Half a Century

by Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE MINNESOTA DICTATOR.

Every day, from my arrival in St. Cloud, evidence had been accumulating of the truth of that stage-whisper about Gen. Lowrie, who lived in a semi-barbaric splendor, in an imposing house on the bank of the Mississippi, where he kept slaves, bringing them from and returning them to his Tennessee estate, at his convenience, and no man saying him nay.

He owned immense tracts of land; had and disposed of all the government contracts he pleased; traveled over Europe with his salaried physician; said to this man "go," and he went, to that "come," and he came, and to a third "do this," and it was done. But of all his commands "go" was most potent; for, as president of a claim club, his orders to pre-emptors were enforced by Judge Lynch. He never condescended to go to Congress, but sent an agent; furnished all the Democratic votes that could possibly be wanted in any emergency, and nobody wondered when a good list came from a precinct in which no one lived.

Republicans on their arrival in his dominion, were converted to the Democratic faith, fast as sinners to Christianity in a Maffitt meeting, and those on whom the spirit fell not, kept very quiet. People had gone there to make homes, not to fight the Southern tiger, and any attempt against such overwhelming odds seemed madness, for Lowrie's dominion was largely legitimate. He was one of those who are born to command—of splendid physique and dignified bearing, superior intellect and mesmeric fascination. His natural advantages had been increased by a liberal education; he had been brought up among slaves, lived among Indians as agent and interpreter, felt his own superiority, and asserted it with the full force of honest conviction.

On all hands he was spoken of as Dictator, and there was both love and respect mingled with the fear by which he governed. His father was a Presbyterian minister, who taught that slavery was divine, and both were generous and lenient masters. He was the embodiment of the slave power. All its brute force, pious pretenses, plausibility, chivalry, all the good and bad of the Southern character; all the weapons of the army of despotism were concentrated in this man, the friend of my friends, the man who stood ready to set me on the pinnacle of social distinction by his recognition. Across the body of the prostrate slave lay the road to wealth, and many good men had shut their eyes and stepped over.

The territorial government under Buchanan was a mere tool of slavery. Every federal officer was a Southerner, or a Northern man with Southern principles. Government gold flowed freely in that channel, and to the eagles Gen. Lowrie had but to say, as to his other servants, "come," and they flew into his exchequer.

So thoroughly was Minnesota under the feet of slavery, that in September, '60—after we thought the State redeemed—the house of William D. Babbitt, in Minneapolis, was surrounded from midnight until morning by a howling mob, stoning it, firing guns and pistols, attempting to force doors and windows, and only prevented gaining entrance by the solidity of the building and the bravery of its defense. It was thus besieged because its owner and occupant had dared interfere to execute the common law in favor of freedom.

Minneapolis and its twin-city St. Anthony each had a large first-class hotel, to which Southern people resorted in summer, bringing their slaves, holding them often for months, and taking them back to the South, no one daring to make objection; until one woman, Eliza Winston, appealed to Mr. Babbitt, who took her into court, where Judge Vanderbilt decreed her freedom, on the ground that her claimant had forfeited his title by bringing her into a free State.

At the rendering of this decree, Rev. Knickerbocker, rector of the only Protestant Episcopal Church in the city, arose in open court, and charged the judge with giving an unrighteous judgment. He condemned the law as at war with Scripture and the rights of the master, and its enforcement as injurious to the best interests of the community. It was the old story of Demetrius; and the people, already keenly alive to the profit of boarding Southern families with their servants, were glad to have a mantle of piety thrown over their love of gain. The court room was packed, and under the eloquent appeal of the reverend gentleman, it soon became evident the populace would make a rush, take the woman out of the hands of the law, and deliver her to the master.

She and her friends had about lost hope, when an unlooked for diversion called attention from them. The red head of "Bill King," afterwards post-master of the U.S. House of Representatives, arose, like the burning bush at the foot of Mount Horeb, and his stentorian voice poured forth such a torrent of denunciation on priest-craft, such a flood of solid swearing against the insolence and tyranny of ecclesiasticism, that people were surprised into inactivity, until Mr. Babbitt got the woman in his carriage and drove off with her.

There could no longer be a question of her legal right to her own body and soul; but her friends knew that the law of freedom had lain too long dormant to be enforced now without further serious opposition, and Mr. Babbitt brought into use his old training on the underground railroad to throw the blood-hounds off the scent, so secreted the woman in the house of Prof. Stone, and prepared his own strong residence to bear a siege. For that siege preparations were made by the clerical party during the afternoon and evening, without any effort at concealment, and to brute force the besieging party added brute cunning.

It was known that in my lecturing tours, I was often Mr. Babbitt's guest, and might arrive at any hour. So, shortly after midnight, the doorbell was rung, when Mr. Babbitt inquired:

"Who is there?"

"Mrs. Swisshelm.'

"It is not Mrs. Swisshelm's voice?"

"William Griffin (a colored porter) is with her."

"It is not William Griffin's voice."

Then, for the first time, there were signs of a multitude on the porch, and with an oath the speaker replied:

"We want that slave."

"You cannot have her."

A rush was made to burst in the door, but it was of solid walnut and would not yield, when the assailants brought fenceposts to batter it in, and were driven back by a shot from a revolver in the hall. The mob retired to a safer distance, and the leader—mine host of a first-class hotel—mounted the carriage-block and harangued his followers on the sacred duty of securing the financial prosperity of the two cities by restoring Eliza Winston to her owners, and made this distinct declaration of principles:

"I came to this State with five thousand dollars; have but five hundred left, but will spend the last cent to see 'Bill' Babbitt's heart's blood."

After which heroic utterance a fresh volley of stones and shots were fired, and fresh rush made for doors and windows. The sidelights of the front door had been shattered, and one burly ruffian thrust himself halfway in, but stuck, when a defender leveled a revolver at his head, and said to Mrs. Babbitt, who was then in command of the hall, while her husband defended the parlor windows:

"Shall I shoot him?"

"Yes, shoot him like a dog."

But Mrs. Edward Messer, her sister, who knew Mr. Babbitt's dread of taking life, knocked the pistol up and struck the ruffian's head with a stick, when it was withdrawn, and again the mob fell back and resorted to stones and sticks and oaths and howlings and gunshots, and threats of firing the house.

Mrs. Babbitt thought that personal appeals might bring citizens to the rescue, and in an interval of black darkness between lightning flashes, escaped through a back cellar way, and had almost reached the shelter of a cornfield adjoining the garden, when the lightning revealed her and three men started in pursuit. It was two months before the birth of one of her children, and Mr. Elliott, a neighbor who was hastening to the rescue, saw her danger and ran to engage her pursuers. Stumbling through the corn, he encountered one and cudgeled him, but all were separated by the darkness. Mrs. Babbitt, however, succeeded in reaching the more thickly settled portion of the city, and the first man she called upon for help, replied:

"You have made your bed—lie in it!"

The sheriff came, with two or three men, and talked to the mob, which dispersed before daylight, with open threats to "have Babbitt's heart's blood," and for months his family lived in momentary apprehension of his murder. For months he was hooted at in the streets of Minneapolis as "nigger thief," and called "Eliza." No arrests were made, and he has always felt it fortunate that Mrs. Messer prevented the shooting of the man in the side-light, as he thinks to this day that in the state of public sentiment, the man firing the shot would have been hanged for murder by any Hennepin county jury, and his home razed to the ground or burned.

Eliza Winston was sent by underground railroad to Canada, because Minnesota, in the year of grace, 1860, could not or would not defend the freedom of one declared free by decision of her own courts.

When such events were actual facts in '60, near the center of the State, under a Republican administration, what was the condition of public sentiment in the northern portion of the territory in '57, when there was scarce a pretense of law or order, and the Southern democracy held absolute sway? I soon understood the situation; had known for years that the Southern threats, which Northern men laughed at as "tin kettle thunder," were the desperate utterances of lawless men, in firm alliance with the "Hierarchy of Rome for the overthrow of this Republic."