"It Behoves A Frontier Man To Be Smart, Sir." Such, In That Or Other Language, Has Been The Prevailing Idea.

Such is the prevailing idea.

And one feels driven to ask one's self whether such must not be the prevailing idea with those who leave the world and its rules behind them, and go forth with the resolve that the world and its rules shall follow them.

Of filibustering, annexation, and polishing savages off the face of creation there has been a great deal, and who can deny that humanity has been the gainer? It seems to those who look widely back over history, that all such works have been carried on in obedience to God's laws. When Jacob by Rebecca's aid cheated his elder brother, he was very smart; but we cannot but suppose that a better race was by this smartness put in possession of the patriarchal scepter. Esau was polished off, and readers of Scripture wonder why heaven, with its thunder, did not open over the heads of Rebecca and her son. But Jacob, with all his fraud, was the chosen one. Perhaps the day may come when scrupulous honesty may be the best policy, even on the frontier. I can only say that hitherto that day seems to be as distant as ever. I do not pretend to solve the problem, but simply record my opinion that under circumstances as they still exist I should not willingly select a frontier life for my children.

I have said that all great frontier men have been unscrupulous. There is, however, an exception in history which may perhaps serve to prove the rule. The Puritans who colonized New England were frontier men, and were, I think, in general scrupulously honest. They had their faults. They were stern, austere men, tyrannical at the backbone when power came in their way, as are all pioneers, hard upon vices for which they who made the laws had themselves no minds; but they were not dishonest.

At Milwaukee I went up to see the Wisconsin volunteers, who were then encamped on open ground in the close vicinity of the town. Of Wisconsin I had heard before - and have heard the same opinion repeated since - that it was more backward in its volunteering than its neighbor States in the West. Wisconsin has 760,000 inhabitants, and its tenth thousand of volunteers was not then made up; whereas Indiana, with less than double its number, had already sent out thirty-six thousand. Iowa, with a hundred thousand less of inhabitants, had then made up fifteen thousand. But neverthless to me it seemed that Wisconsin was quite alive to its presumed duty in that respect. Wisconsin, with its three-quarters of a million of people, is as large as England. Every acre of it may be made productive, but as yet it is not half cleared. Of such a country its young men are its heart's blood. Ten thousand men, fit to bear arms, carried away from such a land to the horrors of civil war, is a sight as full of sadness as any on which the eye can rest.

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