by Alan Sewell
Lewis Schneider took his place at the podium.
“Thank you Sheriff, and thanks to your men of Cass County, and to the men of St. Joseph’s County, Indiana who blocked the Slavers and gave us time to get there and help with the rescue.”
Schneider’s eyes became moist.
“Elmer Ellsworth was a peaceable man. He never expected us to be engaged in combat. But he didn’t shirk from doing his duty when the time came.” Schneider wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. “He was the first of our men to die. I was standing right next to him when the Slavers shot him. Thirteen of our men died. Sixteen more were wounded, some gravely.
“The survivors of Elmer’s Company are defending us on the Illinois Front. I would be there too, if I hadn’t stopped a bullet.” Schneider grabbed his limp left arm and held it up. “I lost use of my arm at Delphi, but that is so very little compared with those who lost their lives. Let’s remember what Elmer and the other heroes of his company and of Sheriff Parker’s posse died fighting for. They died fighting to keep the Free States free for all men, the way our Founders decreed it to be free! Freedom isn’t freedom if it is just for some men. It has to freedom for all!”
The crowd whistled and cheered.
As Schneider turned to sit down President Lincoln stood up and embraced him.
“Thank you Eddie and Emma and Sheriff Parker and Captain Schneider. You have brought home to us the evil of the Slave Power: how it violates the homes of free men and women; how it kidnaps them and nails them into coffins; how it inflicts violence not only on the slaves but on our law-abiding people here in the Free States.
“Elmer Ellsworth was one of my dearest friends. He embodied all the ideals that are right in young men. And he had the courage to die for those ideals at a tender age. Slavery killed him. It killed his men and Sheriff Parker’s men. It has killed our Free State men in St. Louis, in my hometown of Springfield, and at Gettysburg.”
Mr. Lincoln shook his head and seemed about to weep.
“Oh, how I hate slavery! Not only do I hate its oppression of the slaves, but I hate it for the violence it inflicts upon the free men who dare to oppose it!
“But even though I hate it, I never had a thought of interfering with the institution in the states that permitted it. We only went out of the Union when the Slavers sought to impose their slave laws upon us by force!
“Let us never forget how precious is this legacy of freedom our Fathers handed down to us. I learned about it when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I would listen, around the fireplace, to the stories my father and uncle Mordecai told. My favorite stories were about those olden days soon after the Revolution when the pioneers followed Daniel Boone on the Wilderness Road from Virginia into Kentucky.
“I remember their telling of how hungry and fatigued they grew from travelling the barren wilderness over the two hundred miles of mountains, constantly guarding against Indian attack. How they rejoiced when they reached the Cumberland Gap! From there they looked out over the endless green fields of the Cumberland Plateau that stretched to the horizon. They had reached their Promised Land.
“Once they got there, they had fight to keep it. My Grandfather Abraham was killed by an Indian in his yard. The Spanish and British sent their agents to Kentucky, promising the settlers that if they would abandon the United States and pledge loyalty to the Spanish Empire to the south or the British Empire to the north, that the attacks by their Indian allies would stop.
“But Kentucky’s leaders told the people: ‘Stand firm. Our countrymen on the other side of the mountains will come to help us as soon as they are able. Until then we must fight to hold our lands. We will not find a better country.’
“Those Kentuckians did hold out until the United States organized itself under the Constitution and grew strong enough to send its armies across the mountains to fight with them.
“In time those Kentuckians prospered and the land became dense with settlement. Then the plantation owners brought in their slaves from Virginia and Tennessee. They purchased title to the best land and drove the original settlers off it by hiring lawyers to tie their claims up in court. My father moved the family across the Ohio River to the country that Thomas Jefferson had so wisely set aside for free men in that great Ordinance of 1787.
“This is now all the country we have left of that which was reserved for us by the Founders. We must fight to preserve it for ourselves and for our prosperity, just as they fought so hard to preserve it for us.”
Lincoln paused as if gathering his thoughts to make another point.
“Now, in everything I have said, I do not mean to condemn the slave owners. They are no worse people than we would be were we in their place. It is the institution of slavery that leads them to commit outrageous acts violence against free men and women that no person in a slave-free country could ever be induced to commit.
“I do not believe that slavery can endure in a world that is becoming ever more civilized. Advances in machinery and communications will doom it. When each machine can do the work of a hundred men on a plantation, the Negroes will become only so much surplus labor. When the advance of science enables people to communicate with each other from afar, then the policy of keeping the Negroes in ignorant isolation from the larger world will fail. Eventually the Negroes must be liberated and set to work for wages as free men in commerce and industry, the same as Whites. The advance of civilization allows for no other course.
“By maintaining our Free State independence we not only protect the freedom of men who are already free, but we advance the day when freedom will be delivered to men who are now held as slaves. The free Negroes who live among us show by example how they prosper in freedom as Whites do. They are demonstrating that their freedom to work as free men, to live as free men, and to vote as free men is no more to be feared than is the freedom of any White person to do the same.
“I have heard some men say that they are reluctant to commit to our cause of Free State Independence because they do not want to destroy the Union. But I believe the correct way of looking at it is to recognize that the Confederates have destroyed the Union by making slavery the cornerstone of it. It is up to us to restore the Union by placing slavery on the ultimate course of extinction that our Fathers placed it on.
“I believe that if we hold firm, the Border States of Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware will abolish slavery before the current century is finished. I can see Virginia returning to its roots in freedom and eliminating slavery as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington asked the Virginia Legislature of their day to do. And I think that eventually even the states of the Deep South will see that slavery’s time has passed.
“Our United States of Free America is really the re-founding of our original Union. We will wait for the other states to free themselves and then join with us. The words ‘Free America’ will become superfluous when all the states join us in freedom! We will become just the United States of America again. We are not fighting to divide the Union, but to restore it --- to restore it in the freedom to which it was born!”
12
Northern Ohio, September 30, 1861
The President and his party relaxed in the passenger car taking them back to Cleveland. The train sped along the flat landscape of Northern Ohio where the work of the harvest was at its peak.
Several hours past sunset, the land was softly illuminated by the light of the orange moon sifting through the cool autumn fog. The President had been playing a game of counting the farmers he saw in the dim light. A few were still working, but most had dropped off to sleep in their fields, too exhausted from a day of hard labor in the hazy sunshine to trek back to their farm houses. They were sleeping peaceably outdoors on a delightful night.
Lincoln smiled. This is the how the Lord meant for men to labor --- working free lands with free hands and enjoying the fruits that their labor produces. Thank Heaven our fathers had the presence of mind to keep this land free from slavery. Let me not s
hirk from my duty to keep it free for my generation and all those that follow.
Mr. Lincoln was accompanied by Eddie Bates and Emma Brown, Lewis Schneider, and Sheriff Parker. He wanted to introduce them to Congress when he addressed the Joint Session on Friday, and then have them speak at another Republican rally in Cleveland on Saturday. Cump Sherman travelled with the President’s party too, his brother John seeking an opportunity to introduce him to Lincoln as a military advisor.
The group sat together around the fold-down table mounted sideways in the middle of the dining car. John Hay had filled the coffee pot and the tea kettle at the station while Mr. Lincoln and his guests had been speaking at the rally. He had purchased some fresh roast beef with cooked green beans and corn and biscuits at the downtown market. Mr. Hay was gratified that the tired passengers enjoyed the food and drink he had scrounged up. None needed refreshment more than his boss.
Hay had worried that Mr. Lincoln was becoming physically and mentally exhausted. The deaths of the President’s in-laws during the Partisan War in Springfield, the loss of his protégé Elmer Ellsworth at Delphi, and the passing of Stephen Douglas had deepened his melancholy. The pending renewal of hostilities in the Confederate Union War had etched his face with lines of worry.
But tonight the President’s spirits seem to be much improved. The success of the rally cheered him. It had persuaded thousands of young men to head off to Camp Dennison to enlist in the Free State Army. The camaraderie with the Heroes of Delphi raised Mr. Lincoln’s spirits even higher. Hay watched Lincoln happily slapping the table in uproarious good humor in the way that Hay hadn’t seen since those glorious days of last year’s presidential campaign. He was telling stories in his animated ways of happier days, bringing laughter to his companions as Hay had seen him do on so many occasions before the war. Even the stern man introduced to Hay as “Cump” Sherman was smiling.
The President set down his coffee cup and began speculating in a more serious tone.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it, how history so often turns on the actions of one person. If Emma hadn’t bolted out of that house, the slave raiders might very well have made off with her and Eddie to Kentucky and that would have been the end of the story. Our Republicans would have seethed with rage, but there would have been nothing we could have done about it after the fact. Most in the South and some in the North would have blamed us for protesting the raid: ‘There the Negro-lovers go stirring up trouble again.’ And we would have shut up and gone on about our business in silent humiliation.”
Mr. Lincoln looked at Emma. “You changed the course of history by your courage in bolting out of that house.”
Emma set down her cup of coffee on the table too.
“You know, Mr. President, I just did what I felt in my heart was the right thing to do. I never felt calmer. I felt as if the arms of the Lord were wrapped around me. It was like He was saying, ‘You know what you have to do, now go and do it. I will be with you.’ I didn’t have time to be scared. I just knew the good Lord wasn’t going to let us be sold back into slavery, not if we took action to save ourselves. I thank the Lord for men like Sheriff Parker and Lewis Schneider, and especially for all those who gave up their lives to set Eddie and the others free.”
“My men were proud to come to your rescue,” said Sheriff Parker. “They were proud to fight for their friends and neighbors. Elmer Ellsworth’s men wasted not a second getting to Delphi either.”
“It seems like that’s the very thing that fate was preparing Elmer and us for,” agreed Lewis Schneider. “Like Emma said, we didn’t see it as courage. We just knew what we had to do when the time came to do it.”
“The hardest thing of all,” Emma said to Lewis and Parker, “must have been when you men faced down General Harney the next day. If you hadn’t stared him down until the Wide Awakes got to Delphi, he would have taken us off to the Slave Court. We know how that would have turned out.”
“I hadn’t heard that part of the story,” said Eddie. “The part about them staring down General Harney.”
“That’s because you were laid up in the doctor’s house,” Emma explained. “You didn’t come to your senses until three days after you were rescued from that coffin they had locked you up in. Well, let me tell you: there was an uproar all over the country when news of the battle with the slave raiders got out. Stephen Douglas tried to quiet folks in the South by ordering General Harney to Delphi. He had orders to take us to Slave Court. Douglas had put his men in charge of that court so you can bet they were going to send us back into slavery. Sheriff Parker and Elmer Ellsworth’s men stopped them cold in their tracks until the Wide Awakes got to Delphi and made the army leave.”
“Well, I’ll be switched,” said Eddie. “Douglas wasn’t going to let us go free even after we were rescued. That’s what set off the Partisan War!”
“It was,” replied Parker. “Like Emma said, Harney had orders to take you to that Slave Court that Douglas had set up in Indianapolis. My men and Elmer’s men, and some of the townspeople wouldn’t allow it. We formed a line between the doctor’s house and Harney’s men. We stared them down for hours. Harney hoped we’d chicken out and leave, but we didn’t.”
Parker picked up his coffee cup and swirled it as he remembered that day. “Fred Douglass was there too. He tried to persuade Harney to ‘look the other way’ so we could get you out of there. I could tell that Harney wanted to let you go back home but was duty-bound to obey Douglas’ order to send you to the Slave Court. But you know, I don’t think all of us put together could have held that line if it wasn’t for that old fellow who stood with us. His voice rolled like thunder and steadied our courage. He commanded Harney to halt. Harney stopped right in front of him and didn’t move another inch for two full hours. Never did find out who he was. Probably just an old coot full of hard cider.”
“But you did say he stopped General Harney, didn’t you?” asked Mr. Lincoln.
“That, he surely did.”
“Then let’s find out what cider he was drinking and have some made for the rest of us.” Lincoln chuckled. “We’ll likely need a lot of the courage it gave the old fellow before this war’s over and done with.”
“Why do we even have to have a war?” asked Emma when the polite laughter finished. “There aren’t enough free Negroes in the North to shake a stick at. Why don’t the Confederates just let us be? Haven’t they got enough slaves already, without needing to go chasing after us?”
Cump, who had been listening in silence, spoke up.
“You and Eddie are two of the reasons. The Confederates don’t like the example that free Negroes set for their slaves. The slaves are bound to ask why is it that if some Negroes can prosper as free men and women, like you and Eddie do, why can’t all the Negroes be set free to prosper?
“Another thing,” Cump continued, “is that the Confederates believe that the Free State Abolitionists are never going to stop agitating their slaves into rising up against them. I can’t say that point is entirely without merit, not after John Brown’s Raid. I suppose they’re afraid that if the Free States remain independent that one day they’ll start a war to liberate the slaves, perhaps with England and France in tow. So they think it’s better to fight a war to get the Free States back under their thumb now than to have to do it sometime later on. I’m not saying they’re right, but that’s they way they see it.”
“You speak as though you’ve lived among the Confederates and know how they think,” Emma observed.
“Cump was Superintendent of the Louisiana Military Institute until he came up here in July,” explained John. “He knows the Confederates well. In fact, Robert E. Lee asked him to command one of the Confederate Armies, but he refused. Good thing for us he did.”
“Why did you decline Lee’s offer?” Lincoln asked.
“Because I spent enough time fighting John when we were boys! He licked me enough times to learn not to fight with him anymore!”
John howled wit
h laughter. “Well, I was your bigger brother, you know.”
That got a chuckle from everybody.
“Seriously,” Cump continued, “John, and now you, Mr. President, have convinced me that the Free States maintaining ourselves as a separate national sovereignty is necessary, but that it may also lead to our reunification with the Confederate Union States at some time in the future, just the way you explained it today.”
“Sort of like a troubled marriage, I suppose,” said the President. “Sometimes the only way to save it is for the couple to go out of each other’s presence for a while, until their hostility abates. If they remain in each other’s company it will only lead to more arguments followed by divorce.”
“We’ve reached that point, Mr. President,” acknowledged Cump. “We can’t maintain a country in which John Brown’s Raid on the South is followed by Bill Yancey’s raid on the North over and over again. To save the ‘marriage’ we’ve got to get away from the Confederate Union. We’ve got to restore the purpose of the old United States as a country that’s destined to bestow freedom on all. And separated from us, the Confederates may decide to end slavery on their own, when they think the time is right.”
Lincoln put his head in his chin and leaned forward. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of us sending you over to talk some sense into Davis, Lee, and McClellan, is there?”
“I’ll be glad to try it, but I’m afraid we’ll have to beat them first. That’s the only way we’ll get them to accept Greeley’s Peace Plan.”
“I was thinking that Cump might be able to help us beat some sense into them,” said John Sherman. “I thought that if Robert E. Lee has judged him capable of commanding a Confederate army, then he’d he qualified to give you sound military advice.”
Mr. Lincoln chuckled. “Well, now, I have been offered advice from all manner of people. I don’t see why I shouldn’t receive it from somebody esteemed by General Lee.”
