414 



LAWTON, HENRY WARE. 



them from being commandeered. Afterward they 

 wanted franchise privileges. He gave them fran- 

 chise privileges in matters affecting the mines and 

 the Uitlander community. Eventually they raised 

 a factitious clamor for full burgher rights. Here 

 he had to deal not with the bungling imperson- 

 ality in Downing Street, with its pigeonholed 

 official knowledge which would make out the 

 Transvaal Boers to be British subjects who had 

 gone beyond the pale of the law to gratify their 

 criminal propensities among savages, but with a 

 man, a practical politician, who could bend multi- 

 tudes to his will, who was crafty, ingenious, re- 

 sourceful, careless of the means he used if they 

 only served his end, and that end involved first 

 of all the extinction of the South African Repub- 

 lic. The history of South Africa subsequent to 

 the conclusion of the last London convention is 

 a narrative -of the struggle between Paul Kruger 

 and Cecil Rhodes. As Premier of Cape Colony 

 and the accepted leader of the Afrikander party, 

 pretending to pursue the good of all South Africa, 

 but nursing the local jealousies springing from 

 separate material interests, Rhodes sought to win 

 the Cape Dutch and the Free Staters to his side, 

 and actually secured their quiescence and con- 

 sent when he threw a strangling band of British 

 territory round the Transvaal, checking all ex- 

 pansion* to the west or the north. Kruger had 

 established friendship with Lobengula; but 

 Rhodes unearthed a dormant mining concession, 

 given by Lobengula for a supply of firearms to 

 fight the Boers, and on the strength of this ob- 

 tained a royal charter. The Cape Dutch had now 

 lost faith in Rhodes, so he took the opposite 

 party into his train, and nursed the jealousies 

 of the British in South Africa, especially the 

 rapidly increasing mining community on the 

 Rand, which grew to outnumber the Boers of the 

 Transvaal. He plotted the revolutionary upris- 

 ing of 1895 and the invasion of the Transvaal 

 by the Chartered Company's troops. This proved 

 a lamentable failure, owing to the watchfulness 

 of Kruger and the unwillingness of the American 

 conspirators and of the workingmen to abolish 

 the republic and accept British rule. If Rhodes 

 had been on hand there would have been no 

 abortive rising, but he had to suffer an eclipse in 

 consequence of the fiasco. To Kruger it gave the 

 opportunity he desired. He armed and fortified 

 the Transvaal. It was four years before the Uit- 

 lander agitation could be renewed with the pros- 

 pect of British official support. In 1899 Mr. 

 Chamberlain and Sir Alfred Milner determined to 

 curb the growing military power and national 

 spirit of the South African Republic, even at 

 the cost of war. Asserting the suzerainty of 

 Great Britain, they assumed the right of the Brit- 

 ish subjects in the Transvaal to the- franchise 

 on a theory that Englishmen are a masterful race, 



who will not suffer others to rule them, and that 

 such a condition constituted a danger to the 

 peace of South Africa. The policy of President 

 Kruger in regard to the franchise was always 

 clear and simple. He wanted as many new burgh- 

 ers as he could get that would stand by the re- 

 public and uphold its laws and institutions. 

 Strangers who came to get money and return 

 after a few years to their own country he did 

 not want; still less Britishers who desired to 

 upset the republic and convert it into a British 

 colony. When the strangers began to flock in 

 the naturalization period was made longer and 

 longer, so as to exclude the elements that could 

 not be assimilated, though all who showed their 

 loyalty to the republic by going out with the 

 burgher commandos to fight native rebels or the 

 Jameson raiders were naturalized immediately by 

 special legislation. The state President offered 

 to prove to Sir Alfred Milner that Englishmen 

 with few exceptions would not renounce their 

 nationality to become Transvaal burghers, and 

 that the majority of the Uitlanders were satis- 

 fied with the law r s and their administration. The 

 High Commissioner persisted in his demand for 

 a five years' retrospective franchise as an irre- 

 ducible minimum. The state President offered 

 this if the newly revived claim to suzerainty were 

 abandoned ; but Sir Alfred Milner could not agree 

 to retract or even ignore the absurd assumption 

 of Mr. Chamberlain that the preamble of the 

 convention of 1881 was still in force. President 

 Kruger said he would not consent to give his 

 country away to strangers. Thus war resulted 

 between Great Britain and the allied Boer repub- 

 lics a war that he predicted would stagger hu- 

 manity. 



Ohm Paul, or Uncle Paul, as his people some- 

 times call him, is vigorous in body and intellect 

 in his old age. He is a typical Boer patriarch, 

 the father of eleven children, who have large fami- 

 lies too. He has sold gold-bearing land and other 

 property enough to make him very wealthy a 

 millionaire in pounds sterling, it is said yet he 

 lives in the utmost simplicity in a modest house. 

 He shares the common Boer disdain for luxury 

 and elegance, as well as for ceremony and formal- 

 ity. The Bible is his constant guide, and from 

 its perusal he has acquired the habit of quoting 

 scriptural texts in support of his political argu- 

 ments. From the Bible, too, he has learned the 

 graceful art of illustrating his meaning by means 

 of parables and forcible similes. He often mounts 

 the pulpit, and has the reputation of being the 

 best preacher in Pretoria. Tobacco and coffee 

 are his only indulgences. Coffee is indeed the 

 only regale that is usually set before visitors in 

 the President's house, and to keep a plentiful 

 supply ready an annual sum is allotted from the 

 state treasury. 



LAWTON, HENRY WARE, American sol- 

 dier, born in Manhattan, Lucas County, Ohio, 

 March 17, 1843; fell in the battle of San Mateo, 

 Luzon, Philippine Islands, Dec. 19, 1899. He was 

 a student in the Methodist Episcopal College in 

 Fort Wayne, Ind., when the civil war broke out, 

 enlisted in the Ninth Indiana Volunteers April 

 18, 1801, and was appointed a sergeant. On Auo-. 



) he was commissioned first lieutenant in the 



Thirtieth Indiana Regiment, May 17, 1862, was 



promoted captain, and Nov. 15, 1864, lieutenant 



He was mustered out of the service Nov. 



25, 1865, with the brevet rank of colonel. In 

 1864 Capt. Lawton commanded his regiment. Its 

 service was at the West, and he received the of- 

 ficial commendation of his superior officers on 

 several occasions, especially for the manner in 

 which he handled his men in the battle of Nash- 

 ville. The brigade to which his regiment be- 

 longed captured on the two days of battle 7 of 

 the 13 guns secured by the entire division, and 

 641, or more than half, of the prisoners. The 

 Thirtieth Indiana was very much reduced in 

 strength about this time, and Capt. Lawton car- 



