The First Book on Kansas

The Story of Edward Everett Hale's "Kanzas and Nebraska"

by Cora Dolbee

May 1933 (Vol. 2, No. 2), pages 139 to 181
Transcribed by lhn; HTML editing by Tod Roberts
digitized with permission of the Kansas State Historical Society.

OF THE numerous publications occasioned by the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the westward movement it instigated, the first, the most authoritative, and the longest was the 256-page study, Kanzas and Nebraska, by Edward Everett Hale, compiled in the summer of 1854, and published September 28, 1854, by Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston. [1] The first extant allusion to the book occurs in an advertisement in the Boston Evening Transcript, July 11, 1854:

KANSAS AND NEBRASKA

____________

In Press

THE

HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY

OF

THE TERRITORIES OF KANSAS AND NEBRASKA

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF

THE NATIVE TRIBES

AND

The Emigration now in progress thither

with a map

_________________

Prepared with the assistance of the officers of

The Emigrant Aid Society,

From unpublished documents, and from the travels of the French voyagers
Lewis and Clarke, Pike, Long, Bonneville, Fremont, Emory, Abert, Stevens and others.

---------

By EDWARD S. HALE [2]

--------------

To be comprised in one volume, duodecimo, and

published under the sanction of the Emigrant Aid Society.

The work will be issued in August.

Price, in muslin, 75 cents; in paper covers, 56 cts.

Orders from the Trade respectfully solicited.

---------

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO.
Publishers.

(139)

140 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

On the following day, July 12, M. D. Phillips, [3] of Messrs. Phillips, Sampson & Co., wrote Mr. Hale of the business arrangement, in reply to an earlier offer by him. [4]

"Rev. E. E. Hale:

"DEAR SIR -- We'll do the Nebraska. The illness of our Mr. Sampson & the financial storm now passing over the country has compelled some delay in replying to you. You speak of a specific sum for the M. S. -- map & copyright -- or of a 15 per cent on the retail price of the work.

"This we infer is optional with us. -- Before making our election, we shall of course want your terms -- i. e., the price for the outright purchase. -- When you give us this we'll advise you of our decision at once.

"We announced it in the Ev'g-Transcript today & shall tomorrow do the same all over the Northern creation. -- It must be in two kinds of binding -- cloth & paper: Cloth for the thoughtful house reader & paper for those residing in cars. -- (Without any joking, though -- what myriads of `young America literally live in these fair carriages.) These are the emigrating men, and the men at any rate to help swell the great aggregate of emigrating enthusiasm, -- and the boys must run through all the cars with them.

"It can be stereotyped in 10 or 15 days if you will always be at home & read the proof in the ev'g & let me return it in the morning -- They can do about 25 pp. a day -- i& this would do it in 10 days.

"We agree with you that it sh'd be out at once, -- and we ought to have the map Lithographing now. Truly yours, PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO."

The extent of the "northern creation," as far as we have evidence in Kansas to -- day, did not reach beyond New York and Washington. The advertisement, just as it appeared in the Boston Transcript, was published in the Boston Commonwealth, July 18-20, 22, 24, 25, 27 and 28; in the New York Daily Tribune, July 15, 22 and 29; and in the National Era, Washington, D. C., July 27, August 3, 10, 17 and 24. In all contemporary newspapers and magazines Messrs. Phillips, Sampson & Co. advertised their publications extensively, but the issues of the papers named are the only places in which the writer has found notice of Kanzas and Nebraska in the summer of 1854.

The immediate occasion of Mr. Hale's undertaking the book is not a matter of available record. The question of slavery had long interested him. A northerner in fact and in sympathy, he had been in Washington during the winter of 1844-1845, as minister of the

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 141

Unitarian Church, [5] and witnessed the procedure of congress for the annexation of Texas by joint resolution. In anger he had gone back to Boston on March 3, 1845, to carry out what he believed to be the true policy of the Northern states." He gave his first days there to the writing of "an eager appeal for the immediate settlement of Texas from the Northern states, [6] calling the sixteen-page pamphlet How to Conquer Texas before Texas Conquers Us. Although no one outside the circle of his immediate friends and the proof readers ever read the pamphlet, published at his own cost, and no man went or proposed to go to Texas as a result of his effort, Mr. Hale was convinced of the wisdom of his proposed solution for the social condition of the time.

A sermon, Christian Duty to Emigrants, delivered by Mr. Hale before the Boston Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, May 9, 1852, also emphasized the need for some agency to care for and place properly the foreign emigrants as they reached the shores of the United States. [7]

"We do not ask alms for them. God has provided the western prairie, white with the harvest, waiting for them to reap it. He has reared the forest which will build their cheerful cabins; it waits for them to fell it. If only from the shore where they landed, to the earth begging them to subdue it; or to the wheels which will rust, if they do not attend them; or to the waters which fall idly, if they do not labor with them; if only between that supply and this demand, you will come in between to lead the laborer to the harvest I . . . We ask you to treat them as accessions, to an amount incalculable, to the country's wealth . . . while these strangers bring to the country all their manly strength, of which other nations have taken the cost of maturing."

In 1852, the sermon stated, the annual emigration numbered about 400. In New York there was only a labor exchange or an intelligence office to care for the emigrants; in Boston the business was handled by the city and the state administrations. Although the sermon was addressed to a society for the prevention of pauperism, the speaker believed the direct danger of undirected emigration was not so much of pauperism as of enlarging too fast the body of mere muscular laborers in the United States, and he showed, by specific

142 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

illustration, how through guidance skilled labor could be supplied to existent need.

Not only on the question of slavery, then, but on the question of emigration, too, Mr. Hale had already entertained definite ideas for nine years, when, in the spring of 1854, people of the North became widely interested in colonizing the new territories with free men, [8] and Eli Thayer, founder of Mt. Oread Institute for Young Ladies and a member of the legislature for the city of Worcester, called upon the legislature of Massachusetts in March to organize the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. [9]

"It was a plan which proposed to meet the South on its own terms, familiarly known as `squatter sovereignty.' It authorized a capital of five million dollars in establishing settlements at the West. The charter was rushed through both houses of the legislature at once, and was signed by Governor Washburn on the 26th day of April, 1854. . . On the 4th of May the petitioners accepted the charter.

"Mr. Eli Thayer was a near neighbor of mine in Worcester, and as soon as I knew of his prompt and wise movement I went over to see him, showed him my Texas pamphlet, and told him I was ready to take hold anywhere. He was very glad to have a man Friday so near at hand. There was enough for all of us to do. We called meetings in all available places, and went to speak or sent speakers wherever we were called for."

That is Mr. Hale's own story of his first association with the Emigrant Aid Movement, as he published it in 1902. A letter from Mr. Thayer to Mr. Hale, written from Oread, May 3, 1854, describes his first assigned duty. [10]

"There is an Emigrant Convention in the city to-day at which I expected to be present for the purpose of unfolding (by request) the purposes of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. My health is such that I do not dare to venture out in such weather and therefore wish that you would appear for me. If you can do so, I will inform you of what it was my purpose to speak. The explanation requisite must not occupy more than fifteen minutes." To this letter, in Mr. Thayer's own illegible handwriting, is attached a note in Mr. Hale's plain script, January 8, 1889.

"This letter . . . relates to the first meeting of emigrants for Kansas in the spring of 1854. I went and gave them their encouragement and instruction. It was in the town hall of Worcester. There were perhaps a hundred people all or mostly over."

The Daily Spy carried an account, a column and a quarter in length, of the meeting, attended by delegations from numerous

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 143

towns, within a radius of one hundred miles. [11] Approximately half of the report reviewed Mr. Hales exposition of the proposed plans of operation of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, to be organized on the morrow, and the delegates' satisfaction in the plans. The meeting, however, was not the first meeting of emigrants in the spring of 1854, as Mr. Hales note of January 8, 1889, states. [12] The convention of May 3 was but an adjourned meeting of an earlier convention called in March for April 18 and held on that day in the police court room in Worcester with forty or fifty delegates in attendance, representing twenty towns in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. [13] At least one preliminary meeting had preceded the meeting of April 18. [14] Mr. Thayer's letter of May 3 is, nevertheless, the earliest record preserved, among the official papers of the Emigrant Aid Companies, of the work of the company with emigrants. The convention of April 18 had passed resolutions rejoicing in the proposed incorporation of an "Emigrant's Aid Society" and agreeing to encourage every feasible plan "for the establishment of the institutions of freedom and the prohibition of slavery in the national domain." [15]

Mr. Thayer, in writing in 1889 of the formation of the company, noted the same enthusiasm in Mr. Hale that Mr. Hales own statements show. [16]

"Indeed the very first man to express confidence in its success and his own readiness to work for it with all his might, was Rev. Edward Everett Hale, one of the signers of the protest [of the clergy to congress]. True to his pledge, he immediately began to write a book minutely describing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, showing their many attractions, the way to reach them, and enumerating the Emigrant Aid Companies already formed." The protest of the clergy to congress, March 1, 1854, against repeal of the compromise, had been signed by three thousand clergymen of New England, of whom Mr. Hale had been one. If, as Mr. Thayer suggested, Mr. Hale in his book was following out his pledge made there-the protest had ended ". . . and your protestants, as in duty bound, will ever pray,"-his affiliation with the movement began two months before the Emigrant Aid Company was chartered, and the immediate occasion of the book, Kanzas and Nebraska, was the fulfillment of that pledge.

144 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Other evidences of his interest in the political situation of the territories and in the emigration thither were continual in his correspondence of the spring. To his brother Nathan he wrote on March 17 of being "much riled at Douglas's language regarding me among others"; on March 22 and 25 to his father and his brother Charles, of a "stereotyped map of Nebraska, etc.," in the New York Independent, he would like his father to print in the Boston Advertiser; on April 5, to his father, of an article on emigration to Kansas, with quotations from John M. Forbes, .for publication in the Advertiser; on May 11, again to his father, urging the father's attendance at the meeting of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company on the morrow at Revere House to arrange subscriptions to stock, outlining some of the proposed policies of the company, and concluding, "I think I have never had anything so much at heart before." [17] In June he was the recipient of letters about the same general question from Edward Everett, who was friendly to the cause but reluctant to enter actively into its support because of his years; [18] and from Charles W. Elliott in New York three letters about the charter in New York and Connecticut and meetings for Mr. Thayer to address in Hartford, New Haven, and Springfield. [19] His mind had no rest from thought of emigration westward and its importance; no time to make record of the exact origin of conception and plan for his extensive study of the newly organized territories that was to constitute his book.

Although the different publications of the advertisement, from July 11 to August 24, stated the book was "in press," remarks in the text itself indicate Mr. Hale did most, if not all, of the actual writing in August. On two widely separated pages, namely pages 18 and 129, he says he is writing on August 1, 1854. [20] The manuscript shows that the pages of this portion were prepared consecutively in the numbered order. [21] Since the physical feat alone of putting one hundred and eleven pages of this book on paper in

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 145

a single day would have been impossible, the reader concludes that "August 1" is not an exact date in the second entry, but an approximate date chosen for general reference. The date of the preface, written apparently after the book itself was complete, was August 21, allowing twenty days for the composition of the book. According to Mr. Hales own computation, in a letter to his brother Charles, August 10, 1854, he spent far fewer than twenty days at the task: "I have not written to Boston this week because I was writing Kanzas at the rate of forty- three pages a day and dreaded the sight of pen and ink." [22]

Edward E. Hale, Jr., in editing this letter, added the explanation that "Kanzas at the rate of forty-three pages a day" meant the book Kanzas and Nebraska. In the manuscript of Kanzas and Nebraska there were altogether 335 pages; all of chapter VIII, with the exception of the headings given to the different sections, was a printed copy of the Kansas and Nebraska bill. In a few other places clippings furnished the copy of quoted passages. Most of the manuscript, however, is in Mr. Hales own handwriting. At his own declared rate he should have completed the book before August 10, if the "forty-three page" days were successive days.

But what is Kanzas and Nebraska that its author could have compiled it so fast?

The printed title page explains in part:

KANZAS AND NEBRASKA
THE HISTORY, GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS,
AND POLITICAL POSITION OF THOSE TERRITORIES;
AN ACCOUNT OF THE
EMIGRANT AID COMPANIES
AND
DIRECTIONS TO EMIGRANTS
BY
EDWARD E. HALE
WITH AN
ORIGINAL MAP FROM THE LATEST AUTHORITIES.

This title page apparently evolved with the book from a plan that itself took shape as the author assembled his material. The

146 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

first draft, as it was preserved in the manuscript, described the book thus:

KANSAS AND NEBRASKA

The History, & Geography of These territories; with some account of the native tribes,-climate and natural production.

From original documents in possession of the

EMIGRANT AID COMPANY

and from the travels of the French Voyagers, Lewis & Clarke, Pike, Long, Fremont, Emery, Abert & Bonneville, Abert, Fremont, Emory, Abert and Others.

[Names set in italics were marked out in original manuscript.]

Mr. Hale's idea at first of the inclusions of his study was as uncertain as the order of the names of his authorities. Here he would draw from the documents in possession of the Emigrant Aid Company, presumably of Massachusetts, but at the time he did not plan to give an account of its work. In another draft of the page, also with the manuscript, he planned an account of the "emigration now in progress" to the territories, to be "prepared with the assistance of the officers of the Emigrant Aid Company."

The history, the geography, and the map were common to all three versions. Although the Emigrant Aid movement had recognition in each, it was not until the printed version appeared that the nature and purpose of that recognition were evident. First the Emigrant Aid Company, evidently of Massachusetts, was to allow the author use of its original documents on the territories; second, its officers were to assist; but third and finally, the author was himself to give an account, not of one company, but of the companies, and also to include directions to emigrants. The "Emigrant Aid Companies" of this last draft included, besides the company of Massachusetts, the Emigrant Aid Company of New York and Connecticut, referred to in the letters of Chas. W. Elliott to Mr. Hale, June 5 and 27 and July 5, 1854, [23] and organized July 18, 1854, [24] and to the Union Emigration Society of Washington, D. C., organized "by such members of congress and citizens generally as were opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and to the opening of Nebraska and Kanzas to the introduction of slavery." [25] One of the author's last additions to his plan was presentation of the political position of the territories; and as his book progressed he

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 147

no doubt found that he had consulted too many sources to give credit to all on the title page, and therefore transferred to the preface such assembled acknowledgments of authorities as he chose to make. The last form of the page omitted all mention of the native tribes, given prominent position among the first topics to be treated, yet the book itself gave ample space to their history and political position in the territories.

Although the book consists of nine chapters, the subjects it discusses group themselves under five headings: history, geography, development, political position, and emigration. In a sense the whole book is but a history of the section opened as the territories of Kansas and Nebraska on May 30, 1854; but the first two chapters treat particularly of the earliest explorations and of the tribes of Indians dwelling there, both those called "native" and those known to have been immigrants.

In a seven-page chapter Mr. Hale first traces briefly the discovery of the regions now under discussion; he cites the reports of Father Marquette and Father Dablon of the expedition of 1670-1673, as it appears in Shea's History of the Mississippi. The expedition of La Salle in 1681 and 1682 he reviews in the words of Father Membre and the continuation of the journey to the Canadian frontier after 1687 by six of La Salle's party, in the words of Father Douay, both also quoted in Shea's history. He analyzes the claims of La Hontan in 1689 to his discoveries along the Missouri. To the French scheme of 1717 for emigration and exploration he attributes the discovery of Kansas. From the time the French officer, M. Dutisne, reached the Osage villages, in 1719, he "was exploring the territory of Kanzas." [26] Mr. Hale fails to cite the special sources used in his account of the French expedition. The forty-three page discussion of the Indian tribes that had occupied the territories since the region was known to man gives bare facts of name, origin, history, language, habits and state of civilization. It elaborates a little more in reviewing the smaller tribes removed thither by governmental treaties. It then launches into somewhat detailed accounts of the characteristics of the tribes whose position at the time offered anything of special interest, beginning with those in the northern part of Nebraska and speaking in succession of those farther south. It gives a summary, "anything but agreeable," of their long and indolent careers of poverty and misery, and remarks that the only success of the Indian agencies

148 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

has been in breaking up the tribe system entirely and substituting the labor and responsibilities of civilized men. It includes general estimates of the population of the tribes, and ends with a statement of the Indian lands recently opened for settlement by treaties just made with the Omahas, Ottoes and Missourias, Sacs and Foxes of the Missouri, Kickapoos, Iowas, Delawares, Weas, and Piankashaws. [27] In his preface Mr. Hale stated that the sources of this sketch of the Indian tribes were the treatise of Mr. Gallatin, the spirited sketches of Mr. Catlin, the journal of Mr. Parkman, and the notices of travelers . [28] Most of the text is a paraphrase or summary of the subject without exact references to special sources. Once, in the middle of the chapter, a three-and-one-half-page quotation of a visit to the "Ogillalah" lodges is attributed to Mr. Parkman. The long account of the Mandans, he says, is mostly digested from Mr. Catlin's narrative; [29] and he supports the contention of their possible Welsh origin by citation of Southey's preface to his poem Madoc [30] Mr. Gallatin is his chief authority on language; [31] but on the vocabulary of the Dacotahs he cites the study of the Rev. S. R. Riggs. [32] He refers to the reports of the superintendents of the missions, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Meeker, and he alludes to the opinion of three agents by name, Mr. Vaughn, Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Manypenny. Chapters III and IV discuss the geographical and physical characteristics of the two territories, the one being devoted theoretically, as the titles would indicate, to Nebraska and the other to Kansas. As matter of fact most of the first chapter does describe Nebraska, there being but one or two parts of the account that include Kansas or a part of it; but the second chapter, two and one-half times as long as the first, treats as frequently of some part of Nebraska as of Kansas and often considers the two together. Mr. Hale had never visited the region. [33] He was therefore dependent for his information upon the writings of the travelers and explorers who had; and their accounts had been made before the vast region was divided into two territories. [34] They had treated the territories as

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 149

one, and he, in citing and quoting them as authorities, travels back and forth with them constantly from one territory to the other. The section of Nebraska that he treats of along with Kansas is for the most part, moreover, the section lying south of the Platte river, a section many of the features of which are similar to the features of northern Kansas. The courses of their rivers, the divides between them, the valleys along them, the elevations and the depressions, the soil and its geological formation, the vegetation and the crops, the native animals and the chances for domestic sustenance are all matters the numerous explorers had noted, and Mr. Hale uses some one's observations on every point once or several times in the course of the two chapters. In each he is lavish with quotations and almost always here he is careful to cite his authorities.

In the chapter on Nebraska he gives credit to Lewis and Clark, Governor Stevens, Captain Bonneville as edited by Irving, Major Cross, Colonel Fremont, a nameless but "intelligent writer in the New York Tribune" of no date, the Reverend Mr. Parker, who in 1835 described the Nebraska prairie, and a nameless explorer and writer of a private letter noting the firs and pines of the upper Platte. With one exception the authorities for all borrowed material of this chapter are evident to the reader, though three of them are nameless, and the reference source of only one is cited; the exception is the unmentioned author of a one-and-three-quarter-page description of a journey into Nebraska from Council Bluffs. [35] From the paper and type of the clipping attached to the manuscript copy of the chapter the reader suspects it, too, came from the New York Tribune in which the article of the "intelligent writer" above appeared, but he cannot be positive.

So, in the beginning of the next chapter, when Mr. Hale refers vaguely to "the writer already quoted," the reader finds himself asking "but which writer?" For the most part, however, Mr. Hale gives authority for all his material here, yet he seldom cites the exact source where he found it. Colonel Fremont is his most constant reference, and he quotes him again and again in passages from one to four pages long; of the forty-eight pages in the chapter, virtually twenty-four consist of scattered accounts from Colonel Fremont's official reports. Parkman's travels contribute a sketch of the Arkansas, near Pueblo, and a description of the basin of the Kansas. Colonel Emory is another reference on the Arkansas and on trees

150 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in eastern Kansas. As authorities on geology Colonels Fremont and Emory share honors with a Professor James, a Prof. James Hall, Captain Stansbury, Jessup's MS. Report, and Long's Expedition, vol. I, pp. 137-139. Private letters contribute fascinating pictures, especially of the valley of the Kansas-no one called the river "the Kaw" then. Among these writers were Father Duerinck, [36] superintendent of the Catholic Mission among the Pottawatomies; a nameless person from Indiana; another nameless person, "a gentleman" who had written his impressions on July 6, 1854, and who was probably Dr. Charles Robinson; and again a nameless person, "a most intelligent gentleman who has traveled over all parts of America," who quotes entries from his diary of 1849 enroute to California, and who, from this description and from the more telltale evidence of the back of the printed clipping of his letter attached to the manuscript copy of the book, was most likely Dr. Robinson also. [37]

Chapters III and IV that thus describe the natural features of Nebraska and Kansas are the most readable chapters in the book. They make the most complete pictures. They seem, as one lays the book aside, to have been the best written. Yet in them is little original composition, no original observation, and only the original thought necessary to link together nicely recorded impressions of other persons who have been and seen for themselves. In selection at least the author has been the artist here.

Although on August 1, 1854, the proffered date of composition of Kanzas and Nebraska, Mr. Hale asserts there was nothing deserving the name of a town in either state, he devotes a short chapter, chapter V, to stations, military, trading, and missionary posts, and the projected cities in Nebraska and Kansas. He locates each place, gives its history, and tells something of its known purpose and use. The statements are meager but informative. Colonel Fremont is his acknowledged authority on Fort Kearney, supplemented by "the return of last autumn," the return evidently being a government report. A letter of the spring, of no given authorship, furnishes a page and one-half of quoted description of Fort Leavenworth. A government report of the winter before provides a page quotation

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 151

on the development of Fort Riley. The author cites no sources for his knowledge of the other forts, the post offices, the stations (or stopping places), and the missions. Obviously they have been the letters and the reports of explorers, however, that he has had opportunity to read.

Chapter VI is a general survey of routes of travel through the region. It is both a history and an exposition of recommendations. It reviews all the courses of all the known explorers, compares them as to nature and use, and evaluates their importance. Regarding "the territory of Kanzas, from its position," as "the great geographical center of the internal commerce of the United States," [38] Mr. Hale pronounces the emigrant track along the valley of the Nebraska and through the "South Pass" to Oregon and California and the Santa Fe trail to New Mexico the greatest; and he indicates that "it is by some modification of the one or the other that almost all the projects for a Pacific railroad propose to cross the continent." [39] He tells with care just where each route touches Kansas and suggests different approaches in each territory to the emigrant route along the Nebraska. The sources of his information are again numerous, including Gregg in his Commerce of the Prairies, Colonel Fremont, Lieutenant Emory, Captain Stansbury, and the Secretary of War. Virtually half the chapter consists of quotations, three and one-half pages being taken from the last report of the Secretary of War, the same from Lieutenant Emory, and two pages from Lieutenant Fremont and Captain Stansbury, each. Though the sources are several, Mr. Hale admits their insufficiency to help him do more than "hazard a guess" as to the greater. feasibility of one course or a part of a course over another.

Chapter VII, which reviews the political history of the region now to be organized as territories, is the most spirited portion of the book. The opening statements suggest the vein of the author's treatment. [40]

"Up to the summer of 1854, Kanzas and Nebraska have had no civilized residents, except the soldiers sent to keep the Indian tribes in order, the missionaries sent to convert them, the traders who bought furs of them, and those of the natives who may be considered to have attained some measure of civilization from their connection with the whites. For a region that has had so little practical connection with the political arrangements of civilized states, this immense territory has had a political history singularly varied."

152 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Mr. Hale passes over the early political history in rapid survey, devoting brief paragraphs to the sovereignty of France, of Spain, of France in turn. Purchase by the United States and subsequent division and organization occupy two more paragraphs. The expeditions of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806, of Lieutenant Pike in 1806, and of Major Long in 1820, crowd another half page. At the beginning of the fourth page Missouri is seeking admission to the Union and Mr. Hale's creative hour is come. Visiting the copious contemporary files in the library of the Antiquarian Society for materials upon "the great Missouri debate," he steeped himself in the political lore and enthusiasm of 1818-1820, and returned to his manuscript to revive the period in spirit and in fact. He tells one story of Southern pride, another of Northern hardness. He reproduces Mr. Otis' wit. He laments the failure to preserve all speeches, especially of Clay. He cites arguments; he quotes clever addresses and equally clever replies. Seventeen pages in all he devotes to the "misery debate." The account is very readable and marks the climax of the chapter in interest.

Mr. Hale's purpose, as he says twice, is to show how alike were the times, the questions at issue, and the arguments of 1818-1820 and 1853-1854. In his own time it has so often been said that the excitement on the question regarding slavery in Nebraska and Kansas is unparalleled; it is his purpose to show "how precisely appropriate the various speeches preserved are to the recent discussion." [41] Then and now the same type of "incidents occurred every day which showed the deep-seated excitement and irritation of the public mind at the North and at the South." [42] He sees only two important differences between the principles advocated then and those so recently upheld. First, no Southern statesman then attempted the defense of slavery as a permanent institution. Second, opponents of the extension of slavery then interpreted article I, section 9, of the constitution, to oppose emigration of slaves from state to state. [43] His review closes with quotation of the Missouri Compromise, provision for settlement of the territory north of 36 30' in the Louisiana purchase, not included in the state of Missouri.

The chapter notes the terms of the boundary treaty with Spain, saying that inspection of the map will show that some parts of Kansas have since been added under the arrangements by which

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 153

the United States acquired Texas and New Mexico (if his allusion here is to his own accompanying map, the parts referred to are included but not indicated). He regards as remarkable the act of June 7, 1836, by which the triangle between the Missouri and the west line of the state of Missouri was ceded to that state, the act passing congress without any opposition, though it was a distinct violation-and the first violation-of the compromise. He makes rapid survey of government removal of Indians east of the Mississippi to the land west, supplementing the long account of the Indian tribes in chapter II. In the last seven and one-half pages he relates compactly the later history of the Nebraska bill, summarizing motions and dates from its introduction in the senate December 14, 1853, to its passage in the modified form of the Kansas and Nebraska bill May 25, 1854, and its signature by the President May 30. His own statement best explains his cursory treatment of the bill:

"Its general character and many of its details are too familiar to readers of the present day to need repetition now, and a proper account of it for the pages of history would require more space, and a closer analysis of the motives and actions of living men, than can properly be given to such matters in this work." [44]

Why he fails to trace the evolution of the bill is not suggested; he must have known of the proposals for territorial disposal of slavery that had occupied congress at intervals since 1820, and he probably knew of the earlier bills for organization of Nebraska that had been before congress from 1844 to February 2-March 3 of 1854. Nor was he unaware of the plans for building a railway to the Pacific-in chapter VI he had reviewed proposed routes-and in comment elsewhere [45] he indicated he realized the commercial advantages of such enterprise, even using it as argument for the settlement of lands in Kansas contiguous to the route. [46] Like many others of his contemporaries he apparently did not recognize "the commanding influence of the railway plan over the establishment of territorial government." [47] It seems a little odd now that to one of Mr. Hales discernment the political significance of this movement was not at once evident; in congress it was a dominant motive, [48] although it was, of course, kept out of the discussion nd so

154 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

out of common public attention. The press, however, in the East and the Middle West, made emphatic note of it from time to time. Mr. Hale was quite as concerned in providing for emigrants westward as in securing to freedom the land they should there occupy, and he recognized the importance of railroads in the development of their new communities, but neither in 1854 nor in any other year of his long life did he allude to the railway issue as a political factor in the organization of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.

Chapter VIII consists of an "accurate copy" of the bill itself, published here because "so few have read `the Nebraska act' of which so many have talked. " [49] The source of the accurate copy is not clear in the manuscript, where we find a printed version of the bill, exclusive of sections 19-36. In the manuscript of Kanzas and Nebraska the bill is cut apart by sections and pasted to sheets of letter paper. Apparently Mr. Hale had some trouble in procuring the bill, for on August 10 he wrote to Nathan as follows: [50]

"I cannot get the Nebraska Act, but have a clue to that National Era which I am to have to-day. I am sick of the whole thing, and it really seems as if my hand quailed at writing."

The "whole thing" of which he is "sick" is his task of rapid composition, evidently, and not the bill. All he wrote in this chapter were the headings he supplied for the different sections, each being labeled by the topic it treated. Sections 19-36, inclusive, treating of the organization of the territory of Kansas, were omitted, "being word for word the same as sections two to seventeen," which outlined the organization of Nebraska. The source of the printed copy of the bill in the manuscript is not available now. The print and the paper are not the print and the paper used by the National Era of 1854. The copy evidently was furnished by Nathan and is so alluded to among chapter divisions and paging notes of the manuscript, including the substitute sections of the bill quoted in chapter VII.

In his preface Mr. Hale suggests that he included chapter IX on emigration to give such hints to emigrants as would aid them in the immediate settlement of Kanzas. [51] The chapter does give such hints, but to the later student of Kansas history it furnishes more significant matter in its review of emigration and its exposition of motive and plan of the emigrant aid companies. The belief

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 155

commonly held almost from the first seems to have been that the companies operating in Kansas had but one or possibly two purposes. The one, that of keeping Kansas free, was popularly repeated and generally supposed to be the primary purpose. The other, that of money making, has been the suggestion of students quick to question altruism, and the implication has always been that such motive of gain was neither admitted nor legitimate. Mr. Hales treatment does not disavow either motive but presents each in a new light in relation to the general cause of emigration with which, as he understands, the very idea of slavery is incompatible.

Occasioned equally by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and by the need of organization of western emigration, his discussion emphasizes the advantages of Kansas as an emigrant center. He points out the natural attractions of the territory, the fertility of its soil, the nature and the value of its crops, its natural resources, its water power, its contiguity to all overland routes, and its consequent ready market; all these are greatly in its favor, but most of all is the situation that will draw across its boundaries whatever roads are built westward. Along through routes of travel emigrants ever settle and make their homes.

Reasons for organizing emigration to this favored central territory, he says, have been two: first, to secure to Kansas a fair proportion of western emigration, to secure for the principle of "squatter sovereignty" a fair trial, and to make sure that the institutions of both territories be digested by settlers of every class; second, the need "on pure grounds of humanity" to provide for the immense pilgrimage from Europe, hitherto uncared for. Both considerations, Mr. Hale asserts, guided Mr. Thayer to seek a charter for the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. The report of the committee submitted by Mr. Thayer and printed in the midst of this discussion by Mr. Hale indicates that in return for its service to emigrants, the company would have two rewards-the one in the high satisfaction of having become founders of a state; the other in sharing in "an investment which promises large returns at no distant day." [52] Since time has revealed that the investment

156 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

yielded no returns in kind, and present-day scholarship has been inclined to discredit the claim of the emigrant aid companies to a rank of importance in the founding of the state, it is interesting now to have these original avowals of purpose and frank admissions of anticipated rewards.

Although both Mr. Hale and the committee name the securing of a fair trial for freedom in Kansas as their first motive, and place their trust in the character of Northern and of foreign emigration as their last assurance of success, each gives equal consideration to the commercial advantages, for both the emigrants and the company. Each presentation recognizes the particular needs of the great foreign emigration that neither the United States government nor any other established agency is prepared to meet. In proposing to provide for it, both Mr. Hale and the committee are guided by altruistic and business motives. Each has long desired to protect the European immigrant after his arrival, and if in the proposed plan the company makes capital of the recognized need, it is at the same time financing the undertaking itself in a way that to each seems both legitimate and praiseworthy. The material aid the companies would be able to render both northern and foreign immigrants makes up the bulk of the discussion, and the service they may incidentally render the cause of freedom in Kansas slips into secondary consideration.

The motives had evidently borne about the same relationship to each other in Mr. Hale's mind from the first. On May 11, 1854, in writing to his father to ask him to attend the meeting of the corporators of the company on the morrow, to arrange subscriptions to stock, he had indicated his attitude. [53] "It is no mere charity scheme, but one in which business men, I think, will interest themselves . . . . They want to secure your hearty cooperation if the scheme pleases for an examination, and I think would be glad to make you President of the Company.

"You know how it has interested me as the means of helping these Irish and German people west without suffering.

"There are two hundred thousand of them and others going west this summer. If twenty thousand only of them go into Kansas, that is made a free state forever . . . .

"I think I have never had anything so much at heart, and I only wish I were a business man that I might move in it openly."

As noted before, Mr. Hale's first hope of insuring political freedom to western territories through northern immigration dated back to 1845. His proposal then for the more southern territory was not

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 157

essentially different from the later plan for Kansas. The motive and the means were the same; the emphasis, in 1845, however, was upon the motive and in 1854 upon the means. The earlier study evolved a theory; the later offered a practicable, working plan. [54]

As chapter IV is the most readable and chapter VII, in part, the most spirited, chapter IX is the most original, being entirely Mr. Hale's own composition. Even the ten-page report, submitted by "Eli Thayer, for the Committee," was Mr. Hale's own work. [55] The only "hints" to emigrants the chapter includes are the directions of this report. [56] A brief account of the work of the company as finally organized under private articles of corporation follows. [57] Plans for the Emigrant Aid Company of New York and Connecticut, with Eli Thayer as president, were said to be similar. The chapter outlines the work of the numerous "leagues" auxiliary to the companies, describes the nature of the service of the Union Emigration Society of Washington, and tells of the rapid and extensive emigration into the territory independent of any organization. It interprets the congressional act of 1854 to establish "the offices of surveyor-general of New Mexico, Kanzas and Nebraska." It indicates the variety of occupations people may hope to find in the territories, recommends the westward route through Alton or St. Louis, and suggests the nature of educational and religious institutions to be established by the emigrants themselves. The last section is a kind of glorification of the opportunity Kansas offers to the emigrant, both native and foreign, to work, and so is a glorification of the cause of freedom he has opportunity there to serve, ending with prophecy of victory. It is a dignified and coherent exposition of the eastern plan for settlement of the territory of Kansas.

The frontispiece of the book is a "map of Kanzas and Nebraska from the original surveys, drawn and engraved for Hale's History. Boston. Published by Phillips, Sampson & Company, 1854." The first extant correspondence about Kanzas and Nebraska alluded

158 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

to the map; "we ought to have the map lithographing now," Mr. Phillips wrote Mr. Hale on July 12. [58] On August 4 the publishers addressed the author again, saying, "with this you will receive 2d proof of map." [59] The title page described the map as "an original map from the latest authorities." In the preface Mr. Hale vouched once more for its authenticity: "The map is accurate as far as may be with our present knowledge of the country. It is compiled from more than twenty of the recent surveys made by government." [60] There is no available record now as to who drew the map. Neither the original sketch from which the engraving was made and which is now preserved with the manuscript of the book, nor the reproduction in the front of the book bears any identifying mark of the artist. W. C. Sharp, of Boston, was the lithographer.

Mr. Hale had been interested in the geography of the region prior to the compilation of the book about it. On March 22 and March 25 he had written his father and his brother Charles respectively of a good stereotyped "map of Nebraska, etc.," which had appeared in the Independent and of which the management would sell the block for two dollars. He then commissioned his brother to buy the block for his father to use in the Boston Advertiser along "with an article wwhich I am to write on the present position of the question." [61] He had no doubt the map was accurate.

The map in The Independent was a "map of the states and territories in their relation to slavery. 1162 It was drawn by George Colton. It showed in white the states in which slavery was prohibited by fundamental law; in black lines, the states in which slavery was fully recognized; in shaded lines, the territories where the question of slavery or free soil was yet an open one. The map made a most effective visual appeal. It revealed the extent of the question more graphically than any description in words; yet the accompanying legend defining the boundaries of the territory as outlined in Douglas' second bill also made colorful portrayal of the country involved, emphasized its important geographic relation to the rest of the states, and compared the anticipated dangers of the introduction of slavery into these newly organized territories with the effects of the institution in the states where it had become fully recognized. Although the map was of general nature, it was accurate,

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 159

as the legend asserted, with the exception that the southern boundary of Kansas was placed at 36%#0176; 30', whereas the second Douglas bill had fixed the line at latitude 37°.

Just what the sources were for Mr. Hale's own map is now something of a puzzle. He preserved no record of the "more than twenty recent surveys by government." Interpretation of his phrase would seem at first to depend upon the qualifying "recent." The surveys that were most deserving of the attribute, however, those authorized by congress in the amendment to the army appropriation bill for 1853-1854 as additional sections 10 and 11, [63] were not begun until the spring of 1853, and were not fully reported upon and officially published until 1855. [64] First instructions to the leaders of each of the four expeditions conducting these surveys called for reports to be laid before congress the first Monday of February, 1854. Complete reports of all four surveys were delayed, but Gov. I. I. Stevens, exploring the route near the forty-seventh and forty-ninth parallels, Capt. A. W. Whipple, the route near the thirty-fifth parallel, and Lieut. R. S. Williamson, the route near the Sierra Nevada and Coast. range, all made preliminary reports that were published in house document 129, 33d congress, first session. These copies of the preliminary reports, however, issued in 1854, probably appeared too late for Mr. Hale's topographer to have used them in published form. [65] They must have been available to him, [66] nevertheless, else he could not have included in his map, as he does, the entire line of the Stevens survey for a Pacific railroad route, 1853. The Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, had himself made a review of the undertakings in a senate document, December 1, 1853; [67] but his account was brief and general, giving a sketch of the country to be explored, evaluating information already obtained to determine the routes to follow, and noting the instructions to each officer in charge of an expedition. It gave none of the results, though, of the surveys, but

160 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

with it Mr. Hale was familiar, for in his text he quotes verbatim two passages of the report" and elsewhere notes the order of the Secretary of War to Captain Gunnison to explore the region of Colonel Fremont's expedition of 1848-1849.69 In April of 1854 Governor Stevens was in Washington to make his report in person to the Secretary of War. [70] The information of that report Mr. Hale's topographer must have seen, but how is not now clear.

If the adjective "recent" be given loose interpretation, and if the topographer had access to the official government files in Washington, he could have consulted "more than twenty surveys" in making the map for Kanzas and Nebraska. In the period the territory had been known to white men, there had been a few more than twenty official surveys. In a Memoir to accompany the map of the territory of the United States from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, Lieut. Gouverneur K. Warren, of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, U. S. A., in 1859, made "a brief account of each of the exploring expeditions since A. D. 1800," with a description of accompanying maps when maps were made. [71] Study of the memoir reveals the possible sources used. Since from the first of these explorers Mr. Hale draws subject matter for his discussion, it seems not at all unlikely that his topographer drew from them, too, or at least consulted them, in making the map. Indeed he must needs have seen not only the first map but well-nigh all the other maps between it and his own to have had a total of "more than twenty" government surveys for authority.

The Memoir compiled by Lieutenant Warren was not published until 1859. On March 1, 1858, however, in the preface, the author tells that his "work has been in progress during the past four years," so that it is possible the maker of the Hale map had the benefit of some of Lieutenant Warren's criticisms of the different maps. In his preface Lieutenant Warren pointed out that "the maps used in the compilation have been mostly made from reconnaissances, and but few possess very great accuracy. The geographical positions are therefore rarely determined absolutely, or even relatively, with certainty, and new surveys are constantly making slight changes

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 161

necessary." [72] In the text he pointed out the mistaken trends of mountain ranges and river sources in the map of Lewis and Clark; the elementary but basic principles of topography and hydrography of Humboldt's map of Spain; incorrect river sources and singular representations of mountains in Rector's and Roberdeau's map, described, nevertheless, as "the most correct map of the country now extant"; the confusion of the Canadian and the Red river and the first right representation of the Black Hills of Nebraska as a north and south range by Major Long; the elaborateness but lack of topographical skill in the work of J. C. Brown; the correct representation of the hydrography of the region west of the Rocky Mountains, although the geographical positions are not accurate, in the maps of Captain Bonneville; the wrong location of the union of the Cimarron river with the Arkansas near Fort Atkinson, in the map of Lieutenant Steen; the representation of New Orleans and St. Louis as both being in longitude 90° 25', in the topographical bureau map by W. Hood; the value of the survey of C. Dimmick between Old Fort Scott and Fort Smith, never replaced to date; the erroneous listing of the Bitter Root as a source of the Salmon river, in the map of Captain Hood; the use of the barometer to determine the elevation of interior country by Mr. Nicollet, making his map "one of the greatest contributions . . . to American geography"; the usefulness of the map in Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies; the value to travelers in spite of its inaccurate geographical positions, of the map by Charles Preuss in 1846 of the Fremont route from Missouri to Oregon, 1843-1844; the tracing in the map of Captain Pope of a tributary of the Arkansas, probably the Big Sandy, to the source formerly attributed to the Smoky Hill Fork; the similarity of the routes of Messrs. Beale and Heap, Captain Gunnison, and Colonel Fremont (1853-1854) ; and the availability to J. R. Bartlett of the observations of the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission in the making of his map of 1850-1853.

Any or all of this criticism may have been available to the maker of the Hale map; the points of it, at least, for the most part the maker heeded. The Black Hills in the map are a north and south range; the Big Sandy is a tributary of the Arkansas, and the Cimarron joins the Arkansas east and south of Fort Atkinson. Although the map shows only the Fremont route for a Pacific railroad, the text discusses the mountain passes explored by Colonel Fremont

162 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

and Captain Gunnison and describes the recommendation of each. [73] The portion of southwestern Kansas bounded on the east by 100° west longitude, on the south by 37° north latitude to the 103d meridian, thence west to the Rocky Mountain range by about 38° north latitude, on the west by the Rocky Mountain range, and on the north by the south bank of the Arkansas, the Hale map places within the boundary of Kansas in accordance with the findings of the United States and Mexican boundary commission and the terms of acquisition of Texas and New Mexico.

The reason for the inclusion of the Fremont route for a Pacific railroad instead of the Gunnison and for labeling it the Fremont route was probably the availability of some accounts of the Fremont expedition. On June 13, 1854, Colonel Fremont wrote a letter to the editors of The National Intelligencer "communicating some general results of his recent winter expedition across the Rocky Mountains for the survey of a route for a railroad to the Pacific."74 This report he offered in anticipation of a fuller report with maps and illustrations which it would necessarily require some months to prepare. The eastern part of this route extended from the mouth of the Kansas river on the Missouri frontier to the valley of Parowan at the foot of the Wahsatch mountains, between latitudes 38° and 39°. Having been over this route from Sierra Blanca to the Missouri frontier four times before, he summarized the features and connected the expedition with the route explored in 1848-1849 from the mouth of the Kansas river to the valley of San Luis. From the Sierra Blanca to the Grand river the -routes of Colonel Fremont and Captain Gunnison were nearly identical; from the latter point Colonel Fremont, in 1853 and 1854, continued farther south. [75] The map of the official explorations for Pacific railroads by George Leslie Albright shows that the Fremont route from Fort Riley to the Fremont route pass, south and a little west of Pueblo, was almost the same as that of Gunnison in 1853, from Fort Riley, through Bent's Fort to Fort Massachusetts. [76] Mr. Albright also traces the history of Colonel Fremont's different explorations of the railroad route. [77] The third Fremont expedition, he says, was, according to Thwaites in his Rocky

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 163

Mountain Explorations, page 239, for the purpose of finding the shortest and best route for a railroad to San Francisco Bay; if it was for such purpose, Mr. Albright adds, it was under the private instructions of his father-in-law, Senator Benton. His fourth expedition, 1848-1849, primarily for the exploration of a central route, and also without government support, had failed in the San Juan mountains in Colorado. After the government surveys were ordered in 1853, Fremont in August, with funds of his own and Senator Benton's, planned a fifth expedition to complete the objects of the former. Mrs. Fremont, in her Memoir XV, says it had been intended her husband should lead one of the government surveys of 1853, but as no name appeared in the bill, the Secretary of War appointed Gunnison. Some of the Fremont reports were given government publication. [78] On the fifth expedition F. W. Egloffstein was the topographer as far as the Mormon settlement. [79] Because of this government aid and government recognition given the Fremont explorations, they no doubt seemed themselves to be official, and were so regarded by Mr. Hale and his topographer.

In spite of its dependence upon the numerous authoritative sources, the Hale map, which is itself merely an outline map, has many inaccuracies, owing in part at least to the inaccuracies of the sources. The most conspicuous are the courses of the mountain ranges. From 45° north latitude the entire Rocky range follows a slightly northeastern course; only the chief range is indicated, and it is confined to 112°-111° longitude instead of being shown from 118°-110° as it should be. Fremont's Peak, located almost rightly near parallel 43° and meridian 110°, is placed in the main range instead of in the Wind River mountains where it belongs, the main range here being given too northwesterly a line; and the Wind River mountains, which are a northwesterly range parallel with the main range between latitudes 42°-44° in longitude 109°-110°, are on this map a west and east to northeasterly range between latitudes 43° and 44° in longitude 104°-109°, being confused apparently with the Sweetwater range. Although the Black Hills follow a north and south line, they extend from about latitude 44° to 54°, whereas they are a short range reaching from about latitude 44° to 45° 30'. The

164 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

topography of the rest of this northwestern region that in 1854 was a part of the Nebraska territory, is even more uncertain. No others of the numerous mountain ranges are represented on the map at all.

The rivers follow curious courses. The Big Horn, which is given approximately correct headwaters in the Wind River mountains, is made the chief source of the Yellowstone river on the map; and the Wind river, which is now known to flow in a southeasterly course into the Big Horn, follows, on the map, a northeasterly course into the Little Big Horn. The headwaters of the Missouri are in north latitude 44° and 45°, longitude 109° to 112°, instead of latitude 45° and 46°, longitude 111° to 114°; and Great Falls is in latitude 48° and longitude 110°, whereas it belongs in latitude 47° 30' and longitude 111° 30'. The union, however, of the Yellowstone and the Milk river with the Missouri is approximately right. The Bitter Root river is not named on the Hale map and perhaps not shown, but the Salmon river to the west of the mountain range is made to abut the range on the west directly west of an unnamed river abutting it on the east so that it seems probable the Hale map followed here the erroneous idea of Captain Hood that the Bitter Root was a source of the Salmon.

In southeastern Nebraska and in Kansas geographical positions are much more accurate on the Hale map. Rivers and forts are about the only markings. The more important rivers have about the same headwaters and the same courses as in modern maps. A few exceptions are noticeable. The Little Nemaha, which follows a course markedly southeasterly, and the Great Nemaha, which after the union of its two forks is also southeasterly, follow on the Hale map courses almost due east. Although in the text, in a passage quoted from an unnamed source, [80] "the Republican and the Smoky Hill forks are said to take their rise in the Rocky Mountains and unite to form the Kanzas river in almost latitude 39° and longitude 96°," the map reveals the rise of each in the plains east of the mountain range and the union in latitude 39° and longitude 97°. The Arkansas, which crosses the southern line of the state just east of longitude 97° crosses on the Hale Map, at a point just west of 96°. The Cimarron, which unites with the Arkansas in latitude 36°, longitude 96° 15', unites, on the Hale map, in latitude 38°, longitude 97° 30'. This point, although 200 miles east of Fort Atkinson, may be the union marked in the map of Lieutenant Steen and noted by

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 165

Lieutenant Warren as wrong. The right location of the union is more nearly 300 miles southeast of the fort.

Mr. Hale was probably more aware of the meagerness of his map than of its inaccuracies. In interpreting the rights of settlers he alluded to the law providing for the survey of Kansas and Nebraska that had passed congress late in the session of 1854 but which would "scarcely begin before late in the fall of 1854."81 That survey, had it already been made and its results been available, would have enabled him to locate on his map some of the places and streams he talked about but did not represent Elm Grove, Council Grove, Walnut Creek post office, Big Timbers, Great Bend, Wolf river, the Little Blue, Grand Island, Bijou, the Vermillion, and the various Indian missions. One other provision of the map, that of leaving five inches of blank paper on the end bound in the book, making the entire map visible when open, no matter at what page the book itself may be open, is the most convenient feature of the map.

A point of relatively small importance but of considerable interest to Mr. Hale in the publication of his book was his chosen spelling of Kanzas. The first allusion to it occurs in a letter to his brother Charles, without exact date, but belonging to the early summer of 1854: [82]

"We have canvassed that and still spell it with a `z.' I think you will find that the territory of Arkansaw was organized under that spelling, but the public changed the matter before it was a State"

On August 18 Mr. Hale wrote his brother Charles on the matter a second time. [83]

"I will write an article explaining why I spell Kanzas with a z. Will you print it and give a general order to spell so. I will make the Register, and I think the Tribune; my book will spell so, and, I hope the Emigrant Company. I hope it is not too late to change it, or rather to settle it:"

In the preface to Kanzas and Nebraska Mr. Hale explains his choice as a matter of accuracy. [84]

"In that view I have held to the spelling of Kanzas, of most of the travelers and of the Indiana department, in preference to Kansas, the more fashionable spelling of a few weeks past. There is no doubt that the z best expresses the sound, that it has been almost universally used till lately, and that it is still used by those moat familiar with the tribe and the river which have, time immemorial, borne this name. Kanzas, too, will soon be a state. Its name then will, at best, too much resemble the name of Arkansas, which was,

166 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in fact, derived from it. [85] To keep them by one letter more apart is to gain something."

In the text, discussing the Indians in the territory, Mr. Hale tells more of the origin of the different forms of the name. [86]

"Around the forks of the Kanzas river, is the hunting ground of the Kanzas tribe, from whom this river and territory have their names. This name is spelled by different writers in many different ways. Cansas, Conzas, Konsas, Kansas, and Kanzas, are the most frequent."

Mr. Hale's reasoning was sound enough, but the public did not accept and follow his chosen spelling at all generally. By late autumn he felt it necessary to secure aid if he would establish his chosen way as custom. To G. W. Brown he wrote both of the tendency of the day and in fuller explanation of his own usage: [87]

"I hope I am not too late to beg you to turn a cold shoulder on the careless fashion of spelling Kanzas with an a after the n, which I see is coming into vogue. It is all wrong. A Boston paper to-day says that Kanzas is an abbreviation of Arkansas. This is preposterous. Let us take for our new state high ground from the very beginning, as it is the true ground. The Arkansas Indiana broke off from the Kanzas Indians but a few years before the French first explored the valley of the Mississippi. They enlarged our name. We never took theirs nor the fag end of it. Kanzas has an antiquity and may as well claim it.

"The earliest history of Louisiana, in French, spells the name Canchez--giving the sound in question the very hardest sound of which the French language is capable."

Before Mr. Brown published the letter in the Herald of Freedom, January 6, 1855, he had written "Friend Hale" on December 27, 1854, of the already accepted western spelling with the K. [88]

"I regret that I had not received your letter in time for publication, [89] but it now is quite unseasonable.

"The spelling of Kansas seems to have become almost established by usage, and I think it would be impossible in the West to change it now. All the papers in the territory, with the many along the border to which my attention has been called, are in the habit of spelling it with an s. Congress sent out the bill in the same form, and for me to attempt a change-although convinced of the force of your argument would seem wholly impracticable. I shall give the public the benefit of your ideas on this matter."

When on January 6, in the first issue of his paper thereafter, Mr. Brown did give the public opportunity to read Mr. Hale's views, he added his own editorial comment.

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 167

"The argument of our friend sustains his position as to the spelling of Kansas; and yet the popular will has charge of the matter so fully that it appears to be beyond the power of the literati to change the result. Congress in the enrollment of our territorial bill, set an example which has been followed by the different heads of departments, and the newspaper press-with very rare exceptions-in all parts of the country. The five presses in the territory are also with the majority, and the orthography of Kansas at this time seems as firmly established as that of any state in the Union."

So apparently it was, although a few eastern publications continued to spell the name with a z into 1856. The Quarterly Journal of the American Unitarian Association abandoned it after the annual report of the treasurer, May 27, 1856. The Boston Transcript and the Daily Chronicle used it into the summer and the Springfield Republican continued it into the fall. Many of the contemporary publishers, even when writing of Kanzas and Nebraska, referred to it always as Kansas and Nebraska. Mr. Hale himself had some difficulty in remembering to use his preferred spelling in the book, as the manuscript reveals. Frequently he had to change the s to a z; the first two drafts of the title page even read Kansas and Nebraska. To the modern casual reader the spelling of the name is the most noticeable and most memorable feature of the book.

Such in summary-review is Kanzas and Nebraska that its author compiled at the rate of forty-three pages a day. His son described it, in 1917, as "little more than a compilation;" [90] and to the modern reader so indeed it seems and is; a compilation, moreover, in which some of the signs of haste are obvious. Attached to the book, for instance, in a separate Appendix B, is a six-page description of the valleys of Smoky Hill and the Kansas rivers in the form of a letter from George S. Park, published by the Emigrant Aid Company too late to be given a place in the text. Its full subject matter would have been an addition to the text, chapter IV, on the geography of Kansas, but it would have been somewhat out of proportion even to the other long quotations already incorporated in the text. More deliberate preparation of the manuscript would have permitted a digest or summary treatment of the substance. All the way through the text as it stands there is too continuous dependence upon quotation as it is, too little of the author's own explanation in proportion.

Comparison of the printed pages with the manuscript reveals more evidences of haste. Written for the most part in Mr. Hales own clear and meticulous script, on letter paper of two sizes, it was, nevertheless, clean, easily read copy for the printers to follow. Evi-

168 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

dently, though, it was his first copy and the changes he had found necessary were made on the manuscript there. Pages 17 and 18, for instance, of the manuscript, page 17 of the book, were crossed out, and rewritten as they now appear in the printed text. All of page 14 of the manuscript, page 11 of the book, was scratched out and rewritten on the back of the same sheet. Now and then additional passages or whole paragraphs were written on the backs of sheets and marked for insertion in the text; such passages are found in the manuscript, page 241, and in the book as the last paragraph of page 152; in the manuscript, page 288, and in the book the middle paragraph of page 183. Sometimes longer extra insertions were marked by half numbers, as 114-1/2, 123-1/2, 125-1/2, 126-1/2, 185-1/2, and 220-1/2, to care for additional material; corresponding to these numbers in order are the following book pages where they belong: 60, 66-67, 70-71, 72, 117-118, and 180. Manuscript page 178 carried an insertion of six pages numbered A1 to A6, covering pages 106-109 of the book. The manuscript is written on one side of the sheet only, with three exceptions: page 274 of the manuscript is found on the back of page 273, 279 on the back of 278, and 283 on the back of 282. These passages, appearing in the printed book, from page 174 through 180, belong in the chapter on political history and consist of quotations and Mr. Hale's own summaries of political happenings.

Extensive changes in the printed book from the manuscript readings are few. The chief occurs toward the end of chapter II, where in the manuscript in a different handwriting, with the initials "N. H. Jr." attached, three footnotes are supplied. In the manuscript these appear on pages 96, 108, and 114-1/2-115, corresponding to pages 50, 56, and 60 of the book respectively. The initials are evidently those of Nathan Hale, an older brother of Edward Everett Hale, who probably read proof and who procured for his brother the copy of the Kansas- Nebraska bill used in chapter VIII. The book retains only the footnote of "N. H. Jr." on page 56-"as this book is passing through the press, it is understood that these treaties have been ratified"-but it omits his personal notation, "Here I inserted footnote. N. H. Jr." Page 115 of the manuscript ends, "It is probable that these treaties will be ratified before this book is published." Attached is a footnote by Mr. Hale himself which reads, "Here I said, in text, `it is understood that these treaties were ratified by the senate at the close of the session just finished, although the official promulgation had not been made when this sheet was prepared for publication."' This note, in different-colored ink, was probably

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 169

added to the manuscript long after the book was printed, for on page 60, where the passage occurs, there is no footnote in either Mr. Hales or his brother's writing. Incorporated in the printed text, however, without any explanation at all, is all of the sentence above beginning with "It is understood . . . ." The statement, thus couched as the proof was read, became the new conclusion of chapter II.

Occasionally there were changes in sentence construction. In the manuscript of the preface, sentence 2 of paragraph 5 embraced by use of participial phrases what now appears in three sentences. In the manuscript, page 90, there was a penciled insertion of "Missouri" at the end of a sentence which in the book, page 51, line 5, became "and west of the Missouri." A sentence on manuscript pages 126-126 -1/2 reading, "The French name La Platte was given it to designate its French name, La Platte, from its great width," was corrected and shortened in the book, page 72, line 6, to "The French name La Platte designates its great width." The clause, "so immense is the extent of the prairie country," of the manuscript, page 128, became in the book, page 73, "so immense is the prairie country."

Usually the differences between the manuscript and the book readings were briefer and less troublesome, but they were sufficient in number to have added to the bill for author's corrections:

170 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Besides these lesser changes were a few of mechanical nature such as the insertion of quotation marks on page 92 of the book, omitted from page 153 of the manuscript; and the making of new paragraph divisions, as on page 72 of the book which printed as two paragraphs what appeared in the manuscript, page 126 -1/2 as one; or as on page 163 of the book, which did the same for material placed in one paragraph in the manuscript, page 256; or as on page 81 of the book, which united in one paragraph what constituted two in the manuscript, page 139. For the omission of quotation marks in the book from page 139, paragraph 2, through page 138 and from page 140, paragraph 2, around material which in the manuscript, pages 218 and 220-1/2 respectively, is obviously taken bodily from a newspaper, there is no explanation in either manuscript or book.

Although Kanzas and Nebraska is "little more than a compilation," the compilation was itself no small feat for two summer months. Begun some time after the publisher's agreement of July 12, the book was in press by September 20 [91] and was published on September 28. Collection of materials from the many different sources was itself something of a task; selection and arrangement of them required care; and the copying of virtually all of them in longhand was a nervous as well as a physical strain. Though Mr. Hale may have "written" at the rate of forty-three pages a day, he could not have kept up the speed many consecutive days unless, of course, he had selected and arranged all his material in advance, but that he could hardly have done. The presentation does not suggest such foresight. His letters and manuscript notes, moreover, record some of his difficulties in procuring materials. The small letter sheets he used for much of the manuscript permitted a greater output for those parts than for others of the 335 pages. Cessation in August of most of the advertisements of the book, begun so prematurely by Phillips, Sampson & Company on July 11, suggests unexpected delay.

Not until late September was the advertising revived. Then on September 26 the New York Daily Tribune carried again the advertisement of July, with the additional line, "Published This Day, Sept. 28," and with the price of the paperbound copy given as 50 instead of 56 cents. On September 27 the Boston Evening Telegraph repeated the form of the Commonwealth advertisement of July. On September 30 and October 2, G. S. Wells, a bookseller of New York,

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 171

advertised Kansas and Nebraska in the New York Tribune, and on October 12, 19 and 26 in the National Era in Washington. In Worcester the review of the book in The Daily Spy, September 26, said the book was for sale at William Allen's bookstore, but it was not advertised then or later among Allen's new books. On September 27 John Keith & Company, also of Worcester, however, listed it in their Bulletin of New Books in The Daily Spy, and from September 29 through November 28 they carried the title among their regularly advertised books in the same paper. Although in July the publishers spoke of announcing the book "all over the northern creation," their advertising of September, when the book was ready for circulation, seems to have been considerably curtailed. The only elaborate advertisement the writer has found was that of the Boston Evening Telegraph, October 7 and 14, 1854. Four and three-quarters inches long, in heavy black type, somewhat exclamatory in form, and markedly antislavery in tone, it was conspicuous among book announcements of the day.

WHICH SHALL WIN

The intense interest felt throughout

the country with regard to the settlement of

our youngest territories

KANZAS

AND NEBRASKA!

has already begun to be manifest in the tide

of emigration settling westward. The air, virgin

soil is free to all, and the hardy pioneers are

to bear on their shoulders the destinies of those

embryo states. Throughout the

NORTHERN HIVE

Which is again to swarm with thousands

of gold gleaning bees, there is already

the bustle of preparation.

To meet the universal demand for reliable

information respecting the geography, climate,

soil, and probable productions of the new

territories, a volume has been prepared by

REV. EDWARD E. HALE,

containing all that is desirable to be known.

It is accompanied by an accurate and comprehensive 

Map of the Territories.

This work, so opportune, so complete, has

been received with uncommon favor. 

172 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The whole of the first edition

was exhausted on the very day of the publication, without

supplying all the advance orders received.

New edition nearly ready.

Price in muslin 75 cents; in paper 50 cents.

The sponsor of this propaganda-colored venture is unknown, for it did not bear the name of publisher or dealer or friend. It is of interest, though, as indicating that the advance advertisements of the book had brought the desired sales. Statement of Charles Hale in a letter to his sister Susan, September 24, 1854, substantiates this suggestion: [92] "I suppose you know Edward's book is published, and the whole first edition sold at once with good promise of continued demand."

One other advertisement of the book followed, that of November 4, evidently in the Boston Journal, just after the new edition was published. Matter-of-fact in nature and modest in tone, it, too, appeared without the name of the sponsor, who, nevertheless, described the book as invaluable to persons desiring the latest information upon Kansas derived especially from "the correspondence of the Emigrant Aid Society" and having an accurate map.

The first review of Kanzas and Nebraska seems to have appeared in the Daily Advertiser, managed and edited by the Hale family. [93] Who wrote the review, copied by the Evening Transcript, September 20, 1854, the papers do not reveal. [94]

"It appears to us well adapted to that object [of giving authentic information on the territories] by combining in a narrow compass, and in a tangible shape, a great amount of information scattered through many, many volumes of travels and documents, and placing it before the reader in a methodical form."

In a letter from Edward Everett Hale to his brother Charles, September 20, 1854, the day of the Transcript reprint, responsibility for the review is placed upon the brother: [95] "I am heartily obliged for the notice of Kanzas; whether I ever see the book itself seems more doubtful." The book itself did not appear officially for eight more days. [96]

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 173

On September 26 and 27, respectively, the editors of The Daily Spy and the editor of The Daily Transcript of Worcester, Edward Everett Hale's home town, had seen advance copies of the book. The Daily Spy reviewed the contents and said that the book admirably supplied the need of a complete history of the territories. It also commended the author. [97]

"Mr. Hale is a clear, judicious, and practical writer, and is admirably fitted, by his experience and the constitution of his mind, to write just the book needed by those who intend to settle in the territories. We heartily commend his book to the public:"

The editor of The Daily Transcript singled out the instructions to emigrants as he best that had yet appeared. [98]

"It reflects great credit upon the author, by the patient and thorough investigation which marks the various researches, and the authentic sources, from which he has drawn such abundant material, render the work of double interest and of more especial value:"

The New York Tribune analyzed the method more. [99]

"Mr. Hale, whose taste and ability for statistical and historical research are well known to the community in which he resides, has made an assiduous study of everything relating to the history, geographical and physical characteristics, and political position of Kansas and Nebraska, and has here set forth the fruits of his labors in a compact and readable form."

The Atlas [100] and The Congregationalist, [101] like the other papers, noted the seasonableness of the book and emphasized its value to emigrants to the new territories. Putnam's Monthly said it was "not a political tract but a practical work on the geography, history, and resources of the new Canaans of our confederacy full and reliable." [101] The Quarterly Journal of the American Unitarian Association considered the singular nature of the task of writing such a work. [103]

"It is no small service to a good cause to supply, at a few weeks' notice, a valuable book, which exactly meets a pressing exigency; and it is a proof of no small courage, industry, and command of resources, to be able to render that service with promptitude and ability. Great credit is due, on both accounts, to the author of this book, who has done much to give immediate impetus to a noble cause of philanthropy"

Northern reviewers were all in praise, in a moderate but sincere tone.

174 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

From Washington came critical comment in lighter vein, playing upon the commonly heard names of Kansas and Nebraska. [104]

"If there be any faith due to the proverb that `a hair of the same dog cures his bite,' those who have had their nervous excitabilities worn down and their sense of hearing deadened by the daily repetition of those names for almost a year-soft and sweet and euphonious though they be-will find a pleasant recuperative remedy by taking up this volume. In it they will see these twin sisters of the West with new faces, with features not so harsh and repulsive as they appeared in the paintings exhibited at the Capitol during the last session by the rough speechifying limners of that ilk. Here the coloring is drawn from nature, not from distorted imagination. Their prairie oceans, their beautiful streams, their shady forests, and savage denizens, and wild herds are all fairly depicted. Nor is the darker side of the picture hidden from view. The arid plains, where neither tree, nor shrub, nor blade of grass for hundreds of acres, can find soil enough to sustain a root; where no water bubbles up to greet the eye of the thirsty emigrant; where no fuel can be found to light the fire by which to prepare his daily food; where neither rock nor hillside shade invites him to repose his wearied limbs; all these, too, are delineated with the pencil of truth.

"Mr. Hale has honestly compiled his history from the most reliable sources extant. Indeed we believe he has not failed to consult every traveler who has ever written a line upon the subject of that extensive region of our country.

"With all his predilections for that particular ism to which he confesses himself attached, Mr. Hale has managed to make this chapter on political history of the new territories extremely interesting. He has hunted up many anecdotes from the molding documents of a past generation, which revive in our memories many agreeable and some unpleasant incidents, but has fairly stated the sayings and doings of the most conspicuous actors and speakers on both sides of the vexed question, the `misery debate,' as the wags called it, of 1820."

Weary of endless ill-judged comment that as propaganda had underestimated or overestimated the features of the territories, the reviewer of the National Intelligencer wrote appreciatively of Mr. Hale's study. Of the reviews discovered his is the only one that seems to have been deliberately designed for Southern as well as Northern readers.

In Kansas there was no recognition of the book until the spring of 1855. On February 10, under a column heading "General Intelligence," excerpts were made in the Herald of Freedom "from `Kansas and Nebraska' by E. D. Hale." The source, of course, was Kanzas and Nebraska by E. E. Hale. The parts copied were taken from chapter VI, "Routes of Travel . . . The Pacific Railroad

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 175

Navigable Rivers." [105] On April 21, quite as though the copy of the book had just arrived, the editor of this same paper, under the title, "History of Kansas," acknowledged receipt of "the nicely bound volume" of Kanzas and Nebraska with which, "through the politeness of Rev. E. E. Hale, of Worcester, Mass., we are favored." [106]

"As the pioneer history of the great West, abounding with a vast amount of matter which is very difficult to procure through any other channel, it will be a standard work, and invaluable to the future historian of Kansas. The volume contains many inaccuracies, of course, as is the case with all new publications of a similar character; but these will be readily corrected by the intelligent reader, and a revised volume will add many important incidents which have transpired subsequent to its original preparation. The map, which at present is a mere outline, will be dotted with towns, villages, and cities. We hope friend Hale will pay Kansas a visit during the present season, and prepare a new volume for publication. Another work of the kind is much needed"

The criticism in this review is the most adverse published comment upon the book by contemporary writers the author of this article has found. In Kansas, in proximity to the contemporary facts, inaccuracies were apparent, but the editor did not take the trouble to note them. What interested him more was having the history of Kansas, subsequent to its organization as a territory, included in a new edition of this first "history" of the prospective state. Of so little impress was the criticism, however, that the New Haven Daily Palladium, in noting the review, said, "The Herald certifies to the merits of Rev. E. E. Hale's . . . Kanzas and Nebraska;" [107] Kansas was too remote from Connecticut for errors to be visible.

One other contemporary article, that of The Methodist Quarterly Review, said that the information was general rather than special, but added that "a minute knowledge of the country has yet to be acquired."1°a This review also frankly hoped that the book might "contribute its share to nullify the plan of the present American government to spread slavery over the vast territory, covered by what is known as the `Nebraska Bill."'

176 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The only specific adverse criticism of Mr. Hale's work that survives occurred in a letter of Charles H. Branscombe, one of the Kansas agents for the Emigrant Aid Company, to Mr. Hale, February 2, 1855. [109] A long twenty-five-page article on the significance of the Emigrant Aid Movement, written by Charles Wentworth Upham and published in the North American Review, January, 1855, had praised Kanzas and Nebraska as a source book for the emigrant and attributed credit for conception of the whole emigration enterprise to Mr. Hale. [110]

"It is natural that Mr. Hale should have had his attention specially called to this subject. The Kanzas and Nebraska emigration movement is the fulfillment and realization of one of his early and cherished visions. He tried to save Texas to freedom by the same instrumentality, and urged an organized emigration to that region in a pamphlet entitled, A Tract for the Day: How to Conquer Texas, before Texas Conquers Us-published in 1845."

The Upham article in the Review then praised Mr. Thayer for his part in the movement, making use, partly in paraphrase and partly in quotation, of an account in the London Times and of other material from another unnamed source. The sketch gave a colorful picture of Mr. Thayer "to whose energy, enthusiasm, and powers this emigration movement is mainly owing, and by whom it is in great measure superintended and conducted."

This division of credit between the two men is the point to which Mr. Branscombe takes exception in his letter.

"I have been much surprised in reading your work on Kansas and Nebraska, and also in reading Mr. Upham's review of it, that neither has awarded to Mr. Thayer the honor of having originated the plan of organized emigration which is efficiently used by the Emigrant Aid Company.

"Your book seems to make Mr. Thayer secondary and subordinate to a general public sentiment, and Mr. Upham makes him secondary and subordinate to yourself in this movement.

"Now in relation to the first position, that of the book. I know it to be incorrect, for I know that it has been a gigantic work on the part of Mr. Thayer to arouse public sentiment and to guide it into the line of practical action . . . . Mr. Thayer has been and now is the caput acque princeps of all efficient action in the premises.

"Now in relation to the other point. Will you be so kind as to inform me, whether you as the review claims, are the originator of this plan of organized emigration or of any plan. I am aware you wrote a tract advocating emigration to Texas, but did you originate and develop any plant Are you the author of the Stock Co.? of the Leagues? of the officer of Master of Emigra-

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 177

tion? of one or all of these or of none of them? If you are rightfully in the position, which works of an enduring character assign to you, then Mr. Thayer does you an injustice by not disclaiming the honor given him in the daily and weekly papers and the conversation of the people. -.

"Your reviewer denies Mr. Thayer the honor emphatically-but gives him credit for energy and perseverance as a subaltern. In this extract from the London Times he omits the part which makes Mr. Thayer the leader of the movement."

Mr. Branscombe wrote his letter from Boston, where he then was in the interests of the Emigrant Aid Company. Mr. Hales reply to him is not extant. On the following day, February 3, however, Mr. Hale, in Worcester, addressed a communication to the editor of the North American Review-, disclaiming all credit for originating the movement. The letter was published later as a "note to article VI of the January number." [111]

"DEAR Sir-The honor for originating the plan for emigration to the West, with the view of saving Kanzas and the new Western states from the worst of evils, is one which will yet be regarded as among the most distinguished honors of this time. As your pages will be resorted to as history, I am anxious to put on record there the title of Mr. Eli Thayer to all this honor. He conceived the scheme, he arranged the working details of it, and by his comprehension and ingenious combinations so adjusted it, in the beginning, that to practical men it has always seemed an eminently practical affair.

"This statement is due from me, because, in your kind notice of my book on Kanzas, there is an expression from which a careless reader might suppose that Mr. Thayer was working out suggestions of mine. Every one who knows the facts would ridicule this idea. I published in 1845 a pamphlet on Emigration to Texas, which no one read, and I could not induce any one to consider the idea. It contained no plan of operation. Although I never abandoned the fundamental idea of that pamphlet, I made no suggestion for carrying it out last year. Nor had I any plan to propose. Mr. Thayer had never seen nor heard of my pamphlet when he originated what I have no claim to-the comprehensive scheme, only now beginning to be realized, for organizing Western emigration."

Mr. Thayer may or may not have been disturbed himself by the implied division of credit for the plan; no positive statement of either attitude has come into the writer's hands. In 1889, in a History of the Kansas Crusade, when Mr. Thayer praised Mr. Hale for his early confidence in the undertaking and his willingness to work for it, he of course was indirectly assigning Mr. Hale a secondary place in the development of the plan. [112] At the same time, Mr. Hale, in his introduction to the book, surrendered again all

178 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

credit to Mr. Thayer: [113] "I should be sorry not to say, on all occasions, that to him the work owed its success and the nation owes all that grew from that success."

The success of Kanzas and Nebraska was measured in two ways by contemporaries. For the publishers it was a financial failure; for the emigrant aid companies it was a practical help. The correspondence extant does not indicate the size of either printing of the book, but it does reveal the effects of the sale. In July, 1854, Mr. Hale had offered to sell the manuscript outright for $300 or to take a fifteen per cent royalty on the retail price of the work. [114] Phillips, Sampson & Company would have accepted the first terms save for the recommendation of Mr. Phillips. [115]

"My sole reason for resisting it was not for us-but because I really thought that there hung around it one of those chances that I did not want to see you throw away for so small a sum . . . . I did not make this ruling until Mr. Sampson told me he was satisfied we sh'd sell anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 copies."

That the sale fell far short of even the lower figure of the estimate is evident in the $218 royalties the company paid Mr. Hale in August, 1855. The letters between Mr. Phillips and Mr. Hale at the time indicate the sum was figured on the basis of ten per cent instead of fifteen per cent.

Both the author and the publishers had overestimated "the public interest in that new world." Neither had considered the cost of extensive advertising. Issuing the book shortly after two far more popular titles, [116] the firm found itself under the high pressure of advertising from Maine to Kansas. Although Mr. Sampson had early begun to say, "If we advertise this so, we can't pay over 10 per cent.," Mr. Phillips had asserted Mr. Hale would be reasonable about the matter and procrastinated in telling him "under the notion that the sale would come out strong enough to justify such an after consideration. But the sequel is as it is and it can't be any tizzer." Mr. Phillips assumed all blame, even for the small sale, but Mr. Hale was disappointed, saying he would not have put the time and work into the book for the $218 had he foreseen the slight interest in the new territories. Under a false impression about the amount of the

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 179

loss on the book, Mr. Hale took the $108 [117] difference between ten and fifteen per cent philosophically, volunteering to share the loss equally with the publishers. Afterwards Mr. Phillips went over the books again and found the loss of the company to be more than $300, which the company, however, assumed without complaint as a risk of trade. [118]

Although within the year the promulgators recognized Kanzas and Nebraska as a commercial failure, they regarded it from the beginning as first authority on both the territories and the Emigrant Aid Company. It was at once a history and a geography and a book of directions for Kansas and prospective Kansans. Mr. Thayer wrote that "the several hundred of the different kinds of societies, leagues, committees, and companies in the free states" kept it as "an invaluable handbook for emigrants . . . . It was of great service in our efforts to arouse the public to the importance of organized emigration." [119] The day after the official publication, September 28, 1854, Doctor Webb submitted to the publishers an order from the German Kansas Settlers Association of Cincinnati, Ohio, for several copies. [120] Records of publishers and booksellers are not available to show the number of copies sold. Comments in advertisements and early reviews to the effect that the first edition was exhausted were probably references to printings rather than editions. There could hardly have been need of a second edition. The only person who wrote of the possibility was G. W. Brown, editor of the Herald of Freedom, of Lawrence. To western readers, with the scene of its setting at their doorsteps, Kanzas and Nebraska had shortcomings not obvious elsewhere. Although the publishers boasted of announcing it "all over the northern creation," the book probably found its greatest number of readers in the East, where interest in the emigration movement was most manifest. There people talked about it and its subject matter; there reviewers wrote of it; there its author was known. Those who had already come West found the territories themselves all around them a more urgent and more authentic source of information and thought. The last of the business corre-

180 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

spondence preserved was Mr. Phillips' letter of August 21, but not until December 18, 1855, did Mr. Hale find himself free of matters relative to the book. On that day he wrote to his brother Charles, "I have swept Kanzas off my table completely." [121]

Copies of the book are easily available to-day. Second-hand book dealers list them at nominal prices. Only last year a friend picked up a copy in Bridgeport, Conn., for 10 cents. In Kansas now the book seems to be known little more than in the year of publication. Only a few of the older libraries have it, and frequently the older of the old settlers say they have never heard of it. Kanzas and Nebraska was, nevertheless, the first and the most authoritative of the numerous books upon the new territory.

In 1917 Edward E. Hale, Jr., suggested the manner of his father's gathering of the material for Kanzas and Nebraska. [122]

"He read for it, or remembered, not only the account of Father Marquette and La Salle, but accounts much more recent and full of the charm of current interest . . . . Even nowadays Kanzas and Nebraska is an interesting book, because it is so full of the intense feeling of the day."

The latter chapters of the book do reflect the feeling of the day; but they and all the others in the hastily prepared composition present more the subject matter that provoked the thought and stirred the feeling of the day. To anyone examining the book now Mr. Hale appears to have read for it and quoted far more than he drew from memory and paraphrased. His method, however, was in part that of the historian, in part that of the writer of popular appeal. He sought authority and usually gave due credit where he could; yet in his selection of materials, he seems to have chosen more to appeal to the reader than to treat his subject thoroughly. The copy for Kanzas and Nebraska was prepared so quickly that Mr. Hale probably gave little thought to the method he pursued, yet it illustrates well two contradictory inclinations, that his son relates, guided him most of his life.

"He sometimes thought that he was meant to be an historical student rather than anything else . . . and he always had some sort of historical work on his hands . . . . The two historical principles which appear to have been most important in guiding his work seem, if not contradictory, at least hard to combine. One was . . . the importance of studying the original sources. The other . . . was the importance of being interesting to all sorts of people. This was most natural. We can hardly imagine such

DOLBEE: FIRST BOOK ON KANSAS 181

a man studying the original sources without regard to people's getting the advantage of his studies .... A history had to be founded on the original sources, he held; but then, also, it had to be interesting, or it might as well not be at all."

In his numerous direct quotations in Kanzas and Nebraska, Mr. Hale brought his sources to his very reader, but he also chose those quotations to interest as well as inform his reader.

Notes

1. Daily Tribune, New York, September 26, 1854. Adv.
2. Edward S. Hale is a misprint, of course, for Edward E. Hale.
3. The letter of July 12 bears the company signature, "Phillips, Sampson & Co." only; but it is in the handwriting of the letter of August 21, 1855, bearing the personal signature of M. D. Phillips.
4. Correspondence of Edward Everett Hale in Archives Department, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka.
5. Mr. Hale ministered to this church from October 1, 1844, to March 3, 1845. He was invited to remain there as permanent minister, but "I knew perfectly well that there was to be a gulf of fire between the North and the South before things went much further; and I really distrusted my own capacity at the age of twenty-three to build a bridge which should take us over." He left the day before Mr. Polk's inauguration, "too angry to be willing to stay."-E. E. Hale, Memories of a Hundred Years, v. II, pp. 12, 145.
8. Ibid., pp. 151, 153.
7. Sermon in files of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Copy used here.
8. The Daily Spy, Worcester, Mass., March 18, 27, 1854. Photostatic copy used.
9. Hale, Edward Everett, Memories of a Hundred Years, v. II, pp. 154, 155.
10. Correspondence of Edward Everett Hale.
11. The Daily Spy, Worcester, Mass. May 4, 1854.
12. A later article will develop the background of this movement more fully.
13. The Daily Spy, Worcester, Mass., March 21, April 19, 1854.
14. Ibid., March 24, 1854.
15. Ibid., April 19, 1854.
16. Thayer, Eli, A History of the Kansas Crusade (Harper, 1889), pp. 124, 25.
17. Hale, Edward E., Jr., The Life and Letters o) Edward Everett Hale (Little, Brown do Co., 1917), v. I, pp. 250-254.
18. Ibid., pp. 251, 252.
19. Correspondence of Edward Everett Hale.
20. Hale Edward Everett, Kanzas and Nebraska (Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston, 1854), pp. 18, 129.
21. The manuscript of Kanzas and Nebraska, almost in entirety, was in the collection of Massachusetts and New England Emigrant Aid Company papers sent to the Kansas State Historical Society at Topeka by the family of Edward Everett Hale, and is now on file there. The manuscript of chapters I-VII is complete with the exception of pp. 230-232 being in the book pp. 147-148. The manuscript paging for chapter IX follows a different order, being numbered b9-b18, which corresponds to pp. 219-232 of the book. Page b10 is gone, but for it is substituted a 10-page report of Eli Thayer for the committee," covering pp, 220-229 of the book. For the first 3X pages and the last fourteen of the book there is no manuscript at all.
22. Hale, Edward E., Jr., Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, v. I, p. 255.
23. Vide ante footnote 19.
24. Hale, E. E., Kanzas and Nebraska, p. 230.
26. Ibid., p. 231.
25. Ibid., p. 18.
27. Ibid., pp. 59, 80.
28. Ibid., p. V.
29. Ibid., p. 48.
30. Ibid., pp. 31, 43.
31. Ibid., p. 81.
32. Ibid., p. 48.
33. Twenty-five years later Mr. Hale visited Kansas. The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, by Edward E. Hale, Jr., vol. II, p 283 includes a letter by Mr. Hale to Mrs. Hale, written from Lawrence, Kan., September 12, 1879.
34. For the boundaries of the two territories as divided by the congressional act of May 80, 1854, see the map used by Mr. Hale in Kanzas and Nebraska.
35. Hale, E. E., Kanzas and Nebraska, pp. 70, 71; MS., p. 125.
36. Father Duerinck, S.J. Mr. Hale refers to him as "Mr. Duerinck."
37. Hale, E. E., Kanzas and Nebraska. Back of M9. page 197; the back of the newspaper clipping bearing this letter on the front, says: The following letter copied from the Worcester Spy, are said to be from the pen of Dr. Charles Robinson, of Fitchburg, who visited the territories in 1849. It seems quite probable though of course not certain, that the letter quoted is one of this group. In the spring and early summer of 1854, Doctor Robinson was in Kansas in the interests of the Emigrant Aid Company and in 1849 he had crossed the region on his way to California.
38. Hale, E. E., Kanzas and Nebraska, p. 139.
39. Ibid., p. 141.
40. Ibid., p. 162.
41. Ibid., p. 170.
42. Ibid., p. 100.
43. Ibid., pp. 170, 171.
44. Ibid., p. 185.
45. Hale, Edward E., Memories of a Hundred Years, v. II, pp. 116, 110.
46. Hale, Edward E., Kanzas and Nebraska, p. 237.
47. Beveridge, Albert J., Abraham Lincoln (Houghton, 1928), v. II, pp. 108-171.
48. Hodder, Frank Heywood, "The Railroad Background of the Kansas-Nebraska Act," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, v. XII, No. 1 (June, 1926).
49. Hale, Edward E., Kanzas and Nebraska, p. IV.
50. Hale, Edward E., Jr., Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, v. 1, p. 255.
51. Hale, Edward E., Kanzas and Nebraska, p. IV.
52. Although this report bears the signature, "Eli Thayer. for the committee," it was the work of Mr. Hale. In a letter to his father, May 11, 1854, he says: "Mr. Bullock, Mr. Thayer, and I were requested to draw up the Corporator's address to the public, which I have just now been putting in form "-In the Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale by Edward E. Hale, Jr., v. I, p. 253. In 1897 Mr. Hale said again: "This report of the Emigrant Aid Company was drawn by myself. I had the advantage of the fullest conference with Mr. Thayer, and it is evident that I used his brief above in the preparation of the report." -Edward Everett Hale, in New England in the Colonization of Kansas, a reprint of Chapter XI of The New England States, p. 84. (The "brief" by Mr. Thayer was some hastily thrown-together suggestions. The committee to make the report consisted of Eli Thayer, Alexander H. Bullock, E. E. Hale of Worcester, Richard Hildreth and Otis Clapp of Boston.. ----- and Nebraska, p. 220.)
53. Hale, Edward E., Jr., Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, v. I, pp, 252-253.
54. Writing long afterward of his interest in the annexation of Texas, Mr. Hale still had faith in the desirable effect of his theory, could it have been tried: "How certain it is that if the wave of free emigration could have been turned into Texas then, evils untold of would have been prevented. On the other hand, I am afraid it is as certain that human slavery would not have been abolished in the older states for another generation."-Hale, Edward Everett, Memories of a Hundred Years, v. II, p. 152.
55. Vide ante, footnote 52.
56. Appendix A, pp. 249-250 of Kanzas and Nebraska, consists of a copy of the constitution of the Worcester county Kansas league which supplements these directions.
57. Hale, Edward Everett, Kanzas and Nebraska, p. 229. Since the provisions of the charter did not satisfy all parties interested, the company organized under private articles of association, June 13, 1854, and functioned so until March 1855, when the New England Emigrant Aid Company received its charter and absorbed the private company. The Worcester Spy, June 14, 1854, described the association se "a private company" organized "under joint articles," the property of the company to be "vested in three trustees who shall hold the same as joint tenants, subject to all the trusts and provisions of these articles."
58. Vide ante, p. 140.
59. Letter of Phillips, Sampson & Co. to Edward Everett Hale, in the correspondence of Edward Everett Hale.
60. Hale, E. E., Kanzas and Nebraska, p. V.
61. Hale, Edward E., Jr., Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, v. I, pp. 250, 251.
62. The Independent, New York, March 16, 1854.Photostatic copy used.
63. Congressional Globe, 32 Cong., 2 sess., 1852-1853, pp. 798, 799.
64. Pacific Railroad Reports, Senate Exec. Docs., 33 Cong., 2 sess., No. 78, vols. I-XII.
65. The title page of the four volumes of this document bears the publication date of 1854. In the text of volume I, however, appears a letter bearing the date of February 27, 1855, indicating the volumes were not ready for circulation until 1855, too late to have been used for the Hale book.
66. The National Intelligencer for Monday, February 6, 1854, noted in the senate proceedings of the day that "the president of the senate laid before the body a communication from the Secretary of war transmitting copies of all reports of engineers and other persons employed . . to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, which was ordered to be printed and referred to a select committee." In brackets there followed an explanation, evidently from the communication itself, of the incomplete and partial nature of the reports and the consequent impossibility of judging the relative merits of the different routes. This form of the report may have been accessible to Mr. Hale and his topographer.
67. Senate Documents, 33 Cong., 1 sess., pt. II, pp. 16-28.
68. Pages 17-18 of Secretary Davis' report, Senate Documents, 88 Cong., 1 sess. part II, appears in Mr. Hale's Kanzas and Nebraska as pp. 142-145.
69. Cf. Secretary Davis' report above, p. 20, and Mr. Hale's Kanzas and Nebraska, p. 151.
70. Albright, George Leslie, Official Explorations /or Pacific Railroad, 1853-1855 (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1921), p. 78.
71. Warren, Lieut. Gouverneur K., Memoir, to accompany the map of the territory of the United States from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean to accompany the reports of explorations and surveys for a railroad route, War Department, 1859.
72. Ibid., preface.
73. Hale, Edward Everett, Kanzas and Nebraska, pp. 151 152. The findings of Captain Gunnison were evidently known in detail to Mr. Hale, although he notes the fact that Lieutenant Beckwith's report of the expedition had not been published.
74. This letter was reprinted as Miscellaneous House Document, No. 8, 33 Cong., 2 sess. (1855.)
75. Warren, Lieut. Gouverneur K., Memoir, p. 75.
76. Albright, George Leslie, Official Explorations for Pacific Railroads.
77. Ibid., p. 89, footnote.
78. The expedition of 1842 appeared as Senate Document, No. 245, 27 Cong., 3 sess,; the second, as Senate Document, No. 174, 28 Cong., 2 sess.; the third, as Miscellaneous Senate Document, No. 148 30 Cong., 1 sess.; the map of Charles Preuss, 1848, of this third Frémont expedition from Missouri to Oregon, as House Committee Report, No. 145, 30 Cong., 2 sess.; the fifth as represented in footnote 74, and the fourth was connected with the fifth.
79. Mr. Egloffstein joined Lieutenant Beckwith in 1864 to aid in his explorations along latitude 41°.
80. Hale, Edward Everett, Kanzas and Nebraska, p. 88.
81. Ibid., pp. 236, 288.
82. Hale, Edward E., Jr., Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, v. I, p. 254.
83. Ibid., p. 280.
84. Hale, Edward Everett, Kanzas and Nebraska, p. V.
85. Ibid., p 57: "The Arkansaw Indiana, an offshoot from the Kanzas, struck the French as such fine men, that they called them `les Beaux Hommes,' supposing that to be the meaning of their name."
86. Ibid., p. 52.
87. Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, January 8, 1855.
88. In correspondence of Edward Everett Hale among the official papers of the Emigrant Aid Company.
89. In an earlier issue of the Herald of Freedom.
90. Hale, Edward E., Jr., The Life and Letter of Edward Everett Hale, p. 258.
91. Evening Transcript, Boston, September 20, 1861.
92. Letter from "Charlie" to "Susie" September 24, 1854, in correspondence of Edward Everett Hale.
93. The Daily Advertiser, Boston, published by Nathan Hale, Sr., had in the late spring of 1854 been taken over by two of is sons, Charles and Edward Everett. Charles became the managing editor and Edward Everett helped on the editorial page. Cf. Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, by Edward E. Hale, Jr., v. I, p. 254.
94. Evening Transcript, Boston, September 20, 1854.
95. Hale, Edward E., Jr., Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, v. I, p. 280.
96. Vide footnote 92. The letter from Charlie to Susie, September 24, said the "book is published." The word "published" here appears to have been a mistake for "punted." Since the New York Tribune of September 28 gave the date of publication as September 28, the writer of this article supposes the publishers did not release the book for circulation until the latter date.
97. The Daily Spy, Worcester, Mass., September 28, 1864. Copy used.
98. The Daily Transcript, Worcester, September 27, 1864.
99. The Daily Tribune, New York, October 8, 1854.
100. The Atlas, Boston, October 17, 1854.
101. The Congregationalist, Boston, October 27, 1854.
102. Putnam's Monthly (November, 1864), v. IV, p. 684.
103. Quarterly Journal, American Unitarian Association (January 1, 1856), v. II, pp. 808-209.
104. National Intelligencer, Washington, December 20, 1854.
105. The passages coopied were from pp. 139-141, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151-153, and 156-161.
106. Herald of Freedom, April 21, 1855. Attempts had been made to get the book to Kansas before. G. W. Brown had ordered a copy from Boston in the fall but it was stolen en route. Mr. Hale had evidently announced he was sending a copy, for on December 27 Mr. Brown wrote him, "The Desc. of Kansas and Nebraska has not been received. Should have been glad to acknowledge receipt of copy."-Letter of G. W. Brown to E. E. Hale, December 27, 1854, in correspondence of Edward Everett Hale.
107. Daily Palladium, New Haven, Conn., May 7, 1856.
108. Methodist Quarterly Review, 4th series (January, 1855), v. VII, p. 135.
109. Letter of Charles H. Branscombe to Edward Everett Hale, February 2, 1855, in correspondence of Edward Everett Hale.
110. North American Review (January, 1855), v. 80, pp. 91-i1B. The article as printed is unsigned, but a letter from Virginia Barney, assistant editor of the North American Review, to the writer of this review, May 21, 1932, relates that the author was Mr. Upham.
111. North American Review (April, 1866), v. 80, p. 548.
112. Vide ante, p. 143.
113. Hale Edward Everett, "Introduction" to A History of the Kansas Crusade, by Eli Thayer, p. XI.
114. Letters from M. D. Phillips to Edward Everett Hale, July 12, 1854; August 21, 1855, in correspondence of Edward Everett Hale.
115. Ibid., Letter of August 21, 1855.
116. These titles were Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; and History of Cuba, by Maturin M. Ballou.
117. The figure, $108, is evidently a mistake for $109, which would have been the exact amount of the extra five per cent royalty of the original plan.
118. The Herald of Freedom, October 15, 1859, noted Phillips, Sampson & Company had recently failed with an indebtedness of $240,000.
119. Thayer, Eli, A History of the Kansas Crusade, Its Friends and Its Foes, pp. 124, 125. Because of this official use of the book by the Emigrant Aid Company, it subsequently came to be regarded as a publication of the company; cf. Albert J. Beveridge's Abraham Lincoln, v. II, p. 300, footnote.
120. Webb, Thos. H., Letter of September 29, 1854, to Albert Oestreicher, in Letters (Letter Press copies) of The Emigrant Aid Company.
121. Hale, Edward E., Jr., Life and Letters o) Edward Everett Hale, v. 1, p. 286.
122. Ibid., p. 268.

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains

The latest in scholarship on Kansas history, published quarterly since 1978 by the Kansas Historical Foundation.

• List of issues
• Forthcoming issue
• Indexes
• Purchase back issues
• Editorial policy and style guide
• Edgar Langsdorf Award for Excellence in Writing
• Contact the publisher
• Contact the editor

Related Content

• Benjamin Foster Papers, 1890-1990
• Dietrich F. and Margaret Friesen Diaries, 1911-1932
• Frank Hodder Correspondence, Lincoln Notes, 1905-1928
• George M. Hoover Account Book, 1883-1885
• Iowa Nation Historical Records Collection