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be otherwise. The first declined the invitations made to him when he assumed office in the territory, and thereby saved his independence, as well as kept himself sober, although from that moment he fell in Missourian esteem. The second governor of Kansas accepted the hospitalities and convivialities of the Missourians in Westport the night before he entered the territory, displayed that love of good cheer which seems never to forsake him, and in the course of his speeches defined his intended policy in Kansas, with a point and plainness of speech which left his Missourian entertainers nothing to desire. "The enactments of your Legislature," he said, addressing the people of Missouri," are valid, and I have the will, and am clothed with the power, to employ whatever force is necessary to carry them into execution; and I call upon you (again, the people of Missouri), to sustain me in the discharge of this duty." "As to slavery," writes the Missouri Democrat in reporting his speech," he had no intention, he said, of changing his political faith; he thought, with reference to slavery, that as Missouri and Kansas were adjoining States, it would be well if their

institutions should harmonize, otherwise there would be continual quarrels and border feuds. He was for slavery in Kansas. (Loud cheers.)"

During the same month in which Governor Shannon commenced his administration, the Free-state party, as an independent political body, was organized. From their new governor the Free-state people saw that they had nothing but high-handed oppression to expect; to the Federal power which they had memorialized in the hope of obtaining justice, they looked in vain for redress; the law of the territory defined their opinions as felonious, at least if put into language, and condemned their acts as rebellious and treasonable. They, therefore, held their mass-meetings and conventions, passed resolutions without number, and, treating the fraudulent Legislature as spurious and consequently unpossessed of legislative authority, they availed themselves of the right of American citizens to assemble together in a peaceable manner to make provision for their own government. Thus was set on foot the Free-state organization, which, whether constitutional or otherwise in its mode of action, has brought itself into competition with

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the territorial authority, and given rise to the double governorship, double judiciary, double legislature, double militia, and in general double claim to obedience, which has constituted so peculiar a feature in the politics of Kansas.

The Territorial Legislature had appointed Oct. 1, for the election of the delegate to Congress. The Free-state party, repudiating the acts of the Legislature, appointed Oct. 9 for the same purpose. General Whitfield, as before, was elected on the one occasion, Missourians again having the chief share in the polling. Andrew Reeder, the late Governor, was elected on the other, by a large vote from the Free-state population. The two candidates were sent, therefore, to Washington, to contest the seat. Delegates were also chosen to represent the Free-state people in Kansas at a convention for the purpose of framing a constitution. This convention met at Topeka between Oct. 23 and Nov. 11, and framed a constitution embodying Free-state views, under which application was made to Congress for the admission of Kansas into the confederacy as a State. In the following month the people voted upon and adopted this consti

tution; in January, 1856, they elected their Governor and other state officers, as well as a Senate and House of Representatives; on March 4, the State Government was organized, and the Legislature met to adopt a memorial to the Federal Government, and to adjourn till July; and at the same time they received the President's special message and subsequent proclamation, in which their movement was denounced as rebellion, and power was granted to Governor Shannon to employ the United States troops for the suppression of every movement which placed itself in opposition to the Territorial Legislature, although that Legislature owed its existence to force and fraud.

Thus far the history of the efforts of the Freestate party to organize a State Government, in relating which I have anticipated by a little the narrative of the course of events generally in the territory.

Possessing a code of laws which would justify the extermination of every Freesoiler in the territory, and having obtained in Wilson Shannon a Governor ready from the heart to execute those laws, the Slavery party had little to interrupt its

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designs. The vow was often expressed that

"Missouri river should run red with the blood of Abolitionists." The Squatter Sovereign uttered the feeling of the Southern party in words that admit of no second meaning:

"It is silly to suppose for an instant that there can be peace in Kansas as long as one enemy of the South lives upon her soil, or one single specimen of an Abolitionist treads in the sunlight of Kansas territory."

Again, the editor of the same organ waxes yet

warmer :

"We are determined to repel this Northern invasion, and make Kansas a Slave State; though our rivers should be covered with the blood of their victims, and the carcasses of the Abolitionists should be so numerous in the territory as to breed disease and sickness, we will not be deterred from our purpose."

During the autumn of 1855, many enormities were committed by the warm adherents of slavery. But none probably was more revoltingly cruel than their treatment of a Western preacher, the Rev. Pardee Butler. This gentleman unfortunately set foot in the violently Pro-slavery town

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