Lincoln, the unknown

100• LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNKansas knocked at the door of the Union, asking to be admittedas a slave State. But should she be so admitted? Douglassaid "no," because the legislature that had framed her constitutionwas not a real legislature. Its members had been electedby chicanery and shot-guns. Half the settlers in Kansas—menwho had a right to vote—were never registered, and so couldn'tvote. But five thousand pro-slavery Democrats who lived inwestern Missouri and had not the shadow of a legal right tocast ballots in Kansas went to a United States arsenal, armedthemselves, and, on election day, marched over into Kansaswith flags flying and bands playing—and voted for slavery. Thewhole thing was a farce, a travesty on justice.And what did the free-State men do? They prepared foraction. They cleaned up their shot-guns, oiled their rifles, andbegan banging away at signs on trees and knot-holes in barndoors, to improve their marksmanship. They were soon marchingand drilling and drinking. They dug trenches, threw upbreastworks, and turned hotels into forts. If they couldn't winjustice with ballots, they would win it with bullets!In almost every town and village throughout the North, professionalorators harangued the citizenry, passed hats, and collectedmoney to buy arms for Kansas. Henry Ward Beecher,pounding his pulpit in Brooklyn, cried that guns would do morefor the salvation of Kansas than Bibles. From that time on,Sharp's rifles were known as "Beecher's Bibles." They wereshipped from the East in boxes and barrels labeled as "Bibles,"as "Crockery," as "Revised Statutes."After five free-State settlers had been murdered, an old sheepraiser,a religious fanatic who cultivated grapes and made wineon the side, rose up on the plains of Kansas and said: "I haveno choice. It has been decreed by Almighty God that I shouldmake an example of these pro-slavery men."His name was John Brown, and he lived at Osawatomie.One night in May he opened the Bible, read the Psalms ofDavid to his family, and they knelt in prayer. Then after thesinging of a few hymns, he and his four sons and a son-in-lawmounted their horses and rode across the prairie to a proslaveryman's cabin, dragged the man and his two boys out ofbed, chopped off their arms, and split their heads open withan ax. It rained before morning, and the water washed some ofthe brains out of the dead men's skulls.From that time on, both sides slew and stabbed and shot.