ITS INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR LIFE. INCLUDING A FULL VIEW OF ITS SETTLEMENT, POLITICAL HISTORY, BY SARA T. L. ROBINSON. THIRD EDITION. BOSTON: CROSBY, NICHOLS AND COMPANY. 1856. 233673.e.1 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. *OXFORD LIBRARY Stereotyped by NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDERY, BOSTON. PREFACE. THIS work, now offered to the public, has been written amid all the inconveniences of tent life. Its pages were penned during a three months' residence of the authoress in the United States Camp, at Lecompton, with her husband, one of the state prisoners. If a bitterness against the "powers that be" betrays itself, let the continual clanking of sabres, and the deafening sound of heavy artillery in the daily drills of the soldiery, aids in crushing freemen in Kansas,—the outrages hourly committed upon peaceable and unarmed men, -the daily news of some friend made prisoner, or butchered with a malignity more than human, the devastation of burning homes, by the connivance of the Governor, under the eye of the troops, and no power given them to save an oppressed people, be placed in the balance against a severe judgment. If the simple recital serves to strengthen in any the love of liberty, or to arouse in others a hatred to tyranny, then will its mission have been accomplished. "God give us Men! A time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; Men who possess opinion and a will; Men who have honor, - men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue, And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking! Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty, and in private thinking; For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds, Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps |