THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 875 



nition as this he cared but little. The acceptance of an article by the 

 Atlantic was for him a baptism as a litterateur. 



From November, 1855, to May, 1856, he was in Fayal. What he 

 found there worth observing is set forth in a paper entitled " Fayal and 

 the Portuguese," originally published in the "Atlantic Monthly" in 

 November, 1860, and reprinted in "Outdoor Papers." 



The Kansas Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, and the struggle for 

 possession of the territory of Kansas between the free states and the 

 slave states began at once. In Massachusetts organized emigration 

 from that state to Kansas was effected through the agency of the 

 Emigrant Aid Society. This movement was at first of a peaceful 

 nature, but later such emigrants as went forth were better prepared 

 for emergencies. Higginson arrived in Boston from Fayal in May, 

 1856. A public meeting which was held in Worcester in honor of his 

 return was converted into a call for volunteer emigrants to Kansas. 

 A committee was appointed, of which he was secretary, under whose 

 auspices three parties of emigrants were sent forward armed with rifles 

 and pistols and prepared for camping out. He himself was first sent 

 to St. Louis to look out for a stray party of emigrants whose progress had 

 been hindered, and later, as agent of the National Kansas Committee, 

 having its headquarters at Chicago, he was sent to Kansas with a con- 

 voy of rifles to oversee a party of emigrants. On this expedition he 

 met the famous " Jim Lane " at the head of a party of mounted 

 followers, and was honored by an appointment on Lane's staff with the 

 rank of brigadier-general. He passed safely through Kansas, though 

 the trip was not without the fascination of actual peril. He speaks of 

 the " tonic life " of these weeks, and says that when they were over and 

 he arrived where he could call for help upon a policeman, he felt as if 

 "a despicable effeminacy had set in." 



In January, 1857, he joined with a few other Republicans and 

 Garrisonian Abolitionists in calling and in holding a state disunion 

 convention. A call for a national disunion convention was also circu- 

 lated, Cleveland being the appointed place of meeting, but the financial 

 panic of 1857 prevented the meeting of this convention. 



February 2, 1858, John Brown wrote to him, as "an abolitionist" 

 and " a true man," for pecuniary aid in perfecting what Brown con- 

 sidered the most important undertaking of his life. This celebrated 

 abolitionist was already famous, and Higginson says that there was but 

 one way of thinking among the Kansas Free State men as to the most 

 extreme act of John Brown's Kansas career, the so-called "Pottawa- 

 tomie Massacre." As one of them put it. Brown saw the necessity of 

 some such blow and had the nerve to strike it. " Personally," adds 



