KRUGER, STEPHANUS JOHANNES PAUL. 



413 



berg trundled the long caravans of great Cape 

 wagons, each drawn by a dozen yoke of oxen. 

 The Transvaal was the land of Canaan after all, 

 for there the Philistines could not oppress them. 



The elder Kruger took up a farm as large as 

 a county, and when the boys grew up and mar- 

 ried they made locations for themselves. Paul 

 was known throughout the Transvaal for his 

 strength, skill, -courage, and resource. He hunted 

 over the whole country, and killed more lions 

 than any one else. No Kaffir could match him 

 in ileetness of foot or endurance. Sound and 

 shreAvd of judgment, keen in practical affairs, 

 convincing in argument, eloquent, masterful, he 

 asserted himself among the young burghers, and 

 soon held a place in the councils of the young 

 nation of which he was the product and the 

 type. He became field cornet, a member of the 

 Volksraad, an active and diligent member who 

 shaped legislation because he was grounded in 

 the principles on which the republic was based 

 and a thorough believer in them. He became a 

 member of the Executive Council under Presi- 

 dent Burgers in 1872. When dissatisfaction at 

 the liberal religious views of President Burgers 

 threatened to disrupt the republic, when the fail- 

 ure of the expedition against the Bapedi rebels 

 and the financial embarrassment caused by the 

 President's ambitious policy of internal improve- 

 ments seemed to justify the opinion of the pious 

 Doppers that the Lord had deserted the republic, 

 an English commissioner appeared and raised the 

 British flag over the Transvaal, and a strong body 

 of troops marched in straightway. Paul Kruger, 

 Piet Joubert, all the Boers, all the Boer wives 

 still more, were determined that the republic 

 should not go under, that the Englander should 

 not rule them and their children. All signed a 

 memorial declaring that they did not desire Brit- 

 ish annexation all the Boers, not the British 

 and German traders and artisans who had in- 

 vited the occupation. Kruger, Joubert, and Pre- 

 torius went to London to protest against the 

 action of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, went again 

 with this document to disprove the statement 

 that the people had asked for annexation, and 

 were informed that the British flag, once raised, 

 would not be hauled down. The Boer deputation 

 returned home discomfited, but not entirely dis- 

 heartened. They knew their people's patience, 

 persistence, unity, courage. The case was not 

 worse than when they warred against Dingaan 

 and his Zulus. They did as they had done in 

 that dire time of tribulation. They came to- 

 gether quietly to discuss and plan. They prayed 

 and sang the Transvaal hymn of deliverance from 

 the British yoke. They quietly acquired more 

 firearms and stored up provisions. When the 

 British had reduced their garrisons they suddenly 

 raised the flag of independence. The British sent 

 troops up from Natal, and the Boers trapped them 

 and beat them. When a rude farming community 

 of about 6,000 .men bade defiance to the British 

 Empire, and when 800 British regulars were put 

 to flight on ground selected by an English gen- 

 eral by 156 of these farmers, there seemed to be 

 political and military grounds for vindicating 

 British prestige, and therefore an army was sent 

 to subjugate the Transvaalers. When, on the 

 other hand, every Dutch Afrikander felt his blood 

 boil when he saAV what England had done and 

 intended to do to his kindred in the Transvaal 

 there were political and military grounds for the 

 British Government to stay its hand. Mr. Glad- 

 stone appreciated these grounds, and he under- 

 stood that it would be more ignominious for 

 Great Britain to impose a tyrannical yoke on a 



race of white freemen than it was to have Brit- 

 ish soldiers worsted in a few skirmishes. There- 

 fore the convention of 1881 was signed, giving 

 back self-government to the Transvaal, Great 

 Britain retaining suzerainty. The military suc- 

 cesses that brought about this result were due 

 to Joubert, who was elected commandant gen- 

 eral. The political and diplomatic success was 

 achieved by Kruger, and for that reason the 

 burghers chose him in 1882 to be President of 

 the Transvaal Republic, and in 1883, when the 

 regular electoral period came round, he was re- 

 elected for five years, and in each successive 

 election since, in 1888, in 1893, and in 1898. The 

 convention of 1881 did not secure to the Trans- 

 vaal that full measure of independence to which 

 President Kruger and the burghers aspired. When 

 they had organized the republic on a new and 

 lasting basis, and were strong again because they 

 were united, the President set himself to work 

 to secure a revision of the convention. He was 

 willing to concede commercial and territorial ad- 

 vantages if the Queen's Government would yield 

 rights that were scarcely exercised or had little 

 value. It was a question of names rather than 

 actualities, but names that fastened the badge 

 of dependence on the republic were harder to bear 

 than material sacrifices. There was the right to 

 march troops through Transvaal territory, the 

 right to represent the republic in its external 

 relations, the right to appoint a resident; there 

 was the suzerainty, an invidious word, having 

 no modern legal meaning, only defined as mean- 

 ing here those specified rights. Paul Kruger went 

 to London again in order to negotiate a new 

 convention with Lord Derby, who had to con- 

 sider, as before, the opinion of the Cape Afri- 

 kanders, which was altogether propitious, for 

 Kruger always knew what ground he was walk- 

 ing on. To renounce any one of the thousand 

 shadowy rights built out of words that rest un- 

 heeded in the British archives would not enter 

 into the head of a British minister. The Liberal 

 Secretary of State for the Colonies was willing 

 to make a new convention, to let the Transvaal 

 resume the old name of South African Republic, 

 to expunge the word suzerainty from the pre- 

 amble, to strike out the right to march troops 

 into the Transvaal, to send a diplomatic agent 

 instead of a resident to Pretoria, and to let the 

 republic have its own diplomacy, subject to the 

 condition that the Queen's Government should 

 have six months in which to disapprove any 

 treaty made with a foreign power. That veto 

 power was all that stood between the Transvaal 

 and absolute independence. The state President 

 was willing to give a substantial quid pro quo 

 in order to take back to Pretoria this convention 

 of 1884. 



The national development of the South African 

 Republic was rapid after Kruger had secured this 

 convention. With their own railroad to the non- 

 British port of Delagoa Bay the Boers were in- 

 dependent of the railroad and customs tariffs of 

 the Cape and Natal. They secured a title to a 

 port of their own, the Bay of St. Lucia, in Zulu- 

 land, but the British Government intervened and 

 took it away from them. The discovery of gold 

 in the Transvaal opened the prospect of a na- 

 tional revenue, a thing almost impossible to ob- 

 tain from farmers alone, and Kruger permitted 

 miners to come in, and gave them a code of min- 

 ing laws as liberal as those of California. He 

 had controversies with the Foreign Office, of 

 course. His life has been spent in these contro- 

 versies. The British settlers objected to being 

 commandeered to fight Kaffir rebels. He excused 



