Article-1855, May 26

From the New York Tribune.

From Kansas.
Johnson’s Mission, K. T.,

May 26, 1855.

   This is the headquarters of the pro-slavery party in Kansas, and the Rev. Mr. Johnson is one of its leaders. But the residence of the government officers has also been here for the past winter and this has drawn hither men of all shades of politics.

   The Mission is in the midst of that beautiful rolling prairie country which so abounds in Kansas, with no advantage over the eastern part of the Territory except a spring which here comes to the surface. But the hand of cultivation has shown us here how beautiful all our homes in this favored region may be made; and the worldly prosperity of this reverend proprietor teaches us how to bring into tangible shape about us the exhaustless riches of this incomparable soil. The substantial brick buildings, shaded by trees, and the well-fenced fields present an aspect really inspiring to the weary immigrant, who can see that but little labor will make his quarter-section as comfortable and productive a farm as this.

   I arrived last evening. Mr. Johnson accommodates at reasonable charge all wayfarers who come; And I was speedily ushered by an active gray-headed negro who acts the major domo of the establishment, into a long dining-room dimly lighted with lamps, and through the whole length of which ran two tables with the plates arranged for breakfast.—The weird aspect of the turbaned slave, and the character of the room whose extremes the feeble light of the lamps failed to penetrate, brought to my mind the whimsical descriptions of old romances, where the stranger knight is welcomed with mysterious formalities to the great hall of some feudal castle and regaled at its board without knowing whether to class its baron among friends or foes. I smiled at the conceit, and did such justice, I trust, to the good cheer placed before me as would not dishonor the romantic comparison or disgrace any Christian knight in the stronghold of his Paynim foe.

   A supplementary entertainment awaited me, fully equal in its way to the bounties of the table which I had so emphatically approved. This was a Kansas thunder-storm, which made the night almost as brilliant as the sunshine at this moment streaming through my window, and lulled me to sleep with a grateful sound of down-pouring floods of water upon the parched earth, and a deep, melodious bass of Thunder rolling along with rich undulations of sound, swelling and sinking like the beautiful plain, which I could almost fancy the mold in which its varying echoes were cast.

   This morning after a most refreshing stroll, I tended the service held every Sunday in the Chapel. Mr. Johnson officiated in person—a thing not unusual with him of late years—for, like other political ecclesiastics who are pecuiarily able, he finds it more agreeable to employ a substitute. He is a large, well-looking man, of grave deportment and speech, with a temperament rather phlegmatic and a square, practical cast of countenance that guarantees his fidelity to the matter-of-fact details of business, but gives no promise whatever of creative intellect, or the high, generous impulses of imagination. The audience was composed mainly of the resident officials, the white members of the household, and about fifty Indian youths and children who compose the school, and some of whom I understand to be orphans. Their dress was tidy and neat, and some of the older girls had intelligent faces. One of the most significant facts about them is their color—not a dozen of them being full-blooded Indians, and many having light hair, and skins almost white. The sermon was a mild specimen of the kind you may anywhere hear in a Methodist Chapel.

   As to the personal and religious character of Mr. Johnson, as the world goes, I know nothing against it. His demeanor is gentlemanly, and but for the constant reflection that his religious profession of saving souls is stultified ten times daily by his practical championship of a systematic destruction of soul and body, I could believe that he has for eighteen years occupied his border position out of conscientious instead of mercenary motives.

   The government survey proceeds with slowly. The fact seems that the Surveyor General is not a practical man, and he has certainly shown little of the energy needed in his position. He was absent nearly all winter and has now gone east again. The base line on the boundary between Kansas and Nebraska was run through during the winter, and now the engineers who have gone on to continue the survey pronounce that line wrong and say that it must be run over. If this should be so it will put back the work several months. The first meridian is to be started on the base line some thirty miles west of the Missouri border. It is much to be feared that the lands will not be in market for two or three years, thus continuing and increasing the difficulties about titles—difficulties which will be numerous enough in any event. But one good effect at all events will be produced and that is the exclusion of speculators in lands, and the country must needs be held by actual residents till the survey is finished. By that time we may have some new laws.

Stranger

The Kansas Herald of Freedom, July 21, 1855, p.1.