Brother Against Brother; Or, The War on the Border

by Oliver Optic

The colonel's estate was on Bar Creek, at its junction with Green River. One mile from Riverlawn was the village of Barcreek, a place with three churches, several stores, a blacksmith's and a wheelwright's shop, with a carpenter and a mason. It supplied the needs of the country in a circuit of eight or ten miles. In fact, it was a sort of market town.

There was not a great deal of building done in this region; but the mason residing there had made a comfortable living, jobbing and erecting an occasional chimney, till he died in 1852. The colonel notified his brother, Titus Lyon, who was a mason in Derry, that there was an opening for one of his trade in Barcreek, but he could not advise him to move there.

Titus was not a prosperous man; for he was rather lazy, and greatly lacking in enterprise. The colonel did not believe he would do any better in a new home than in the old one, and he bluntly wrote to him to this effect. The planter had a suspicion that his brother drank too much whiskey, for he could not account for his poverty in any other way; but he had no evidence on the point. Titus decided to move to Kentucky; and he did so, though he had to borrow the money of his brother Noah to enable him to reach his new home.

Business in his trade happened to be usually good after his arrival, and for several years he did tolerably well. Then he desired to buy a house and some land which were for sale in Barcreek. The colonel loaned him five thousand dollars for this purpose, and to pay off his note to Noah, mortgaging the estate he had purchased as security.

From this time Titus did not do as well as before. He seemed to regard himself as a landed proprietor, and the equal of the planters of Kentucky. He neglected his work, feeling rather above it, negroes doing most of the jobs in his line. He employed a couple of them, but they did not earn their wages. The colonel had to help him out several times.

As a planter in good standing among his neighbors in the county, Colonel Lyon, who was not a profound thinker, fell in with the views and opinions of those in his grade of society. He was not a strong pro-slavery man, but he owned half a hundred negroes, who had been necessary to enable him to carry on his planting operations; but he treated them as well as though he had paid them wages.

He was not inclined to make any issue with his neighbors on the labor question, though some of them thought he was not entirely reliable on this subject. He attended to his business, and did not vex his spirit over extraneous matters. When the protection of the South against the aggressions of the North in connection with slavery was agitated, he followed his Kentucky leaders.

On the question of any interference on the part of Congress or the people of the free States he had very decided opinions. If he had ever intended to manumit his negroes, as had been hinted in the county, no one could object to his position after the subject began to be agitated in the State. After eight years' residence in Barcreek, his brother Titus was a more thorough-going pro-slavery man than the planter; in fact, he had had a strong tendency in that direction when he lived in Derry.

Titus's wife was not a happy woman in her domestic relations. She was better educated than her husband, and emphatically more sensible; and she could not help seeing that Titus was frittering away his opportunities, drinking too much whiskey, and associating with reckless and unprincipled characters. Their two sons, Alexander and Orlando, were following in the footsteps of their father. Even the three daughters had imbibed strange notions from their associates, and belonged on the Secession side of the house.

Colonel Lyon was not permitted to witness the wild disorder which pervaded the State after the election of the Republican President; for he died suddenly in a fit of apoplexy, after he had eaten his Christmas dinner, in 1858. He was only fifty years old, and perhaps if he had taken more exercise and been more prudent in his eating and drinking, he might have taken part in the stormy events of the later period.