LINCOLN ROOM UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY MEMORIAL the Class of 1901 founded by HARLAN HOYT HORNER and HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER LINCOLN IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR An Epos of the Northwest BY DENTON J. SNIDER ST. LOUIS, MO., SIGMA PUBLISHING CO (For Sale by A. C. M'Clut" CR. Co., Booksellers, Chicago, His.) KUDU-JONES PRINTING CO. MINT LOUIS MISSOURI TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGB CANTO 1 5 Captain Abraham Lincoln. CANTO II 41 The Conflict of Races. CANTO III 73 Lincoln at New Salem. CANTO IV 107 Black Hawk and Keokuk. CANTO V 146 Lincoln's March CANTO VI 194 Black Hawk's March (3) 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE CANTO VII 229 Lincoln's Double Oath. CANTO VIII 263 The Indian Tragedy. CANTO IX 297 Lincoln's Return. CANTO X 339 Home Again. HISTORIC INTIMATIONS.. . 362 Canto Jftrsit. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I. Sunshiny little April showers Would whirl from Heaven's cloudy towers, A slanting coverlet of rain Down on the grassy bed of plain, Which seemed each water-drop to flatter And answer with a kiss the patter; Afar the feathery greenery Filled full of love the scenery, Which in the longing heart would stir Sweet fancy to a tender whirr. Then Spring would prime her watering pot Up in the skies where every dot Of fog she gathered to her store, When she again began to pour (5) 6 CANTO 1. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Her glossy globules in long lines down dash- ing, And on the face of the pedestrian splashing. Thus intermittent vernal showers Kept playing up and down the hours, Building the day of cloud and sheen, With rainbows arching them between, On which the troubled human sight Could glance its way from dark to bright. The muffled trumpeter on high Whose peal is thunder out the sky Would downward hurl his sudden blast Of earth it seemed the very last, As if he tried on his trump to play The signal of the judgment day. Now through this elemental war Resounding o'er him from afar, Young Abraham Lincoln you may see Walking alone, unstrung his form, Thinking about what is to be, Unmindful of the shine or storm. He dreams, too, of New Salem, whence he hails, Where he has quit his splitting rails, Has flung down axe and wedge and maul, For he has heard another call- Where, too, he is a candidate To be lawgiver to the State, And where runs singing Sangamon JOURNEY TO RICH LAND. 7 Which he in soul oft floats upon. Thither he will be soon returning When the war-cloud passes over, It is the very heart of all his yearning, For Lincoln, too, is lover; Awake, adream, he cannot help but render Unto that town and stream a service tender. But now he moves the other way, Although not very long may be his stay; He goes the proclamation to obey, In which the Governor demands, Some troops to quell the Indian bands Of Black Hawk in their fierce foray, Whose bloody hope dares all whites slay And blooming farms in ashes lay. So Lincoln starts on his new path To bring to the red slayer scath, And yet a deep recoil he hath. Noiseless the brooding mist from Heaven fell Around him, and a far foreboding spell Awoke, and heaved with throbbings of his heart, Which slowly seemed atwain to part And with itself by turns to talk, Wooing the way by misty walk. Two souls within him face each other, Yet he to both is the one brother. At last the cleaving of the cloud Bids him let fall his inner shroud, g CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. A little prairie run lie fords, And there breaks into spoken words: "My gift has been still to forgive, In mercy I my days would live; And yet within I feel a strife Which stabs me at the source of life; My father's father I can see Drop dead beside a giant tree Which he was felling in a wood, Where he, of harm unconscious, stood ; The enemy not far away Secreted in the bushes lay, And treacherous took a deadly aim At him from whom I bear my name. That bullet, by an Indian shot Is shaping now my earthly lot ; I feel it plowing in my brain, And slaying still afresh the slain; To-day I am impelled to fight By that transmitted bullet's might My father, Thomas Lincoln, stood Beside his father gurgling blood, A little lad of soft six years Shedding his hapless, hopeless tears ; A tomahawk was whizzing round his head When the redskin there reeled over dead, Shot by the quick-eyed brother who was bigger, Who from the near-by cabin pulled the trig- ger. JOURNEY TO RIG ELAND. 9 But fatherless became the home On the frontier, where wild men roam, Eeady for any bloody deed To sate their vengeance or their greed. This story have I often heard Told at the fireside, till upstirred I felt to retribution of my blood, When I grew up a man, and could From my own tracks give back the blow Dealt at me by the stoutest foe. And yet shall I my blood deny? Another voice bids me defy The surging of the vengeful strains Which trickle down ancestral veins, And turn to a red battle-field my brains." While thus his musings to him spoke, At once his weaving fancy broke Its fine-spun thread and stopped his talk With self ; he hardly dared to walk Ahead in usual striding gait, Although he knew 'twas getting late, And the muster might not for him wait. Right on his path a cloud throws down In wrath a sunless savage frown, And stutters doom in clashing claps of thun- der Which its black bosom tear asunder, And overturn the contents all Into one woful waterfall 10 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Swirling him in its swashing sheet, So that he scarce can keep his feet. The forked lightning fiercely stabs His eyesight with a dozen jabs, And fain would break into his brain As if to sear it of a stain, Leaving an inward blank of pain Which blinds him to the light of day, So that he cannot see his way. He wondered at the white-hot levin Which flung a bolt at him from Heaven, And listened in his halted breath To hear the messenger of death. But when he had regained his eye And looked anew up to the sky, How changed the tide of circumstance ! A cataract of radiance Falls slanting to him from the sun Through gorges deep of cloudland dun, And racing down the sunbeam's slope Eoll the bright caravans of Hope. Lincoln resumed his former stride, Yet floated on an inward tide Which flooded to the brim his soul, As he read in the future 's scroll : "And still I would not hate a man, Let his skin be a coppered tan ; I hate the hate of race, Little it hath of grace ; JOURNEY TO RICH LAND. JJ But still I feel that blob of lead Burrowing Abraham Lincoln's head Before I ever saw the light Which lifted these two eyelids out of night. Grandfather mine, Oh, Abraham, Thy fate my brain must still embalm, With thee I interlink in name, And in the blood from which I came. But a yet deeper tie I feel, On mine thy death has set its seal, In me thy dark foreshadow I descry : By bullet in the brain I, too, shall die." The sentence scarcely had he uttered When all the empyrean muttered In louder-growing growls around him, Which seemed in forecast to confound him; Down Heaven's hills of clouded zones Zeus bowls his heaviest thunder-stones, Cracks the huge reservoir of storm Above that solitary form; The deluge falls together in a crash, And on the patient earth doth ply its lash Plaited of million million rain-drawn strands Which whip from skiey dome the lowly lands. The thunder seemed to punctuate What that one man would state, And wrote down in its dripping ink Whatever he might think, And the quick letters of the lightning's writ 12 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Stirred in him a prophetic wit, While Heaven's deep reverberating chords Found echo in his words. Soon to a drizzle swooned the sheeted rain, The dark demoniac clouds took wings, No more was felt their heavy watery chain, Which thralled the earth's aspiring under- lings. Lincoln picked up his mind again Just where the thunderbolt shot it atwain, By mighty claps of cannonade Eoaring as if the globe must be unmade, And in its cosmic graveyard laid. But now he muses, once more whirled From the wild outer to his inner world, Calls up afresh the image gory Which reddens his ancestral story : 1 ' My father 's tale it was, his only tale, And he rehearsing it would tremble pale, The terror of the child reveal Which I, a child, would also feel. It ne'er grew stale to me, a boy, Who found in story all my joy; I heard the feats of border fights Between the Indians and the Whites, Eecounted in heroic way By heroes who had led the fray. Of these one far surpassed the rest E'en though they did their very best JOURNEY TO RICH LAND. 13 The frontier hero of the West He rose, enduring every test; And still my heart thrills to the rune Which chants the deeds of Daniel Boone." Here Lincoln whirled around to see What now the judgment of the skies might be ; Then picked he up the fallen thread, Still talking to himself, he said: "Our Governor a call to arms Has sent to all these scattered farms To meet with like the red man's harms; I shall pay back my Indian debt Inherited, but paid not yet. There 's not a man on this frontier Who has not felt what I feel here And with it dropped the trickling tear Who could not tell my story's counterpart Oft with a fiercer frenzy of the heart, And fiercer flashes of the eye From burning wells of memory, Which now burst up along the ways And set the prairies all ablaze. The borderers rise, and on the run They mass themselves with shouldered gun, To turn back on the savage His self-same bloody ravage. For generations back my kin Right on this battle-line have been This battle-line 'tween white and red 14 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Which will be drawn till one be dead ; Yet this my own reproach I have to face : How can you help destroy a race ? ' ' So Lincoln strode along the way And let the rain strive with the ray, He fought all in himself a fray; He was both sides, was joy and rue, Was victor and the vanquished too, Was right and wrong, was good and bad, An inward civil war he had, He overjoyed in gladness, He oversighed in sadness, When his embattled hosts of brain would meet In triumph and defeat. II. He came unto a meadow brook On which a willow drew his look. Its wattled head seemed bowed in prayer, As shrouded in a holy hood, And breathed an introverted mood Along the silent gloaming air ; Each twig drooped earthward in devotion And stilled its every petty motion ; Each little leaf was bended down Before high Heaven 's throned frown ; It wept in drops as if in pain, The tears were furnished by the rain. A man beneath the willow stood, THE STRANGER. 15 A stranger in the neighborhood, But somehow of that prayerful tree, The human counterpart he seemed to be, Brothered in universal sympathy ; Out of a mild benignant face He threw a gleam of God's own grace. His old straw hat was badly shattered His coat was round his body scattered, And pantaloons in places tattered, While out his windowed shoes Would peep two lines of toes. He held in hand a sack of seeds, Which he would plant as his good deeds, That others could enjoy the fruit When he, the giver, might be mute. No recompense he gained for good, Little he recked of gratitude, Planting a seed alone he stood. He asked no man for aid, On Heaven and himself was stayed. Lincoln came up to him and thought : ' ' Somewhere that favor I have caught ; But I can't tell exactly how, That character I've known ere now;" But he could not the when or where awake From sleeping memory, and so he spake ; "What are you doing here, good friend? A helping hand I'll gladly lend." ' ' This by-way nook I seek to plant 16 CANTO I CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. That it may serve some human want." * ' But say for whom such toil out here Upon this wild frontier?" ' ' I never can turn back Till I get round; The world wheels in my track Upon this very ground; Here you with me now stand in line, You need not seek a better sign. ' ' Young Lincoln wondered at the mystic speech Yet felt a meaning in it out of reach, As if it came some whence above him Voiced by a presence that did love him. And so he pressed the point anew: "What purpose have you here in view What purpose good as you?" The stranger straightened up to his full stat- ure, And seemed to concentrate all human nature Into an outlook of the all-seeing soul Which views untimed the aeons forward roll ; It was as if beneath that willow portal A God came down and spoke unto a mortal : "I plant for all the races To dwell hereafter in these places ; I plant for black, for white for you For red, perchance for yellow too. I am not limited by space, I. make no difference of race, THE STRANGER. 17 In every moment of my life I solve the universe's strife, And though I live in this small speck of years, All time to me in it appears. And now I hand thee here a little book, Upon the march thou oft in it can'st look, It will thee to thy higher self recall When there is danger of a fall. Let man be minded of the fact His life must Adam's re-enact. In this breast pocket of thy blouse, Next to thy heart let it be laid, To help thee keep thy holiest vows, Fulfilled they should be, e 'en if not prayed ; This book of only forty pages, Entitled the New Testament, Is now to thee from Heaven sent, The library of all the Sages, The key-stone of God's firmament, The overtone of coming ages This now it is thy task to hear In this campaign of just this year." Staid Lincoln listened there amazed, At first he thought the fellow crazed, Perchance a social vagabond, Who seeks somehow to get beyond The civil order he feels cramping, And so he turns his life to tramping ; A citizen of everywhere, 18 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Who of the All-in- All plays heir, A wandering cosmopolite Who suns himself in his own light. But when the youth got to divine The sudden whirl of that last line, Which whizzed itself into his heart, He felt the barb of a prophetic dart Him soothing in its very smart. He scanned anew the stranger's face, Bespake him in a kindly tone : "I've seen you in some other place Which will not let itself be known. ' ' The man wheeled on his heel to go, And dryly said: """I guess that's so." But then as if he caught a sudden gleam His countenance rayed out its sunniest beam As he to Lincoln voiced a whispered dream : "Me thou shalt see another day More now to thee I cannot say. ' ' At once the stranger swiftly sped And vanished in the silvery billows Along a shore of waving willows, He trod an airy winged tread, His footsteps tipped the ground in their sure speed, He hardly seemed the solid earth to need, Bearing along his bag of seed. MUSTER AT HIGHLAND. ] III. When out of sight had fled that form, And far away had rolled the storm, This younger newer Abraham Had soothed the lion and the lamb, Which crouching lay within his breast, For each of them had there its nest, Though both just now be medicined to rest. In mind he bore a lighter load, Trudging along the muddy road, To Bichland where the warriors planned To choose the captain of their band ; The election was at hand. Some others met him on the way, And soon they had his brain at play With story, fable, anecdote Which tickled laughter in each throat, And tuned the time to merry note; Then more yet joined at the cross-road, A little human river flowed Toward Bichland, when a voice cried out Raised vehemently to a shout : ' ' Abe Lincoln, you the captain be Of this our prairie company." When thunderous vociferation Had noised the people's approbation, That same stout voice cried Halt to the whole group, Then spoke to Lincoln there before the troop : 20 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. "You have a roaring rival in the field, Your tonguey turns Kirkpatrick cannot wield ; Although he runs a water mill, Your clapper is a better still ; He owns indeed a well-tilled farm, But yours is much the brawnier arm. He has, they say, a slave, a nigger, But that out here makes him no bigger, An old cocked hat and regimentals He dons with other incidentals, When he comes out to yearly muster To air aristocratic bluster. And then he is a man unlean He is too fat is what I mean. You, Abraham, are just the man Lank and long-legged as a pelican, Can wade the swamps of Blini Or rise and o'er the tree-tops fly, Soaring above the Sangamon And prairies flat we stand upon. I dare him clinch you in a tussle Despite his bluster and his bustle; In making an off-hand stump-speech Him can you many a lesson teach, Your tongue and arms are longer, each to each, Than his two, stretch them as he may, Both yours and his must measured be to-day ; His arm and tongue with yours must gallop Like racing horses twain MUSTER AT RICHLAND. 21 To see which can the other wallop And as best man the prize obtain. When both of you come to the twist, He dares not butt against Abe Lincoln's fist, And given all his power and glory, He cannot with you swop a story." The people seems to speak in that one voice When it gets down to talking to the boys ; Uproared in mass that leveled crowd To rival upper thunder of the cloud. Lincoln's first thought was to decline, He could not put his men in line ; Little he knew of military drill, His knowledge of the foe was smaller still. But he bethought himself anew : There rose two sparkling eyes upon his view, Flashing ambition in his heart, Along with echoes of a subtler art Which softly throbbed a dulcet smart, Whose twinge he deftly kept concealed Though it to him his holier self revealed. But out the game he could not stay, He soon came back from far away, Hearing again a clang of tongue Which from the prairie flat was sung. Another man spoke up his pleasure Whose name we shall leave out this measure; His voice was cracked in sundry streaks of spite, 22 CANTO I CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. While setting up his democratic right : ' ' Kirkpatrick holds his head too high, We'll prairie him out of his sky, And bring him down to our country's level, He means to us the very Devil He piques himself upon his ancestry, And cannot say enough of quality. You are the better man in muscle, First challenge him to try a tussle ; The brain you have to boot, I know, That never have you failed to show, For you can write the fairest hand Of any body in this border land, Can tell a yarn or make a speech, Can any common man outreach With your long arms and longer head; The leader ought not to be led By aristocracy of blood ; That bodes our country little good; You must the champion chosen be, Abe, dare the captaincy." But to the village they have come, Stepping the beat of the big bass-drum And the rack-a-tack of the little tambour, Two dozen borderers or more. Already others had gathered there, And some were still arriving; Eumors of war buzzed in the air Like busy swarms of bees a-hiving, MUSTER AT RICHLAND. 23 They slaughtered the redskin with many a damn, Which blazed in speech aflame with liquor's dram; Always the word became more bloody Shot through and through with charge of toddy ; At last the squads of men repair Toward a grassy public square, With whoops which would the Indians scare, Had they been only there. Some wore their buckskin pantaloons, With caps made of the skins of coons Others were dressed in butternut That always showed a home-grown cut, Blue jeans was in great favor, too, And lent to yellow its skiey hue; To mud was trod the loamy street In chorus kneaded by many feet ; April still tried the clouds to drain, Spirting adown her rivulets of rain, And from celestial sprinkling-pots, Kept watering her earthly garden spots. The men had yelled the final cheer, When every mouth was oped and every ear, And all began to electioneer. The war of offices, now uppermost, Must first be fought out by that host; Of tongues there were at least three score 24 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Which started up a pattering roar, Like musketry in battle That never stops its rattle ; The big guns too were getting loaded, But had not yet their charge exploded. The rival strutted through the throng, To it he seemed not to belong ; He was the only man who wore store-clothes, And rode a blooded horse in pompous pose, Against the drizzling shower he spread A silk umbrella o'er his head, A thing unknown to all that crowd Who at such weapon jeered aloud; His twisting corkscrew of a nose, Go where he might, would make him foes, And oft he twitched his countenance, As if he tasted wormwood in each glance He threw upon the multitude Who everywhere about him stood. But when the sun strode out his cover In golden panoply of lover, And laughed down on the earth his beams, Then all the folk in his inviting gleams Together roll with mighty crush, And to a pile of logs they rush, And it their prized center make, As if just that were all the stake. "A speech! a speech!" the cry first heard The leader must be master of the word; MUSTER AT RICHLAND. 5 "From Lincoln's Abe a speech, a speech!" The roar resounded round the welkin's reach. His stalwart form o'ertopped the rest, Of them he was, yet was the best ; He mounted there upon a log, Before him stood the crowd agog; * * Here, hold my old straw hat, ' ' he said 1 ' No, keep it on your brush-heap head To shade your phiz and roof your poll, Now let from under it the stories roll ; We want no stunning style from you, Kail-splitter of the Sangamon, Maul on the wedge till it rive through And one good job of jaw get done." So spoke the people's voice reduced to one; Meanwhile the speech of Lincoln had begun : "My country's call to-day I hear. And so I come a volunteer Against the murderous savages, Who have renewed their ravages ; When we but think of all their brutal broils, The blood of us frontiersmen boils. The battle has come down to sons from sires, In us still glow the old ancestral fires Enkindled long ago to flaming strife Between the white and red for death and life ; From generation to generation We stand the vanguard of the nation. But when the war is done, come back 26 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I shall and tread the same old track; You know I am a candidate To make the law for this whole State ; My creed I shall at once make known, It is to improve the Sangamon, Which to the Illinois will stream t Bearing us on as in a dream. Into the Mississippi float Behold our Sangamonian boat ; Then to the Gulf and to the Ocean, Of all the world we'll share the motion, The universe, I have to think Needs us to get along or else 'twill sink." Whereat the applause did seem to tear To very shreds the domed air Which overarched the shouters there ; Each flintlock old was held on high And shot in chorus up the sky, Making a noisy celebration Since just next door stood all creation; Such was the backwoods aspiration Stirred by Abe Lincoln's speech upon The navigable Sangamon. The people's voice again spoke single, The many tongues turned one in tune and time And lilted in a kind of common jingle, Which somehow fits into this rhyme : "The tallest cornstalk, Lincoln, is just you, MUSTER AT RICHLAND. 7 With biggest ear of corn From prairie ever born, With all the silken tassels streaming too, You never fail to tick the tickle spot, You read us off down to the dot ; Give us another sample of that lot." But now the rival has his turn, Haughty he peers about and stern, For he the trend may well discern. With his fat jowl high up he treads, And from his perch looks o'er their heads, Then he begins to talk At that big-eared unhusked cornstalk: "I know this Lincoln and his clan, Awhile he was my hired man, In yarning he would spin his time, Would crack a joke and make a rhyme, He liked his work less than his play, I sent him off, he could not stay Upon my place another day When I him once had tried. He has no horse, for none can pay, And if he had he cannot ride As it becomes a captain in the line, He has no sword, but here is mine, Worn by my father at Tippecanoe, Where it he boldly drew Against this same Black Hawk, 28 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Of whom so much is now the talk. Its flash beheld Tecumseh too, When up in Canada he met his fate. And though I am no candidate, I still have something in my pate ; I give my time to the public will, Though busy with my farm and mill ; Lincoln is out of a job, I hear, And so he comes a volunteer ; To country he will now be true, And fight and bleed and die for her with you, As he has nothing else to do." Then Jack of Clary's Grove spoke out Once thrown by Lincoln in a bout, But now Abe's over-zealous friend Who would at once the contest end : "Now for a wrestling match to test Of all these men who is the best ; Only the best man here can be The captain of this company. Lincoln, Kirkpatrick on this ground Show us your bodies wriggling round, And if it can't be settled with a twist, Why, then decide it with the fist. ' ' The rival sullenly drew off, Muttering his mood in sulky scoff: The tall rail-splitter may strain more strength, 1. 1 MUSTER AT HIGHLAND. 29 The thin wood-chopper may stretch more length, That does not give him skill This company to drill ; And though he tell a funny story, That leads us not to battle's glory." And Lincoln too slid off aside, Such contest would he not abide, But the crowd shouted: "the match! the match ! Step up ye twisters to the scratch." Then Lincoln to divert them sought, Therewith a lesson also taught ; He showed that he at once was able To turn to use a little fable : "All animals," quoth he, "were once like men, They came and talked together then As we do now upon this green, Speakers they had too, fat and lean. The frogs got somehow in a muddle, They could not stand it in their puddle, For each and all would croak together, Their gabbing tongues must have a tether. So they resolved to choose a king To rule that most unruly thing : The sonorous bellow of the big bull frog When in the swamp he mounts a log ; Who shall be king? Who shall be king? 30 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Did through all leaping frog-town ring ; One of ourselves or some other beast Who can us swallow at his feast? The news that last came to my hearing They all were still electioneering." The crowd felt just a little rub, The story had a sly-shot nub Which struck them with its stub. Whereat a busy buzz uprose From out that swarm of friends and foes Until one mouth seemed these and those : "Abe, you are of all the big bull-frog, Hop up again upon that log, And yawp another yarn like that, You have a hundred of them pat." "No more," said he, "but to the choice We must now pass at once, my boys ; Black Hawk is burning, stealing, slaying, While here we stand debating and delaying, To choose the leader let us now proceed, The time roars like a tempest for the deed, Hump down to work and quit this babble, When we have done, again we'll gabble." But suddenly he stopped in doubt, A turn of thought wheeled him about, He felt he had left something out; Cloudy he lifted up his look, His knotted hand he raised and shook, MUSTER AT HIGHLAND. 3 And then another turn he took. He thought of the portentous hap Which loomed just then on Southern map, In which to him lurked the dread fates Of these entire United States. For Lincoln felt the people whole With a sort of universal soul, Already he was national And in himself he saw the country all; ' * Just one more thing I have to tell, ' ' Says he, "which makes for Heaven or Hell. Two men will leaders be Of this our little company In which a speck I seem to see Of one great contest yet to be. Let both of us without defection, Pledge now to stand by the election, Kirkpatrick here as well as me, Whoever may be chosen, I or he, I swear to obey the majority; I shall not have to be co-erced, Let happen what for me is worst. Kirkpatrick, will you take this oath, Whose sacredness should bind us both? I shall enlist with you If beaten I shall be ; Will you enlist with me If you do not pull through 1 ? Or will you try To nullify ?" * 32 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. A sudden silence hushed the multitude, All faces turned to where the rival stood Intently gazing on the air, Until the shout resounded, ' ' Swear ' '. The man seemed wrestling in a transforma- tion Which was akin to God 's salvation, Just then he must decide his own self-strife, And turn around a corner in his life. He had to go to worse or better, Eivet or rive his ancient fetter; A light through all his being ran, Lincoln's test was making him a man. The crowd stood silent all the while Waiting but could not even smile, At last the people's voice roared upward there Eepeating louder: " Kirkpatrick, swear." He reared his head again, but not in pride, A man regenerate he was inside Through Lincoln's priestly mediation, But mighty rolled his perspiration. At once he flashed his eyes of glede : * l No, no, I never shall secede. Though I be beaten at the poll As private I shall still enroll Put down my name upon that scroll." So spake he now, a new-born soul, To Lincoln, who the scribe was then, MUSTER AT HIGHLAND. 33 Best wielder of the people's pen, Who wrote the name that bright it shone In neatest script beside his own. Spake Lincoln up with face delighted, Though hitherto it was benighted With a sombre melancholy line, Through which his humor now could shine : ' ' The best is this ! United we shall go, United stand against whatever foe. A dim presentiment I could not hide, Lest my election should perchance divide Our band atwain in bitter hate, So that my office might create A little civil war within our little state. Already of secession I have heard, My soul grows murky at the word, But my foreboding fantasy pass by The ballot now we have to try : All ye who vote me captain, toe this line Beside me you will then be counted mine. ' * When out his mouth had sped these words, Beside him sprang at once two-thirds And more, of the whole sixty-eight, Whereat he still forefelt his fate As if the small might yet be great. A moment there he gazed afar As if he saw another war, A distant time he seemed all rapt in When he again was chosen Captain. 34 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. IV. About a pivot's turn was Lincoln whirled, The rounding of his new career Dizzied the youthful volunteer, To one fantastic moment shrank the world, Until he somehow squared his head And out the whiz himself he led. Suddenly he woke up to the act, And grappled with the present fact : "Attention, company, shoulder arms" The flintlocks gathered from the farms Battled together at their best, The powder-horn slung round the breast, And pouch with bullet-moulds and knife, The implements of death and life, All which from childhood they had handled, About their bodies gaily dandled; Some proudly bore a blanket too, A bedquilt some, of speckled hue, Pieced by their mothers when it was new, But most kept all such gewgaws out of view. Then Captain Lincoln gave command When he in front had taken stand, He towered over all the rest, His features said he meant no jest : ' ' Forward march ! now follow me, The foremost I must always be As Captain of this company The first man to be shot or shoot, Whether mounted or on foot. MARCH TO NEW SALEM. 35 But to New Salem next we go, Some gear it has for me I know ; There we can borrow Mentor Graham's flag, As sash I'll find some old red rag, And I must get some neighbor's nag, I own myself a fuzzy saddle-bag. Perchance I may pick up a sword" Somehow he falters at the coming word, A sudden image in his bosom bobs, And makes it thrill unworded throbs, So that he speechless moves along, Self-occupied with inner throng. But the chief reason is kept down Why Lincoln marches to New Salem town. Still on they pushed, and Lincoln led The swaying line by his high head Through which was surging many a thought, Of what that one brief day had brought. The wheeling point of years it seemed, The living of an entire life foregleamed, The present deed of all the future dreamed In fleeting magical reflection, Which would not wait for close inspection. His outspread years in one diurnal dot Seemed crushed together on a little spot, These people took him as their choice, That came to him a far-off voice, He had no skill in this vocation, 36 CANTO I CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. And still they chose him for their highest sta- tion. Nor could he well forget that face benign Which did his soul with grace beshine, And left him with a promise still Which he has ever to fulfill. A passion too in bosom deeply hidden, Would upward well to memory unbidden. By many feelings he was goaded, His inner world was overloaded, Still now and then, to get relief, He would relate a story brief. Marching along thus occupied He let some minutes swiftly slide, When suddenly with waked-up look He sharply eyed around, and took A searching glance at all, as if he tried To find a missing man Most needful to his plan ; But soon his mien gleamed satisfied: 'Twas when he came to scan Kirkpatrick walking in the ranks And sharing in the soldiers' pranks, Tramping in mud just like them all, Without his silken parasol, Taking the rain and sun atwain, together Whatever be the weather, Dropping his aristocracy's pretension, Yet with a lordly condescension. MARCH TO NEW SALEM. 37 Then Lincoln could not help but utter Quite to himself though in a mutter: * * True man he is beneath that fatted skin, An office he shall have as his just prize, If I can only get him in When the whole regiment doth organize. I did not like his dewlap chin Puffed in contempt and pride ; But now I see his other side I could not feel his loyal spirit In such thick layers doubly rolled, Nor soul in such a deep outside insouled ; Justice I must now give his merit, His character is gold." In native contemplation caught Lincoln still carried on his nearest thought : "Methinks secession shows no sign Within this little band of mine, And yet the dread of it me haunted, As damned ghost far down implanted In the first fountain of my being That ghost I cannot shun the seeing. And here appears no nullification, Which holds a bonfire celebration Just now down yonder in Caroline, With Andy Jackson getting into line : He will not fail to give the countersign. An earnest of myself he seems A sun beshining me with far-off gleams- But I must halt these daytime dreams." 38 CANTO I. CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Young Abraham looked up and sighted New Salem town; he stepped delighted, That image fleeted round again Despite the pleasure and the pain, The knowledge and the ignorance, Weaving the web of circumstance With all the ups and downs of chance. Through sticky mud with many a puff The soldiers reach the rising bluff, On which the houses sleep in silent sheen While citizens pour out upon the green, Which overlooks a little stream, Ambitious Sangamon in sunlit dream; Now flaunting wide its yellow flood It challenges the solar golden gleam, And channels field and wood Filled full of April rain, Which one year hence may come again. It seems to say to Lincoln and all there : "See I can a steamboat bear If you will only clear my track ; Here launch it on my back." Lincoln heard the voice but cannot stay, Yet took the time within to pray : * ' Fair nymph, thee I shall heed another day, When the present task is done And the Captain's laurel won; So then, sweet water-sprite, don't cry, Though now I have to say good-bye." Whereat he turned and up the hill MARCH TO NEW SALEM. 39 He trod in tune to his bosom's thrill, Which seemed to lift him on soft pillows And skyward float him in its billows. Spry Lincoln, as he lightly climbed above, Rose winged with the thought of love ; And though he kept it nestled in his breast, The honeyed sting gave him no rest, And was by many a fantasy caressed ; The image lisped to him unbidden, But his reply was always hidden. Then from his revery sublime He was jerked down to earth and time, For now the notes of fifer and of drummer Make shrill salute to the new-comer ; A batch of the most piercing tunes Are fiercely fifed by old Tom Cunes, The tiptop fifer of the county, Who never spared his music's bounty, On all he spent his shrilly overflow Which failed not to the bone to go. A hurricane he could outblow And make its blasts much smaller feel, Puckering his breath into a squeal, As he the measures off would reel, Boomed by the big drum 's monotone Which tuned the tempo to its drone And smote the snarling snare-drum's under- tone. So now with bodies bobbing up and down, 40 CANTO I CAPTAIN ABRAHAM LINCOLN. With Lincoln in his loftiest lead, Gleaming as if he wore their jeweled crown For doing the heroic deed, The soldier boys mount to New Salem town. Canto &econb. THE CONFLICT OF RACES. I. Far up the Mississippi's flood A solitary Indian stood; The river and the rivulet In many murmurous gushes met, And babbled round the long-necked strand Where Black Hawk 's boat had drawn to land In silent moonless night Which shut the sheen from human sight. To him the spot of old was known, And from the heart's far-down abysm, Despite his Indian stoicism He heaved a heavy-laden moan; "Upon the graves of those most dear, I, the lone Bedskin, drop a tear; (41) 42 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. Many a mile I've sneaked my way, By night, and hid myself by day, Till I have reached the holy grounds, Where lie within their little mounds My fathers taking their last sleep, Unwept by those who ought to weep. I scarce know where to go or stop, The land is covered with the white man's crop; My people's ancient burial-place Is taken by another race That cunning, cruel, whited face Who tills the sacred ashes of my mother, And sells the risen body of my brother, Who, like cannibal, can eat The red man's flesh grown up in wheat, And builds his church, to the foundation stones, Out of our very skulls and bones. Ye whites ye are the savage race. Perish ye shall without a trace ; What you to me and mine have sought to do I shall pay back to you. ' ' >> So seethed Black Hawk as once he stood, And voiced the rush of vengeful blood At the sad sight of his old village Begrown and green with a new tillage, Which the fresh emigrant had taught The earth to yield when rightly wrought. THE GATHERING OF RACES. 43 Two rivers formed a tongue of land, The mighty Mississippi and The lesser purling stream called Rock In honor of its stony stock ; He from the far-off Iowa Had hither crept his forest way; To Prophetstown his path did bend Where the red Prophet dwelt, Who had in ecstacy forefelt A plan the white man 's power to end, And back the tide of settlers send. Black Hawk ere leaving, cast a look Upon the old ancestral nook: "Ye dead, I shall come back and stay; I hear your spirits to me pray, Ah, well I understand Your heavenly command, And must obey I shall come back this very year, And when I die upon a day Be buried with my people here." Sadly the Indian turned up stream, Fleeting in night as if a dream Through woody dell along the River Which gave him drink fresh from the Giver, Which whispered to him as of old, The same sweet fairy-story told As it pellucid o *er the pebbles rolled. Betimes a waterfall with white swan-wings 44 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. A shredded song of the Great Spirit sings ; Outspreading on the tops of trees A guardian Manitou he sees. Safely he entered Prophetstown Without a single skiey frown, And in the Prophet's hut he sat him down. Two other men were there to meet him, They rose in white man's style to greet him, And threw dim outlines in the gloaming. They, too, had come from distant roaming, And on the self-same spot had landed, By hidden power together banded, As if to waylay weal of chance And rule the mighty roll of circumstance ; By throwing pebbles in Rock river They thought to dam the Ocean stream for- ever, They would reverse the flow of History, Whirling it backward across the sea, Whence it had voyaged to America And there proposed to stay. Another figure let us mark, Whose outlines shot into the dark So that he hardly could be seen, Yet he was always moving in between. This was the Prophet, named White Cloud, Who sewed his meaning in a shroud, Who in the future dream-world loved to grope THE GATHERING OF RACES. 45 And of it weave the web of Indian hope, Of which he was himself the spinning spider Circling the net-lines wider and yet wider, Until they might the land embrace, Entangling prey of every race. That Prophet was the soul of wiles, Made faces full of priestly smiles ; He played upon the racial hate, The deepest strain in man's estate, Red was his skin, but crossed in breed; That undermined in him the Indian's creed, Which rooted deeply in the single tribe: No other faith the savage could imbibe. Two hostile tribes met in the blood And in the soul of this red Pope, Two hateful halves oft made his mood And nullified each other's scope; Two Indians fought in him with might, Each scalped the other in the fight, And left the Prophet blank to neither, So that he could be both or either, Tribeless, loveless, yet all ambition To turn his dream of power to fruition ; Deft in a savage sacerdotal cunning, He could in deepest malice seem but funning ; Still through his craft himself had reared To be the Prophet famed and feared By Beds in all the regions of the North ; Some Whites, too, held him son of Earth, Possessing a mysterious power of evil, 46 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. And leagued by blood-signed paper with the Devil. So from afar that racial four Have come to spy each other's store, Within that little Indian hut Unsunned, untorched, yet smeared in smut. To fill the dark with darker, all took a smoke, They puffed the brooding calumet, Twirling its vapor in many a stinking jet ; The Prophet first the clouded silence broke : ' ' Last night there came to me a dream : Black Hawk I saw recross a stream ; It was the loving Father of Waters, Who, with his thousand fluff-haired daugh- ters, Welcomed his greatest son as yet Of all the copper-mounted set, And bade him take again his land Which had been wrested from his band. It was the God's own invitation To his dear people's restoration. I saw the Hawk fly back to his fathers' graves, And with him came a countless horde of braves, Who pushed the white face over the border, The women and children shrieking murder ; Beyond the Illinois they fled, The battle was 'tween white and red, THE GATHERING OF RACES. 47 And all this new-born State We dared to desolate. Through the Kaskaskia we plunge, Across the Ohio we make a lunge Into Kentucky, where another race We come upon in our long chase ; It is the black enslaved by white, He is our ally in this fight, The red and black shall be one nation United in a single federation : Such is to be our future story One cause, one people, and one territory, Irradiated by one common glory. Now we shall wreak on whites our shame, What they have done we'll do the same." The Prophet turned then to another, Whom, though of different race, he called his brother, And flattered with his best attention, Whose name he did not fail to mention: 1 'I have invited here a man Whose tongue can tell if any can, The future of our two-raced nation, The scope of all our aspiration. Swartface, pour out thy fluid word And tell to these what I have often heard From thee, far greater than my dreams; In thy quick brain a new world teems. Let them now see our coming State 48 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. The tinted races all in it regenerate. The sapient lines which curl a wreath Upon thy brow, give to them breath." II. And who was Swartface, sitting there In silence sullen, as in his lair, Ready to pounce upon his prey, Unseen except his eyeballs' glare Which now and then would fiercely flare, As if they flamed to slay. He was no redskin, not a trace Ban in his blood of that dying race ; Adopted in an Indian tribe he was, But only for a deeper cause, Bed he became so as to fight His hated foe with greater might, Until his soul turned gory with despite, And his fierce eye shot crimson in its light. That foe was a Caucasian skin, Though to it he himself was kin, One-half of white he was or more, But the black mother gave her store Of race to a white father's son, Thus he was double, yet was one. As in himself he had two races, So he was owner of two faces, One writhed and wrestled in demoniac hate, Its lines seemed twisted dragons in the fight of fate, 8WARTFACE, THE MULATTO. 49 The other face could turn and laugh at its own mate, And so with smile of courtesy, Yea, with a strain of chivalry Its wearer well it would ingratiate. And yet beneath his double he was whole, Under two faces he had one soul . Of a slave-mother in Virginia He was brought forth unto the day, Then to Kentucky he was sold When scarcely ten years old, To Mr. Davis of Christian County, A master not unkind or cold And not without a master's bounty. Swartface as the most polished one Of all his slaves, he gave to serve his son, A military officer Who felt ambition's deepest stir To put his laureled name Upon the scroll of fame ; A student's prize he had already won: Young Davis bore the name of Jefferson. But at Fort Snelling one bright day Swartface was missing, he had run away, Though he as slave was treated well, Slavery had become to him a hell. He turned an Indian was the sequel, And by that act was free and equal To the best Eedskin that ever was, Defying whites and all their laws. 4 50 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. For as his mother was a slave and black, He never could break out her fastened track Into his father's life and station, And so it was with all his generation. His wife and child he could not bear, Waifs he deemed them of despair, The family was but the devil's net, The worst of all the curses yet, If he a slave could only slaves beget. At birth he fell from the upper race Far down into another, Though he could see his full white brother Perched high above him in the loftiest place, Disowning him, though every drop of blood Conjoined them in a common brotherhood. He gnashed his teeth at such disgrace, Into whose Hell he had been thrown When born, and by no sinning of his own; He cursed himself as father and as son, In both he deemed himself undone. The universe itself seemed rotten, And Heaven too, should be thrown in, Damning him begetter and begotten, For his unsinned sin. And so, as he grew up apace, He brooded on the conflicts of his race, His tribesmen soon gave him a name Which dimly hinted whence he came, A swarthy face and ringed hair Showed him to be no Indian's heir. 8WARTFACE, THE MULATTO. 5^ English he well could read and write, Had learned them both in law's despite, Some of his master's books in stealth He had devoured, and won their wealth, Of verse he owned one little book And kept it hid in safest nook, From it his deepest draughts he took ; And thus by secret education He shared in the new age's civilization. He also knew mechanic trades : Could shape the keen-edged tomahawk, And shave its helve without a balk In battle, too, he made it talk. He fashioned every kind of blades To stab, to rip, to slash, Anywise to make a gash Possessing which the savage still, Though only knowing how to kill, Might foeman slay with foeman's skill. A damaged gun could Swartface fix, With handicraft so clever That it would shoot as well as ever : A wonder-doer for his tricks And knacks and works, both great and small; Those Kedskins deemed he could do all By means of power magical. But now he plays another part Which shows the bottom of his heart, Eeveals as one his dual soul As he looks out upon his goal ; 52 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. The Indian mind he well discerned, The Indian tongue, too, he had learned, And now would speak it at its best, In answer to White Cloud 's request : "Mulatto I, with hybrid's hate For his despised debauched estate ! But from my old condition Has sprung a new ambition : My vengeance soon I hope to sate ; Methinks I see the coming date On which I shall wipe out the white, And give my other self its right, Which always was put basely down Until I came to Prophetstown : Here from man civilized I changed And with you savages I ranged; I would begin the world anew, All wrong it has been going hitherto. In every drop of blood I feel the fight Between the black man and the white, An inner civil war is mine, I hear it waged in wrath malign Of fierce contending arms, With all the wounds and pains and harms, Even to death's alarms. These battles inner I shall make outer, And there shall wage them all the stouter; The thunderous onset of my soul Will yet be echoed in the cannon's roll. 8WARTFACE, THE MULATTO. 53 Our red men here with Black Hawk's braves, I shall conduct to free the slaves; The black and red shall then unite To rid us of the intruder white Whose land shall be our own estate, And we shall dwell inseparate. The union of the races is my plan, The highest union, that of man; The racial tint in every human face It is my deepest purpose to erase, If not by nature, then by institution, Of this world 's war such is the last solution. In my best moments I can feel That union as the eternal commonweal, And then my every double drop of blood Becomes prophetic in me of that final good. But now my own twin racial halves Are hurtling still against themselves, Through every vein is running strife Between the double elements of life ; I oft can hear my knuckles rattle, My very bones quake in the shock of battle, From the two races in me smiting, That war I can already see it fighting, Mine is the white-black's vengeful hate Which holds me pinioned to my fate, So that I can but seldom rise to be The higher one above my fierce duality ; I hear my mother 's blood in me to rate My father's for its deep damnation, 54 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. And load him with the curse of all creation, In which the world did once begin Its paradise of sin. Once more I tell my deeper scheme E 'en though it turn out but a dream, For I am one at last, though two I seem : Two races I would make one nation, Which, separate, must die Without a trace in history That is the newest federation, Which yet will circle the whole earth, With its uplifting girth Heaven-suspended And God-attended, Removing this curst stain of racial birth Which now discolors every human life, Ingraining it with mortal strife." So pictured Swartface his self -fight, And whizzed his fist defiant of the night, Upon his knee he pounded So that the hut resounded, And all his fellows felt a little fright Lest unawares he took them all for white. Two Satans in his soul appeared, They coiled and clinched with heads upreared, The white in him would damn the black, Who never failed to send the curses back ; Thus each the other hissed and imprecated, Though every blood corpuscle kept them mated ; SWARTFACE, THE MULATTO. 55 The one rose up the Southern gentleman, The other crouched his slaved African ; Caucasian brain in kinky pate Begetting furious racial hate, Imprisoned was in wall of fate The thick-built negro skull Which keeps its captive null And never will be broken Until a great new word be spoken. Yet Swartface had a deeper strand Which may to-morrow voice to him command, A something good far down Which he cannot quite drown. The speech delighted the red Pope, It seemed to build the fortress of his hope And pinnacle topmost his tall ambition, Whereof he dreamed the quick fruition. But to the Redskins all that thought Of twinned alliance Swartface taught, Prophet was the preacher, Mulatto was the teacher Of what his own two-natured soul Could read within as from a scroll, And whisper to the Prophet when alone Who then would tongue the prophecy as if his own. Swartf ace's words pleased too, Black Hawk, Whose hatred loved that sort of talk, Who with the Prophet had agreed 56 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. To wreak the bloody deed. Though these two were of separate station, Each plied his own red-skinned vocation, One was the warrior, the seer the other, Kuling the double-headed savage state, And both together sought to imitate Warman Tecumseh and his prophet brother. But if the future be forecast By what has happened in the past Then it will turn out that these two Will also meet their Tippecanoe. III. A man was present at that speech Whose heart it wholly failed to reach, Turn it around as he might please : Of stain Caucasian, he was ill at ease, He heard his race assailed that night And all that was his deepest own ; He felt himself in Hell alone, Although a priest anointed, The one full-blooded white, Bedamned to sulphurous racial spite, In this red world un jointed. He was of fierce Black Hawk the friend, Whose mind he artfully could bend, The savage yielded to the subtle skill Which gave direction to the ruder will. Like White Cloud too he had his priestly hope, THE SPANISH PRIEST. 57 With whom in craft he had to cope. This white-skinned priest now tests another skin, Although his texture be more fine and thin; The exquisite diplomatist The subtle, dainty-worded casuist Who to the savage West had come With all the discipline of Rome, Now bumping, thumping, clubbing brain-pans blunt Will have to stand this rough red devil's brunt, For of that finer sacerdotal fence Our White Cloud had but little sense. Thus still another race was at this feast Of human colors, pure and mingled, Held in a Winnebago tenement Remote from any European settlement: The fourth man was he, now outsingled, All bade him speak this Spanish priest A Jesuit missionary, His bearing high and military, Of human beings the most wary. Of feelings he was chary, A learned man at Salamanca trained, With Roman culture well ingrained, The Indian tongues he could all speak From the Great Lakes down to Pike's Peak, As well as the old Latin and the Greek ; 58 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. And thence to Mexico he had a trail Which topped the mount and thrid the vale ; Out Mexico it led to Spain, Surging across the mighty main; From the new world back to the old again He forged a strong but unseen chain ; A continent he would concatenate With his own Order, Church, and State; A hemisphere he would put under One little terrene speck though far asunder, It interweave in priestly leading-strings, Keeping its folk forever underlings, While at recusants he could pitch some thun- der, And for the faithful work a wonder. From upper inland seas Of cold Canadian land Till where the southern balmy breeze Forever summers on the Eio Grande He like Arachne, spun his net And kept it always trimly set, Which you would brush into, go where you please. Francesco Molinar was this man named, For his devotion highly famed And for his piety religious As well as for his lore prodigious. And yet he also had his hate, He could not brook the American state So different in disposition THE SPANISH PRIEST. 59 From the Spanish inquisition. The worship on the rude frontier Would cause in him a holy sneer, He sniffed too at the backwoods teacher With learned Jesuit compared, School master Mentor Graham, How would Francesco flay him ! And Peter Cartright, the circuit preacher, As heretic would not be spared On the last Judgment Day, But given a Hell-lit auto-da-fe, With faggots by the Devil himself prepared. But a still deeper hatred in him lurked, And every fibre of his being worked, Aye, made him sometimes lose his balanced mood; Abhorred was the entire Teutonic brood From that first Gothic multitude Who smote to death antique high Rome, Then stole its ruins for their home; But specially this brazen Anglo-Saxon branch Forth sweeping westward like an avalanche, Whose flow no Rome-born state could stanch, Now threats to drive out Latin blood From where it had for centuries stood, From high-up Canada's Great Lakes, Where once it set its boundary stakes, Then followed down the Mississippi's vale, Of which it told the first romantic tale. It seized all countries round the Gulf, CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. Land-hungrier than the old Roman Which gorged the Mediterranean world; And then itself, to downfall hurled, Was speared to death by the same Teuton throng ; This act the Spaniard termed Time's great- est wrong. So he had too, his ethnic hate Active, though ages old, and still insatiate. But just this war was in his eyes A cause the more to anathematize The freck, elbowing Anglo-Saxon, Who, having bought the great North- West, Would put the Latin to the test Whose President was Andrew Jackson, A will at times most wilful, And yet with cunning skillful. Thus Molinar has found his place In this unceasing strife of race, Which courses through all history Down into you and me. In him as representative His Church, his State, his Stock did live, Nor could he ever forget his Order Whose head had sent him to this far-off bor- der, Where had begun the final strife Between his world and its new foe, Of whom he sought the overthrow, Ready to offer up his life. THE SPANISH PRIEST. fa Yet Molinar gave his laborious days To what he deemed the truth of God 's ways, Capable of the greatest sacrifice He did himself not seek to rise. To sick and dying he would give his all, He sternly followed duty's call And made himself its meanest thrall. Now in that pitch-dark Indian tenement, In which as lightless All must be sightless, Every tint of skin was getting eloquent. First Molinar had to dissent From the Mulatto's argument; All heard the tell-tale face, Unseen it spoke the race. The Hybrid must dislike him as a White, Each felt the other's spite, And failed not to requite. For Molinar upheld his kind, And culture too he highly prized, Would keep the world still civilized If only moulded to his mind. But that red Prophet's lofty hope, Sounded to him like that of antipope, In word and also thought; To deal with him he hardly ought, As twin of the incarnate evil, As Mother Church's very Devil. The heathen doctor he could not abide, g2 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. And still his horror he must deftly hide; Yet each was priest to his own kind, Each had a trait of priestly mind, And thought the other far behind In knowledge of the deity, What God Himself would do and be ; In fine, each deemed his side quite free Of sacerdotal jealousy, But held the other thus afflicted And bad results thereof predicted. The Hawk called on the priest once and again To say to their far-reaching scheme amen, And to invoke the white man's God His folk to chastise with the sinner's rod; A gentle clerkly tone he took Whose dulcet flow him ne'er forsook: "Vengeance is not the way divine, Let charity be always thine, Forbearance is the holier dower, And love imparts the greater power. WTioso avenges, commits sin, And Heaven's bliss can never win, But even here below his own Comes back to him in many a groan; The Sacred Scripture oft hath said, With what ye pay, ye shall be paid; If it be Hate, your portion Hate shall be Tf it be Love, reward will just agree. THE SPANISH PRIEST. 53 Duty to Holy Church is first, To scorn its sealed priest is worst ; Confess to him thy hidden heart If thou wouldst choose the better part. One Spirit Great rules over red and white That is the truth which rays all light. Him would I bring to you, for He Loves every race impartially; Bed, black, and white are all his children dear, He will you save if you but hear, And free you of the future's fear. "Good is this Spirit of whom I've told; But hark ! there is a Spirit bad and bold, Who sometimes gets his grip on men, Clutching them down into his den, Where burns a pitchy fire infernal Which causes tears and pangs eternal. Americans are of the Devil's brood, Not children of the Spirit good, Foes of his Church and State and Stock, Their further progress we must block, Or else by Satan's imps be jammed, Or e'en with them to Hell be damned. With you Black Hawk I shall unite To vent on them the Lord's own spite, And drive them backward whence they came Over the Alleghenies, in God's name. Yet of these facial shades no perfect play 64 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. Can be without another tinted ray; Three colors make our racial prism Which I shall bless with holy chrism; To red and black I'll add my mite Another stain it is the white, All three I shall here consecrate As corner-stone of newest House of State, In which will dwell the social ultimate. My race will unify your double nation, My third your two will mediate, And weld your new confederation, Rounding it out to fend off fate. The sign of God Himself we see Stamped on this racial trinity, Which I shall bless in holy rite, And fill it with the Lord's own might. I now proclaim it Heaven 's plan : All races join against the American, Who stands athwart the unity of man." So spake Francesco Molinar, Who had some hate still left for war Against the foe hereditary, And who had journeyed from afar Through space, down time, With fortitude sublime, To meet him on the Western prairie For final tug extraordinary Between the Latin and Teutonic mettle The future course of History to settle. THE SPANISH PRIEST. $5 He is the Soldier of his Order Against heresiarchs of the young border Just drawn between the old and new Which now the Mississippi brings to view : As once upon the rambling Rhine His ancestor defended Caesar's line Against the same bnpressing brood Which could not be withstood. Apostle too he was political, And weened he might perpetuate Out here the Latin State ; He could be very critical Of this new-fledged democracy Compared to good old Spain's autocracy; A President instead of King For him had a demoniac ring; His well-galled tongue spared not attacks on The people's hero. Andrew Jackson, The type of westering Anglo-Saxon. Still the humanitarian Would see in both the one white skin The Latin and the Teuton were blood-kin, For both of them were Aryan. And if far back in time we reach, We hear them talking each to each. Just in the self-same syllables of speech. Swartface made ready to attack This argument of priestly Spain, (Jg CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. But by the Prophet was held back, "Whose speech ran in the following vein: "We three must pull as one at least, And join this crusade with the priest, Who has his end as we have ours, United we must wield our powers; Divided we are lost And might as well give up the ghost." Uneasy Black Hawk here broke in: "I must return now to my kin And rouse them with all speed, Though Keokuk will try to check my deed With the rattle of his talking mill, But Jesuit has equal skill. Thou Molinar, must go with me, Important work I have for thee. My dreamful White Cloud, now good-bye, I see the day of vengeance nigh ; And stormy hero, strong Swartface Get ready to wake up thy race, Then with the toiling African We'll start confederated man." The Prophet's face shone like a star Flashing a word to Molinar : "Go with Black Hawk, I cannot go, One priest is enough, and I have much to do ; I'll keep aflame our lofty scope And weld all races in one hope ; Now to the trial of it. ' ' So blazed ambitious the red Prophet, THE PLAN. 07 In tonguey bodeful flare Which seemed the Lord to dare To Molinar, who tittered a teehee scoff, Whispering to Black Hawk: "Let's be off." IV. When they had gone, the speech outcropped Of Swartface overfull, who had been stopped By the sly Prophet politic, Lest unity might get a crick. "That cunning priest," quoth he, "I should have told, All that his people seek is gold ; I read in story of the Spanish, They are as greedy and as clannish As the English whom they hate, And brand as avaricious and ingrate, But always underrate. They stole the Africans for slaves, And worked the Beds to rapid graves, His fight is but a selfish fight Of white against another white, In which he will make us his tool That he may win his nation's rule He will not find me such a fool, Though his soft speech be Latin With surface smooth as satin. I care not for his Nation, Church or Stock To which comes ever back his talk; gg CANTO IITHE CONFLICT OF RACES. I reach down to the race, And on it all my world I base; In him our master still is white And we are slaves without a right, I scarce can bear him in my sight. That priest still grades the human creature, Tracing the turn and tint of feature ; I tell thee my sole creed Which I shall make my deed: As I hate the facial So I love the racial. And list me thou, the newest pope, No longer in the narrows grope, Be not the shallow-pated priest of faces, But universal mediator of the races." So spake that semi- African And glorying glimpsed the greatness of his plan ; But when he had himself thus heard He could not stop, he was so stirred By the momentum mighty of his word: ' ' That Priest holds Black Hawk under thumb But back to us he is not like to come. For he will try to win sage Keokuk, But with that chief will have no luck, At such mishap the self-same day He well may start the other way; Bent on his trail to Mexico I seem to see him go, THE PLAN. (J9 And thence perhaps again He will be landed in old Spain, And so he will complete life's round Returning to his early stamping-ground, Where he will find his Church and State and Order Just at their central hold of power, Still living on their ancient dower, And cooped up in their medieval tower, Far from the Mississippi border. He stands, if he go with us, in the way; He 's past, whatever he may do or say, Of this great futuring North West Where is to be the New World's best, He never can get hold, His world is all too old, Besides, it is unfree, Transplanted here it cannot be, I doubt if him again we '11 ever see, Let him but glimpse futurity. ' ' The Prophet here sprang to his feet And forward leaped as if to greet His lofty-coming destiny; To Swartface he proclaimed at once: ''You need not take me for a dunce; Francesco thinks he 's using me To build up his supremacy, But I am working at my own, Although I throw him now and then a bone. 70 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. With his fine ways I must be charmed, Still, Swartface dear, be not alarmed; Me but a savage dull he deems, A redskin prophet given up to dreams, Whom he with ease can overmatch, But I shall bring him to the scratch; Priest against priest both are divine, A trick I'll show him in his own line. A coppery juggler to the white, I'll turn him inside out to his own sight. But let me now repeat to thee What thou hast oft inspired in me : I would not be a priest of sect or stock, Latin or Teuton, whatever be the grade Black, white or red, of every shade, All men all-tinted make my flock, In that my thought is one with yours, LBj We shall take in all out-of-doors. ' ' Here Swartface stops the flow of dreams With which the brain of White Cloud teems : "Let us the plan now execute On which we often have agreed, Of thought we have not plucked the fruit Until we do the deed. The Winnebagoes, Potawatomies, And other tribes through you will rise, For all the Beds and e'en some Whites deem you To be the voice of the Great Spirit true ; THE PLAN. 71 You have been baiting long this trap, Let it be sprung before mishap. Besides, you have hatched out a scheme By which Fort Armstrong may be caught, Its head in cunning overraught; Let this no longer be a dream To play with as if fancy's fitful gleam. Such work I would not of you ask, Unless I gave myself a bolder task, Which I shall have to play in mask: I hasten to the volunteers Whose northward march our river nears, Among them I shall move disguised, Not in mulatto skin despised, But as a sunburnt farmer white Bringing his truck to soldiers there, And spying out how great their might, What doings they intend to dare Eaves-dropping all about the coming fight, The rumors snaking through an army's air, Like a vast vat of eels a-wriggling, I'll hearken best just when I'm higgling. Perchance a hunter too I'll play, Trailing the game along the way, To sate the hunger of their camp, Till in my brain I bear its stamp. ' ' White Cloud still in prophetic swing, Slapped on his knee and spake : ' ' That is the thing. 72 CANTO II THE CONFLICT OF RACES. Let each of us make such an offering ; The Prophet I shall be and you the King, my large hope you see the traces, I am to be the priest of all the races, And then unite in one vast fellowship" Broke Swartface in: "Enough of that, Let us now do it, pat The sun is up, come, let us skip." Canto