The Kansas herald of freedom. [volume] (Wakarusa, Kan. Territory) 1854-1860, 1859-06-25
Horsos crsslsx on Kansas

1 like Kansas-that is natural kansas
better than l expected to. The soil is
richer and deeper the timber is more
generally diffused; the country more roll
ing-than l had supposed them. There
are, of course, heavy drawbacks in re-
moteness from the seaboard, heavy
charges for bulky goods, low prices of
produce. Indian reserves, and the high
prices of good lumber.
1 consider Kansas we'll watered-no
Prairie State better. / do not confne
this remark to the present, when every
thing is flooded, and likely to be more
so. mean that springs, streams, creeks,
rivers, are quite universal. For my own
private drinking, should like a supply
not so much impregnated with lime /;
but, for limestone water, this is generally
quite good.
And the limestone itself is among the
chief blessings of Kansas. l presume it
underlies every foot of her soil l have
yet traversed, with nearly every square
mile that will be comprised within the
State of Kansas. You see it cropping
out from almost every bluff; it lies
thickly strewn in boulders over the sur
face of every hesdland or promontory
that makes out into the bottoms, low
prairies, or ravines so that if you want
to use it, it is always to be drawn Tor
rolled) down hill. Though not here
needed as fertilizer, it eau everywhere
be quarried, with labor, into building
stone, or burned for use in putting up
chimneys and plastering walls.
But an unpleasant truth must be
stated There are two many idle, shift
less people in Kansas. 1 speak not here
of lawyers, gentlemen spectators and
other on-producers, who are in excess
here as elsewhere | allude directly to
those who call themselves settlers, and
who would be farmers if they were any,
thing. To see man squatted on quar-
ter-section of land, in cabin which
would make fair hogpen, but is unfit
for human habitation, and there living
from hand to mouth by little of this
and little of that, with hardly an acre
of prairie broken, sometimes without a
fence up,) with no garden, no fruit trees,
"no nothing"-waiting for some one to
come along and buy out his "claim" and
let him move on to repeat the operation
somewhere else-this is enough to give a
cheerful man the horrors.
Ask the squatter what he means, and
he can give you hundred good reasons
for his miserable condition. He has nc
breaking team he lost two years and
some stock by the Border Rufians, &C.,
sc. But all this don't overbesr the facts
that, if he has no good timber some oi
his neighbors have it in abundance, and
would be very glad to have him work
part of it in rails, on shares at fair rate;
and if he has no breaking team, he can
hire out in haying and harvesting, and get
nearly or quite two acres broken next
month for every faithful weeks work he
chooses to give at the busy season. The
poorest man gradually hews farms out Of
heavy timber, where every fenced and
cultivated acre has cost twice or thrice
the work it does here.
As to the internal spirit of Land Spec
ulation and Monopoly, l think no State
ever suffered from it more severely thar
this. The spectators in broadcloth are
not one whit more rapacious orpernicious
than the spectators in rags, while the
latter are forty times more numerous
Land speculation here is about the only
business in which man can embark
with no other capital but an easy con.
science For example l rode up the
bluffs back of Atchison, and out three
or four miles on the high rolling prairie
so as to have some fifteen to twenty
square miles in view at one glance. Or
all this inviting area, here were perhap:
half dozen poor or middling habita'
lions, while not one acre in each hundred
were fenced or broken. My friend sale
that every rood l saw was ''pre-empted,'
and held at from thirty up to hundred
dollars or more per. acre. "Pre-empted u
l exclaimed (; show pre- empted by liv
ing or lyiug?" "Well," he responded
they live little and lie a little"
could see abundant evidence of the lying
not at all of the living. To obtain I
presumption, the squstter must swear tina
he actually resides on the quarter section
he applies for, has built a habitation anC
made other improvements there, ant
wants the land for his own use and tina
of his family. The squatters who tool
possession of these lands must every on
have committed gross perjury in obtain
ing pre-emption-and so it is all over tn
Territory, wherever a lot is suppose,
likely to sell for more than the minimum
price.
In another letter we End his estimate o
Kansas politicians and their duties:
The controlling idea of the one-hors
politicians is that the Republicans mus
not let their adversaries have a chance b
raise the cry of "nigger" against them
that hence they must be as harsh, an
cruel, and tyrannical, towards the unfor
tunate blacks as possible, in order to prov
themselves ''the white mans party" Q
else all the mean, low, ignorant, drunken
british whites will go against them fror
horror of NEGRO equality" To which
reply that this sort Of cattle are agains
the Republicans any how, and never ca
be permanently otherwise. They ma
be driven by circumstances to vote ono
or twice with rs, but the virus Of Shai
Democracy is in their blood, and muI
come out. The Democracy, from Ion
practice and an experience that it pay
can dive deeper, stay under longer, an
. come up nastier, in this business Of negrt
hating. than any other party that ev,
, was or ever can be invented. There
, nothing that more strikingly exposes Il
, radical baseness Of slayeholding than Il
. fact that its yetaries so hate those who
D they have long injured that, beaten
0 their desperate struggle to force negro
s into Kansas as slaves, they now turn
S short corner and insist that, if they ca
s not come in as slaves, they shall be al
q out, and even driven out, altogether.
|, Iapprshend that it win be necessa
: for the Republicans Of Kansas, in view
9 the inveterate Western prejudices of
II large portion of her population. to co
cede, for the present, that the right
suffrage shall be exercised only by viii
males, or men of European lineage, 9