I am now over eighty-two years old. Why my life has been preserved so long I do not know. Like a tale that has been told so we our lives do spend. It is the same journey for all from birth to death that every one has to travel,- some short, some long; some rough and boisterous, some peaceful and uneventful.
In looking back I think I can plainly see the leading hand of a Heavenly Father. My anxiety to secure riches and honor led me into many devious paths and engagements which I sincerely deplore and repent of. Several times I was on the door-step of political honor, when apparently no human power would be able to keep me back; but every time a power that I could not overcome, a power with which I was too weak to contend, would interfere and snatch the coveted prize from my lips.
I made money very fast during the four years I was U.S. Marshal. At the end of my term I counted that I was worth $100,000. Four years later I was nearly a pauper. I never saw the hand of God more plainly than in the way wealth was taken from me. Once the Speakership of the Kansas House seemed in my grasp: the hand of wicked men saved me. Twice afterward God used the same instrument to defeat my plans on the eve of victory.
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In pioneer days I was on the Board of Directors of the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Ft. Gibson R.R. A plat of the road had to be filed in Washington within a certain time to secure the land grant of every alternate section of land on each side of the road. We had no money. In this emergency, I borrowed a compass, took my own team, hired ax-men, and located the road on very nearly the ground it now occupies, from Garnett to the line of the Osage Indian Reservation,- made a plat, filed it in Washington, and secured the land grant.
I was always a pioneer, and like such generally, results went to successors. While I was in Leavenworth City on recruiting service, The Knights of the Golden Circle were very bold and aggressive. They had an organ,- The Inquirer, a disloyal sheet, published by a man named Taylor. One night Col. D. B. Anthony was fired on from the the windows of the office of that rebel sheet. The next night we organized a Union League. Soon after, that office was broken to pieces and thrown out of the window, and Taylor saved his life by flight. This purified the air. We never had any “copper-head” that cared show themselves in Leavenworth after that. I was president of that League. It was the first organized west of the Missouri River.
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The State Department of the present Grand Army of the Republic was organized in Topeka in the year 1872. I was president of the convention of old soldiers that organized it, and was that year elected delegate -- the first delegate of the Kansas Department -- to the National Encampment of the G.A.R., which met that year at Saratoga, N.Y.
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In 1870, while U.S. Marshal, I selected and placed on the jury in the U.S. Court a colored man, Capt. Wm. Matthews. This was I believe the first time that a colored man had ever been on a U.S. jury, since the recent amendments of the U.S. Constitution. It was amusing to see Justice Miller look at him when he took his seat.
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When I was in the Senate in 1864 I had a lady, Mrs. Bennie Ridgeway, appointed a clerk in one of the departments of the Legislature. She was the first lady ever appointed to such a position in our State.
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In 1865, after the assassination of President Lincoln, when the administration of President Johnson was fast becoming a stench in the nostrils of every loyal man, Senator Lane came home from Washington. He lived on Government patronage. To secure this in his own hands, and deprive Senator Pomeroy of any share, he hoped to secure the endorsement of the State. He stopped first in Leavenworth, called a meeting of the citizens, and had resolutions passed endorsing Johnson's administration. Then he came to Topeka where the Legislature was in session, called a public meeting and intended through this meeting to influence the Legislature to endorse the Leavenworth resolution. I got word of this, and consulted some of the radical members of the Senate, and drew up resolutions ready to offer, had he attempted his. But he learned our temper and made no such attempt. I need hardly say here, for it is a matter of history, that for his conduct in this matter Kansas repudiated Gen. Lane, condemned his action, and sat down on him hard. The result was, he went insane and shot himself.
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I was by nature opposed to debts, bonds, and State extravagance. When I was a member of the State Senate I voted against the power of municipalities to vote bonds to rail-road companies. Afterwards, I opposed the extravagant franchise that Anderson County was trying to vote to a rail-road company. This angered the citizens of Garnett very highly. They thought their lives depended almost on voting these bonds. They were angry enough to assassinate me; but they satisfied their spleen by burning me in effigy. One night as I came from prayer-meeting in company with my wife and Mrs. Ada Laferty, I found my house surrounded by a howling mob, and an effigy labelled “Old Houston” stuck blazing up on a pole.
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In 1893 I went with my son James J. to the opening of what was known as the “The Strip” in Oklahoma. Under the rule of the Interior Department we had to get an order before we could enter the Strip to secure claims. This was the greatest farce I ever saw. I lay on the road all one night so as not to lose my place in the column that was standing before the tent in order to get the permit to enter when my time would come. At last we got our permits and made the race, but got nothing. I stayed with James in Perry, helped him to buy a block of lots and build two houses, and then returned to Garnett.