It was very plain to me that these observations were not particularly friendly. The glares cast at me were openly hostile. While we were disposing our baggage in our stateroom—I had hired the bridal chamber—I heard some of my wife's friends asking her father if he knew who I was, and whether I had any credentials. He replied that he had left the matter of credentials to his daughter.
"Well," said one of the party, "these people on board are excursionists from Independence, and they say this son-in-law of yours is the most desperate outlaw, bandit, and house-burner on the frontier!"
The old gentleman was considerably disturbed at this report. He made up his mind to get a little first-hand information, and he took the most direct means of getting it.
"Who are you?" he asked, walking over to me. "The people on board don't give you a very good recommendation."
"Kindly remember," I replied, "that we have had a little war for the past five years on the border. These people were on one side and I on the other, and it is natural that they shouldn't think very highly of me."
My argument was not convincing. "I am going to take my daughter home again," said my father-in-law, and started toward the stateroom.
I besought him to leave the decision to her, and for the next ten minutes I pleaded my case with all the eloquence I could command. I was talking against odds, for my wife, as well as her parents' friends, were all ardent Southerners, and I am proud to say that after fifty years of married life, she is still as strongly "Secesh" as ever. But when I put the case to her she said gamely that she had taken me for better or for worse and intended to stick to me.
She was in tears when she said good-by to her parents and friends, and still in tears after they had left. I tried to comfort her with assurances that when we came among Northern people I would not be regarded as such a desperate character, but my consolation was of little avail. At dinner the hostile stares that were bent on me from our neighbors at table did not serve to reassure her. It was some comfort to me afterward when the captain sent for me and told me that he knew me, that my Uncle Elijah was his old-time friend, and one of the most extensive shippers on the steamboat line. "It is shameful the way these people are treating you," he said, "but let it pass, and when we get to Independence everything will be all right."
But everything was not all right. In the evening, when I led my wife out on the floor of the cabin, where the passengers were dancing, every dancer immediately walked off the floor, the men scowling and the women with their noses in the air. All that night my wife wept while I walked the floor.
At daybreak, when we stopped for wood, I heard shots and shouting. Walking out on deck, I saw the freed negroes who composed the crew scrambling back on board. The steamboat was backing out in the stream. Later I learned that my fellow passengers had wired up the river that I was on board, and an armed party had ridden down to "get" me.