Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[204] an attempt, more or less serious, to clear Kansas of all armed bands. Lane stopped two days in Nebraska City, and I did something towards renewing the clothing of his band. He made a speech to the citizens of the town,--they being then half balanced between anti-slavery and pro-slavery sympathies,--and I have seldom heard eloquence more thrilling, more tactful, better adjusted to the occasion. Ralph Waldo Emerson, I remember, was much impressed by a report of this speech as sent by me to some Boston newspaper. Lane went with me, I think, to see our emigrants, encamped near by; gave me some capital suggestions as to our march into the Territory; and ended by handing me a bit of crumpled paper, appointing me a member of his staff with the rank of brigadier-general.

As I rode out of Nebraska City on the march, next day, my companion, Samuel F. Tappan, riding at my side, took occasion to exhibit casually a similar bit of paper in his own possession; and we thus found that the Kansas guerrilla leader carried out the habit of partisan chiefs in all history, who have usually made up in titles and honors what they could not bestow in actual emoluments. After this discovery Tappan and I rode on in conscious inward importance, a sort of dignity à deux,