him.” Then the indignant, determined crowd in response cried out, at the top of their lungs, “Three dollars, three dollars,” and without a break kept up the cry for twenty minutes or more. The auctioneer yelled to make himself heard above that deafening din of voices, but it was all in vain. At last, however, the cry of the crowd died away. Was it simply a good-natured joke only carried a little too far? The auctioneer seemed to be in doubt how to take that vociferating throng. “Now,” he said in a bantering tone, “gentlemen, don’t make fools of yourselves; how much will you bid for this boy?” Then, for many minutes, they shouted, “Four dollars, four dollars,” and the frantic cries of the auctioneer were swallowed up in that babel of yells; his efforts were as futile as if he had attempted to whistle a tornado into silence. To the joy of that crowd of young men the auctioneer was at last in a rage. It had dawned upon him that this was no joke; that the crowd before him were not shouting for fun on this annual holiday, but were in dead earnest. When their cries once more died away, he soundly berated them for their conduct. But they answered his scolding and storming with jeers and catcalls. At last he again asked, “How much will you bid for this first-class nigger?” This was answered by a simultaneous shout of “Five dollars, five dollars,” and the roar of voices did not stop for a quarter of an hour. And so the battle went on. The bid did not get above eight dollars, and at the end of two hours of exasperating and futile effort, the defeated auctioneer led his ebony charges back to the jail. Through the force of public opinion freedom had triumphed. No public auction of slaves was ever again attempted in St. Louis. But in the cries and counter cries of the auctioneer and that throng of freemen could be felt the pulsations of the coming conflict. We had before us in concrete form Lincoln’s doctrine, that the nation cannot exist half slave and half free. CHAPTER III RUMBLINGS OF THE CONFLICT Far away to the south we now began to hear, like the low growling of distant thunder, a rumbling of the approaching conflict. Early in 1861, secession ordinances in quick succession were passed by the Gulf States. By February 1st all of them, following the lead of South Carolina, through the action of their respective State conventions, had severed their relations with the Union. They also forcibly seized United States forts, arsenals, arms, custom-houses, lighthouses and subtreasuries. In Texas the United States troops had been treacherously surrendered. The Federal government offered no resistance to those who thus trampled on its authority, inaugurated revolution, and resorted to acts of war.