Stories of the Badger State Part 10

Six months after Strang's conversion, Joseph Smith, the president and prophet of the Mormons, was killed by an Illinois mob. At once there arose a desperate strife among the leaders, for the successors.h.i.+p to Joseph. Two of the number, Brigham Young and Strang, were men of ability, and the contest soon narrowed down to them. Young had the powerful support of the council of the church, known as "the twelve apostles"; but Strang produced a letter said to have been written by Joseph just before his death, in which Strang was named as his successor, with directions to lead the Mormons to a new "city of promise" in Wisconsin, to be called "Voree."

The "apostles" at Nauvoo denounced Strang as an impostor, declared that his letter was a forgery, and attacked him bitterly in their official newspapers, published at Nauvoo and at Liverpool, England. But Strang was not easily put down. A great many of the fanatics at Nauvoo believed in this impetuous young leader, who defended his cause with tact and forceful eloquence; and for a time it looked as if he might win.

However, in the end the "apostles" had their way, and the adroit Young was elected to the heads.h.i.+p of the church. Strang at once called forth his followers, and in April, 1845, planted the "City of Voree" upon a prairie by the side of White River, in Walworth county, Wisconsin. It soon became a town of nearly two thousand inhabitants, who owned all things in common, but were ruled over, even in the smallest affairs of life, by the wily President Strang, who claimed to be divinely instructed in every detail of his rigorous government.

The people dwelt "in plain houses, in board shanties, in tents, and sometimes, many of them, in the open air." Great meetings were held at Voree, and the surrounding settlers gathered to hear Strang and his twelve "apostles" lay down the law, and tell of the revelations which had been delivered to them by the Almighty. Strang, who closely imitated the methods of Joseph, pretended to discover the word of G.o.d in deep-hidden records. Joseph had found the Book of Mormon graven upon plates dug out of the hill of c.u.morah, in New York; so Strang discovered buried near Voree similar brazen plates bearing revelations, written in the rhythmic style of the Scriptures, which supplemented those in the Book of Mormon.

President Strang was a very busy man as the head of the Voree branch of the Mormon church. He obtained a printing outfit, and published a little weekly paper called _Gospel Herald_, besides hundreds of pamphlets, all written by himself, in which he a.s.sailed the "Brighamites" in the same violent manner as they attacked him in their numerous publications. He also, with his missionaries, conducted meetings in Ohio, New York, and other States in the East, gathering converts for Voree, and boldly repelling the wordy attacks of the Brighamites, whose agents were working the same fields.

Despite some backslidings, and occasional quarrels within its ranks, Voree grew and prospered. By 1849 there was a partially built stone temple there, which is thus described by an imaginative letter writer of the time: "It covers two and one-sixth acres of ground, has twelve towers, and the great hall two hundred feet square in the center. The entire walls are eight feet through, the floors and roofs are to be marble, and when finished it will be the grandest building in the world."

Nevertheless, it was early seen by Strang that the growing opposition of neighboring settlers would in the end cause the Mormons to leave Wisconsin, just as the Nauvoo fanatics were compelled (in 1846) to flee from Illinois, to plant their stake in the wilderness of the Far West.

He therefore made preparations for a place of refuge for his people, when persecutions should become unbearable. In journeying by vessel, upon one of his missions, he had taken note of the isolation of an archipelago of large, beautiful, well-wooded islands near the foot of Lake Michigan. The month of May, 1846, found him with four companions upon Beaver Island, in this far-away group. They built a log cabin, arranged for a boat, and returned to Voree to prepare for the migration of the faithful.

The new colony at first grew slowly, but by the summer of 1849 the "saints" began to arrive in goodly numbers. Strang himself now headed the settlement; and thereafter Voree ceased to be headquarters for the "Primitive Mormons," as they called themselves, although a few remained in the neighborhood.

Very soon, about two thousand devotees were gathered within the "City of St. James," on Beaver Island, with well-tilled farms, neat houses, a sawmill, roads, docks, and a large temple. A hill near by they renamed Mount Pisgah, and a River Jordan and a Sea of Galilee were not far away.

One beautiful day in July, 1850, Strang, arrayed in a robe of bright red, was, with much ceremony, crowned by his "apostles" as "King of the Kingdom of St. James." Foreign amba.s.sadors were appointed, and a royal press was set up, for the flaying of his enemies. Schools and debating clubs were opened; the community system was abolished; t.i.thes were collected for the support of the government; tea, coffee, and tobacco were prohibited; and even the dress of the people was regulated by law.

Never was there a king more absolute than Strang; doubtless, for a time, he thought his dream of empire realized at last, and that here in this unknown corner of the world the "saints" might remain forever unmolested.

But the sylvan archipelago, and Beaver Island itself, had other inhabitants; these were rude, st.u.r.dy, illiterate fishermen, who lived in huts along the coast, and had little patience with the fantastic performances of their neighbors, King Strang and the court of St. James.

His majesty had, also, jealous enemies among his own subjects.

Trouble soon ensued. The fishermen frequently a.s.saulted the "saints,"

and carried on a petty warfare against the colony at large, in which the county sheriff was soon engaged; for false charges came to be entered against these strange but inoffensive people, and they were now and then thrown into jail. The king, thereupon, in self-defence, "went into politics." Having so many votes at his command, he easily secured the election of Mormons to all the county offices, and of himself to the legislature of Michigan.

But despite these victories over outside foes, matters at home went from bad to worse. The enemies in his camp multiplied, for his increasingly despotic rule gave them abundance of grievances. At last, about the middle of June, 1856, two of the malcontents shot their monarch from behind. He was taken by vessel to his old home in Voree, where he was tenderly cared for until his death, a month later, by his poor, neglected wife, who had remained behind when he went forth to the island. His kingdom did not long survive him. The unruly fishermen came one day with ax and torch, leveled the royal city to the ground, and banished the frightened "saints."

To-day the White River prairie gives no evidence of having once borne the city of Zion, and even in the Michigan archipelago there remain few visible relics of the marvelous reign of King Strang.

THE WISCONSIN BOURBON

Two years after Louis the XVI., Bourbon king of France, and his beautiful queen, Marie Antoinette, were beheaded by the revolutionists in Paris, in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, their imbecile child of eight years, called the "dauphin," was officially reported to have died in prison. But the story was started at the time, and popularly believed, that the real dauphin, Louis the XVII., had been stolen by the royalists, and another child cunningly subst.i.tuted to die there in his place. The story went that the dauphin had been sent to America, and that all traces of him were lost; thus was given to any adventurer of the requisite age, and sufficiently obscure birth, an opportunity to seek such honor as might be gained in claiming ident.i.ty with the escaped prisoner.

Great was the excitement in the United States, when, in 1853, it was confidently announced by a New York magazine writer that the long lost prince had at last been discovered, in the person of the middle-aged Eleazer Williams, an Episcopal missionary to the Oneida Indians at Little Kaukauna, in the lower valley of the Fox.

The Bonaparte family, represented by Louis Napoleon, were just then in control of France; but the Bourbon family, of which Louis the XVII., were he alive, would naturally be the head, considered themselves rightful hereditary masters of that country. Of course, there was at the time no opportunity for any Bourbon actually to occupy the French throne; but the people of that country are highly emotional, revolutions have been numerous among them, and displaced royalists are always hoping for some turn in affairs which may enable them once more to gain the government. It was this possible chance of the Bourbons getting into power once more, that added interest to the story.

Let us see what sort of person this Eleazer Williams of Wisconsin was, and how it came about that he made the a.s.sertion that he was the head of the Bourbons, and an uncrowned king. It had heretofore been supposed by every one who knew him that he was the son of Mohawk Indian parents, both of whom had white blood in their veins, living just over the New York border, in Canada. Certain Congregationalists had induced this couple to allow two of their sons, Thomas and Eleazer, to be educated in New England as missionaries to the Indians; and for several years they attended academies there, becoming fairly proficient in English, although their aboriginal manners were not much improved.

At last returning to his Canadian home, Eleazer neglected his Congregational benefactors, and soon became interested in the Episcopal Church. He would have become one of its missionaries at once, but just at that time the War of 1812-15 broke out; and instead he became a spy in the pay of the United States, conveying to his employers important information concerning the movements of British troops in Canada. When the war was over, having, as an American spy, incurred the dislike of the Canadian Mohawks, he was sent as an Episcopal missionary to the Oneida Indians, then living in Oneida county, New York.

Williams appears to have differed from the ordinary Indian type, although he was thickset, dark haired, and swarthy of skin. Some took him to be a Spaniard; others there were who thought him French; and comments which he had heard, concerning his slight resemblance to the pictures of the Bourbons, doubtless caused Eleazer in later years to pretend to be the lost dauphin. He was a fair orator, and in his earlier years succeeded well in persuading the simple red men about him. His plausible manner, and this ease of persuasion, finally led him astray.

The Oneida Indians in New York and their neighbors (formerly from New England), the Munsees, Stockbridges, and Brothertowns, were just then being crowded out of that State. A great company had acquired the right from the federal government to purchase the lands held by these Indians, whenever they cared to dispose of them. In order to hurry matters, the company began to sow among the poor natives the seeds of discontent.

Certain of their leaders, among them Williams, advocated emigration to the West. It appears that Williams, who was a born intriguer, conceived the ambitious idea of taking advantage of this movement to establish an Indian empire in the country west of Lake Michigan, with himself as dictator.

Moved by the clamor of the red men, the federal government sent a delegation to Wisconsin, in 1820, to see whether the tribes west of the lake would consent to accept the New York Indians as neighbors. This delegation was headed by Dr. Jedediah Morse, a celebrated geographer and missionary. Morse visited Mackinac and Green Bay, and returned with the report that the valley of the lower Fox was the most suitable place in which to make a settlement. That very summer, Williams himself, with several other headmen, had on their own account journeyed as far as Detroit on a similar errand, but returned without discovering a location.

The owners of the land selected by Morse were the Menominees and Winnebagoes, with whom Williams and his followers held a council at Green Bay, the following year. A treaty was signed, by which the New York Indians were granted a large strip of land, four miles wide, at Little Chute.

The ensuing year (1822), at a new council held at Green Bay, the New Yorkers asked for still more land. The Winnebagoes, much incensed, withdrew from the treaty, but the Menominees were won over by Williams's eloquence, and granted an extraordinary cession, making the New York Indians joint owners with themselves of all Menominee territory, which then embraced very nearly a half of all the present State of Wisconsin.

Ten years of quarreling followed, for there was at once a reaction from this remarkable spirit of generosity. In 1832 there was concluded a final treaty, apparently satisfactory to most of those concerned, and soon thereafter a large number of New York Indians removed hither. The Oneidas and Munsees established themselves upon Duck Creek, near the mouth of the Fox, and the Stockbridges and Brothertowns east of Lake Winnebago. As for Williams, the jealousies and bickerings among his people soon caused him to lose control over them, thus giving the deathblow to his wild dreams of empire.

During the next twenty years, in which he continued to serve as a missionary to the Wisconsin Oneidas, Williams was a well-known and picturesque character. His home was on the west bank of the river, about a mile below Little Kaukauna. Although a man of much vigor and strength of mind, he soon came to be recognized as an unscrupulous fellow by the majority of both whites and reds in the lower Fox, and his clerical brethren, East as well as West, appear to have regarded him with more or less contempt.

Baffled in several fields of notoriety which he had worked, Williams suddenly posed before the American public, in 1853, as the hereditary sovereign of France. He was too young by eight years to be the lost dauphin; that he was clearly of Indian origin was proved by a close examination of his color, form, and feature; his dusky parents protested under oath that the wayward Eleazer was their son; every allegation of his in regard to the matter has often been exposed as false; and all his neighbors who knew him treated his claims as fraudulent.

Nevertheless, he succeeded in deceiving a number of good people, including several leading clergymen of his church; one of the latter attempted in an elaborate book, "The Lost Prince," to prove conclusively that Williams was indeed the son of the executed monarch.

The pretensions of Eleazer Williams, who dearly loved the notoriety which this discussion awakened, extended through several years. They even won some little attention in France, but far less than here, for several other men had claimed to be the lost dauphin, so that the pretension was not a new one over there. Louis Philippe, the head of the Bourbon-Orleans family in France, sent him a present of some finely bound books, believing him the innocent victim of a delusion; but, further than that, and a chance meeting at Green Bay, between Eleazer Williams and another French royalist, the Prince de Joinville, then on his travels through America, the family in France paid no attention to the adventurous half-breed American Indian who claimed to be one of them.

The reputation of Williams as a missionary had at last fallen so low, and the neglect of his duties was so persistent, that his salary was withdrawn by the Episcopal Church, and his closing years were spent in poverty. He died in 1858, maintaining his absurd claims to the last.

SLAVE CATCHING IN WISCONSIN

There had been a few negro slaves in Wisconsin before the organization of the Territory and during Territorial days. They had for the most part been brought in by lead miners from Kentucky and Missouri. But, as the population increased, it was seen that public opinion here, as in most of the free States, was strongly opposed to the practice of holding human beings as chattels. Gradually the dozen or more slaves were returned to the South, or died in service, or were freed by their masters; so that, at an early day, the slavery question had ceased to be of local importance here.

As the years pa.s.sed on, and the people of the North became more and more opposed to the slave system of the South, the latter lost an increasing number of its slaves through escape to Canada. They were a.s.sisted in their flight by Northern sympathizers, who, secretly receiving them on the north bank of the Ohio River, pa.s.sed them on from friend to friend until they reached the Canadian border. As this system of escape was contrary to law, it had to be conducted, by both white rescuers and black fugitives, with great privacy, often with much peril to life; hence it received the significant, popular name of "The Underground Railroad." Wisconsin had but small part in the working of the underground railroad, because it was not upon the usual highway between the South and Canada. But our people took a firm stand on the matter, sympathizing with the fugitive slaves and those who aided them on their way to freedom.

When, therefore, Congress, in 1850, at the bidding of the Southern politicians, pa.s.sed the Fugitive Slave Law, Wisconsin bitterly condemned it. This act was designed to crush out the underground railroad. It provided for the appointment, by federal courts, of commissioners in the several States, whose duty it should be to a.s.sist slaveholders and their agents in catching their runaway property. The unsupported testimony of the owner or agent was sufficient to prove owners.h.i.+p, the black man himself having no right to testify, and there being for him no trial by jury. The United States commissioners might enforce the law by the aid of any number of a.s.sistants, and, in the last resort, might summon the entire population to help them. There were very heavy penalties provided for violations of this inhuman law.

The Fugitive Slave Law was denounced by most of the political conventions held in our State that year. In his message to the legislature, in January, 1851, Governor Dewey expressed the general sentiment when he said that it "contains provisions odious to our people, contrary to our sympathies, and repugnant to our feelings." But it was three years before occasion arose for Wisconsin to act.

In the early months of 1854, a negro named Joshua Glover appeared in Racine, and obtained work in a sawmill four miles north of that place.

On the night of the 10th of March, he was playing cards in his little cabin, with two other men of his race. Suddenly there appeared at the door seven well-armed white men,--two United States deputy marshals from Milwaukee, their four a.s.sistants from Racine, and a St. Louis man named Garland, who claimed to be Glover's owner.

A desperate struggle followed, the result being that Glover, deserted by his comrades and knocked senseless by a blow, was placed in chains by his captors.

Severely bleeding from his wounds, he was thrown into an open wagon and carted across country to the Milwaukee county jail, for the man hunters feared to go to Racine, where the antislavery feeling was strong. It was a bitter cold night, and Glover's miseries were added to by the brutal Garland, who at intervals kicked and beat the prisoner, and promised him still more serious punishment upon their return to the Missouri plantation.

The news of the capture was not long in reaching Racine. The next morning there was held in the city square a public meeting, attended by nearly every citizen, at which resolutions were pa.s.sed denouncing the act of the kidnapers as an outrage; demanding for Glover a trial by jury; promising "to attend in person to aid him, by all honorable means, to secure his unconditional release"; and, most significant of all, resolving that the people of Racine "do hereby declare the slave catching law of 1850 disgraceful and also repealed." There were many such nullifying resolutions pa.s.sed in those stirring days by ma.s.s meetings throughout the country, but this was one of the earliest and most outspoken. That afternoon, on hearing where Glover had been imprisoned, a hundred indignant citizens of Racine, headed by the sheriff, went by steamer to Milwaukee, arriving there at five o'clock.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee had been active. News of the capture had not been circulated in that city until eleven o'clock in the morning. One of the first to learn of it was Sherman M. Booth, the energetic editor of a small antislavery paper, the _Wisconsin Free Democrat_. Riding up and down the streets upon a horse, he scattered handbills, and, stopping at each crossing, shouted: "Freemen, to the rescue! Slave catchers are in our midst! Be at the courthouse at two o'clock!"

Prompt to the hour, over five thousand people a.s.sembled in the courthouse square, where Booth and several other "liberty men" made impa.s.sioned speeches. A vigilance committee was appointed, to see that Glover had a fair trial, and the county judge issued in his behalf a writ of _habeas corpus_, calling for an immediate trial, and a show of proofs. But the federal judge, A. G. Miller, forbade the sheriff to obey this writ, holding that Glover must remain in the hands of the United States marshal, in whose custody he was placed by virtue of the Fugitive Slave Law.