had determined to take up a
claim in Kansas and to begin a new life in this stirring country. Had
he foreseen the dreadful consequences to himself and to his family of
this decision we might have remained in Iowa, in which case perhaps I
might have grown up an Iowa farmer, though that now seems impossible.

Thirty days of a journey that was a constant delight to me brought us
to Weston, where we left the freight-wagons and mother and my sisters
in the care of my uncle.

To my great joy father took me with him on his first trip into
Kansas--where he was to pick out his claim and incidentally to trade
with the Indians from our wagon. I shall never forget the thrill that
ran through me when father, pointing to the block-house at Fort
Leavenworth, said:

"Son, you now see a real military fort for the first time in your
life." And a real fort it was. Cavalry--or dragoons as they called them
then--were engaged in saber drill, their swords flashing in the
sunlight. Artillery was rumbling over the parade ground. Infantry was
marching and wheeling. About the Post were men dressed all in buckskin
with coonskin caps or broad-brimmed slouch hats--real Westerners of
whom I had dreamed. Indians of all sorts were loafing about--all
friendly, but a new and different kind of Indians from any I had
seen--Kickapoos, Possawatomies, Delawares, Choctaws, and other tribes,
of which I had often heard. Everything I saw fascinated me.

These drills at the Fort were no fancy dress-parades. They meant
business. A thousand miles to the west the Mormons were running things
in Utah with a high hand. No one at Fort Leavenworth doubted that these
very troops would soon be on their way to determine whether Brigham
Young or the United States Government should be supreme there.

To the north and west the hostile Indians, constantly irritated by the
encroachments of the white man, had become a growing menace. The
block-houses I beheld were evidences of preparedness against this
danger. And in that day the rumblings of the coming struggle over
slavery could already be heard. Kansas--very soon afterward "Bleeding
Kansas"--was destined to be an early battleground. And we were soon to
know something of its tragedies.

Free-soil men and pro-slavery men were then ready to rush across the
border the minute it was opened for settlement. Father was a Free-soil
man. His brother Elijah who, as I have said, was a slave-owner, was a
believer in the extension of