Henry Wilson Arms Himself

Henry Wilson (R-MA)

Preston Brooks could have challenged Charles Sumner to a duel. The Yankee would have refused and his fellow Northerners would have dismissed Brooks as a barbarian, but Brooks had the option. Doing so would have meant according Sumner a kind of peer status as a fellow gentleman, which didn’t have the visceral punch that Brooks wanted. He had to degrade Sumner by treating him like less than a white man to achieve satisfaction.

Wilson damned Brooks on the floor of the Senate on May 27 and the speech roused Andrew Butler, just returned to Washington. He shouted that Wilson was a liar and other senators convinced him to withdraw the remark. Brooks didn’t take the news of it well and chose to get satisfaction again. This time, he challenged Wilson to a duel. He picked a proper second, Oregon’s delegate Joseph Lane. Lane later ran second fiddle to John C. Breckenridge on the Southern Democracy’s ticket in 1860.

Wilson received advice from Joshua Giddings, Schuyler Colfax, and some others on what to do. He ignored it and delivered an answer he related years later:

I characterized, on the floor of the Senate, the assault upon my colleague as ‘brutal, murderous, and cowardly.’ I thought so then. I think so now. I have no qualification whatever to make in regard to those words. I have never entertained, in the Senate or elsewhere, the idea of personal responsibility in the sense of a duellist. I have always regarded duelling as the lingering relic of a barbarous civilization, which the law of the country has branded a crime. While, therefore, I religiously believe in the right of self-defence in its broadest sense, the law of my country and the matured convictions of my whole life alike forbid me to meet you for the purpose indicated by your letter.

In other words, Wilson knew what Brooks resented. He would not withdraw a word of it and he would not take part in Brooks’ affair of honor. People in Massachusetts didn’t go for that kind of savagery. Still, Wilson knew his protocols or at least had the good sense not to deliver his answer to Brooks in person; he had a congressman deliver it.

Wilson took Brooks seriously, dismissal or not. He telegraphed his wife to inform her of the challenge, his refusal, and that if Brooks came upon him Wilson would “defend my life, if possible, at any cost.”  He also made arrangements with friends of his, William Claffin and John B. Alley, to look after his ten year old son and “armed himself for defence, resolved to go where duty called.”

Preston Brooks (D-SC)

Wilson’s history also tells that “a few Southern members” got together at a Washington hotel and debated doing something to him. James Orr, one of the men who knew in advance of Brooks’ plan against Sumner, told Wilson in 1878 that he talked them down. I haven’t read this from anyone else and we must suspect that Wilson may have dramatized things. Orr could also have inflated idle talk into a serious conspiracy. Still, the toxic environment in Washington at the time, where Southerners endorsed Brooks wholeheartedly renders something on those lines happening plausible.

 

 

 

Back to Washington with Senators Wilson and Butler

Henry Wilson (R-MA)

The Public Indignation Meeting at Faneuil Hall on May 30 featured diverse Massachusetts luminaries venting their displeasure at Sumner’s treatment. Some of the same politicians made their displeasure known in a more formal setting. The Massachusetts legislature, utterly dominated by Know-Nothings, produced its own set of resolutions about Brooks’

assault which no provocation could justify, brutal and cowardly in itself, a gross breach of parliamentary privilege, a ruthless attack upon the liberty of speech, an outrage on the decencies of civilized life, and an indignity to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The resolutions further approved of Sumner’s “manliness and courage” and demanded an investigation. State legislatures passed resolves on this order fairly often, dispatching them as petitions for their congressional delegation to enter into the record. Each might get a brief speech and the Congress would then do as it liked. Massachusetts bypassed the ordinary process, instead directing the Governor send copies directly to the President of the Senate, Indiana slaveholder Jesse Bright, and Speaker of the House.

I haven’t found a date for the resolutions or their reception by the Senate. Given that the chamber voted for Seward’s proposal for a committee on the attack the day after, it seems unlikely that they played a direct part in consideration. Matters in Washington did not inspire much confidence. The Senate passed the buck to the House. The House committee delivered its recommendations: expulsion for Brooks and censure for Edmundson and Keitt. Those proceedings take us up to June 2, 1856.

Henry Wilson didn’t wait for all that. He had a smaller, but much more exalted audience than a New York or Boston crowd in the United States Senate. By May 27, word of Sumner’s testimony had gotten around to the Senators. Some of them didn’t like how they came off in it and took to the floor to offer their explanations for the record; Slidell explained himself then. Wilson accepted that explanation and granted that he didn’t think Sumner meant to cast Slidell in a bad light. He also granted Douglas’ version of events.

Wilson continued:

Mr. Sumner was stricken down on this floor by a brutal, murderous, and cowardly assault-

Andrew Butler (D-SC)

Andrew Butler, returned from South Carolina to defend his kinsman, broke in here. The Congressional Globe reports that he

impulsively uttered words which Senators advised him were not parliamentary, and he subsequently, at the insistence of Senators, requested that the words might be withdrawn.

Butler admitted he spoke rashly, saying that

I used a word which I hope will not be put down. I have never used an epiphet on this floor, and therefore ask that I may be excused.

Reading that, you might think he speculated about Wilson’s parentage or his sexual inclinations. Wilson recalled what the South Carolinian said in his history of the era, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, published in 1874. His words

provoked the exclamation “You are a liar!” from Mr. Butler; although at the request of Senators he immediately withdrew the words.

Directly calling a man a liar, in the Southern code of honor, essentially dared him to admit lying or prove his convictions in a duel. The accusation itself came near to a challenge and so, understandably, Butler’s colleagues talked him down and he at once regretted it. Two days later, an interested party took up Butler’s claim as his own and challenged Henry Wilson to a duel properly: Preston Brooks.

To “record our protest against such a doing”

George Hillard

George Hillard, who has known Charles Sumner for years and once considered him a friend as well as a law partner, condemned Preston Brooks’ caning of his old friend as inhuman and brutal. More than that, and more importantly, he called it cowardly. If Brooks faced Sumner in even terms he would still have transgressed against the respectable mores of Massachusetts gentlemen, but to attack a man unawares made his caning the work of an assassin.

Hillard continued by noting that every man had a duty to come forward, as he and they had, and

record our protest against such a doing, to express our sympathy with our Senator from Massachusetts who has been thus assaulted, and to proclaim to the United States and the world that this is an occasion in which we are able to soar above party distinctions. It is not a gentleman belonging to this or that political party, but it is a man representing Massachusetts, who has been cruelly and brutally assaulted for the honest discharge of what he deems to be his duty, and we have only to say against such doings, we do protest now and all times. (Applause.)

In his own life, Hillard probably felt that pull. He and Sumner hadn’t gotten on in years and retained only a formal remnant of their old friendship. Brooks’ attack took precedence over their personal disagreements, just as it did over Governor Gardner’s differences with Sumner. He represented Massachusetts and that mattered.

Having gone so far, Hillard dialed back:

I hope, in conclusion, that we will not suddenly jump at the inference, that this brutal and cowardly act, is in any degree the expression of public sentiment or sanctioned by the public feeling in any particular section of the country. As yet we have no evidence of it, and let us wait until we have that evidence. I trust we shall not have it

Boston gathered for public indignation on Saturday, May 24. Only two days had passed since the caning. News clearly hadn’t reached Boston of the general delight with which the South greeted received word of Sumner’s plight. Hillard, as a more moderate and less political man than Sumner, might of his own accord approach the question with more circumspection. Doing so before evidence had come in speaks to general prudence and good sense in an era when it could take days for news to travel the country.

“Not first that it was inhuman and brutal, but it was cowardly”

George Hillard

Massachusetts’ Know-Nothing governor, Henry Gardner, had mixed feelings about Sumner’s caning. He condemned it at the public indignation meeting, but left room in his condemnation for anyone who harbored doubts about whether Sumner had gone too far. As a member of a party which positioned itself often as an alternative to antislavery extremism, while retaining some antislavery preferences, he had to thread that needle whatever his private thoughts. Resolutions followed Gardner’s speech, in the same vein as the New York set, but with an additional dig at the congressmen who voted against the House investigatory committee.

George Hillard, a former law partner and friend of Sumner’s who grew apart from him as the latter became more invested in politics, took the stage next. Hillard noted that Sumner’s speech had “strong expressions” but no one called him to order. Therefore, his speech had to be proper. After disclaiming any commitment to pacifism, Hillard got to the meat of it:

the principle that in a civilized community a man may resort to physical violence for the sake of redressing a private wrong, is a doctrine which you and I, and all of us, do most distinctly repudiate, because by adopting or admitting it you render null and void all that has been done by our fathers and mothers to build up this goodly fabric of the State, the highest work of man’s hands.

Hillard had the right of it, by his mores and I hope our own. White Southerners disagreed, but they didn’t attend public indignation meetings in Boston. Sumner’s old partner went on to expound about degrees of culpability in assaults. One could justify, or at least forgive attacks, “made in hot blood” or “under sudden provocation”. Even attacking a person of “notorious violent, manners and deportment” could get a pass.

Brooks did none of that. He couldn’t have acted in the heat of the moment as he “had had at least one sun go down upon his wrath” and against a man who

I can testify, after a friendship of twenty years, is a most amiable, gentle, and kindly man. (Applause.)

Hillard and Sumner hadn’t actually carried on a friendship since the late 1840s, but close enough. He drilled further down, distinguishing Brooks’ assault from “a boxing match”. Men in Massachusetts must still have settled things that way on occasion. He declared such bouts “not a pretty thing to look at” but resolving things that way made one

far nobler or at least less ignoble than the assassin who dogs the steps of his victim in the dark and stabs him in the back. So too the man who comes to me, face to face, at noonday in the street, and tells me he is going to inflict a personal chastisement upon me, there is even in that some little show of fair dealing, of honesty so to speak, even in the very attitude and circumstance of the assault.

If you had to do violence, and Hillard accepted that you sometime might have to, then do it the right way. Stand up and face your foe, don’t skulk around, plot, and strike from surprise. What Brooks did struck Hillard as

a very bad specimen of a very bad school, and the comment I made upon it, was not first that it was inhuman and brutal, but it was cowardly.

The cowardice, mention of which drew applause, stood out to Hillard more than the brutality or inhumanity even in retrospect. He depicted Sumner as, “a man imprisoned, tied hand and foot, so to speak, in an arm-chair and desk” when Brooks struck, “without warning.” That made the South Carolinian an assassin striking a nearly helpless victim. Compared to that Hillard, could commend the “manliness and courage” of someone who met him on the road and whipped him.

 

Governor Gardner on Sumner’s Caning

Henry Gardner (Know-Nothing-MA)

New Yorkers across the political spectrum, from the conservative establishment of the North’s most proslavery city to reformers and radicals, united in condemning Charles Sumner’s caning by Preston Brooks on the floor of the United States Senate. At the city least likely to generate such a response, New York stands out from the crowd. That said, it had a big crowd to stand out from. Sumner’s biographer, David Donald, recounts that

There were not merely rallies in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, not merely in Albany, Cleveland, Detroit, New Haven, Providence, and Rochester, but in Newmarket, New Hampshire, Lockport, New York, Rahway, New Jersey, Berea, Ohio, Burlington, Iowa, and in dozens of other towns.

Preston Brooks had at least briefly united most of the white North, a feat not quite accomplished by the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, or all of Bleeding Kansas to date. The outrage naturally united Massachusetts, where a public indignation meeting occupied Faneuil Hal on May 24. Governor Gardner gave the opening speech, wherein he rehearsed familiar themes and then drove into a condemnation of political vitriol:

Gentlemen, I cannot resist this opportunity to say to you that this event, unparalleled heretofore in the history of our country, can perhaps be traced by easy and slow gradations to that habit which is too frequently adopted even in Massachusetts, of unbridled abuse and calumnious insinuations and assaults against the character, purposes, designs and motives of our public men – While I stand here to defend the liberty of speech, I would not have that liberty degenerate into licentiousness. He who strikes into the bosom of an opponent with a dagger, or he who uses a bludgeon upon his head attacks his physical life; but he who uses the dagger of the assassin on the character of a political opponent, or the bludgeon of an untruth upon his reputation, is as bad as the other.

One could hear all that and get the wrong idea. Governor Gardner sounds like a man with more than half a mind to pin this all on Sumner, the martyred victim. The five thousand or so gathered in and around the hall can’t have minded Gardner’s previous pleas to rise above party too much, but just where did he mean to go with the next part? Gardner himself must have realized that, because he immediately dispels the obvious inference:

I can hardly trust myself to speak of this despicable conduct as it deserves. I have read the speech which gave rise to it, and I am constrained to say that in my judgment there is not a pretext for the assault. But whether the words were weighed carefully and were in good taste or not, is not the question. the question is, whether a man from Massachusetts can be indulged with the same latitude that the other sixty senators of Congress are allowed. That is the point for us to consider, and I hesitate not to say that this speech does not surpass many speeches which have been uttered there and gone abroad to the winds, without the first word of complaint against them.

Charles Sumner (R-MA)

The Governor has obvious mixed feelings. The content of Sumner’s speech doesn’t matter, as a matter of principle. On the other hand, nothing in it would justify an attack upon his person. But do remember, character assassination has no place in decent politics. I don’t know what Gardner’s delivery was like, and my report of the speech lacks crowd reaction notes, but he sounds like a man trying to please diverse factions without committing to much to any of them. If you believe Sumner’s speech completely within bounds, you can draw lines out of Gardner to support that. If you believe it outside the limit of good taste, or just minimally acceptable discourse, then Gardner also supports you. Only the position that Sumner really had it coming doesn’t get clear support.

 

“We respectfully await the action of the House of Representatives”

The New York Herald reports on the indignation meeting

New York City’s public indignation meeting got off to a bit of a slow start, despite the packed Tabernacle. The crowd arrived on time, but not the committee and speakers. I don’t know what caused the hold up, but they arrived with a set of resolutions for the multitude to endorse. Those resolutions condemned Preston Brooks’ caning Charles Sumner as an attack upon democratic government, and consequently an attack upon the North in general. Furthermore, as the Southern press and politicians united in endorsing Brooks’ assault they had to understand the caning as retroactively the work of the entire white South. That united the leading men even of a proslavery city like New York. They continued

from no other motive and from no other impute we are called upon to a distinct and unequivocal expression of our feelings and opinions on this important event, in our deep, unchanged and unalterable attachment to the federal constitution and federal Union, we should find abundant reasons for the most earnest solicitude and the most decided action to arouse reflecting, disinterested, and patriotic citizens, in all parts of the country, to a manful and united determination to frown upon and extinguish the first indications of violence and terror as agencies in our political system.

In other words, the people on the speaker’s platform and in the audience understood themselves as often political adversaries. By diverging from their usual alignments they could look like men trying to ride a wave for selfish purposes. The resolutions denied that, casting the caning emphatically as an American matter, not merely one of party sentiment. They had their disagreements, but they staked out a norm that no one should conduct politics as Brooks and his many southern admirers had.

At this point, one might expect a course of action to appear in the resolutions. The meeting articulated the problem and their understanding of it; a remedy forms a next logical step. Here they pulled back just a little,

we respectfully await the action of the House of Representatives in the premises, but we announce, we believe, the universal sentiment of our citizens, as demanding the immediate and unconditional expulsion of Mr. Brooks from their body, as a necessary vindication of their own character.

The meeting did not presume to dictate the House’s course; it merely expressed the universal belief that the House take a certain course of action and kick Preston Brooks out. This double talk can’t have fooled anyone, but given that the resolutions focused so closely on the sanctity of government and the prerogatives of men holding public office, specifically Sumner, an outright order would have been a jarring departure from theme. Customarily, public meetings didn’t dictate to Congress in so many terms. They requested or recommended actions as expressions of their members in the form of petitions, not ultimatums.

The resolutions closed with an order they could make, because it applied only to them. The newspapers should publish the resolutions and send them to New York’s delegation in Congress, where those men should lay them before the House and Senate for proper consideration.

To “firmly and boldly oppose and overthrow any and every set scheme”

The New York Herald reports on the indignation meeting

New Yorkers did not think highly of Preston Brooks’ violent escapade against Charles Sumner’s skull on the floor of the United States Senate. By breaking a cane over Sumner’s head, the South Carolinian attacked the fabric of republican self-government. White men of the North took that as their birthright whatever they thought of the party now claiming republicanism in their name and declaring slavery’s threat to it. In caning the Republican, Brooks also caned the Republic. Furthermore, they could not dismiss the caning as a private affair. Yankees might brawl on occasion, or more often; heated politics didn’t necessarily bother them. That the South appeared united in endorsing Brooks’ conduct elevated the dispute to a higher and ominous plane. They couldn’t dismiss him as a bad apple in light of all that. When Brooks caned the Republic, the whole white South joined in.

Ramping up on that theme, the New Yorkers spoke then for their whole section:

We rejoice to believe and to say that the general community of the free States, by their public men and their public press (with a few base exceptions to prove the honorable rule), and through all the channels of public opinion and public influence do thoroughly denounce, and by word and act will firmly and boldly oppose and overthrow any and every set scheme, system, or principle which avows or upholds violence as a means or mode of affecting political action, or restraining personal freedom, or enforcing servile inequalities among the statesmen or common citizens of this country; that in public questions, where each citizen is the keeper of the rights of his fellow citizens, and each generation holds a solemn trust for its posterity, next to the commission of injustices and violence there is no greater crime against the commonwealth than their permission, with power to prevent them, and their sufferance with a spirit that can feel them.

This said a great deal. Yankees would no longer stand by, complicit, in systems that endorsed violence to suppress political action or restrain personal freedom, whether among statesmen or ordinary white men. The white South practiced just such a system, enforcing censorship of its mails to keep out antislavery material and through the use of violence and intimidation to rout any antislavery whites who happened to live in the slave states. Neither system worked perfectly, and both saw prosecution most aggressively in moments of perceived threat to slavery, but free white men suffered under them all the same.

Charles Sumner (R-MA)

For many antislavery whites, those sins against freedom counted as much for despotism as any offense against blacks. For most, they counted much more. The antislavery movement had its greatest successes not in defending the lives, safety, or freedom of black Americans, but in advocating for white men. Republicans wanted to spread free labor across the West, in lieu of slavery. The free laborers they had in mind had white skin. When black laborers threatened to join them, even as free men, westerners saw fit to pass laws against their presence.

Still, one must take notice. The New Yorkers assembled at the Tabernacle that day came together in the North’s most proslavery city and represented a cross-section of the city’s politics. Antislavery radicals could produce resolutions like this at the drop of a hat. It took a truly extraordinary and unprecedented event to bring in the city’s conservatives. For once, the white community unified against a proslavery attack. If it could happen in New York, it could happen far more easily elsewhere.

“They cannot afford to be generous or even just.”

Charles Francis Adams

The Senate gagged Charles Sumner, denying him the customary permission to speak on behalf of a motion he presented for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. The man with three backbones had shown his backbone at last. His fellow senators, citing their parties’ commitment to the finality of the Compromise of 1850, told Sumner that he shouldn’t take this personally. They had to do what they had to do, just as he did in bringing the resolution to the floor to begin with. Before the vote, Sumner had every expectation that he would speak. He got on well with Southern men. His oratory had won praise before. Senate custom stood on his side. In rising to ask the chamber to take up his resolution, Sumner got in his only words on the subject:

As a Senator, under the responsibilities of my position, I have deemed it in my duty to offer this resolution. I may seem to have postponed this duty to an inconvenient period of the session; but had I attempted it at an earlier day, I might have exposed myself to a charge of a different character. It might have been said, that, a new-comer and inexperienced in this scene, without deliberation, hastily, rashly, recklessly, I pushed this question before the country. This is not the case now. I have taken time, and, in the exercise of my most careful discretion, at last ask the attention of the Senate. I shrink from any appeal founded on a trivial personal consideration; but should I be blamed for delay latterly, I may add, that, though in my seat daily, my bodily health for some time past, down to this very week, ash not been equal to the service I have undertaken. I am not sure that it is now, but I desire to try.

Did you hear that, William Lloyd Garrison? Sumner had good reasons to delay, including personal illness. David Donald, citing Sumner’s letters, names the sickness as diarrhea and attributes it to Sumner’s nerves. He might have the right of it. One doesn’t want to give a lengthy speech while cramped up or likely to have dire need of a recess midway through. Now, at last, and against his better judgment given continuing infirmity, Sumner would speak. The Senate need only let him and they would hardly refuse a man who deliberated so long and confessed to such a weakness.

But they did, blindsiding Sumner. Charles Francis Adams wrote Sumner on August 1 explaining how he had gone wrong:

The result at which you arrived is not in the least surprising to me. You are in your nature more trusting than I, and therefore expected more. Where slavery is concerned I have not a particle of confidence in the courtesy, honor, principles, or veracity of those who sustain it, either directly by reason of selfish interest, or more remotely through the servility learned by political associations. In all other cases I should yield them a share of confidence. I should not, therefore, had I been in your place, have predicated any action of mine upon the grant by them of any favor whatever. They cannot afford to be generous or even just. If you can get even that to which you have a clear right, you will do pretty well; but to get it you will have to fight for it.

Adams spoke from experience, both in his own career and upbringing and as a Northern man in general. To a significant degree, the political progress of the free states during the last decade of the antebellum involved their moving from an innocence like Sumner’s, or at least an indifference, to a hardened awareness like Adams already preached in 1852.

Good News and Bad News, The New England Emigrant Aid Company, Part Four

Eli Thayer

Parts 1, 2, 3

We left the New England Emigrant Aid Company in dire financial straits. J.M.S. Williams wrote to Ely Thayer, demanding he pay his fair share. He had gotten them into this whole business, but spent none of his own money on it. With the company near broke, operations in Kansas grinding to a halt for lack of funds, and the directors already out of pocket, something had to give. At the board meeting of December, 1855, Thayer opened his coffers:

I told the committee that it was very pleasing to me to hear from their own lips their confession of error in substituting the charity plan for the old business charter. Had we retained the latter and made investment in Kansas City, which our own work would have built up, we could have easily become a very formidable power against slavery, not only in the territories, but in the slave states as well.

He did tell them so. Business antislavery hadn’t raised the hoped-for funds, but it did recognize that investors wanted something for their trouble. The accounts of well-off men from Massachusetts could only go so far. Thayer then proposed to go big: the company would hire him through May. If he raised more than $20,000, then he would take 10% off the top as his fee. The Board agreed and Thayer hit the road again, focused on New York and Boston. He hoped to get $100,000, just as he had in 1854, and pick up $40,000 more in Boston.

George W. Brown

Thayer had big dreams. He brought NEEAC into the black again at $5,287.62 on hand. He took a commission of $5,158, so Andrews calculates that he raised at least $51,580. That made for a hefty sum indeed at the time, albeit not all that Thayer had hoped. The immediate crisis had passed by the end of May, but by then 1856 had delivered a fresh set of problems. While the Company’s finances rose, the free state effort it supported with mills, loans, and guns had taken a deep plunge. A second proslavery army had gathered on Oread Heights, named after Thayer’s school. David Rice Atchison and Samuel Jones led them to sack the Company’s town, throw the presses of the Company’s paper into the river, burn its hotel, arrested Charles Robinson and George Brown for treason, and closed the Missouri river. The closure of the river meant the end of communications, so with that news Kansas went dark.

 

“You are worth $200,000!!!!” The New England Emigrant Aid Company, Part Three

Eli Thayer

The demise of business antislavery left Eli Thayer as a traveling promoter of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. His excessively rosy account of Kansas led to some emigrants opting to go right back home, but some stayed on in the territory and Thayer’s appearances helped keep Kansas in the public mind. The aid companies also kept themselves in the minds of white Missourians living in the plantation counties next door. NEEAC could muster dozens or a few hundred emigrants, but they had thousands of angry proslavery men with guns, knives and two cannons. After they carried two elections in a row, antislavery Kansans had quite enough.

Charles Robinson wrote Thayer to inform him

Our people have now form themselves into four military companies and will meet to drill till they have perfected themselves in their art. Also, companies are being formed in other places ans we want arms … cannot your secret society send us 200 of Sharp’s rifles as a loan till this question is settled?

The Stringfellows could go around telling everyone that the company raised legions of pauper mercenaries, but those mercenaries apparently set out for their war without sufficient arms. One would expect better of professionals. Nor did NEEAC’s directors leap at the chance to underwrite their emigrants’ military ventures. But as it soon appeared that antislavery Kansans would get no relief from Franklin Pierce, they secretly changed their minds. Robinson didn’t mean the Aid Company per se when he referred to Thayer’s “secret society”. He meant a group within it that privately raised money for arms, organized by the society’s then-current treasurer, Samuel Cabot. Amos Lawrence donated $2,700 for guns on top of what he gave to the official company funds. The Sharpe’s rifles arrived over the course of fall, 1855, often in crates labeled as books.

Charles Lawrence Robinson

As the second amendment thrived in Kansas, on both sides of the slavery question, the Aid Company did not. Amos Lawrence took over as treasurer, but quit the post in September. By April, the Company had spent $22,000. It had stock subscriptions for $26,844, but the subscribers had declined to pay their bills to the tune of almost eleven thousand dollars. It transpired that telling people their stock donation would probably not realize profit somewhat dimmed their ardor for investment. Philanthropy and patriotism only went so far. Resignation or no, Lawrence paid six thousand against the overdrafts of company agent Samuel Pomeroy. Pomeroy himself went back east on a two month tour of New England and New York that netted only $3,000.

One of the directors, J.M.S. Williams, blamed Thayer for all of this. Having paid out $3,000 already, with $800 more to go, and due to pay another $2,300, he felt that Thayer ought to kick in some of his own money too. The cash flow had dried up to the point of impeding the establishment of mills, where the company expected to realize its real gains. The company stood crippled by shortfalls. The directors had paid out of their own pockets to keep things going. Operations ground to a halt, Williams wrote Thayer,

yet you are worth #200,000!!!! You have done more to palce us all in this position than any other and ought to take hold in earnest and relieve us.