Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler Part 10

The writer had given his testimony before the Investigating Committee while they were yet in Lawrence. A number of South Carolinians had been present while this testimony was being given, and they had protested in a towering rage, "We will shoot Butler on sight." It was evident the town had to be given up to the tender mercies of this mob of ruffians. There was nothing to be gained by remaining, and the writer, sick at heart, went back to Atchison county; but he afterwards returned to see the blackened ruins of the desolated town.

On May 21st the monster _posse_, led on by Marshal Donaldson and Deputy Marshal Fain, gathered around the doomed city. The town was quiet--unusually so. Deputy Marshal Fain went into the city and arrested G. W. Deitzler, G. W. Smith and Gains Jenkins, on the charge of treason. The Marshal went to the Free State hotel, that they were soon to batter down, and got his dinner, _and went away without paying for it._ And now the opportune moment had arrived for the final _denouement_. Sheriff Jones--the mourned and lost and murdered and much-lamented Sheriff Jones--whose tragic death had fired the hearts of all the Missouri border, now put in an appearance and showed himself a mighty lively corpse, and led his _posse_ into the town. The flag of the lone star of South Carolina, blood-red, and on which was inscribed the motto, "Southern Rights," floated beside the Stars and Stripes. The monster _posse_, with loaded cannon, marched into the city and in front of the Free State hotel, and the "Committee of the Public Safety Valve" was called for. Mr. Pomeroy came forward and shook hands with Sheriff Jones--should not _gentlemen_ shake hands when they meet? Sheriff Jones demanded the arms of the people, otherwise he would bombard the town. Mr. Pomeroy went and dug up the cannon that had been buried, and surrendered it to Jones. But further than this he could not go: _the people had their arms, and intended to keep them_. Then they tried to batter down the Free State hotel with cannon. Failing in this, they tried to blow it up with powder; and, failing in that, they burned it down. They also destroyed the two printing presses, burning the buildings, and then sacked the town.

Sheriff Jones was beside himself with joy. In frantic excitement he said, "I have done it! I have done it! This is the happiest moment of my life! I determined to make the fanatics bow before me in the dust and kiss the Territorial laws, and I have done it! The writs have been executed. Boys, you are dismissed." It will be doing Senator David R.

Atchison, Ex-Vice-President of the United States, a kindness to conclude simply that he was drunk, otherwise he displayed utter savagery and barbarism. He inculcated gallantry to ladies, but said: "If you find any woman with arms in her hands, tread her under foot as you would a snake." The Cauca.s.sian white woman of Lawrence had no more rights of self-protection than the slaves of a South Carolina rice plantation--they were wholly and absolutely at the mercy of their masters!

We have no comments to make on the work of this drunken rabble; but there is one man that must be held to a terrible responsibility before the judgment-seat of posterity. Gov. Wilson Shannon was not drunk: and it is to be presumed he had read that Const.i.tution of the United States which he had so often sworn to support. He knew, therefore, that this doc.u.ment stipulates:

1. "That the right of the people to _keep_ and bear arms shall not be infringed;" yet he showed a fixed purpose to deprive the Lawrence people of their arms.

2. The Governor knew that the Const.i.tution guarantees "freedom of speech and of the press" to the American people; yet the burning of these printing presses was an attack on the freedom of the press.

3. The Const.i.tution guarantees that "in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial." Property of large value was destroyed because its owners were charged with high crimes and misdemeanors; yet the owners of this property had never been given a trial.

4. Gov. Shannon alleged that it was treasonable for the people of Kansas Territory to frame a State Const.i.tution without an enabling act from Congress; yet California had done this very thing, and under that Const.i.tution had been admitted as a State.

5. He treated the Free State men as traitors, because they would not admit the legality of the Lecompton Territorial Legislature. But the majority of the Investigating Committee held the same view with the Lawrence people, and Congress affirmed the same judgment in permanently unseating Mr. Whitfield as Territorial delegate to Congress.

Would that men could remember that there is a _hereafter_; that _to-morrow_ forever sits in judgment on _to-day._ There are three men most conspicuous in the sacking of Lawrence. Let us look at them in the electric light of the awful _to-morrow._ Since the Kansas struggle had begun David R. Atchison had made himself the most conspicuous figure. He was the representative of the John C. Calhoun school of Southern politics, and from the hour of the destruction of Lawrence he was to disappear from public view, as absolutely as that Free State hotel which was burned by his orders; yet he did not die--he was simply _buried alive_ out of the public sight. He was done with the nation, and the nation was done with him. He went back and lived on his plantation in Western Missouri, where he was forgotten. It is said he loved his slaves so well, and petted them so much, that they became masters on the plantation, and not himself. He lived to see Kansas a free State, with almost a million of inhabitants, and fairly taking the lead of Missouri in the elements of education, enterprise, and the highest civilization.

We have seen the crawling servility with which Gov. Shannon served the "Law and Order" party; yet in less than three months he was to see his office as Governor go up in smoke, as these burning buildings had gone up in smoke. Mr. S. became frantic when he saw the carnival of bloodshed and murder, of riot and robbery, that had been brought about by his means. Dr. Gihon, the incoming Gov. Geary's private secretary, reported that Mr. Shannon fled the Territory in fear of his life. When the troubles were over he came to Kansas and sought the pity and forgiveness of that city he had turned over to the tender mercies of a mob of ruffians. It need not be said that he could have done no better, for his successor, Gov. Geary, had only to speak a word and this tumult of disorder was instantly hushed.

As the years went by the people could not believe that a man that displayed so many good and amiable qualities could have been a party to such outrages as characterized his administration. He died in Lawrence very much respected.

Sheriff Samuel J. Jones strutted his brief hour on this stage in which the play had been both a bloodcurdling tragedy and a comedy; and now he was to step down and out. In the last act he had said, "_I have done it!" And he had done it_! He and his fellow conspirators, whether of high or low degree, had set in operation a train of causes that should issue in abolishing throughout the United States that inst.i.tution of slavery they had so frantically sought to establish in Kansas.

Joseph said to his brethren, "You meant it for evil, but the Lord meant it for good." _Sheriff Jones and his fellow conspirators were in the Lord's hands, but they did not know it_.

CHAPTER XVI.

When the news came of the sacking of Lawrence, the great ma.s.s of the squatters had not yet lost faith in the nation, nor had they lost hope that justice would be done, tardy though it might be; but the utmost limits of human endurance were fast being reached. There were, however, many that had already gone beyond this point, and they returned an answer that made the hearts of the people stand still with horror. It was the answer of a wild beast that had been hunted to its lair, and that turns with savage ferocity on its pursuers. It was an answer framed not in words, but in deeds. It said, "We have come to an end. We have been robbed of the rights guaranteed to us by the Kansas-Nebraska bill. We have been robbed of the rights of American citizens. We have been given the alternative of abject and degrading submission or of extermination. And now we make our answer. We will return blow for blow, wound for wound, stripe for stripe, and burning for burning. Murder shall be paid back with murder, robbery with robbery; and every act of aggression shall be paid back with swift and terrible retaliation." It must be remembered that at that time news traveled slow, and that it was slow work to take men from their ordinary farm life and organize them into bands of soldiers, and it was some days before "Old John Brown, of Osawatomie," appeared on the scene of conflict with a company of men. Of this company his son, John Brown, Jr., was captain. But the "old man" had come too late. He was terribly excited, and denounced as a set of cowards the "Committee of the Public Safety Valve" that had dug up the hidden cannon and had surrendered it to Sheriff Jones. Captain Brown and his company determined to return. Old John Brown selected a squad of six men to go on a secret expedition. Of these, four were his own sons, and one was his son-in-law. His son, Captain Brown, was unwilling that his father should go, and when the old man would not be persuaded, he cautioned him, "Father, don't do anything rash." "Old John Brown" took old man Doyle and two sons and two other men in the dead hour of night and put them to death. The facts of this awful deed have never been made public--there has never been a judicial investigation. It is said that Doyle and his sons were desperate characters, and were in the act of driving off Free State men; but nothing is certainly known.

And now it appeared that the whole country south of the Kaw River was full of armed Free State guerrilla bands. They rose up out of the earth as if they had been specters--their blows were swift, terrible and remorseless. They visited and robbed the houses of Pro-slavery men, as the houses of the Free State men had been visited and robbed.

They stole the Pro-slavery men's horses, stopped them on the public highways, and repeated in every detail and in every act of violence the cruel atrocities that had been so long perpetrated on themselves.

They showed no partiality--if they stole the horses of Pro-slavery men, they also stole Gov. Shannon's horses, and the Governor posted over the country with a squad of soldiers to find them. The town of Franklin, six miles from Lawrence, that had been a rendezvous for the "Law and Order" robbers, and out of which they issued to visit Free State settlers' houses, rob Free State men on the public highway and make raids on Lawrence, was cleaned out. H. Clay Pate, leader of a "Law and Order" company of militia, went to hunt John Brown and put him to death as he would go to hunt a wild beast. An African lion hunter, when questioned, "Is it not fine sport to hunt lions?"

replied, "Yes, it is fine sport to hunt lions, but if the lion hunts you it is not so fine." H. Clay Pate went to hunt the lion, and found the lion was hunting him. John Brown attacked Pate with an inferior force, dispersed his command, and took him prisoner, together with twenty-eight of his men, and kept them in an inaccessible fastness which he made his hiding place. A number of Pro-slavery men fled from the Territory, telling everywhere a blood-curdling story of hard and cruel treatment. The people of the State of Missouri were filled with rage and horror, and its presses groaned with frantic appeals to the people to rise in their might and avenge the blood of their murdered brethren. Hitherto they had witnessed with perfect composure the savage butchery of the Free State men, and the outrage of Free State families; but now the case was bravely altered. It was their ox that was being gored.

Gov. Shannon pa.s.sed as usual from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of helpless imbecility, and called on Col. Sumner to come forward and put a stop to this riot of confusion, blood-shedding and violence. The Governor really wanted Col. S. to disarm only the Free State guerrillas; but Mr. S. made a more liberal interpretation of his orders, and proceeded to disarm all armed bands in the Territory. He visited Old John Brown's hiding place, told him he must consider himself under arrest, and intimated to Deputy Marshal Fain that he was at liberty to arrest these men, who were under charge of murder. But the Marshal replied _that he had no arrests to make_. Marshal Fain had no stomach for the business of lion hunting. It is said that Col. S.

gave Marshal Fain a piece of his mind that was more explicit than polite.

Col. Sumner ordered John Brown to give up his prisoners, and disband his men. John Brown expostulated with him, that it was not right to require him to do this, while the country was full of armed bands of Pro-slavery militia and guerrillas. Col. S. agreed to disband and disarm all companies of persons armed, and then John Brown agreed to comply with his requests. Gen. Whitfield was in the vicinity, and at the request of Col. S. agreed to remove his men from the Territory; but while doing this they continued the business of riot, robbery and murder.

Thus wearily pa.s.sed the month of June of 1856, on the south bank of the Kaw River. The coming Fourth of July was looked forward to with intense interest by both parties, and on the north side of the Kaw River, as well as on its south side. The Fourth of July was the day on which the Legislature, elected under the Free State Const.i.tution, was to meet at Topeka; and on that day, and at that place, a ma.s.s convention of all the Free State men in Kansas had also been called to meet and agree on their future policy. Col. Sumner had at least done this good service, that the highways were clear, and traveling was safe; but not knowing what might happen, the men generally carried their muskets hidden in their wagons. The writer of these "Recollections" went to Topeka with the Free State men of Atchison county. At this convention it appeared that there was the greatest possible divergence of judgment as to the best policy for the Free State party to pursue. There was nothing of the noise and bl.u.s.ter that characterizes a drunken mob; they were sober and quiet men; nevertheless, they evidently labored under an intense and burning excitement. Some were for war, b.l.o.o.d.y, relentless and unforgiving war; others advised a more pacific policy. If the reader can imagine the savage determination with which the old Scotch Covenanters turned at bay when hunted into their mountain fastnesses by their b.l.o.o.d.y persecutors, then he will have some idea of the spirit that animated a great part of that a.s.sembly. Two companies of soldiers, handsomely equipped, armed and drilled, one from Topeka and one from Lawrence, were drawn up in front of the Topeka House, where the Free State Legislature was to meet. It is probable that this crowd of men a.s.sembled at this convention could have laid their hands on five hundred muskets hidden away in their wagons, in ten minutes.

Meanwhile Col. Sumner had quietly drawn up his company of dragoons just outside of the crowd. In front of the dragoons were two loaded cannon, and by them grimly stood soldiers with burning fuse. While the members of the convention were discussing among themselves their proper policy, United States Marshal Donaldson came forward, accompanied by Judge El-more, and taking possession of the stand from which the speakers were addressing the people, Judge El-more read a proclamation from the President and from acting Gov. Woodson, commanding the Legislature to disperse.

To this Col. Sumner had appended the following note: "The proclamation of the President and the orders under it require me to sustain the Executive of the Territory in executing the laws and preserving the peace. I therefore hereby announce that I shall maintain the proclamation at all hazards."

This act of Marshal Donaldson was fiercely denounced as an impertinent intermedding with other men's business. The general drift of the reasoning was as follows: "Our act in framing a const.i.tution and in electing a legislature is not treasonable nor revolutionary. There is no law against it: consequently we are breaking no law. It is, moreover, something that has to be done at some time by the majority of the citizens of this Territory, and we hope to be able to convince Congress and the President that we are that majority. If we had undertaken to set in operation a government in contravention to the one now recognized by the President, then might there have been some apology for this interference; but we have done nothing of the kind."

The writer will say to the reader that Gov. Walker, an ex-Senator from Mississippi, and the ablest Governor Kansas ever had, admitted afterwards that this reasoning of the Kansas squatters was perfectly correct. But however this might be, here was a patent fact. Here was Col. Sumner with his United States dragoons, and he was a man to obey orders; and what were we going to do about it? Should we fight, or should we not fight? The writer submitted the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That this Convention expresses its determination not to resist the United States troops.

The resolution was carried, and a committee was sent to Col. Sumner to inform him of its adoption. His answer was one to draw the hearts of the people to himself: "I knew," said he, "that you were loyal to the old flag."

Our readers will be incredulous that such a resolution should be needed, or that there should be any division of sentiment as touching its adoption. It is for this reason we call this incident up. It is that the reader may understand how strained was the state of feeling of many of the Free State men. They had spent the past months fighting, and they, in their own minds, a.s.sociated the United States troops with the oppressors of Kansas Free State men.

When Mr. Sumner went into the Legislative hall to disperse the Legislature, he spoke as tenderly as a woman. He said: "Gentlemen, this is the most painful act of my life But I must obey orders, and you must disperse." When he wheeled his dragoons to march away the boys cheered Col. Sumner. They cheered the old flag and the United States soldiers, but they gave such groans for the Lecompton Legislature as, it was said, frightened the dragoons' horses.

There was now no further cause that the writer should tarry longer, and he immediately mounted his horse and rode towards home, with a heart heavy with the thought of all the distempers that had come on unhappy Kansas.

CHAPTER XVII.

We have already told how the campaign was opened, in the spring of 1856, in Atchison county, in a letter which we at that time addressed to the editor of the _Herald of Freedom_. This paper was printed at Lawrence, on the printing press destroyed by the "Law and Order" mob.

The weekly issue in which this letter was published was pa.s.sing through the press on the day the town was sacked, one side having been printed, the other side being yet blank. Then the Border Ruffians came into the town, broke up the press and threw it into the river, and tumbled the half printed weekly issue into the street. The above-named article was on the printed side, and was read by the whole crowd, and they were terribly angry. If the writer had been in town he certainly would not have escaped alive, if this mob could have found him. As it was, their curses would not be edifying reading in a Christian newspaper. Lecompton could not give its friends food or lodging. It had been located in an out-of-the-way and inaccessible place; its proprietors were Sheriff Jones, Judge Lecompton, and men of that _ilk,_ and business men avoided the place as if it had been smitten with a pestilence. The people of the surrounding country were generally Free State men, and the South Carolinians could not choose, but were forced to return to Atchison. They had been angry and impatient when their friends in Atchison had constrained them to do things up in such "milk and water" style, and in Lawrence they had been held back in the same manner, and they returned in a savage temper. Should a cowardly Yankee be allowed to defy them, and scoff at them, and call them "bull-dogs and blood-hounds," with impunity? and now, with this man they had to have a settlement.

We have already seen how the contending factions spread murder and violence south of the Kaw River; but from May till September Leavenworth county became a "dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground." Immediately after the Fourth of July, Col. Sumner had been, because of his too great leniency to Free State men, superseded in command at Fort Leavenworth by Persifer F. Smith, a man whose heart was hard as a rock of adamant toward the Free State people, and under his eyes Leavenworth city and county were given up to blood and robbery.

In Atchison county, from the beginning of these border troubles to the end of them, not one man's life was taken, and yet David R. Atchison, Gen. B. F. Stringfellow, and his law partner, Peter T. Abell, were the leading members of the Atchison town company. Robert S. Kelley and Dr.

John H. Stringfellow also maintained unchanged their b.l.o.o.d.y purposes.

We find in the _Squatter Sovereign_, under date of June 10th, the following editorial, and this displays its uniform temper:

The Abolitionist: shoot down our men, without provocation, wherever they meet them; let us retaliate in the same manner. A free fight is all we desire. If murder and a.s.sa.s.sination is the programme of the day, we are in favor of filling the bill. Let not the knives of the Pro-slavery men be sheathed while there is one Abolitionist in the Territory. As they have shown no quarters to our men, they deserve none from us. Let our motto be written in blood on our flags, "_Death to all Yankees and traitors in Kansas_."

Why, then, were not these b.l.o.o.d.y counsels made good by deeds? Our circ.u.mstances were peculiar. It will be seen above that it was only the Yankees and Abolitionists in whose bodies the knives of the "Law and Order" party were to be sheathed; and the Yankees in the country were only a handful of men, and were therefore powerless; but between them and these b.l.o.o.d.y-minded chieftains was interposed a barrier that proved insurmountable. The great ma.s.s of the squatters were just from the other side of the river. Sometimes a son had left a father, and crossed the river to get a claim; or a brother had left his brother, or a girl had married a young man in the neighborhood, and as the young folks were poor, they had left the old folks and had gone to seek their fortune in the new Territory. Of course the old folks would still have a care for the young couple. They were in easy reach of each other, and would still visit back and forth. Now who does not see that to touch any one of these was to touch all? It was like touching a nest of hornets. The reader will observe that these people had no quarrel with the people of the South: they were bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. Neither had they any special quarrel with Southern inst.i.tutions; only this, that they would rather live in a free State. They did feel that way, and they could not help it. But in one thing they had been sorely wounded. In the invasion of Kansas, and in the carrying the elections by violence, their personal rights had been invaded, and they did resent that. And now here were some Yankee neighbors whom they knew to be kindly and peaceable people, and whose help they needed in building up their churches; and yet these were to be murdered or driven out of the Territory _for nothing!_ and it touched their Southern blood. It was neither just nor right, and they would not allow it; and in such an issue there would be a common bond of sympathy on both sides of the river. Moreover, such men as Oliver Steele, Judge Tutt and the Irvings and Harts and Christophers had grave misgivings what would be the final issue of this system of murder and violence that had been adopted to make Kansas a slave State.

And so it was that the leaders in this conspiracy, right here in this city and county of Atchison, which was their headquarters, found themselves strangely embarra.s.sed and handicapped. Their will was good enough, but how to carry out their purpose?--that was the pinch. A private a.s.sa.s.sination was a thing that looked easy enough at the first sight, but it might turn out that they had undertaken an ugly job for themselves.

A meeting of the Disciples was held at the house of Archibald Elliott in the month of June. It was called quietly, and no noise made about it. There was a large attendance, and it was evident that if we could hold regular meetings great good would be done. But the neighborhood was soon filled with alarming rumors. It was said that a company of South Carolinians were seen to go into a grove of bushes, about nightfall, where the writer would be expected to pa.s.s, and that they were seen to emerge from the same place the next morning. One event, however, adjourned our meetings without date. There was a man living in the western part of the county named Barnett, who was a man of considerable attainment, and had been a member of the Christian Church. But he was given to drink. His wife, however, who was an excellent Christian woman, remained steadfast to the church, and Barnett, as he saw his hold on the church and his hope of heaven slipping away from him, clung the more loyally to his wife, as though her Christian excellencies would save them both. At her request he invited me to preach a sermon at his house, and I consented. But when the South Carolinians in Atchison heard of it, they sent an insulting message to Barnett that they would come and shoot me. Barnett's Southern blood was all on fire. Who were these men that had come to Atchison county to ride rough-shod over him in his own house? He sent a message equally defiant back to them, that if they did come he and his neighbors would shoot them. But there was one man in the county that needed to have no nervousness as touching his reputation for personal bravery. That man was Caleb May; and he interposed and said: "Let us wait patiently for more peaceful times. The Son of man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." But this adjourned without date our meetings.

One incident must ill.u.s.trate the strained and peculiar condition of affairs in Atchison county. Archimedes Speck lived on the Stranger Creek, several miles below the residence of the writer. He was a man of magnificent physical development, and was a p.r.o.nounced Free State man. His wife's people originally came from North Carolina, and she was proud of her Southern blood; and the husband and wife did not come to Kansas to be run over by anybody. Yet they were eminently peaceable people, if let alone. These gentlemen in Atchison had determined to disarm the Free State people living in the country; and Mr. Speck, being a Free State man, open and avowed, they called on him, but he was not at home. They therefore asked his wife: "Has your husband a rifle, musket, or fire-arms of any kind?" She brought out an old Queen Anne's musket, as rusty and worn as if it had been in service ever since the Revolutionary war. But while they were inspecting the rusty old thing, whether it was worth carrying away, she took from a closet a bran span new double-barrel fowling-piece, and, putting her finger on the trigger, she said, "Now, sir, if you do not lay down that musket and leave the house, I will shoot you." If this gentleman had suddenly roused up a female tiger, he would not have been more terror-stricken than when he found himself facing this woman, blazing with scorn and irrepressible resentment, and he concluded he did not want the rusty old musket, _and did not ask to examine the other one._

Mr. S. had threatened to flog one of his Pro-slavery neighbors who had insulted him, as he alleged, and the man went to Atchison and made oath that he was in fear of his life, and the Sheriff was sent out with a warrant to arrest Mr. Speck. But at this time Leavenworth county was full of murder and bloodshed; guerrilla parties, both Free State and Pro-slavery, were fighting in many parts of the Territory, and Lane had returned, and was leading the Free State men in this warfare, and had threatened with many oaths to wipe out Atchison, and there were rumors that he was already near at hand. And so, to provide against all contingencies, the Sheriff was accompanied by a _posse_ of forty armed men, who took with them a cannon which had been loaned to Atchison by the people of Missouri.

Mrs. Speck received the Sheriff graciously, explained to him that her husband was absent, but would soon return, but to all questions as touching his present whereabouts, she shook her head mysteriously and refused to explain. The thing looked suspicious. Was it possible that Lane was even now in the neighborhood? and the Sheriff went back to his _posse_ to hold a council of war. He had stationed them on a high bluff on the north bank of the Stranger Creek, and, looking across the wide timbered bottom to the opposite bluff, they could dimly see a large number of objects approaching through the brush-wood. What could it be? Was it Lane coming to attack him? And now two hors.e.m.e.n emerged from the brush and rode on a full gallop down the bluff.

"It is Lane! It is Lane!" they cried. "Let us ride back to Atchison and get ready to defend the town," and on a gallop they skedaddled back to Atchison.

Mr. Speck had been with some of his neighbors to bring home a herd of cattle. An old cow had broken from the herd, intending to get back to her former grazing ground, and Mr. Speck and his neighbors had ridden full gallop to head her off. On reaching home, and learning of the visit of the Sheriff, he went at once to Atchison to give bonds to keep the peace; and to make all things square, he took with him the rusty old musket and proffered it to the gentleman that had been so solicitous to get it. Mr. Speck a.s.sured him that Mrs. S. was now willing he should have it, and _would not shoot him if he took it_.

These gentlemen had been making money out of pocket. They had been frightened out of their wits by a s.p.u.n.ky woman; and forty armed men, with a loaded cannon, had been stampeded and made to run pell-mell into Atchison by a herd of cattle and two or three men on horseback, riding at full gallop after an old cow.

These men had undertaken to do a wicked thing, and had been made ridiculous in doing so; and this contributed largely to that revolution in the public opinion of the county, which had been going on for eighteen months, and which at the last compelled a radical change in the policy of these "Border Ruffian" leaders. But this again gave the chiefs of this conspiracy abundant experience that it pays to do right, and that a good Providence had brought them prosperity and honor by defeating their original counsels and turning them into foolishness.