Article-1855, October 22

Shawnee Mission, K. T.

October 22nd, 1855.

   I think my letter of Saturday, dated at Kansas, I stated Whitfield’s vote at the first election to be twenty-three Hundred and twenty-five, and as it was twenty-four hundred and twenty-five I take this earliest opportunity to correct an unintentional mistake. At the first election Whitfield’s friends only voted—that is, with slight exception, for Reeder got a few votes then; at the second election called by the people, who would not recognize the usurpations of the Stringfellow legislature, the votes thrown were all for Reeder. Thus the two parties avoided coming to collision at the polls, and the vote would have been a fair one under the circumstances, as it stood between them, but for two consideration. In the first place, a large part of Whitfield’s vote was imported from Missouri, as has always been the case with the party who wish him to represent the Territory, a charge which is impossible to bring against Reeder’s votes, for the bulk of his voters come from a distance, the traversing of which was a pretty good guarantee of bona fide intention to settle. Again, while those who voted for Reeder remained perfectly still and peaceable while the Whitfield vote was be polled, the Pro-slavery men resorted to every means to intimidate the Free State men from voting. In spite of all, as I have already written, Reeder by the election returns already in, has four hundred votes more than Whitfield received, counting all the latter got, good, bad and indifferent; and the time the returns are all in from the northern part of the Territory, there is no question but the majority will be six hundred. Wherever polls were opened at the second election, and it was done through the bulk of the Territory, the poll-books were regularly kept and the election conducted according to regular rules, instructions having been sent by the convention that ordered the election. In some few precincts and localities the instructions were not received, and through that cause, as well as from intimidation, the polls were not opened in some places where Reeder would have got a good many votes. In the precinct in which I am now,—and it is a large one so far as territory is concerned, though not populous—there was no poll book opened,  and votes taken at the second election, although there were six votes cast for Reeder here at the first election, which of course were lost. In the first election Whitfield received upward of one hundred and fifty of his votes here. How he got them would be a puzzle to me, if the Missouri State line were not within a mile of Shawnee Mission, and only some three or four miles from the log church where the vote of this section or precinct is taken. As this is in the Shawnee reservation, which extends some thirty miles, there are of course very few white residents, and, indeed, not so very many Indians. There are perhaps a dozen voters around the mission here, including government officials; if there are two dozen, I certainly do not know what can have become of them now, for I have not found more than a third of that number, although Governor Shannon and Secretary Woodson had just started up to the site of the new State capital before I got here. Looking upon the matter in the best light I can go I can find it very slender basis for a hundred and fifty, and Reeder got six votes in this section, which beyond all question were genuine. Gen. Whitfield’s place is a mile and a half distance from where I am writing and about a quarter of a mile from the Missouri State line. I suppose he would also have a few voters there who would be legitimate enough. All the government people here are Whitfield. One of them, a very respectable man, told the (and he seemed to take it for granted that there would be nobody hereabouts who would take a different view of politics from the powers that be) that he “feared Reeder would get his seat.” “Indeed,” he said, “all that can save it is a good sound Democratic majority in Congress,” which, he added, he “feared we would not have.” He said, however, if Reeder got his seat there would be awful times, for there were a good many desperate fellows that would be for running the “abolitionists” out of the country. This latter was a plain enough; but what he meant by the “sound Democratic majority” that would refuse the seat to the man who had the most votes, was a puzzler.

   The country back of Kansas City, and after you get fairly away from the river breaks—and they extend a very short distance—improves rapidly. The soil assumes a darker hue and is deeper, and it is only where the wheels have cut pretty deep that the subsoil is visible. The timber is heavy and of good quality—oak, chiefly white oak, black walnut, poplar, elm and hickory. As you approach the prairie the timber grows lighter, and finally merges into hazel and other bushes, with here and there a scattering tree, and then the prairie stretches out in rich and finely rolling magnificence, and we stand upon the soil of Kansas—that soil which by solemn national compact was once guaranteed to the enterprising children of the Free States, as their richest birthright, but which has now been stained with blood, and the unholy effort to determine that in the future it shall be stained with the sweat and tears of ignoble serfdom. God grant, I murmured, as I gazed on the magnificent scenery before me, that a wiser and less outrageous policy may mark the career of those to whom the power of the government is intrusted; and may the men of the South seek to emulate the early statesman of Virginia, rather than stoop to the chicanery which would use the treason of vain and ambitious northern representatives, who are unscrupulous enough to barter away the true interest of those they represent.

   Far as the eye could reach the magnificent swelling of the prairie were stretched out, broken here and there with islands and strips of timber, but chiefly in the hollows of the prairie, and not sufficient to shut out the prairie highlands beyond, which melted to dimness in the blue horizon. Immediately on the edge of the prairie and on the one side of the road to Lawrence, lay the Shawnee mission and the well appointed farm around it. A row of nearly twenty haystacks stood along the fence in the edge of a meadow, and another goodly row of oatstacks was ranged behind them. Toward the mission I bent my way, and as I approached it had an opportunity to note the improvements. It stands on the slope of a small hollow, from the face of which, and immediately above the limestone rocks which jut out, there start two or three clear and beautiful springs, within a hundred yards of each other. The water is soft and contains solid mineral; there was no appearance of oxyd, and I had no means of testing it, but it is pleasant and I have no doubt very wholesome. There are three large brick buildings close to each other, two of them immediately connected with the mission—the one containing the school-rooms and church, being a very large, long building, some twenty years old—the other the boarding-house of the mission, which looks to be of the same age; both are very good buildings. The third is the house of the person who now owns the farm. Three sections of land here were originally donated by the Shawnee Indians to the Methodist church South for this mission. One section of it is still in the hands of the church; the other two have been sold to a man who now farms the place, and a splendid farm it is. The whole establishment however, appears to work very harmoniously together. The farm-house appears to be used by the community, and everyone about the place appears to board at the mission. The farm-house, as they call it, is two-story, and brick like the others, and in the upper story the governor and secretary of State have their rooms. Both of these functionaries, as I have said, were gone up to the site of the new capital, which is some forty-five miles distance from this place, on the Kansas, or, Kaw river, as it is called here. Preparations are making to build a State-house. Fifty thousand dollars has already been appropriated by Congress for this purpose, and the design is that the building shall cost eighty-five thousand dollars. I believe there is no house of any kind thereabouts at present.

   I did not see the Governor, of course, but saw his son, who arrived some six weeks ago, and acts as his private secretary. The Governor’s public room was certainly not a palace. I had no wish to be critical; but had Mr. Dawson seen the location and general conveniences of the place the present incumbent occupies, before he refused the offered governorship, there would have been good reason for his want of ambition.

   There was no preaching in the early part of yesterday at the Mission. The head of the school, who is also a preacher, was preaching at the church up the prairie, by interpreters, to the Indians—chiefly Shawnees and Wyandots. There are usually about a hundred children at the Mission receiving education and training. Now, however, the school is not so large, but it is quite worthy of attention. At table they behave with the greatest order and decorum; and just fancy how interesting to sit down to eat with some sixty or seventy juvenile Shawnees, Wyandots, and Kickapoos, between the ages of four and eighteen. Their general behavior was certainly very good. I was also pleased to learn that there are several of the Indians who have been educated here now employed as able missionaries, while many of the Indians about here are intelligent and wealthy. I saw a newly married couple, a young man white, and a very pretty Wyandot girl, the daughter of a chief, I believe; and at all events very pretty, and evidently with some white blood in her veins. She was educated at the Mission, and was quite an intelligent looking young person.

   In the evening the bell summoned us to church. The preacher was a young man, one of the teachers, and it was his second sermon. The theme was chiefly the destruction of Jerusalem, from which he drew a very good lesson. Many of the pupils were present, and behaved with attention and propriety. The strains of worship rose in melody through that old church, with a fervent prayer from the head of the institution. When the tones of that prayer had gone up to the God who guides little children as he does empires, I could not help remembering that in this very room sat the Stringfellow legislature, and here was enacted that singular piece of fraud which fraud which sought to usurp a power, dangerous at once and its assumption and exercise; but my thoughts were recalled by these solemn sound of the benediction which closed the quiet Sabbath at Shawnee Mission.

New York Tribune, November 2, 1855 page 6.