POWDER AND SHOT.

7

ening condition of affairs. Party bitterness had apparently increased. Law existed only for party purposes, and deeds of violence were of almost daily

occurrence.

The St. Louis papers contained advertisements by the half-column of rifles, revolvers, gunpowder, and lead. One of these advertisements may serve as an example of the whole. I extract the following from the Daily Missouri Republican, published at St. Louis. Attention is arrested by the heading, "KANSAS" in large type, and the representation of a revolver in the margin.

KANSAS.

JUST RECEIVED, by Adams & Co's. Express, a large and fine

Assortment of DOUBLE and SINGLE

SHOT-GUNS,

which will be sold cheap for Cash.

We have also on hand an Assortment of our own Manufacture of

RIFLES,

so well known for the past thirty years throughout the Western country.

Emigrants to Kansas should not fail to call at and examine our Stock before

purchasing elsewhere.

The Committee of Inquiry appointed by Congress I understood to be at the time in Kansas, carrying on their investigations. Through the kindness of friends, I had been furnished with letters to Colonel Sumner, who was in command of the United States' troops, and other persons of influence in the territory. Being already in the adjoining State, and events of great moment in the history of Kansas, if not the breaking out of civil war itself, being evidently at hand, I felt disinclined to forego my purposed visit. Five hundred more miles of river navigation would take me to the scene of conflict. I resolved to go and see for myself.

Outburst of Violence-Burning of Lawrence.-Contents of the following Chapters.-Political Parties.-Dramatis Persona.Federal Appointees.-Border-ruffian Ring-leaders.—Leaders of the Free-state Cause.

COULD I have made choice of a period in which to visit Kansas, which should be most rife with incident and best adapted for the successful prosecution of my inquiries, I could not have selected one more favourable than that of my actual visit. The affairs in the territory had reached a crisis. At that moment unresisted oppression had reached its highest point, and the severest blow was struck which Kansas has yet received. Greater individual suffering may have been inflicted later, but May 21st, 1856, was a day which turned the tide of popular feeling, and thus terminated one era in the history of the Kansas struggle, and introduced another.

On that eventful day the town of Lawrence, without offence or crime, was attacked by armed forces, some six or eight hundred strong; its princi

pal hotel, the largest private building in the territory, was battered down and then reduced to ashes; the printing-offices of the Free-state journals were set fire to, the editors having been previously captured and carried off as prisoners; the type and presses were destroyed and cast into the Kaw river; and the city itself was given over to a merciless sack. On the same day, and by the same agency, occurred the firing of Governor Robinson's house on Mount Oread, after it had been made throughout the day the head-quarters of the invading troops. Governor Robinson himself had been arrested a few days before while travelling eastward, and was a prisoner during the attack upon Lawrence, as well as for four months subsequent. His arrest was made without a legal warrant, and his tedious confinement in the gaol at Lecompton was equally without sentence or trial.

But the blow aimed at the Free-state cause in the destruction of Lawrence, and the seizure and imprisonment of some of its most active adherents, brought a severe recoil. A spirit of resistance was evoked, public feeling throughout the country was aroused, and it is not improbable that this great temporary triumph of the pro-slavery party

BURNING OF LAWRENCE.

11

in Kansas may prove itself in the end its most signal defeat.

In the following chapter I purpose describing, as accurately as possible, from information gained on the spot, the events of the siege of Lawrence. It may be right to add that, whatever testimony I gathered in Kansas was for the most part obtained from pro-slavery men. My account, therefore, is rather the result of the admissions of these than of the assertions made by Free-soil advocates. I have endeavoured to omit all statements which are not admitted by the concurrent testimony of both parties.

In a succeeding chapter I will give some detail of events witnessed by myself, which will illustrate the earlier portion of Governor Robinson's captivity and the spirit of his captors, during a short period when it was my fortune to be his companion in travel.

As an introduction to these narratives, however, it may be of service to many readers to have presented in a single view the names of the principal personages who have borne their part, whether nobly or ignobly, in the earlier stages of Kansas history. A more particular delineation of some of