Captain La Barge did not take his boat down the river in the fall of 1859, because the ice cut him off. She was laid up a little below Atchison. He himself went to St. Louis, and in February returned with his family. In the spring of 1860, when the ice was about to break up, the citizens of Atchison offered to furnish fuel for the boat if La Barge would attempt to cut through the ice to St. Joseph. He undertook it, running his boat up on the ice until her weight broke it in, and in that way succeeded in getting through. The captain remained in the service of the railroad all summer, running to Kansas City and Omaha and intermediate points. In the fall he started for St. Louis, but was caught by the ice at Liberty, Mo., and compelled to lay up his boat there. It was at this point that he first heard of Lincoln’s election. When John Baxter, keeper of Liberty Landing, came on board with the news, La Barge said to him: “Up go all your niggers.” “Oh, you don’t think that’ll make any difference, do you?” “Up go all your niggers,” replied La Barge; “they will all be set free.” “And they were all set free,” remarked the captain in narrating this dialogue, “and mine with the rest, for I had some.” FOOTNOTES [1] There is in the possession of the La Barge family in St. Louis a large pocketbook, still in a state of excellent preservation, which was brought from Canada by Captain La Barge’s father. In this book is a slip of paper, worn and mutilated with age, which contains the record of the elder La Barge’s birth. [2] “I can safely recommend him to any traveler, as the best person in his line I have ever met--intelligent, sober, obliging, and never afraid to encounter any difficulty that may occur.”--_Three Years in North America_, by James Stuart, who traveled in the United States, 1828–30, and employed La Barge to convey him on his journeys in the vicinity of St. Louis and as far east as Vincennes, Ind. He was very anxious to adopt the young child, Joseph La Barge, and take him to England and educate him, but the parents would not consent. [3] For a history of this exciting affair see “The American Fur Trade of the Far West,” p. 267. [4] The expeditions of General W. H. Ashley to the Rocky Mountains in quest of beaver fur were very celebrated in those days. They occurred in the years 1822–26. [5] The data for the sketch here given of the ancestry of the La Barge family are mainly derived from letters by Dr. Philemon Laberge, Sheriff of the district of Beauharnois, Quebec, to Captain La Barge. Dr. Laberge had chanced to come across a copy of the St. Louis _Republic_ of January 9, 1898, in which there were a biographical sketch and photograph of Captain La Barge. Knowing that there was but one family of the name in America, he set about to trace the relationship, and presently sent to Captain La Barge a complete genealogical table of the family from Robert Laberge down.