life." And a real fort it was. Cavalry--or dragoons as they called them
then--were engaged in saber drill, their swords flashing in the
sunlight. Artillery was rumbling over the parade ground. Infantry was
marching and wheeling. About the Post were men dressed all in buckskin
with coonskin caps or broad-brimmed slouch hats--real Westerners of
whom I had dreamed. Indians of all sorts were loafing about--all
friendly, but a new and different kind of Indians from any I had
seen--Kickapoos, Possawatomies, Delawares, Choctaws, and other tribes,
of which I had often heard. Everything I saw fascinated me.

These drills at the Fort were no fancy dress-parades. They meant
business. A thousand miles to the west the Mormons were running things
in Utah with a high hand. No one at Fort Leavenworth doubted that these
very troops would soon be on their way to determine whether Brigham
Young or the United States Government should be supreme there.

To the north and west the hostile Indians, constantly irritated by the
encroachments of the white man, had become a growing menace. The
block-houses I beheld were evidences of preparedness against this
danger. And in that day the rumblings of the coming struggle over
slavery could already be heard. Kansas--very soon afterward "Bleeding
Kansas"--was destined to be an early battleground. And we were soon to
know something of its tragedies.

Free-soil men and pro-slavery men were then ready to rush across the
border the minute it was opened for settlement. Father was a Free-soil
man. His brother Elijah who, as I have said, was a slave-owner, was a
believer in the extension of slavery into the new territory.

Knowing that the soldiers I saw today might next week be on their way