It was a {410} noble scheme, and none the less so because of the idea of making it pay ultimately as a business venture. [Sidenote: Not an entirely new thing in American history.] [Sidenote: Denunciations of it as an odious innovation.] It cannot be said that it was a movement entirely new in American history, although this was charged by many of the politicians, both of the North and of the South. A number of the American colonies were originally planted under the auspices of corporations in the motherland, and others were formed by companies of immigrants for the purpose of securing more freedom than the Old World afforded. It is difficult to see how any objection could have been found to such an association, animated with such motives and purposes, and operating through such means, and yet it was charged, even by Northern men, with the responsibility for all the outrages perpetrated in Kansas during the stormy period of 1855-56. Even the President of the United States denounced it with great severity. The view held by the President and his friends, both of the North and of the South, was that no aid should be allowed to be given, and no incentive offered, by any person or organization to any other person, to go to, and settle in, the common Territories of the Union, but that every emigrant should go entirely upon his own impulse, and be sustained entirely by his own means. This they regarded as the only natural and fair method for carrying into effect the principle of popular sovereignty in the Territories. Such a view was a perfect travesty of popular liberty, and manifests the tyranny which slavery was imposing upon the minds of freemen. [Sidenote: The organization of Mr. Thayer's company.] Mr. Thayer's company was never organized under its original charter, but under a charter obtained in 1855. During the period when the counter movements, to be described, were set on foot against it in Missouri, it had no corporate existence at all, but was a movement {411} conducted by three private gentlemen, Mr. Thayer, Mr. Lawrence, and Mr. J. M. S. Williams. Moreover, the establishments which they founded in Kansas were open to use by immigrants from any and every part of the Union, or of the world, without distinction. Such was the organization which was made the justification, or better the subterfuge, for excesses, which had never before been committed in the history of the building of the Commonwealths of the Union. [Sidenote: Reports in regard to its character and purposes.]