Brooklynites in Kansas

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BROOKLYNITES IN KANSAS.

In glancing over the columns of the Kansas Herald of Freedom, we are surprised to observe what a space in the history of public affairs of the territory is filled by former citizens of Brooklyn. First, we have our venerable friend, the Rev. John Pierpont, who has hardly resigned the pulpit of the Third Unitarian Society here, before we find him lecturing the Kansians on Temperance, and complimenting them on their beautiful country:

He had probably traveled more than most men of his profession. He had been over the United States, from north to south, from east to west,—from Bangor to Galena, from the Penobscot to the Savannah river; and, in the Eastern world, from Liverpool to Constantinople—over the seats of the ancient empires, but had never seen so fair and beautiful a country as he had already in Kansas. He would not say God couldn't make a better country, but he could confidently say he never did. It was for them to enter on it, cultivate it, improve it by the aid of science and art, and in its hours of peace be grateful to the great Giver for the benefit thus so lavishly bestowed.

Then comes that volatile Proteus, the Hon. E. O. Perrin,¹ who, not content with figuring at once as a Tennesseean Colonel and a Brooklyn lawyer, has emerged also into the character of a Kansas emigrant. The mystery which involved this pleasant gentleman's history when here, still covers him with a misty halo in Lawrence. While here, he was inveterate in his Nativeism, yet invariably present at every public dinner of foreigners; he was constantly alluding to his lovely Tennesseean valleys, while working might and main to get elected as a Brooklyn Assemblyman. They can't make him out in Kansas, any more than we could here; they are in doubt whether he holds an official relation to Gov. Walker or not.² One thing, and that only, they can say with certainty about him; that he is a pleasant, genial, accomplished man, though too much addicted to hyperbole and hifalutin in his speeches. We make the following extracts from one of the many addresses he has already delivered to the people of Kansas. It contains both information about himself, and advice to them:

As an old line whig, he had held position until the advent of Franklin Pierce,³ who took occasion to decapitate him. If any one wished to know anything of his antecedents, he would say that he followed the fortunes of the party led by Harry of the West, and marched always beneath that flag, not to victory, but to defeat; and when that went down, he went down with it. It rose under another name, flourished for a time, and then went down, most magnificently down, and he doubted whether it had come up yet. He was pledged to no party. When the Democratic party was right he would support them.

He recommended a remedy for existing difficulties, which might with profit be followed. An embargo should be put on bowie-knives and bullets, and a premium offered for the importation of ladies. Let the southern rose bloom side by side with the prairie flower, the fair daughters of New England, and it would do more to restore peace than Sharpe's rifles ever can.

There is also the Rev. Ephraim Nute, who not long since occupied the pulpit of the Universalist Church in Fourth street, now filled by Rev. B. Peters. Mr. Nute, we believe, was the pioneer pastor of Kansas Territory, and by frankly avowing his Free State sentiments, subjected himself to great privations and hardships during the persecutions to which the Missouri Border Buffians subjected all who took a stand against their assumptions. Mr. Nute is now, we understand, ministering to a flourishing congregation, among whom he is comfortably and permanently settled.

Besides these, we notice in connection with every Free State movement of importance in the Territory, the name of O. C. Brown, who formerly transacted business in Grand street, within a block of our office. He has been a prominent member of the Conventions, Committees, and other official assemblages, which the exigencies of the Free State cause has called into requisition.

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