civilization. But their work in the territory was to oppose one another. And, although this might have been done by pacific means, yet, differing widely as they did in natural characteristics, in their sympathies and their political aims, they soon yielded to the influence of party bitterness, so that the Northern man's persevering energy and the Southerner's high-spirited daring found exercise, not in furthering a common cause, but in acts of mutual hostility.

CHAPTER IX.

Striking Contrast.—Freedom and Slavery.-Rapid Progress of Kansas.-Northern Emigrant Aid Societies.-Spirit of Enterprise. The "Regulators."- "Law-and-Order" Men.The Widow's Son. - Barbarous Outrage.-The Western Frontiers-man. His Character.-Generous Reciprocity.— Mode of Intercourse.-The Pioneer of the New World.His Appointments.-The Romance of Peril.-Achievements of the Western Pathfinder.-Contempt of the Yankees.The Source of Life and Vigour.-Effect of Politics on the Western Character.

NOWHERE in America, probably, is the contrast between the Northern and the Southern man exhibited in so marked a manner as in Kansas. He who would see the difference between comfort and discomfort, between neatness and disorder, cleanliness and filth, between farming the land and letting the land farm itself, between trade and stagnation, stirring activity and reigning sloth, between a wide-spread intelligence and an almost universal ignorance, between general progress and an incapacity for all improvement or advancement, has commonly only to cross the

border-line which separates a free from a slave State. But he who would see these broad contrasts in a single view, the evidences of welldirected enterprise and intelligent energy mixed up with the ugly features of back-going and barbarity, should seek out Kansas, and make its strange varieties of inhabitants his study.

Kansas is not altogether bad. It has its redeeming features, its fairer as well as its darker aspects, as if to justify Byron's line," None are all evil." An impulse more than ordinary has been given on the part of the North, and the necessities of the settler have been more than ordinarily anticipated. Usually life in the bush or life on the prairie implies a long apprenticeship of toil before the reward of industry is reached. The Western settler must in most instances make up his mind to years of lonely struggle, hard battling with the earth and elements, before he finds himself surrounded by the life of civilization even in its most rudimentary forms. But it has not been wholly so in Kansas. The want of capital, which is a principal source of the difficulties and embarrassments that so long retard the progress of settlers in a new country, has been in a great

degree met by the active exertions of the Northern emigrant-aid societies. The appliances of civilized life are, as a consequence, by no means wanting. The church, the school-house, the public hall, the necessities of commerce, saw-mills, and other erections of industry, are all in a certain degree provided; and large public works and costly undertakings are promised, and already have an existence on paper, which are in advance of the wants of the place for many years to come. Hence, trade has been greatly stimulated and a degree of enterprise developed which, had not the pursuits of industry been diverted by the rude. checks of war, would have made this new territory remarkable in the annals of successful progress and rapid increase.

Unfortunately, as I had too many proofs at the time of my visit, the labours of the honest and well-disposed among the settlers were most grievously interfered with by the necessity of bearing arms and shielding themselves from political oppression. The farmers were neglecting their cornfields to form committees of defence. Others found themselves mercilessly robbed of their produce and of their horses and other stock, to