Reminiscences of a ’Wayfarer Some of the Important Events of the Pioneer Days of Richardson County and Southeast Nebraska as remembered by the writer who has spent fifty one years here. THI lilS'i'l'UW Ni »t'l I.HTM I ‘WhoV'St’ 1-t ak- t. 111 in 1 I ,* I *! voloe, him nr h r w li I folien. A* the Will" - f .«*:<» A ! T • n I ' with I' 141 1 ! >ot p- Knvwfiert ' liroiltl . * .in Walt Whitman, who was re sponsible for these head lines, was a strangely brilliant think er, j>oet and phvlosophei of the lath r half of the nineteenth cen tury. In appearance, as I have seen him on that world famous thoroughfare in t lie I'Yderal city, Pennsylvania Avenue, he looked something like a cross, between an old clothes man and a mendicant friar, but with a face that reminded me of paint ings that I had seen in the Art < .alleries ol Washington and New York, ol some of the old1 unshaven and unkempt haired prophets, in tiiose far away ages when the high priests were the mighty men in old Jerusalem. It took two hundred years for the world to understand and ap predate Shakespeare, a n <1 it may take as long foi the slow plodding brains ol the masses to grasp in their true gramlure and greatness, the ideas, the j style, and the poetic lire that that nondescript wail ol a war, the drudge of a political depart ment, and the hanger-on ol newspaper offices, in uncouth slovenliness and dirt, scribbled and cast into time, to float or sink as accident, or the ignor enct* of men, might determine. It was said by a very eminent authority that there has not been at any time these twenty three hundred years, more than a halt dozen people who could read and understand the works ot Plato, ^probably a very great exaggeration), and yet they have been published and keot extant all those weary centimes, tor the benefit ot that exception al half dozen. An idea of real \alue once given out in the world, can never perish, nor become lost. It is for that reason, and not the capacity ot an accidental few, that the works of the great Athenian have been cherished by thinking people as time and the world has grown older. Walt Whit man belongs in a 'class with Homer. Shakespeare.Hums and Myron, and will never die. “Whoever speaks to me in the right voice." This presup poses the existence, or the pos sible existence, ot u wrong one. In that peaceful summer of the red letter year in world his lory, when those profoundly ignorant fellow s wanted to be elected members of the legisla ture from this part of the terri lory, there were two voices in clamorous antagonism in the American Republic, and both noisily claiming to be the right i one. It was everywhere in the i minds of the people; in congress and out of it; in the newspn pers and current publications of the day, and had been made the theme of one of the most dra matic works of fiction that ever appeared on this continent. It had never been discussed with any kind of moderation or good sense. To most people who knew nothing historically of the institution of slavery, it was treated as something of very recent origin, and at dead ly war with every civilizing in lluence in the social fabric. In the north, the opposition to the institution as it existed in the southern states, where it was maintained because of its profit able character, was one of sen timent only; but it is probable that if its votaries had been content to confine it to the lim its of the states where it then was,and had not tried to spread it into the territories of the Union, out of which new states ' IN ANTI. ItKI.I.l M I«AY>. [wer» to l»f carved in tie- future, the deadly conflict v. l : after wards ensued, would not have occur* d when it did, nor in the manner it did. Il i- largely believed that slavery w a > t he controling cause ol our civii was. It is not true. That it was the effi cient excuse tortile people ol the south in rebelling against tlm lawful authority ot the I'nited Stales, tlu-n is certain ly no doubt, but the real and all coutnding reason lav deep er under the surface and hidden from the people at large. Jt| was K nown to I’resident Jack - son ,is tar back in our national history as 1X12, and very prob ably before. About that time Mr <'allimm atid his followers asserted the right of a state to nullily an act, or in fact any | act ot congress that Its people ! did not approve ol The doc j trine ot nullification was based on the idea that real govern mental sovereignty resided in tlie states and not in (lie Cnited States, That notion had come down from colonial days, and was the cause of the vigorous opposition of some of the states, notably Virginia, to the ratifi cation of the constitution of 17*7. Many of the Virginia statesmen, Jefferson a m o n gr them, did not like the constitu tion, nor the government formed under its authority, and though that eminent citizen held many offices of trust and power in that government, vice president and then president, for eight years, among others, he yet was opposed to the centralization of power under the provisions of that instrument, as contradis tinguished from his idea of a diffusive government through the instrumentality of the states a* the primal source of govern mental authority. That idea or policy in its last analysis, is made manifest in the Calhoun nullification resolutions in South Carolina, in the decade of l*;-!o, and the civil war in the decade of l*fio President .Jackson, when con fronted with the doctrine of state nullification of a law of congress, thus formulated and amplified in the South Carolina resolutions, expressed the be - liel I have refered to, that there was an element of opposition in the country to the govern ment itself, a n d that there would come a time when some specious excuse would be put torth in destroy it. and in his judgment, the question of slav ery would be selected, to do du ty in the treasonable enterprise. The discussions that followed the admission of Missouri into the Cnion, were not conducted on lines of this kind, but were confim d to those of moral sen timent, and humanitarian con siderations, almost exclusively. Out on these tenantless prairies of Nebraska, a profound silence was maintained on the whole subject, and if it was mentioned at all oil the hustings, or in the legislature, it was done in the most cursory manner and pretty I generally in harmony with the policy of the administration in office which was known to be dominated by the slave power of the south. It was certainly not referred to by the coterie o f small-bored politicians I heard haranguing the people for their votes on the occasion mentioned in my last paper. If they knew anything about the disturbing question, beyond the trouble over it in Kansas, which i> doubtful, they said nothing about it, but confined their ap peal for the suffrages of the people, to what they would do. or attempt to do. in their inter ests in llie way of local legisla tion, and it is very certain that very little. anything,was -aid about it at the ensuing session of the legislature, but tine- was sigiiiticent action by that body concerning' it. at the nest ses -it.n held in the winter of I 00 j Intermediate these d a t e s, tli’ things happened of the highest significence, t h o u gh their far reaching eit'ect was not understood until some time after’ ards. The li. st occurred on the Ibth day of June of that same red letter year, 1'."', at the capitol nf one o| the great middle western states, ft was on the occasion of one of the political conventions of t li e country, and the one all absorb iug question before it, was tile aggressive policy of the south, aided by its friends in the north, to extend it' yeculiar pet insti tution into the western terri tories. On that day t h e r e stepped from out the obscurity of (the people, a tali, angular, sad faced, homely man, who spoke in a voice that has since been demonstrated to be the right one, and the people speed ily came to follow it, as the water,' do the moon, silently, on their errand of mytery all around the world. What lie said pvus not, so far a> words themselves are concerned, par ticularly original, but the ap plication he made (d the famil iar illustration, that a “house divided against itself cannot stand, was so new, so apt, and so thoroughly descriptiveol’ the situation of affairs in the coun try, that it became a new figure of speech and what followed, the dullest of the dull, could easily understand. That this nation must become all one thing, or all the other was the conclusion of the great man who was talking, and though such a result would follow such a premise as a syllogistic con clusion. seemed selfevident. yet the mass of men took it as a real revelation, and felt that, while they had vaguely known it all the time, it required the terse statement of the fact they had just heard, to giv e it form and substance, as a truth estab lished, in their consciousness. It was a new departure, for it told every man his own secret, and all wondered that it had never been told before. Later on in that same year, the same obscure man threw down the gantlet to the miirhty leader of the opposite idea, met him in a series ii f j o i n t discussions through the state, and left not a shred of tile fallicy of the so called popular, or squatter sovereignty doctrine, that so much noist- Ii a d been made about, for more than four years. He not only destroyed and who I ly wrecked the political for tunes of his untayonist, but lie also ruined tin yreat party that for forty years had nursed and pampered the institution that had come to be the monster tlis turber of the peace of the Amer ican Republic, and which Mr. Lincoln said must become law ful in every part of the country, North as well as South, o r cease to exist in any part of it. It took only the five following years to make that prophecy a j fixed and eternal fact. 1 he next sigmticent event oc curred in October of the next year, 1 s.VJ, out on the western coast of our continent. 1 refer to the murder of Senator Brod erick near San Francisco, Cali fornia, by Judge Terry, a vio lent champion of the south, and its institutions. The encounter that resulted in the death of Senator Broderick was called a duel, yclept an affair of honor, but its real name was murder, Broderick was a follower of Stephen A. Douglas, the long time acknowledged leader of the democratic party Douglas lost ;caste with his party over the admission of Kansas as a state. ' He would not consent to making it a state with a constitution ti ■ p-nple had not adopted, and wi cii they did not want. The i) • 'eism of Douy . ' democrats ■j ure yeiieral and Broderick v. - one of them, and it was showing his s ill iii the use of a pistol, the hall from his own pistol struck t ground, between him and ii - antagonist. Thus, another firebrand was added, to tin* rapidly growing I ames of that terrible confla gration which, at a later date, l.i a zed upon the world with ef f . ts more disastrous, t Ii a 11 those produced by the French 11• ■ volution, near the close of the preceeding century. It only needed the election of Abraham Lincoln in the follow ing year, to complete the tale of fateful events, which, for n< urly half a century lias been inflaming the blood o^f those North American descendants of the Norse Kings, and of Hengist and llorsa. to the fever heat of war. and it came. The other inllamable event, was that maniacs raid of John Drown at Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, at a later date, in the same year. They hung the old crazy fanitic in Virginia, and his broken body was buried near his old home in New England with something more than the honors of war, and from that lonelygrave up among the hills of New Hampshire, there went out a battle song, mofe inspir ing than the German Die Wacht am Rhine or the French Mar sailles Hymn, and his body is still on its everlasting march to be ended only, when the point of perfect liberty and justice shall be reached in the fullness of time. All these events affected us in the wilderness quite as much as they did the people in the older communities, and we fol lowed them with the same ah sorbing attention given them anywhere. And now, after the grass has been green on those memorable fields, where the deadly conflict was fought out and ended, for forty odd years, and the vast majority of the heroes who struggled then in defense of the life of the gov ernment of Washington and his illustrious compeers, have gone t*o their silent bivouac, o n « “fame's eternal c a m p i n g ground." 1 feel somehow, that of all the crowding ghosts of thins that have been, that pre sent themselves i n memory claiming recognition, the recol lection of these stirring days, with their fears, doubts and hopes, are the most interesting-, and which I reproduce with the most satisfaction. And now a word about slav ery itself, that disturbing ele ment that one way and another, worked so much mischief in this nation. This, be it remembered, is not reminiscence but a glance at the historical and phylosopli ical side of a question, which, I have before said, was never considered with the good sense and moderation its importance deserved. In the first place 1 'remark, that it was one of the strongest forces employed in the civilization of the human : :*ace. This is putting it as strong as strong as I know how, but it is as true as the sun. To begin with, in its tirst inception, it was a substitute for murder. In the darker ages of the world when man’s principal business wa> war, prisoners taken in ! battle were invariably put to ”Made from ^” cream of tartar, derived solely from grapes. All the ingredients of Dr. Pricefs Baking Powder are printed on the label. They are pure, healthful and proper. When baking powders are peddled or demonstrated, examine their labels. You will find they are not made from cream of tartar. You don’t want them death. In the progress of timej it occurred to conquerors that the prisoners could be put to better use than to kill them, and so they were made slaves of, and compelled to de the work j of their masters. The warriors were too proud to work, and be-j fore the slave came, the women, i as among the North American Indians, performed t hat ser vice. Out of this alteration in the tribal life, came, in time, the in stitution of labor, and with it the institution of marriage. The slave could not own any prop erty or other valuable things, but it occurred to him that lie could take a woman, and by mutual consent, live together after the order of nature, and their children would be their i own in spite of all the conven- j tions, or laws of men. That was the commencement of the most beneficial social institu tion that has obtained in the! civilization of the world. Without it. neither property, nor the social fabric could exist for a day. Slavery in this country had become wrong, or more properly speaking, use less as an auxiliary to man’s so cial redemption, as it was simp ly a wornout or cast off gar ment of an earlier age, like the clothes of a boy. who, having come man's estate, he can no longer wear them. It is agreed by those who have considered the point with attention, that all the great re forms in history have not been effected b y doing something new or unusual, but by undoing something that was old, or be come aside—■ and therefore, wrong on that account. Slav ery had become wrong in this country because it was out of] harmony with the genius of the j age, and the time had come to throw off the slough of an older order. The institution in this country civilized the black race, but it was rapidly debasing and brutalizing the white man, and it had to go, and it did. Why Suffer? If you sutler pain from any cause. Dr. Miles’ Anti Paiu Pills will relieve it —and leave no bad after effects. That’s the impor tant thing. Neither do they create a habit. More often the attacks become less frequent, or disappear altogether. Dr. Miles' Anti-Pain Pills have no other effect except to re lieve pain and quiet nerv ous irritation. “\\V are never without Dr. Miles'* Anti-Pain Hills. My husband anl son, ag> d J5 were always subject to sick headache until we began using these Hills, and they have broken them up entirely. Don't think they have had to use them for six months. I recommend them to every one. A few weeks ago I heard an old lady friend was sn k. I went to see her. She was down with DaGrlppe, and nearlv crazv with awful backache. I gave her une of (he Anti-Pain Pllla and left another for her to lake In a short time They helped her tight away, and she says she will never be without them again. I.ast winter my husband was taken with pluerisy on both sides, and 1 know lie would have died if it hadn't been for the Pills. In less than half an hour lie wad sweating, and went to bed and slept.' JlltS. G. H. WEBB, Austlnburg, Ohio. Your druggist sells Dr. Miles' Ant Pain Pills, and we authorize him to return the price of first package (only) if It falls to benefit vou. Miles Medical Co., Elkhart, Ind Celebrates Eightieth Birthday Last Sunday was the eightieth birthday o f M r s. Henrietta Riechers. one of Humboldt's old - est and most respected citizens A nice family dinner was en joyed and some out of town guests were present. Mr. and Mrs. Tom Davies of Fall- City, and Miss Lulu Schpam of Wich. ita, Kas., the two ladies being granddaughters of Mrs. Riech ers, were in attendance and the day passed in an en joyable man • ner. A post card shower was also given to their aged rela tive by the children, grandchil dren and great grandchildren. Humboldt Leader. 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