The Purchase Price | Page 7

do you say that?" she inquired.
"Because it is the truth. I don't want him about."
"Then you will be disappointed."
"Why do you say that? Did you not hear him say that he was going
West by coach from here?"
"You did not give him time. He is not going West by coach."
"What do you mean?"
"He will be with us on the boat!"

CHAPTER II
THE GATEWAY, AND SOME WHO PASSED
When Captain Edward Carlisle made casual reference to the
"weak-kneed compromise," he simply voiced a personal opinion on a
theme which was in the mind of every American, and one regarded
with as many minds as there were men. That political measure of the
day was hated by some, admired by others. This man condemned it,
that cried aloud its righteousness and infallibility; one argued for it
shrewdly, another declaimed against it loudly. It was alike blessed and
condemned. The southern states argued over it, many of the northern
states raged at it. It ruined many political fortunes and made yet other
fortunes. That year was a threshold-time in our history, nor did any see
what lay beyond the door.
If there existed then a day when great men and great measures were to
be born, certainly there lay ready a stage fit for any mighty
drama--indeed, commanding it. It was a young world withal, indeed a

world not even yet explored, far less exploited, so far as were
concerned those vast questions which, in its dumb and blind way,
humanity both sides of the sea then was beginning to take up. America
scarce more than a half century ago was for the most part a land of
query, rather than of hope.
Not even in their query were the newer lands of our country then alike.
We lay in a vast chance-medley, and never had any country greater
need for care and caution in its councils. By the grace of the immortal
gods we had had given into our hands an enormous area of the earth's
richest inheritance, to have and to hold, if that might be; but as yet we
were not one nation. We had no united thought, no common belief as to
what was national wisdom. For three quarters of a century this country
had grown; for half a century it had been divided, one section fighting
against another in all but arms. We spoke of America even then as a
land of the free, but it was not free; nor on the other hand was it wholly
slave. Never in the history of the world has there been so great a land,
nor one of so diverse systems of government.
Before these travelers, for instance, who paused here at the head of the
Ohio River, there lay the ancient dividing line between the South and
the North. To the northwest, between the Great Lakes and the Ohio,
swept a vast land which, since the days of the old Northwest Ordinance
of 1787, had by national enactment been decreed for ever free. Part of
this had the second time been declared free, by state law also. To the
eastward of this lay certain states where slavery had been forbidden by
the laws of the several states, though not by that of the nation. Again,
far out to the West, beyond the great waterway on one of whose arms
our travelers now stood, lay the vast provinces bought from Napoleon;
and of these, all lying north of that compromise line of thirty-six
degrees, thirty minutes, agreed upon in 1820, had been declared for
ever free by national law. Yet beyond this, in the extreme northwest,
lay Oregon, fought through as free soil by virtue of the old Northwest
Ordinance, the sleeping dog of slavery being evaded and left to lie
when the question of Oregon came up. Along the Pacific, and south of
Oregon, lay the new empire of California, bitterly contended over by
both sections, but by her own self-elected state law declared for ever

free soil. Minnesota and the Dakotas were still unorganized, so there
the sleeping dog might lie, of course.
To the south of that river on which our voyagers presently were to take
ship, lay a section comprising the southern states, in extent far larger
than all the northern states, and much stronger in legislative total power
in the national halls of Congress. Here slavery was maintained by laws
of the states themselves. The great realm of Texas, long coveted by the
South, now was joined to the ranks of the slave-holding states, by
virtue of a war of somewhat doubtful justice though of undoubted
success. Above Texas, and below the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty
minutes, lay a portion of what was known as the Indian country, where