tion ahead of the general information given to the public. For at least that length of time the skilled engineers and pioneers of the army, and an intelligent, well-trained body of men in and about the departments at Washington, knew very well that the "Plains," as they were called, west and southwest of the Missouri River, were fertile and productive far beyond any report ever made concerning them. They had annual production of plants, roots, and grasses that supported buffalo, elk, deer, and numberless other animals, as well as birds by the millions. Also, unnumbered thousands of Indians, as healthy and strongly-developed as any of their race, lived and thrived all over the almost boundless region.

It was in this way the slave-leaders contrived, not for a system based on contingencies, unexpected happenings, or emergencies, but in a steady, determined progress, with plans that were all that the wits, knowledge, and ingenuity of their best-informed and most capable men could make them. During this time freedom and free institutions for this great expanse were quieted to sleep under the fascinating delusion that free labor would drive out slave labor in a competition for supremacy.

In the plans of making Missouri a slave State, it was as much a part of them to gain and keep control of the Missouri River as it had been to acquire and maintain control of the Lower Mississippi. At that time there was no thought of carrying on any considerable commerce or travel other than by means of water transportation. The slaveleaders in the earlier days of the Republic had full confidence of retaining complete control of the entire valley, its products, commerce, and industries, by reason of their control of the lower river, in which they were fully justified in the history of the migrations, business settlements, and progress of our race.

Their plans were never small or hedged in by any kind

of avoidable obstacles. They had no doubt of being able to control the entire valley of both rivers from the day that Missouri was made a slave State. They were still full of this belief in 1854, when they inaugurated their movement to extend slavery into Kansas. They held possession of most of the western rivers, and entire control of all the traffic and commerce on the Missouri River. The order went forth, and was obeyed, that no free State emigration was to be permitted through the State by land or up the river. Although railroads were being built in the West, and a line had been finished from Chicago to St. Louis in 1853-54, the work of building them was slow and tedious. It was a new process of industry to the people, and the slave-leaders had no thought that a railroad could be built in time to affect their plans.

They were fully satisfied that, in closing the Missouri River to free State emigration, they would approximately stop it, for the only other route open to these people was an overland journey, through Iowa and Nebraska, of at least four hundred miles, twice as far, while there were lands of better repute open to settlers on this northern route. They planned that shutting off "Yankee emigration" would leave the Territory fully under their control as soon as they could drive "the Emigrant Aid Society people" out, which they fully expected to do. Atchison repeatedly informed their junta at Washington that he could do all this in a few weeks' time if they would put the force of the army under command of one of their friends. He named several such men that he had become acquainted with in his long residence at Washington; and wanted them to keep away these "half-Abolitionist Democratic governors, and let Woodson act and bear the responsibility."

They tried very hard to do all this for Atchison at Washington, and carried it into execution to the extent of their ability. Again and again they went to General

Scott and pleaded for the appointment of some favorite of Atchison or Davis to take military command in Kansas; but the old general would say, "When "Blank' is relieved, I will consider with you the matter of appointing his successor. Until then I do not care to take it up. 'Blank' suits me very well, and I will do nothing now about selections for the future, or removals." But, in the making and unmaking of governors, they kept the road thronged from Washington to Leavenworth, as we learn in counting all of the five, from Reeder to Sam Medary, in order that Atchison and his man Woodson might be free from "Yankee Democratic governors" as much of the time as possible.

They greatly mistook and underrated the grit and determination of the industrious free State people to open and build some other line for commercial use besides the Missouri River. Indeed, they did not know that they had started a new era and lasting benefit to commerce when they shut off "Yankee emigration" and travel on that river; for, though it is true that the "Yankees" were 'cute and knew a great deal in those days, they did not know the bottom "aggravatin's" of that stream; for, whatever might have been generally known of the science and art of commerce and navigation of that time, what there was of the Missouri, and what there was of trade and barter on it, was entirely confined to the hardy river men, who went up and down, through its soft mud and sandbars, about once a year if they had good luck; and the patient inhabitants living along it were old men, at an average of twenty-five years, by reason of their repeated disappointments and original belief that it was a navigable stream.

Great contentions and disputes were breaking out somewhere along its course almost every day about this. One man, for instance, contended that it was a navigable stream, and that for freighting merchandise as far as twenty miles

it was preferable and more speedy than the other man's oxteams or "gravel-line" of freighters. This provoked the man with the oxen to a trial, so that when the Merchant's Express, a new steamboat, got off the bar at Booneville at four o'clock one day, the owner, with his wagon-load of freight drawn by two yoke of oxen, started up the river to Lexington, about seventy miles, on a race with the boat. The steamboat turned the bend in an hour, and was out of sight, with the oxen only three miles on the way, when there were cheers for the swift boat, and the poor fellow, poking up his oxen along the sandy road, harassed by swarms of flies, was declared out of the race; but he plodded on, and "poked and hollered up his cattle." In five days. the tired freighter and his more tired oxen did n't fly into Lexington. No, but just slowly "pulled into town." He drove up to the post-office, where he inquired, "Hev' you hear'n tell anything uv the Merchant's Express? Has she gone up the river?" The postmaster replied: "Not that I know of, Jim. If the boat has gone, she passed up in the night without landing, which would be singular. Yesterday she was stuck on the bar between Soakum's Bend and Floating Island. They are worried over her. She's loaded down four feet, a foot and a half too much for the water. They had forty men at work all day yesterday building a dam and a two hundred yard chute to run in the water and float her off. Tom Pulloff is there with his men, and I expect he'll get her off to-day. When are you going with your sugar?"

When Jim disposed of his load, he headed down the river, keeping a close watch for the Merchant's Express, the fast new steamer. He found her hanging in the sand at the foot of Floating Island, as he expected, almost ten miles from Lexington. As he drew up to the shore, he called for the captain, as the boat was not over fifty yards from the shore. "I am not the captain. He left us, sick,

at Jefferson City. I am part owner of the boat. This is her first trip up the river, and I have never been above Jefferson City before. I live in St. Louis, where a few of us have undertaken the work of building some strong, light draught-steamers for the Missouri River trade. The clerk has charge of the work. He will be down shortly and see you."

During this parley Jim sat crosslegged on a plank across the middle of his wagon-box, with his long ox-whip in his hand, "chawing" his long-green "tobacker" vigorously, and expectorating loosely, muttering to himself, "He's a tenderfoot, sure, and mor 'n half Yankee." The clerk, an average river man, soon arrived, saying, "Are you Jim Totem, one of the Totem river and plain freighters?"

"Yes, I'm Jim. Me an' Ben's in the bizness. Ben's on the way up with two loads from Booneville. I'm lookin' fur him ev'ry minit. He's got two uv our best wagons an' four-yoke teams, uv the 'Gravel Road Express.' That beats steamboatin' on this river all holler. Yes, thar he

comes roundin' the hill on this side uv the crick. We'd be glad to akommodate you. Yer not likely to git off soon. What kin we do fur you? Our charges is reasonable."

The clerk replied: "Yes, we 're stuck hard. I hardly expect we can get off this week without unloading; and then to reload takes time, so I am inclined to believe that we had best unload and get down stream as soon as possible, before the water gives out. How much will you take the load into Lexington for, and two or three tons each to Liberty and the mouth of the Kaw?" Jim replied: "You're right, only it's a 'tarnal sight wus than you're sayin'. The June rise is mighty nigh over, and she's goin' down mor 'n an inch a day, and if your boat sticks thar two days longer she 'll winter right thar, and not git away till next April onless a high river kums along kind uv accidental."