When he was here, some years ago, he
showed to a few a little manuscript book,--his "orderly book" I
think he called it,--containing the names of his company in Kansas,
and the rules by which they bound themselves; and he stated that
several of them had already sealed the contract with their blood.
When some one remarked that, with the addition of a chaplain, it
would have been a perfect Cromwellian troop, he observed that he
would have been glad to add a chaplain to the list, if he could have
found one who could fill that office worthily. It is easy enough
to find one for the United States army. I believe that he had
prayers in his camp morning and evening, nevertheless.
He was a man of Spartan habits, and at sixty was scrupulous about
his diet at your table, excusing himself by saying that he must
eat sparingly and fare hard, as became a soldier, or one who was
fitting himself for difficult enterprises, a life of exposure.
A man of rare common-sense and directness of speech, as of action;
a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,--that
was what distinguished him. Not yielding to a whim or transient
impulse, but carrying out the purpose of a life. I noticed that he
did not overstate anything, but spoke within bounds. I remember,
particularly, how, in his speech here, he referred to what his
family had suffered in Kansas, without ever giving the least vent
to his pent-up fire. It was a volcano with an ordinary chimney-flue.
Also referring to the deeds of certain Border Ruffians, he said,
rapidly paring away his speech, like an experienced soldier,
keeping a reserve of force and meaning, "They had a perfect right
to be hung." He was not in the least a rhetorician, was not talking
to Buncombe or his constituents anywhere, had no need to invent
anything but to tell the simple truth, and communicate his own
resolution; therefore he appeared incomparably strong, and eloquence
in Congress and elsewhere seemed to me at a discount. It was like
the speeches of Cromwell compared with those of an ordinary king.
As for his tact and prudence, I will merely say, that at a time
when scarcely a man from the Free States was able to reach Kansas
by any direct route, at least without having his arms taken from
him, he, carrying what imperfect guns and other weapons he could
collect, openly and slowly drove an ox-cart through Missouri,
apparently in the capacity of a surveyor, with his surveying compass
exposed in it, and so passed unsuspected, and had ample opportunity
to learn the designs of the enemy. For some time after his arrival
he still followed the same profession. When, for instance, he saw
a knot of the ruffians on the prairie, discussing, of course, the
single topic which then occupied their minds, he would, perhaps,
take his compass and one of his sons, and proceed to run an
imaginary line right through the very spot on which that conclave
had assembled, and when he came up to them, he would naturally
pause and have some talk with them, learning their news, and, at
last, all their plans perfectly; and having thus completed his real
survey he would resume his imaginary one, and run on his line till
he was out of sight.
When I expressed surprise that he could live in Kansas at all,
with a price set upon his head, and so large a number, including
the authorities, exasperated against him, he accounted for it by
saying, "It is perfectly well understood that I will not be taken."
Much of the time for some years he has had to skulk in swamps,
suffering from poverty and from sickness, which was the consequence
of exposure, befriended only by Indians and a few whites. But
though it might be known that he was lurking in a particular swamp,
his foes commonly did not care to go in after him.
