• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1596 0

town’s present drive to provision itself for another such war. In many ways, it didn’t matter, for the moment, how they disposed of the cash. It was more than anything a symbol of the support we had gained through the sacking of Lawrence and, in my opinion, a vindication of Thomas’s view that the sacking had been all for the best. I told him that when I took my morning walk out to his grave. I was sorry he couldn’t be there to see it. And then the slave of the slavocrats, President Pierce, issued another of his proclamations—that the Free State legislators were not to meet on the Fourth of July in Topeka, as planned.

On the July 3, Lawrence emptied out.

On the Fourth, and a hot day, a hundred K.T. degrees, which means sunny and windy, parades commenced in Topeka right after breakfast and went on till noon, with a band and a banner and fireworks and all the usual speeches. Right at noon, a man came in who’d been posted on the road, and said that the troops were on their way, and then the legislature went into the "hall" and took their seats. Pretty soon the dragoons, some three squadrons (including cannon!), came up to the "hall" and arrayed themselves. They even set up and loaded the cannon, and had the cannoneers light their lucifers! The surgeon laid out his medical kit, which the Free State citizens didn’t fail to notice, and then Colonel Sumner went into the hall.

There was some confusion with the roll; or, as Louisa said—she was there with Charles in spite of her condition and reported all this to me, saying that Thomas’s death would be meaningless if I didn’t begin to rededicate myself to the cause—"Many of the men were confused about whether they wanted to declare themselves present or not, in the teeth of the enemy, but of course, Charles spoke right up!"

Then Colonel Sumner stood up and announced, "Gentlemen, I am called upon this day to perform the most painful duty of my whole life. Under the authority of the President’s proclamation, I am here to disperse this legislature and inform you that you cannot meet. I therefore order you to disperse."

"He’s really on our side," said Louisa. "It was painful to watch a man so torn between duty and right sentiment."

And then he vowed to do anything to disperse the group.

"We knew," said Louisa, "that that meant everything up to and including firing on women and children with those cannon."

But Colonel Sumner got a cheer, anyway. His heart was in the right place.

"I tell you, Lidie," said Louisa, when she came home that night, "the tide is turning in our direction. It’s a shame and a crime that your dear husband is not with us to see it."

I agreed with that.

I had become convinced that the boy who shot Jeremiah was the same boy we had driven off from the Jenkins claim in the fall, which meant that his companions were those men, or two of those men. This conviction had come over me bit by bit. The boy’s face was the only one I’d seen, and I thought I remembered it looking familiar. I surmised that that was the reason the Missourians hadn’t bothered to steal such an excellent horse as Jeremiah—that boy had recognized him, and therefore us, and decided to exact his revenge. My secret, all the time that my future was being discussed by my friends and relations, was that I was going to kill that boy. I didn’t even think of him as a boy. He would have been sixteen, old enough to take mercy on a horse. He was a young man, only a few years younger than myself and perfectly capable of paying the full penalty for his actions.

A few days after she returned from the meeting of the legislature, and some three or four weeks after Thomas’s killing, Louisa sat down with me in my room. I sat in a chair and she sat on the bed, which was more comfortable for her in her condition. She had her bodice unbuttoned and her sleeves rolled up, and her face was red from the heat. We fanned ourselves and drank tea, which Louisa said was known to be cooling—the British in India drank tea all through the hottest part of the day. What you couldn’t do in such weather was drink intoxicating liquors: