Personal Recollections of Pardee ButlerWith Reminiscences by his Daughter (page 4)

new churches that grow up around them; but very many are lost in the great whirlpool of this world’s strife.

What, then, is the remedy? Evidently this: Jesus accepts no divided empire in the human heart. He will have all or nothing. The Church of Christ, the cause of Christ, the people of Christ–these must be the centers of attraction to which the heart of the Christian turns with all the enthusiasm with which an Eastern idolater bows before the shrine of his idol. In return for such devotion Jesus gives to his people every imaginable blessing. Wealth, power, dominion, science, civilization, genius, learning, power over the elements of nature, and insight into its magnitude, do now belong to the Lord’s people in Europe and America as they never belonged to any people before. Yet all these must be laid at Jesus’ feet before he will make the returning prodigal the recipient of his love. Everything must be subordinated to our religion.

Since the almighty dollar has become the touch-stone by which everything is to be decided, I assert that this is a good speculation: secure a neighborhood homogeneous and not heterogeneous. Let its tendencies be favorable to temperance, education and religion, and in doing so a man will have added fifty per cent, to the selling value of his property. The present thrift, wealth, genius, enterprise and intelligence of the people of the New England States is the legitimate outworking of the training bestowed on their sons by the stern, old Puritans that first peopled these inhospitable shores.

But all temporal and earthly considerations disappear, as fade the stars at the approach of day, when we consider that measureless ruin, that gulf of everlasting despair, that voiceless woe, into which the emigrant may sink himself and family by locating in a profligate, dissipated or irreligious neighborhood, or in a community wholly swallowed up in the love of money, or absorbed in the questions, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? What home on the beautiful prairies, what treasures of fine water and good timber, what corner lots, what property in town or country, can equal in value the guardianship of our Lord, the indwelling of God’s good Spirit, the approval of a good conscience, the smiles of angels and the inheritance of a home in heaven? Let no man, therefore, fall into the folly–the unspeakable folly–of subordinating his spiritual and eternal interests to his temporal welfare. “Seek ye God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added.”

To teach, to discipline and perfect the churches we have already organized; to gather into churches the lost sheep of the house of our Israel, scattered over this great wilderness of sin; to try and help those who are still purposing to tempt its dangers; and to lay broad and deep the foundations of a future operation and co-operation that shall ultimate in spreading the gospel from pole to pole, and across the great sea to the farthest domicile of man–this is the purpose which we set before us, and which should be pursued with the zeal and enthusiasm displayed by the followers of the false prophet of Mecca; and with the patience of the coral workers, who build for ages and cycles of ages their marble battlements in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

CHAPTER XXIX.

In 1859 I only spent part of the year preaching in Kansas. At the earnest solicitation of Ovid Butler, the founder and munificent patron of Butler University, I spent six months preaching in the State of Indiana. A missionary society had been organized in Indianapolis, in which Ovid Butler was the leading spirit, and such men as Joseph Bryant, and Matthew McKeever, brothers-in-law to Alexander Campbell, together with Jonas Hartzell, Cyrus McNeely, of Hopedale, Ohio, and Eld. John Boggs, of Cincinnati, and many others, were associated with him in the movement. By these brethren I was for some time partially sustained as a missionary in Kansas. The formation of this society had grown out of a difference existing between these brethren and the General Missionary Society, touching what had become the over-topping and absorbing question, both to the churches and the people of the United States. As this question has ceased to be of any practical interest to the American people, I shall spend no time in its discussion, only to narrate, briefly, what happened to us in Kansas, growing out of the existence of these two societies.

Ovid Butler had set his heart on this, that the brethren in Indiana should have personal knowledge of the man that himself and others were sustaining in Kansas. I found myself greatly misunderstood, and was often hurt at the slights that grew out of these misunderstandings; and I tried hard to make these brethren know just what was in my heart, and what were the objects I was seeking to accomplish.

In the early spring of 1860 I returned to Kansas and resumed my work. Geo. W. Hutchinson had been a preacher in what was known as the “Christian Connection” in the New England States, and had been eminently successful in winning converts. But these churches were poor, and he having married a wife, his compensation did not meet his necessities, and like many others he went to California with a hope of bettering his fortunes. Afterwards he came to Lawrence, in Kansas, under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society. But his freighting teams having been plundered of a stock of goods, which they were bringing for him from Leavenworth to Lawrence, he was left to fight his battle as best he might. It was at this conjuncture that he made the acquaintance of the brethren at Big Springs, and became impressed with the simplicity and scriptural authority of our plea. It is well known that there never was more than a paper wall between ourselves and “The Old Christian Order,” and there seemed nothing in the way of Bro. Hutchison. He had in his heart no theory of a regeneration wrought by a miracle, and which gives to a convert a supernatural evidence of pardon before baptism, and that should, therefore, compel him to reject the words of Jesus: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”

The Christian Brethren have been supposed to have some leaning to Unitarianism, but he betrayed no such leaning. But while he had no love for the barbarous language in which Trinitarians have sometimes spoken of the divine relation subsisting between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet he was willing to ascribe to our Lord all that is ascribed to him in the Holy Scriptures. Thus joyfully he accepted this new brotherhood he had found in Kansas, and our churches just as joyfully set him to preaching. We needed preachers, and here was one already made to our hand.

Early in the spring of 1860 the weather came off exquisitely fine. It was like a hectic flush–the deceptive seeming of health on the cheek of the consumptive. It was a spring without rain, in which the sun was shining beautiful and bright, in which the evenings were balmy and pleasant, and the road good; but to be followed by a summer of scorching heat, of hot winds that burned the vegetation like the breath of a furnace, leaving the people to starve. The inhabitants of Kansas will never forget the year 1860, the drought and the famine.

It was in the springtime, in the midst of this beautiful weather, we called Bro. Hutchinson to come to Pardee and help us. This protracted meeting resulted in a great ingathering. It was largely made up of young men, who, for the time being, were located on the eastern border of Kansas, but that in the stirring and stormy times that were to follow were to be scattered over every part of the Great West. And now Bro. Hutchinson’s fame as a revivalist began to spread abroad, and many neighborhoods where there were a few Disciples, and who were anxious to build themselves into a congregation, sent for him to come and help them; and thus our churches rapidly grew in number, and our acquaintance with the brethren was greatly extended. As a result, there came to be a common feeling among them that we ought to come together in a State, or rather a Territorial, meeting. Pursuant to such a purpose, a general meeting was called at Big Springs, Aug. 9, 1860, C. M. Mock having been called to the chair, and W. O. Ferguson, of Emporia, having been made secretary.

The following churches reported themselves as having been organized in the Territory:

No. of Members.

Pardee, Atchison Co 92

Union Church, Atchison Co 60

Leavenworth City 70

Big Springs, Douglas Co 72

Prairie City, Douglas Co 44

Peoria City, Lykins Co 23

Leroy, Coffey Co 108

Emporia 80

Stanton, Lykins Co 91

Iola, Allen Co 21

Humbolt, Allen Co. 12

Burlington, Coffey Co 9

Wolf Creek, Doniphan Co 70

Rock Creek, Doniphan Co 30

Independence Creek, Doniphan Co 12

Cedar Creek, Doniphan Co 16

Olathe, Johnson Co 10

McCarnish, Johnson Co 40

Oskaloosa, Jefferson Co 10

Cedar Creek, Jackson Co 30

Thus of organized churches there were reported 900 members, and of unorganized members it was ascertained there were enough to make the number more than one thousand.

We find on record, as having been adopted at this meeting, the following resolutions:

_Resolved_ That the thanks of this Convention be tendered to the Christian Missionary Society, at Indianapolis, for the service of Bro. Butler as a missionary in Kansas, and that the Society be requested to sustain him until the churches in Kansas shall be able to sustain their preachers.

_Resolved_, That Brethren G. W. Hutchinson, Pardee Butler, Ephraim Philips, S. G. Brown, W. E. Evans, and N. Dunshee be recommended to the confidence and support of the brethren as able and faithful preachers of the gospel.

WHEREAS, The brethren of Southern Kansas are in destitute circumstances; and

WHEREAS, Bro. E. Philips, having spent much of his time preaching, without fee, or reward, needs pecuniary support; and

WHEREAS, Bro. Crocker is about to visit the East; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we commend Bro. Crocker as worthy to receive contributions made on behalf of Bro. Philips.

_Resolved_, That we will encourage and, so far as we have ability, sustain by our prayers and means those who labor for us in word and doctrine.

_Resolved_, That we are in favor of Sunday-schools and Bible classes, and that we will use our influence to sustain social meetings in all our churches.

_Resolved_, That when we adjourn, we adjourn to meet at Prairie City, on Wednesday before the second Lord’s day in September, 1861.

_Resolved_, That the thanks of this Convention be tendered to the brethren of Big Springs for their kindness and liberality during the sessions of this Convention.

On motion, the Convention adjourned to the time and place appointed.

C. W. MOCK, Chairman.

W. O. FERGUSON, Secretary.

The convention in its results was full of encouragement and joy. Insignificant as had been our beginning two years before, here were twenty churches and more than one thousand members ready to cooperate together and plant the cause in this infant Territory. This meeting also introduced us to many new acquaintances. Eld. S. G. Brown, of Emporia, had been diligently employed planting churches along the Neosho River from Emporia to Leroy. Bro. Ephraim Philips, at Leroy, also at that time became known to us. Bro. Philips, after some years, returned to Pennsylvania, and there went into the oil business with his brother; the brothers were successful, and afterwards distinguished themselves by a generous and Christian liberality. Bro. Crocker also, before his death, had won a large place in the hearts of his brethren. Elder Wm, Gans, at that time of Lanesfield, but afterwards of Olathe, will long be remembered with earnest affection; and it was at this time that he became known to us.

For reasons that we have already mentioned, the General Missionary Society had done nothing for us, but seeing that we were fighting a brave battle, and that we were keeping the peace with each other, they felt themselves moved to help us. Eld. D. S. Burnett was at this time employed preaching in Western Missouri, and was deputed by the Missionary Board to visit G. W. Hutchinson at Lawrence, who was winning golden opinions as an eminently successful evangelist. Bro. H. was not at home, but was away holding a protracted meeting, and Bro. Burnett therefore called on his wife. Mrs. Hutchinson was a pious, refined, and educated New England woman, who had married her husband after he had become known as the most successful evangelist in the “Old Christian Order” in the New England States. She had with pain seen him turned aside from his chosen work by hard necessities, and was now greatly rejoiced to see him once more a preacher. Bro. B. was an accomplished gentleman, whose polished and cultivated manners sometimes laid him open to the charge of a proud and aristocratic exclusiveness; but this Yankee lady herself knew how to queen it, and stood before him with no sense of inferiority. She frankly said to him that herself and husband were abolitionists, but that they knew the value of peace, and would do what could be done, in good conscience, to make peace and keep it. Bro. Burnett evidently went away from Lawrence with a good opinion of this family of Yankee abolitionists, and Bro. H. was immediately accepted as a missionary of the General Missionary Society. He used quietly to indicate to me that, as touching this interview, his wife was a better general than himself, and that it was lucky for him that he was not at home.

And so we two became missionaries, sustained by two different, and, in one particular, antagonistic missionary societies. Of course we did not quarrel; why should we? If I was sometimes charged with abolitionism, was not this man blacker than myself? We often traveled together, and held protracted meetings under the same tent. I had for a lifetime studied this plea which we make for a return to primitive and apostolic Christianity, and it was, therefore, my business to press upon the people the duty to yield a loyal obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Lawgiver and King, and thus to renounce all human leadership and the authority of all human opinions; and it became the business of Bro. Hutchinson to win the people by his magnetic power, and fill them with his own enthusiasm, and thus induce them to act on the convictions that had been already formed in their hearts.

I take on myself to say there never have been two more diligent evangelists than were Bro. Hutchinson and myself in the year that followed the Big Springs Convention. Looking over the whole ground, I am able to see that in that year was laid the foundation for that abiding prosperity that has distinguished our effort down to the present time.

CHAPTER XXX.

There had come to the Big Springs Convention two brethren–Father Gillespie and his son, William Gillespie, living at St. George, on the Kansas River, fifty miles above Topeka and about eight miles below Manhattan. These brethren came to tell us that here were two settlements of brethren waiting to be organized into churches; and Bro. Hutchinson and myself both visited them during the ensuing autumn. A military road ran up the Kansas River from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley, passing through the village of St. George, But if I were to go to St. George by this route, I would lose thirty miles of travel, and I therefore determined to start directly west from my place of residence. But, in doing so, I would have to cross the Pottawatomie Indian Reserve, on which for forty miles there was not the habitation of a white man. Stopping over night with Bro. J. W. Williams, on the eastern border of the Reserve, I started betimes to St. George, traveling to the west. But night came on, and I had not reached the line of white settlements. I picketed my horse on the prairie, made a pillow of my saddle, and slept until morning. The night was warm and pleasant, and I did not suffer with the cold, and in the morning I was ready betimes to ride on to the residence of Bro. Gillespie. He was so glad to see me. It was worth a journey of one hundred miles to get such a welcome. And then there was Sister Gillespie, and a house full of young Gillespies, and they were all so glad to see me.

“Have you had your breakfast?”

“No.”

“Well, where did you lodge?”

This was a poser. I attempted to pass the question by; but nothing would do, and I had to confess I slept under the canopy of heaven.

“O, dear! O, dear!” And had it come to this that their preacher had to sleep on the prairie! This was a family of hospitable Kentuckians, who were born to a love of music, and the old gentleman was a fiddler, and next to his Bible he loved his fiddle. Of course, we had a grand, good time, and were all filled with joy; and this was the beginning of the churches on the upper waters of the Kansas River. Twelve miles above St. George was Ashland, where we found Bro. N. B. White, father to A. J. White, who has hitherto been pastor of the church at Leavenworth City; but since has been acting as district evangelist. Bro. N. B. White came from Carthage, Ky., and long remained a faithful and indefatigable preacher. In my experience as an evangelist, I have known many men of superior Christian excellence; but never one man of more singleness and integrity of heart; never one man that had a clearer conception of the ultimate purposes and results of Christianity; never a man whose life was more unselfish and self-sacrificing. Being of an intensely nervous and high-strung organization, and doing his work in a mixed population that would have taxed the patience of Job in its management, it is no wonder that Bro. White was sometimes misunderstood, and, like all reformers, was made to feel that he was living before his time.

Thus passed in abundant labors the year 1860, and the time drew on for our yearly meeting, which had been appointed to be held at Prairie City in September, 1861. The brethren came together with real enthusiasm. During the past year the number of Disciples had been multiplied, and the cause had been greatly strengthened. It had been a year of constant ingathering. New churches reported themselves at this meeting, and brethren whom we had never known before. As evidence of what was being accomplished I will copy a note which I find appended to the minutes of the Prairie City meeting:

The following letter was received from a church meeting in Monroe township, Anderson County, said church being of the “Old Christian Order”:

_To the Elders of the State Meeting at Prairie City_:

We, the Church of God meeting at North Pottawatomie, do recommend to your honorable body, Bro. Samuel Anderson, as our pastor. We also represent our church as in good standing and in full fellowship, numbering twenty-eight members.

Bro. Anderson, the bearer of the above letter, came before the Convention and said: “It does yet appear to me that a man’s sins are forgiven as soon as he believes; but I do not think that for this cause there ought to be a schism between us. I am willing to unite with you in exhorting men to obey all the commands of the gospel, and in seeking to unite all Christians on the one foundation.”

But there appeared one cloud in our horizon, one cause to hinder the perfect success of this, our second yearly meeting. The country was full of rumors of war, and there seemed impending a great national conflict. Bro. Hutchinson had been for one year an eminently successful evangelist; but now he went into the Union army as an army chaplain, and thus his work among us ceased. And now the war was upon us; we were predestined to see dark days, and the hearts of the people were full of forebodings of evil. Many of our young men went into the army, and for two years the produce raised by the farmers brought almost nothing, and many of our preachers retired from their work. And then there appeared in the land wolves in sheep’s clothing–thieves wearing the disguise of loyalty to the “old flag,” and who held themselves self-elected to punish “rebel sympathizers,” and in the estimation of this gentry the best evidence that could be had that a man was a rebel sympathizer was, that he owned a good span of horses. It is said, “There is no great loss without some small gain,” and these evil days gave opportunity to some of us who owed a debt of gratitude for kindness rendered to us when we were in sore straits, to pay back this debt by demanding justice on behalf of loyal citizens of Kansas, whose only offense was that they had been born in the South.

It is the purpose of this series of articles to tell how two peoples, the one from the South and the other from the North–the one the sons of the Puritans, and the other the children of the younger sons of the old English cavaliers–came together and settled in one Territory; how they were divided by the question of American slavery, and how they strove in an antagonism as fierce as that which once subsisted between the Saxon and Norman in Old England; how they peacefully settled their controversy, and in one-third of a century have grown into an eminently peaceful, prosperous, enterprising and well-ordered commonwealth, that stands conspicuous as an illustration and proof of the excellence of our national institutions. We are also to tell how that, out of the furnace fires of such a strife, a community of churches grew up that have for their purpose a restoration of primitive and apostolic Christianity, and the unity of all Christians under a supreme loyalty, to the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Leader and Lawgiver, and as the great Author of our American civilization. We are also to tell how the discipline of such a strife has created a people of such heroic temper, that this has been the first government among the nations to grapple with the saloon power in a final and decisive battle, which has banished it beyond the boundaries of the State, and has branded it as an enemy to Christian homes, an enemy to our Christian civilization, and an enemy to the welfare of the whole human race. Other States have paltered with the evil by means of feeble and frivolous legislation, but Kansas has grappled the monster by the throat by incorporating Prohibition into its fundamental law.

But, above all, we are to press upon the attention of the people the imminence of that danger that is threatening us, and that embodies within itself all other perils that hang over the nation. We are threatened to be overwhelmed by a foreign and alien emigration that brings with it the anarchy of atheism and the unAmerican and the anti-American traditions of a paganized Christianity. We have now fifteen millions of foreign-born citizens and of their children of the first generation in the United States. The Rev. Josiah Strong estimates that in twelve years their number will be forty-three millions; and a great part of this population is now, and shall hereafter be, under the control of Jesuit priests, that seek to maintain in the hearts of these millions loyalty to a foreign prince, resident in Rome, as superior to and more binding on their consciences than is that allegiance which they owe to the United States.

The city of New York has eighty persons in every one hundred of its population that are either foreign born or else the children of foreign born parents. Boston has sixty-three; Chicago has eighty-seven; St. Louis has seventy-eight; Cincinnati, sixty; San Francisco, seventy-eight, and Detroit and Milwaukee have each eighty-four citizens in every one hundred of their population that are either foreign born or else the children of foreign born parents. A nation is dominated by its cities, as England is dominated by London; as France is dominated by Paris, and Germany by Berlin; and our great cities have already become foreign cities, controlled by a foreign vote, and dominated by a foreign public opinion. Here in Kansas, in cities where there is a dominant element of foreign born citizens, we have to invoke the power of the State to compel obedience to our temperance laws on the part of this alien and un-American population; otherwise they overawe the city government and rebel against the laws. Self-evident it is that the presence of such a population is a threat against our social and domestic life, against our government, and against the Christian religion. But the presence of such an evil calls for union among ourselves. Poland was dismembered and ceased to exist among the nations, because of intestine strifes and divisions among its nobility, who were its governing class; and in the presence of such a danger menacing the American people it would be a madness unspeakable in us to keep up among ourselves either our religious feuds and bickerings, or the animosities heretofore existing between the North and South.

We must be one people, or this nation will surely perish. And this oneness is not to be brought about by the utterance of feeble platitudes, nor by the hypocritical profession of a good-will we do not feel; we must follow the guidance of that Book of all books that God has given us, by exhibiting that robust and manly courage that looks the truth and the whole truth squarely in the face. After making all necessary discount and rebate because of faults and infirmities, there is enough yet remaining of solid and essential excellence in the citizens of every State in this nation that they can afford to have the honest truth told about themselves. Is the sun less glorious because there are spots on the sun? Is the moon less beautiful because the man in the moon does not wear a handsome face?

On the late Fourth of July there was a rallying of the clans of the veterans–the men in blue and the men in gray–on the field of Gettysburg, to commemorate the battle they fought twenty-five years before, and to do honor to the bravery displayed by each man in fighting for what he honestly thought to be the right. This was as it should be. But there ought to be the celebration of another battle–it ought to be, even though it may never occur–that should never be forgotten. In that battle there was no dreadful carnage as on the battlefield of Gettysburg; there were no desperate charges made by cavalry and infantry; there was no heroic courage displayed under the pitiless peltings of a deadly hail of shot and shell; there were no great generals of national reputation in command, but humble men unknown to fame, in the final result came together, and with honest speech said, “We will shake hands and be friends. We will let bygones be by gones, and see what can be done by a united effort to promote the welfare of all.”

Now we insist that Kansas is worthy of more honor than Gettysburg. But as in this wicked world the best men do not get the highest honor, nor the best deeds the highest praise, we will be content to bide our time, knowing that the Lord does not forget, and that he will speak a good word for us at the great judgment day.

Kansas led the nation in the abolition of American slavery; Kansas ought a second time to lead the nation in a universal amnesty, so that there shall be nothing to hinder that we shall preach the gospel to the devotees of the mother of Babylon, and to the millions of godless, Christless heathen that are thrown upon our hands, thus making them good Christians that they may be good American citizens.

CHAPTER XXXI.

In 1862 our yearly meeting was held at Emporia, and in 1863 at Ottumwa. These meetings were little better than failures. Yearly district meetings were kept up in Northeastern Kansas, in which more vigor was manifested.

And now the writer began to feel the pressure of hard necessities. For five years I had kept myself in the field on a salary utterly inadequate to my needs, and had been gradually running into debt, and these debts had to be paid. In anticipation of the future wants of my children, I had invested my available means in land; but as this land was not improved, it yielded me no return. In the distress that came on the people in those days, one means of making money presented itself, and many availed themselves of it. Gold had been discovered at Pike’s Peak, and thitherward had flocked a great multitude of people. There were no railroads, and all supplies had to be carried across the plains in freighting wagons. This business was carried on by the roughest class of a rough and frontier population; still, it was an honest business, and honest men might lawfully engage in it, provided they had the hardihood to face the dangers and exposures of such a life.

During the years 1862, 1863 and 1864, I went into this business with a small freighting outfit. This certainly was not just the thing for a preacher to do, but necessity knows no law. In the spring of 1862, Bro. James Butcher was going to Denver with a freighting train, and he with myself agreed to go in the same train for mutual convenience.

The President, Abraham Lincoln, had ordered a draft, and many young men in Missouri had found themselves in a sore strait. In the South were their kindred, and they felt that they could not and would not fight against their own flesh and blood; and to avoid this they determined to flee to the gold mines in the mountains, where every man did what was right in his own eyes–and so they came to Atchison or Leavenworth and engaged to drive these freighting teams to Denver. Many of them were sons of rich fathers, well educated, and had never engaged in manual labor, much less in such menial work as this, and when these proud and high-spirited fellows felt what an ignoble life they had been reduced to, the reader may well believe they did not feel good-natured over it. And now, when these young gentlemen came to understand that they were to be associated with a man that was reported to be the representative of the hated Yankees, who had made war on the people of the South, and set free their slaves, they bitterly attacked me in wordy warfare. Of course I defended myself. And so day after day, in the intervals while our cattle were grazing, we debated every question relative to slavery that has been debated within the last fifty years. Their hearts were bitter; they were passionately excited, and would often end the talk, which they themselves had begun, With noisy profanity. They seemed to think they had this advantage of me, that they could swear and I could not.

We were now traveling up the valley of the Platte River. It was the month of June. The weather had become rainy and there were frequent showers. One night we had corralled our train on an almost dead level bottom, and I was sure, from the appearance of the heavens, that we should have a storm. Bro. Butcher had been taken sick and had returned home, and, except myself, there were none to think or care what was coming; and yet it was plain to be seen that the air was thick and sultry, and the heavens overcast with clouds, and that everything betokened a tempest. Our canvas-covered wagons had been so crowded with merchandise that we could not get into them, and we had slept on blankets on the ground; but here on this dead level bottom, in case of a heavy rain, we would be drowned out by the flooding of the ground. I dragged under my wagon a number of ox-yokes, and with these and some strips of boards I made a platform, and on this I laid a narrow pallet, and crept under the wagon, where I would be sheltered from the rain by the wagon-bed above me. During the night there fell frequent showers, and the boys were soon drowned out from their pallets on the ground. They were tired and sleepy; they were homesick and in bad temper at their mean and unaccustomed surroundings, and were inclined to hold the Yankees responsible for it all, and they began to curse and swear in rough and bitter speech. Then there came on the most awful thunder storm I ever witnessed. Vivid flashes of lightning kept the whole heavens illuminated with a blaze of light, while a thousand electric lights would not so have turned night into day around our corral of train-wagons. Crashing peals of thunder were in the air, and the bolts seemed to descend to the earth around us. Then there came down a flood of rain that was as if a water spout had burst above our heads. I looked out from my narrow bed, and could see the boys gathered in groups, standing leaning against their wagons, soaked to the skin, and their faces white with ghastly paleness; but not a word was spoken. They had forgotten to swear. Then there was a lull in the storm, which subsided into a drizzling cold rain, and I went to sleep.

When morning came we were a sorry looking lot. The boys were soaked, and chilled, and _blue_, and dreadfully homesick. Words would not tell what these poor fellows would have given if they could have been where they could have been coddled and petted by their mothers and sisters. I saw that a warm cup of coffee and a substantial breakfast would do them good, and I hastened to have it provided. They came with alacrity at the call for breakfast, for they were hungry. When a good square meal had somewhat thawed them out, I said, “Boys, what made you quit swearing last night?” The one who was usually their spokesman, and who knew how to be a gentleman if he had a mind to be, said reverently, “We were afraid.” From this time forward our debates over slavery and the Southern Confederacy were at an end, or if we had them it was in a friendly way. Given a fair chance, these boys were not so bad as they seemed.

In the summer of 1864 we had reached the “Cutoff,” and were within eighty miles of Denver. It was late on Saturday afternoon when we got to the Bijou Ranch. We were tired and our teams were tired, and we debated for some time whether we should drive ten miles further, where we would find better feed for our oxen. We did so, though it took us till midnight; and there we rested on Sunday. This was providential; for it was on this Sunday that the Cheyenne Indians made their memorable raid and plundered the trains, burned the ranches and stole the horses for three hundred miles along the Platte River. They attacked the Bijou Station that we had left on Saturday, but they did not venture any nearer Denver; consequently we were safe. On our return we saw how the people had been murdered, the trains plundered and the ranches burned along our route; and it presented a terrible spectacle. A man named Butler was killed and scalped on the Little Blue River, and the people in Kansas got the word that it was myself. Immediately on my return home I rode up to the church at Wolf Creek, in Doniphan county, where we had a district meeting appointed. It was to them as if I had come from the dead. I went home for dinner with my old friend, Bro. John Beeler. I noticed his little boy peering attentively at me; he climbed upon a bedstead close behind me, then, jumping down, he ran to his mother, and, pulling Sister Beeler by the apron, said, “Ma! Ma! The Indians did scalp Bro. Butler; I can see it on the top of his head.” The reader must know that, like “Old Uncle Ned,” I have no hair on the top of my head.

But, in spite of disasters and hardships, and dark and stormy days, our churches continued to grow and prosper, and we kept up a vigorous and aggressive church organization. On Sept. 27, 1864, the churches of the State came together at their fifth annual State meeting at Tecumseh, Shawnee county. Here the brethren organized a missionary society, fashioned after the plan of our General Missionary Society, and in which life directorships, life memberships and annual memberships were obtained by the payment of a sum of money.

The writer of these Recollections will explain that the formation of this Society was not his work. He doubted whether the brethren were prepared for it. Nevertheless, he was willing to be governed by the majority. By resolution of the State meeting, the writer was requested to prepare for publication with the minutes of the meeting an address, of which the following is a copy:

ADDRESS TO THE CHRISTIAN BRETHREN OF THE STATE OF KANSAS.

_Beloved Brethren_: We present to you in these pages the details of the organization of the Christian Missionary Society of the State of Kansas. We hope for your approval and ask for your contributions.

The warrior may fight for his country on the battle field; the statesman may seek to develop its resources and improve its laws; the husbandman may make its fields heavy with their weight of golden grain; and those who love domestic life may seek to create in that place they call home a second paradise; but broader, deeper, more comprehensive and sweeter far, is the work of Christianity. It underlies all good, and is the only sure basis of progress.

For two thousand years China and Japan have been without the Bible, and what they were then, that they are now. For two thousand years the millions of India have been left without God and without hope in the world, and they have only progressed into infinite degradations. The aboriginal inhabitants of America, left without the Bible, have only gone down deeper and deeper into a night as black as that which brooded over old chaos.

No Herschel counts the stars, numbers the planets, measures the length of their years and computes the number of their days, unless his observatory is illuminated by the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. No Luther thunders against priestcraft, shakes the thrones of tyrants, and wakes the nations to a new life and a new progress, save that Luther that finds a Bible in his cell. No Franklin calls down electricity from the clouds to carry messages across a continent swift as the lightning flashes through the sky, save that Franklin whose fathers brought the Bible with them from their native land, and prized it more than all the gold of Ophir. No mother country has had such reason to be proud of any colony that was ever planted on the face of this green earth, as Great Britain has had reason to be proud of her colonies in North America, and no colonies ever so loved the Bible. Judson, Howard, Wilberforce, and Florence Nightingale drew the inspiration of their benevolence from a dying Saviour’s cross, and learned of him who, “though he was rich, yet for our sakes become poor, that we through his poverty might be rich.”

Christianity, as it was given by Jesus to the apostles, and by the apostles to mankind, was as perfect as the God who gave it. Our whole duty then is this, that we should restore primitive and apostolic Christianity again to the world. Many reformers have sought to do this; but they have only reformed in part. Though they fled from Babylon they stopped short of Jerusalem.

We can not pause in this work which we have begun. We can not allow ourselves to grow cold and our churches to die. We must go forward in that path in which the rays of our glorious sun–the Sun of Righteousness–grow brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.

God does not make Christians as he created Adam out of the dust of the earth. He works by _means_: “How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” God works through the voice of the Bible scattered over the world. If any doubt this, let them reflect that among all the millions of men that inhabit the whole earth not one becomes a Christian save him who either hears or reads of a crucified Saviour.

Money is the sinews of this war. True, there is peril in money. It is not safe to be rich; and it is admitted that by wealth preachers may be corrupted. But this is not the present danger. The present peril is, that haggard want, stalking in at the preacher’s door, will paralyze his tongue, make his knees feeble and his hands heavy, and turn away his heart from his proper work to the question, What shall I eat? and what shall I drink? and wherewithal shall I be clothed? The preacher is told to put his trust in the Lord. But when, after long waiting, no ravens come to feed him, he sometimes loses his heart, and says, “I go a fishing.” Surely the brethren will not have a controversy with the Lord. They will not deny that he has appointed that “they that preach the gospel shall live of the gospel.”

It is by no weak, sickly, faint-hearted, lukewarm, languid, and spasmodic efforts that the cause is to be kept alive. God will have all or nothing. This is an age in which, if never before, both good men and bad men are truly in earnest. The devil is fearfully and terribly in earnest “Therefore rejoice you heavens, and you that dwell in them Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knoweth he hath but a short time.”

_We must give till we feel it. The widow’s mite was most precious in the eyes of Jesus, because it was her all_.

The objects we aim at are unquestionably scriptural. “Go disciple all nations.” This was the Saviour’s last command. To sustain our missionaries by the free-will offering of our brethren–this is also scriptural.

CHAPTER XXXII.

In the year 1865 the State meeting was held at Prairie City. Meantime, however, a vigorous local district organization had been maintained from the first in Northeastern Kansas. This year its annual meeting was held at Leavenworth City, continuing from the first till the 4th of June. In addition to the ordinary purposes for which this meeting was held, it undertook to perfect the Missionary Society that had been organized the preceding year at Tecumseh.

Among all the conventions held in Kansas, whether of State or District, this must be regarded as the most notable:

1. It offers devout thanksgiving to the Lord for the return of peace to the nation: “_Resolved_, That with hearts full of gratitude to Almighty God, we hail the return of peace to our long distracted country.”

2. After seven years of labor, beginning in 1858, and ending in 1865, notwithstanding the disorders of the period, this Convention is able to give a tabulated report of seventy-nine churches organized in the State with their bishops, deacons and evangelists, and having an aggregate of 3,020.

3. It is able to report a missionary society, that in the eight months intervening between the Tecumseh State meeting and the present Convention, has collected and paid over to its four evangelists–J; H. Bauserman, Pardee Butler, S. G. Brown and J. J. Trott–the sum of $827.

4. The Convention was able to adjourn, full of hope and enthusiasm, and to promise itself that it would do a still better work in the time to come.

The names of the following persons appear as the accredited messengers of the churches: Leavenworth–J. C. Stone, G. H. Field, S. A. Marshal, H. Allen, J. T. Gardiner, Calvin Reasoner. Ottumwa–J. T. Cox, Wm. Gans, J. Jenks, Peter Smith. Tecumseh–J. Driver, M. Driver, A. J. Alderman. Americus–W. C. Butler, S. S. Chapman. Le Roy–S. G. Brown, Allen Crocker. Little Stranger–J. H. Bauserman, S. A. Lacefield, J. Adams, J. P. Bauserman. Iola–S. Brown. Nine Mile–N. D. Tyler, J. T. Goode, H. Dickson. Garnett–J. Ramsey, H. Cavender. Holton–E. Cope, J. P. Nichols, T. G. Walters, A. B. Scholes. Pardee–Pardee Butler, N. Dunshee. Belmont–J. J. Trott. Monrovia–J. N. Holliday, John Graves, Caleb May. Mt. Pleasant–Joseph Potter, Thomas Miller, Joseph McBride, N. Humber. Olathe P. E. Henderson, John Elston, Martin Davenport, Addison Bowen. Lanesfield–O. S. Laws, Wm. Maxwell, H. C. Maxwell. Prairie City–H. H. Johnson. Buck Creek–C. M. Short, Thomas Finch, Martin Stoddard. Grasshopper Falls–James Ritter, S. Smith. Winchester–Cyrus Taylor, A. R. Cantwell.

But we wait for a period of seventeen years, then Eld S. T. Dodd, of Topeka, is appointed by the Kansas Christian Missionary Society to write a history of the work of the Christian Church in Kansas, which he does in a tract of thirty-eight pages; and Bro. D., writing under date of 1882, makes the following summary of the work done:

From 1856 to 1865 anything like church work was as good as thrown away, except as affording temporary privileges.

Finally a time came when the clatter of arms and the clatter of raiders were ended; railroads were built, and emigration poured in from all States and nations, among which were many Disciples of Christ, who should have been builded into existing churches, or collected into new ones; but many were permitted to drift along in carelessness and irresponsibility until their identity as members has been lost.

During the past five years there has been a general awakening among our brethren, which has resulted in very many new organizations and the possession of Atchison, Topeka, Wichita, and several other strongholds.

Bro. Dodd makes report of the following State meetings as having been held in Kansas:

In 1869, Grantville; in 1870, Le Roy; in 1871, St. George; in 1872, Emporia; in 1873, Topeka; in 1874, Olathe; in 1875, Ottawa, in 1876, Manhattan; in 1877, Emporia; in 1878, Gates Center; in 1879, Emporia; in 1880, Manhattan; in 1881, Salina; in 1832, Emporia.

To the above summary the writer will add the following list of the earlier Territorial and State meetings:

In 1860, Big Springs; in 1861, Prairie City; in 1862, Emporia; in 1863, Ottawa; in 1864, Tecumseh; in 1865, Prairie City; in 1866, Ottawa; in 1867, Olathe.

To the above statistics we will append the following reflections:

1. Among the preachers that prominently appear in the first seven years of our work, there are none remaining, save the writer of these Recollections, Some are fallen out by the way. Elders S. G. Brown, Wm. Gans, N. B. White, S. A. Marshal and Allen Crocker have died in the faith and hope of the gospel. The name of J. H. Bauserman does, indeed, appear, but he had only just begun his work; but having put the armor on, he has never laid it off. The name of J. B. McCleery does not yet appear on the minutes of our yearly meetings, still he was already an evangelist. He had been in Ohio the friend and companion of James A. Garfield, and soon came to be known as one of the first pulpit orators of the State. The government, like death, “loves a shining mark,” and claimed Bro. McCleery for its service, and he is now an army chaplain. The churches will never cease to regret his choice, and yet he had a right to make it.

2. The facts do not bear out the remark of Bro. S. T. Dodd, that “from 1856 to 1865 anything like church work was as good as thrown away.” With seventy-nine churches organized, and with upwards of three thousand church members in the State, work could scarcely be said to be “as good as thrown away.”

3. Notwithstanding, the facts bear witness that there were grave imperfections in our work. After a heroic battle, fought under insuperable difficulties, and when there was every promise of still more brilliant triumphs, the cause went into an eclipse, from which it emerged only after many years of disaster.

From and after the year 1875, the churches spread themselves over a territory of two hundred miles in width and four hundred miles in length, and a great number of men became responsible for the good or the evil that should come on the cause of primitive and apostolic Christianity. It is probable that since the period of which we are speaking, 100,000 Disciples have located somewhere in these Western Territories. If the church should now undertake to make inquisition for these church members, and make inquiry into their present condition, temporal and spiritual, the story of their wants and woes would be full of pathetic eloquence.

Since the days of the apostles an enthusiasm never has been known greater than that which was felt by the men who, under God, are responsible for this Reformation. In the beginning of the present century the missionary spirit among Christians was dead, and their zeal was wasted in disgraceful squabbles over inoperative and metaphysical opinions, or over modes of church government of which the Bible knows nothing.

The Protestant sects were divided into two hostile camps, known as Calvinists and Arminians. The Calvinist dogma was that Jesus died only for the elect, who were chosen in a by-gone eternity; that all men are spiritually as dead and helpless as was the cold dead dust of the earth out of which Adam was created, but that God will quicken into a new life dead sinners who are of the elect, and will give them evidence of their acceptance by the joyful emotions which he will create in their hearts. And so the supreme interest of men centered in this, that they were to seek in their own hearts those raptures and ecstasies that were evidence that they had experienced this spiritual change. The Arminians gloried in a free salvation. Christ died for all. But they demanded identically the same evidence of pardon demanded by the Calvinists, and men found it just as hard to get this Arminian evidence of pardon as to get the experience that assured them that they were of the elect, according to the gospel of Calvinism; and so it game to pass that this lethargy of Christians over missionary work, and these wranglings over human opinions, had, before the Revolutionary War, covered the American colonies like a blanket with the spirit of infidelity. The corruption of Christianity by the Roman Catholic Church issued in the atheism of the French Revolution, and has created the infidelity of modern European nations; so like causes had precipitated a similar result in America. Men were groping as the blind grope in darkness, and then came, during the first half of the present century, the proclamation of primitive and apostolic Christianity. Alexander Campbell, John Smith, Jacob Creath and Samuel Rogers in Virginia and Kentucky, and Walter Scott, the Haydens and John Henry in Northeastern Ohio, made the people understand that the plan of salvation is as simple as the primer of our childhood; that it is all comprehended in this, that we must bow to the authority of Jesus, that we must believe in him and keep his commandments, and that the whole story is told in the four gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles with such simplicity that he that runs may read, that he that reads may understand, and that he that understands may act.

Alexander Campbell has said that a persecution made up of defamation, proscription and slander may be as hard to hear as that which issues in bonds and imprisonments; and this these early Disciples had to bear. But the world was ripe for reformation, and the cause spread like fire on the prairies.

Those who originally planted these churches in Kansas were, in large part, men and women who had drawn their inspiration directly from the founders and leaders of this Reformation. To some of them it had been given to sit at the feet of Alexander Campbell. Others had listened to John Smith, and had been magnetized by the inimitable wit and wisdom of that marvelous man, and their hearts had drawn heroic courage from his heart. Others still had been captivated by the boyish and unstudied drollery of Walter Scott, only to be swept away by a whirlwind of passionate appeal and terrible invective, or to be melted with the tenderness of his portrayal of the love of Jesus. And all these came to Kansas bearing a great cause in their hearts, and determined to build up here such churches as they had left behind them. But this was not all. Here were not only people among the most refined, well informed, and pious in the nation, but here were those who had been born in a storm of religious fanaticism, and could only live in a whirlwind of excitement. These were the “big-meeting” Christians. There were also those whose truthfulness was doubtful, whose business methods were questionable, who could, on occasion, indulge in coarse and vulgar jokes and smutty jests, and whose religion scarce kept them outside the grog-shop. Added to all this, there were many whose hearts were yet bleeding with wounds they had received in that terrible struggle out of which the nation had just emerged. And now, afflicted with poverty, drouth, grasshoppers and starvation, we were left an agglomeration of heterogeneous materials, to fight our own battle as best we might. We might hope for help from the Lord, but not from our brethren in the older States. They were too busy debating the divine plan of missionary operations to help us.

The reader may well believe that the writer of these Recollections did not find himself carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease while this was going on, nor did he find himself reposing on a couch soft as downy pillows.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Whatever may have been thought by a certain class of men, when the writer began his work in Kansas, it is now universally admitted among the Disciples that temperance work is legitimate church work–that the saloon being an enemy to our homes and our families, and the greatest peril that confronts the church and nation, its extinction is a legitimate object of Christian endeavor.

There was a young evangelist prominently engaged with us in our early work whose history is so sad, and whose relations, who are of the excellent of the earth, have already had their hearts so wounded because of him, that I have not been able to bring myself to write his name. He was of Irish descent, and before he became a preacher, or even a disciple, and while learning his trade, he had formed the drinking habit. He was not a young man of brilliant gifts, but they were solid. Moreover, he was humble, patient, industrious and persevering, and, having excellent health and a good physical organization, he gave promise of enduring usefulness. In short, he belonged to that class of young men that, while the people do not spoil them with flattery, yet the church set a great store by them. I can not write the history of his fall, for it was not made known even to his friends; only this, that the time came that he seemed hesitating whether he should continue a preacher, and finally he wholly abandoned the ministry. His wife, who was a most estimable and Christian lady, was paralyzed with grief. At length the shameful truth came out–he was a drunkard! A brother undertook to admonish him of the awful fate that awaited him in the future world, but this apostate and disgraced preacher turned fiercely around and said: “_don’t talk to me of hell! I am in hell now_!”

There was living in the neighborhood of the writer a Christian family–though not of the Disciples–who had a boy that they regarded as of great promise, and they did what they could to give him a good education. After he had been for a while a school teacher, he became a lawyer, resident in Atchison, and finally became a politician. He was talented, social, companionable and ambitious, and soon made himself a man of mark, and was petted and courted by the people, and was the idol of his father and mother. All this brought him much into company. But at that time the brewers and saloonkeepers exercised a despotism over the politicians and public men of the city as absolute as is the despotism of the Czar over the Russians. But there was this difference: instead of being slaves to a great monarch, these politicians were tools and lick-spittles to a set of coarse, brutal, low-bred liquor dealers, who were exceptionally ignorant, degraded and vile. These wretched and vicious corrupters of the public morals insisted on controlling every caucus, and that the candidates, of whatever party, should be men well pleasing in their sight. If not, then the fat was in the fire, and the candidate was forthwith slaughtered. The writer of these Recollections has been a Republican as long as there has been a Republican party, and has probably loved the party as well as it has deserved. This party, as is well known, has assumed to be “the party of moral and religious ideas.” Now I have known, in cases not a few, men to be nominated for office by this party–men who were respectable and Christian men, and they have told me, and they have made the confession with shame and humiliation–that the party managers have come to them and said, “You are assessed so much for campaign expenses.” The pretext was, that this was for legitimate campaign work; and yet they knew that the pretext was a lie, and that it was to constitute a corruption fund, to be put into the saloons. And these men were thus made candidates, to give respectability to the saloonkeepers’ party, and, though they did not go into the saloons themselves, they must pay toll to the devil all the same.

It was under such circumstances that this boy, who had been raised in our neighborhood, but had grown to be a man, and had entered upon public life, now became a center of attraction to the hale-fellows-well-met of the saloon and the caucus. The reader need not be told that this gifted young lawyer was walking into the very jaws of death. There were soon alarming rumors that he was becoming dangerously addicted to drink, and his friends entreated him to save himself while he could, and he made promise to his mother and wife to reform. But, alas! it was too late!

I was traveling home from Topeka, and on the railroad train I met a gentleman from Atchison–an intimate friend of this young lawyer–and I was congratulating him on the reformation of our mutual friend. He shook his head, and said: “don’t deceive yourself. He tells me that he can remain sober two or three months, but that then he can held out no longer, and, not wishing to make a public spectacle of himself, he buys a bottle of liquor, locks himself up in his room, and goes into a regular debauch. Then, after three or four days, he is able to appear on the streets again.”

After a while the friends of this young man buried him. The doctors gave his sickness a respectable name, and reported that he had died of such a disease as decent people may die of, but his friends, with heart-breaking sorrow, knew they were burying a man who had died of a drunken debauch.

I have spoken freely of the evils wrought by our border troubles; but now we had to realize that, taking all the men murdered in our early feuds, and comparing them with the men murdered by strong drink in the city of Atchison, counting man for man, there have been more men murdered by strong drink than by all our border troubles. There have been more women that have had their hearts broken, more children turned into the streets, more fortunes squandered, in the single city of Atchison than in all the Kansas war. But there is another point of comparison. The men who wrestled with each other in that early conflict verily thought they were right. They may have been mistaken, but they thought they were in the right; they therefore maintained their own self-respect. But those who have died in this battle of the bottles and the beer glasses have lost everything–self-respect, reputation, honor, everything; and they went to the dogs and their souls went to perdition.

I have been a somewhat voluminous writer on many subjects now for forty years, but all this would scarce exceed in amount what I have written in Kansas newspapers, during a series of years, on the single subject of temperance. Besides, I spent much time in lecturing, for the welfare of the church and of the nation was at stake; and yet, what was done by myself was only a drop in the bucket compared with what went to make up, year after year, a great agitation. At length the people became so aroused that the lawmakers at Topeka came to understand that something must be done in the way of temperance legislation; and they gave us a local option law. But crafty politicians obtained that cities of the first and second class should be exempted. This was nothing but mockery. The cities were the very places where the law was most needed, for men from the country went into the city and there they encountered their old enemy, the saloon. And so we kept up the agitation, and demanded that the saloon should be prohibited throughout the State. At length the pressure became so great that the politicians understood a second time that something must be yielded to the popular demand, and they tried another dodge. They said: “We will give you the privilege to vote an amendment to the constitution incorporating prohibition into the constitution of the State.” This would at least put off the evil day for two years, for it would take two years before such an amendment could go into operation. But here again was seen the usual treachery. The amendment to be voted on read as follows: “The manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors shall be forever prohibited in this State, except for medical, scientific and mechanical purposes.” This was a stumbling-block laid in the way of feeble-minded Christians, for was not this an attack on their Christian liberty to use intoxicating wine at the Lord’s table, and would not this be awful? Moreover, it forbade a farmer to manufacture _hard_ cider from his own orchard, and would not this be a _hard_ and tyrannical law? This was vexatious, for we were fighting the saloon, and were not seeking to palter with such frivolous and intermeddling legislation. Nevertheless, in spite of these crafty attempts to excite popular odium against the amendment, it was adopted by a majority of more than eight thousand, and it became the duty of the next Legislature to enact a law enforcing the amendment. Then some of us waited on these “conscript fathers” at Topeka, and entreated them, and supplicated them, and almost got down on our knees to them, beseeching- them to use a little courage and common sense. The House of Representatives was largely made up of farmers and men from the country, and was overwhelmingly in favor of an honest temperance law; but the Senate was largely made up of lawyers and men from the city, and was full of treachery and open and secret enmity. And so the Senate took the lead in making the law, and got up a bill that they purposely made as full of imperfections as a sieve is full of holes, and sent it down to the lower house. It was manifestly the duty of the House of Representatives to amend the bill, but now a great scare was got up. The cry was raised: “There is treachery! treachery! You must adopt this Senate bill without amending it, to the extent of changing the dot of an _i_ or the crossing of a _t_; for if it goes back to the Senate it will certainly be killed.” _And yet the Senate had adopted it by an almost four-fifths majority!_

The fact was, that these Senators, with all their bluster and bravado, were trembling in their boots, and dared not face their constituents at home while voting against any temperance law, however stringent, and this gave the friends of the law good warrant to make just such a law as was needed. And so the bill became a law; and then there followed such a farce in the courts as might make us lose faith in our Christian civilization and in our civilized jurisprudence. And it came to be understood that a coach-and-four could be driven through the loopholes that had been left in the law, and saloonkeepers began to remark, “Prohibition don’t prohibit.” But from this evil we had what must be regarded a providential deliverance. A judge was found who made up in his own integrity and courage whatever was imperfect in the provisions of the law, and his good example was followed throughout the State.

John Martin, a lawyer, resident in Topeka, is a solid, sensible and honest man. His brethren of the Democratic persuasion wanted to make him a candidate for Governor, but because they would not insert in their platform a plank affirming that the law–because it was the law–ought to be enforced, he declined to accept the nomination, and Geo. W. Glick was nominated and elected. Then Mr. Glick, to reciprocate this courtesy, appointed Martin to a vacant judgeship in the Topeka judicial district; and a whisky case came before Judge Martin. The principal witness undertook to play the usual dodge of perjury and equivocation, but Judge Martin stopped the witness and said: “Sir, you are to tell whether the liquor you bought was whisky.”

The witness again began to repeat his story of equivocation: “Well, I called for _cold tea_, and I suppose I got what I called for.”

“Stop!” said the Judge in a voice of thunder. “This witness is lying! Sheriff, take the witness and lock him up in jail.”

The Sheriff had got as far as the door when the witness called out: “Judge, are you going to lock me up?”

“Yes, and I will keep you there till you rot unless you tell the truth.”

“Well, I will tell.”

The witness was placed again in the witness box. “Now,” said the Judge, “was it whisky you bought of this saloonkeeper?”

“_Yes, it was whisky_.”

The example of Judge Martin was imitated by all the courts, and incredible sums of money have been collected as fines from the saloonkeepers, who, with the brewers, fought the battle to the bitter end, and appealed their cases to the Supreme Court of the United States. But it has ended in their absolute defeat, and even these gentlemen do now admit that prohibition does prohibit–in Kansas. Since that time the law has been greatly amended, and the saloons have been driven out of the State.

One evil yet remains. Just across the Missouri River from Atchison is East Atchison, and here whisky and beer are as free as water. Of course, this is a great calamity to us, but we wait in expectation and hope that prohibition will yet be achieved in Missouri.

John A. Brooks lives in Missouri; we live in Kansas. This man was once a rebel; we were loyal men. Yet we pray the Father of Mercies to spare the life of this man, to prosper him and keep him, until he shall achieve this great good, not only to Missouri, but to ourselves.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

This reformation in the rapidity of its growth is without parallel in the history of Protestant parties. Those acquainted with its history need not be told that a large number of its members were at first drawn from the Baptists. It is indeed a matter of wonder that a Presbyterian minister, but a short time identified with the Baptists, should exert such an influence over them as to induce a great multitude _of_ churches and church members to resolve that when he was driven out of the Baptist Church they also would share his fortune, and accept loss of reputation and exclusion from their former brotherhood for the sake of the principles they had learned from him. Now, when we reflect that this embraced not only young men, but old men–men already arrived at that period of life at which it is most difficult to change our habits of thinking and acting, it becomes a question of profoundest interest; were these men able to make a change so radical as to plant themselves completely on reformation principles, and to abandon everything in their old Baptist order incompatible therewith?

When we remember that this movement embraced gray-haired Baptist ministers, who all their lifetime had been accustomed to lead and not to follow, we curiously inquire, Did they do this, or did they locate themselves on a sort of half-way ground which was a compromise between reformation principles and old Baptistism?

Let us briefly notice wherein they changed, and wherein they did not change.

1. They laid aside the name Baptist and took the name Christian.

2. They built upon the Bible alone, instead of the Philadelphia Confession of faith.

3. They taught that the church began at Pentecost, rather than with the preaching of John the Baptist.

4. They baptized men into a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, that he is the Messiah, rather than into a Christian experience, made up of voices in the air, marvelous and strange sights, trances and rapturous feelings.

5. They taught that in conversion and sanctification, the Holy Spirit operates through the truth.

Thus far the change was radical, but here a large minority paused and brought with them into the reformation their old Baptist Church usages. The Baptists in the Great West and South are known as “Missionary Baptists,” and “Old Baptists,” or “Hardshell Baptists.” Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice, who had been sent to Burmah by a Congregational Missionary Society, made known to the Baptists that they themselves had become Baptists, and had been repudiated by their own society, and asked for help. The Missionary Baptists are by far the most enterprising in all that pertains to the spread of Christianity. They are the most numerous, most wealthy, best educated, and most liberal. In translating the Bible into all languages, in carrying it into all lands, and in sending the gospel to all nations, they have made some amends for that unrelenting bitterness which they have shown toward our brethren from the first day till now. We shall glance at what has hitherto been their order by making certain extracts from the _Central Baptist_, published in the year 1870. The reader must bear in mind that we are writing of those old days:

In Arkansas there are but four Missionary Baptist Churches that sustain a regular pastor, or sustain preaching more than once a month. In North Alabama, two; in the whole of Alabama, twelve; in Missouri, twenty-seven. Missouri has six hundred white churches, with a membership of fifty thousand, which have preaching once a month. Once a month preaching by secularized ministry! Is it any wonder that the cause does not go forward faster? Not more than two dozen out of seven hundred churches in Missouri have service every Sunday.

Let us pause a moment over this picture of Southern and Western Baptist Churches, drawn by themselves. In Arkansas but four churches had at this time preaching every Lord’s day; in Alabama, twelve, and in Missouri twenty-four out of seven hundred! Well may the writer ask, “Is it any wonder that the cause does not go forward faster?”

But if this was the order of the Missionary Baptists in the year 1870, what must have been the order of the Old Baptists seventy years before, when “Raccoon” John Smith was groping his way out of darkness into the light of the gospel, all unconscious of his utter blindness, that the reading of the Scriptures would conduce, either directly or indirectly, to his regeneration or sanctification.

The people known as “Hardshell” Baptists do not wish to be called by that name. They wish to be known as Old Baptists, or United Baptists, for they allege that they are the lineal descendants of the United Baptists, and that the Missionary Baptists have apostatized, and gone away after strange gods. The Old Baptists had long been declaiming against college-bred preachers and a hireling ministry. They had certain pet theories concerning man’s inability and God’s sovereignty concerning a certain special, supernatural, immediate and efficacious work of grace on the heart of the sinners. They said, “If God wants a missionary, he can send him, and maintain him, too. He needs no human help in the conversion of sinners, whether at home or abroad. We can find no Scripture for Sunday-schools, Bible classes, prayer-meetings, weekly meetings, hireling preachers, missionaries or missionary societies.” So they kept to their monthly meetings and monthly preaching.

They have no schools of learning, few educated men, no well-educated men, no missionaries, no contributions for missionary purposes, no weekly meetings, no weekly preaching, no weekly breaking of the loaf, no Sunday-schools, no Bible classes, no prayer-meetings. But they have monthly preaching, by a man who is reputed a pastor over four churches, and who, in the nature of things, can not reside in three of the four churches over which he professes to preside. He obtains but meager pecuniary reward for his preaching. He therefore provides for his own sustenance and that of his family by the labor of his own hands. For this reason he must needs go to his appointments on Saturday, and return on Monday morning, and is therefore comparatively a stranger to the greater part of his four several flocks. He can not know their daily life. A few preachers among the old Baptists preeminently godly, self-sacrificing, and devoted to the Lord’s cause, have left their families to suffer poverty and want, and have spent their lives in looking after the stray lambs of the flock; but this is not the general rule. This Baptist bishop has no authority whatever in any matter of discipline, his function being that of a moderator in a Saturday business monthly meeting. The sitting in judgment on the alleged acts of disorderly members belongs to the whole church, men and women, boys and girls.

We are now prepared to take the measure of the means of spiritual culture enjoyed by this people. It is just one sermon a month; or, if they are peculiarly favored, it is three sermons a month. The children are left at home. They run wild like so many young apes, and wander along the streams or through the forests; or, if they are brought by their parents to the meeting, there is nothing especially for them.

It will be well for us to ponder well the inevitable consumption and slow decay that is surely wearing out these Old Baptist churches. Like the house of Saul, they are growing weaker and weaker. What a contrast between their condition now and seventy years ago. Then the United Baptists were the most powerful religious body in the great West. Then Jacob Creath and Jeremiah Vardeman could, if they had been so disposed, have elected the Governor of Kentucky. Then the Baptists were strong in the affections of the people, and strong in the memory of those men who had, through incredible toil, obloquy, poverty and loss of goods, planted the Baptist cause in the American wilderness. Alexander Campbell, with his eminent gifts of eloquence and learning, was welcomed among the Baptists almost as an angel from heaven. But his well-meant efforts to work a reformation in the Baptist churches were despised, and he was thrust out as a heathen man and publican.

What treasures untold reside in the Lord’s house, the Lord’s day, the Lord’s book, and the ordinances of the Lord? It is the glory of Christianity. Now let the members of a Christian Church fail to meet at the Lord’s house for Christian worship on the Lord’s day, and to what snares and temptations do they not subject themselves and their children? What temptations to idleness and to wasting the Lord’s day in visiting and gossiping, or in drowsy lethargy!

The sanctification of the Lord’s day by meeting in honor of the resurrection of the Saviour, and especially with a reference to the celebration of the Lord’s supper, is essential to the edification, spirituality, holiness, usefulness and happiness of the Christian community. It is not designed to throw into the shade any other duties of the Christian Church while contending for those above stated; but because no society save the Disciples of Christ so regard, observe and celebrate the Lord’s day. We endeavor to arrest the attention of our fellow professors to the great design of it and of the coming together of the members of Christ’s family on that day. When assembled for this chief purpose, the reading of the Scriptures, teaching, exhortation, prayer, praise, contributions for the poor, and discipline when called for, are all in order and necessary to the growth of the Christian Church in all the graces of the Spirit, and in all the fruits of holiness.–ALEX. CAMPBELL, in _Millennial Harbinger,_ Vol. I., p. 534, New Series.

And what an audacious wrong and unutterable blunder would it be for God’s chosen people to adopt an order that should defraud themselves, their children, their neighbors and their neighbor’s children of such a glorious privilege.

If we could imagine two communities, one of which should, with their children and their children’s children, diligently devote the Lord’s day to purposes of moral, religious and intellectual improvement, while the other community should waste the day in idle and frivolous dissipation, what unmeasured progress would ultimately be made by one beyond that made by the other. And to which of these two classes will that favored people belong to whom will be awarded the high privilege of introducing among jarring sects and parties the true millennial church?

And do not these considerations go far to explain the contrast that is everywhere seen to exist between Protestant and Catholic countries? Among Protestants the day is a day to be sanctified to purposes of religious worship, among Catholics it is a holiday.

The peculiarity of our position creates an invincible necessity that we shall make the largest possible provision for the moral, intellectual and religious training and development of our people. This provision is largely found in keeping the ordinances of the Lord’s house and the Lord’s day. We have made a vow, and that vow is recorded in heaven, that we will meet together every first day of the week to break bread. To do otherwise–to show a good-natured imbecility of purpose–to drift helplessly along in the usages of the Old Baptists, conscious in our own hearts that this is not the ancient order of things, and having sternly demanded conformity to the apostolic order, at whatever sacrifice of peace, now to suffer our own brethren to travel on in the old ruts, rather than hazard the pain and trouble that will be the price of reform, would be a folly so inexcusable, a shame so unutterable, that the very stones might well cry out against us.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Professor William H. Whitsitt, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, at Louisville, Ky., has written a book that has for its leading feature to make it appear that the Disciples are an “offshoot from the Sandemanians.”

The Sandemanians, like the Baptists, had both faults and virtues. They were one of the earliest sects of the Scotch Presbyterians to protest against a union of Church and State; they practiced a weekly breaking of the loaf; held to a plurality of elders in every church, and were exceptionally helpful to the poor; and surely, even Dr. Whitsitt will not call these damnable heresies. But they were also rigid separatists. They were Calvinists of the straitest sect, and made all their opinions a bond of union. In this they were like the Baptists, but essentially dissimilar to the Disciples. They exalted feet washing and the holy kiss into church ordinances, and excluded all who did not agree with them in these opinions, just as the Baptists exclude from the Lord’s table all who are not of “our faith and order,” though they admit that those persons thus excluded are regenerated, accepted of the Lord, and enjoy the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Differing from the Sandemanians in the most essential element of our plea, we hold a very remote relationship to them–that of fortieth cousin, perhaps. The Disciples are just as evidently an offshoot from the Baptists, as children are an offshoot from the parental stock.

Twenty years after the writer had begun his work in Kansas, he was able to count among fifty churches which had been organized within his knowledge, twenty-five that were dead; and there were six meeting-houses that were left unoccupied or sold for debt. And the church members would say to me: “We can neither preach, nor pray, nor read the Scriptures, nor break the loaf to edification, and we are too poor to hire a preacher. What shall we do?” They had no training, save that training they had obtained in the old Baptist churches, or one similar in our own, and now that they were scattered over the great West, and were poor in this world’s goods, they were indeed in a pitiably helpless condition.

I sometimes said, “Get up a Sunday-school.” But the old heads would get together and begin to debate where Cain got his wife, or who was the father of Melchisedec, or what was the thorn in the flesh that afflicted Paul; or they would dispute over the mode of baptism, or the operation of the Holy Spirit, and the boys, verifying the old adage that the devil always finds work for idle hands to do, and not appreciating this sort of thing, would shoot paper balls at each other and at the old folks, and the girls would do naughty things and grieve their mothers, and the whole thing would go up in smoke.

Nothing seemed to be left to these brethren, only the protracted meeting and monthly preaching. To many of them “pastorating” was one of the sorceries which, with the mother of Babylon, had bewitched the world. These brethren seemed to have forgotten that Paul gives highest praise to that elder that not only rules well, but so addicts himself to the ministry of the Word and teaching as to require that he shall be sustained by the freewill offerings of the brethren. And when we sought an arrangement by which all should give–each man, according to his ability–we were alarmed with fearful prognostications of evil: “Beware! beware!” These brethren said, “You are making a veritable Popish bull, and he will gore you to death. Beware of missionary societies!” And when we turned to these men and besought them, “Tell us, dear brethren, how we shall obtain, without offense, the means to send help to those perishing churches?” they were silent. This was not their function. Their vocation was to warn the people against Popish bulls and human missionary societies, for which there can not be found a thus saith the Lord, in express terms or by an approved precedent.

Meantime the churches in the older States had contributed one hundred thousand Disciples–this has sometimes been the estimated number–as emigrants to the great West, and these were scattered over its wide extended Territories, and it was to be shown how far this contribution, more precious than gold or silver or costliest gems, should be as water spilled on the ground, or as treasure cast into the bottom of the sea, or how far it should be as precious seed bearing fruit, some thirty fold, some sixty, and some one hundred fold.

When our first churches were organized in Kansas, Alexander Campbell had become old and well-stricken in years. I have already written of the missionary society that was created in 1864, and of the great convention held in Leavenworth City in 1865, in which we sought to perfect the workings of that society. Within the following year Mr. Campbell died, and the always welcome _Millennial Harbinger_ ceased its monthly visits. The voice of Mr. C. had been a bugle blast calling men to heroic deeds, and his overshadowing influence had restrained from that tendency to division, for opinion’s sake, which is our inheritance from our common Protestantism. But now a great emigration had come into Kansas from every part of the United States, and among these were many who looked with no favor on any innovation on the traditions of the fathers.

Mr. C. had said in his notable debate with the Rev. N. L. Rice, at Lexington, Ky.: “Men formerly of all persuasions, and of all denominations and prejudices, have been baptized on this good confession, and have united in one community. Among them are found those who had been Romanists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Restorationists, Quakers, Arians, Unitarians, etc., etc. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, but various opinions. All these persons, of so many and contradictory opinions, weekly meet around our Lord’s table in hundreds of churches all over the land. Our bond of union is faith in the slain Messiah, in his death for our sins and his resurrection for our justification.”

It is perfectly apparent that to harmonize these elements–often opposite and conflicting–thus brought together in one body was no easy task, but we had more than this to do; we were also to harmonize the fierce antagonisms growing out of our early contests, and then to make those brethren who had been heretofore averse to any combination whatever for religious work other than that of the single congregation–to make them feel the absolute necessity of united action and cooperation. This was indeed a task most difficult. And if the final good results have only slowly become apparent we are entitled to the judgment of charity.

It is admitted that every liberty that God has given to men may be abused, and has been abused. Marriage, religion, civil government, the rights of property, eating and drinking–in short, all liberty, of whatever kind, may be and has been abused. Still we must use our liberty, our very existence depends upon it. I have said it already, and I say again, if sixty millions of the American people can unite together to promote the public tranquillity, and all citizens enjoy more of personal liberty than they could enjoy if every county were an independent principality, then our whole brotherhood, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, may be trusted to meet together, by their messengers or in person, to promote necessary Christian work without endangering our Christian liberties. If all the churches of Macedonia could unite together to send relief to the poor saints at Jerusalem, then, surely, the brethren everywhere may combine together to send relief to people perishing for want of the word of life.

And so with much weariness and painfulness, and often with gratuitous and unrequited labor, with long rides by day and by night, and much exposure to heat and cold, to floods and storms, and to rough treatment by wicked men–in short, with that relentless and persistent toil which makes a man old before his time, and in which one man has carried on the work of two men year after year, I have labored on, never doubting, but always hoping for that good time coming, when churches will be just, and give honest pay to honest men who do honest work. My hope has been that if I can not live to profit by that better order of things, it will at least be better for the men that come after me.

The wife of a traveling evangelist will always be the proper object of pity and sympathy, if pity and sympathy are to be given. She is not cheered by the smiles of admiring crowds, nor does she feel the intoxication of flattering tongues. She dwells at home in the desolation and loneliness of a practical widowhood, and often ekes out a meager support from a stingy and starveling salary.

But somebody has to do this frontier and pioneer work; and might it not as well be me and my wife as any other man and his wife?

I have given a wide range to these “Recollections.” In doing so, I have not followed the example of a cowardly, corrupted and compromising Christianity, but rather have imitated the robust and manly courage of the writers of the Old and New Testament, who tell of the deeds of good men and bad men, and who also use the same freedom in speaking of the evil deeds of wicked rulers that they use in speaking of the things that more immediately concern the spiritual and eternal interests of men.

I have made the briefest possible mention of the hapless condition our churches were in twenty years ago. The picture is neither flattering nor cheering; but right royally are the churches now redeeming themselves from the reproach they were under then. A pastor is now being settled in each church as fast as the pecuniary circumstances of the congregation will permit, and a grand enthusiasm in Sunday-school work, simplifying and illustrating all its details, has made it possible for the weakest and poorest church to keep itself alive. Wherever there are children with their young enthusiasm–and the children, like the poor, are always with us–and wherever there are parents ready to lead their children in the way in which they should go, there the permanency of a church is assured.

And now, with many misgivings as touching our immediate future, but with an abiding hope of triumph in the end, I bid the reader farewell.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

REMINISCENCES.

BY MRS. ROSETTA B. HASTINGS.

When father went back to Illinois, after he was rafted, we visited for several weeks among the churches where he had preached. Then we returned with him to Kansas, to visit my uncle, and to stay on our claim awhile, lest some person should jump it. We left our goods at Mt. Sterling, for father had promised to preach there that winter; but he told us that he had determined to move to Kansas sooner than he had first expected. We ferried the Missouri River near Jefferson City, and crossed the Kansas River in the woods, where Kansas City, Kansas, now stands. There was little of Kansas City then, except a few warehouses where freight was landed for Independence, which was the starting point of the Santa Fe trail.

Claims were being taken so rapidly that we remained to hold ours, while father returned to Illinois to preach. Two families in one room made it rather crowded, but we had a comfortable cabin. It contained a twelve-paned window–the only one in the settlement; cabins usually had no windows, or very small ones. Mr. May’s folks had oiled paper over a narrow opening, which they closed with a board shutter. I asked their little girl why they did not have a larger window, and she said the Indians might get in. But no Indians troubled us.

When father came home, April 30th, we all ran out to meet him. But mother’s quick eye detected something wrong. “Why, I look all right, don’t I?” he asked, smiling. When we reached the house she again questioned him, and he sat down, rolled up his sleeve, and showed us his arm, brown with tar, and fuzzy with cotton. Then he told us his story. They had not tarred his face, except a spot on his forehead, where, he said, they had stuck a bunch of cotton as large as his two fists. The road to Ocena, as our post-office was called, ran up the bluff now known to Atchison people as Sam Kingstown. On the top of that ridge he had stopped, and pulled off his coat of tar and cotton, put on his clothes and come home.

A few evenings after that, we heard that a company of South Carolinians had camped near Mr. May’s house. Father said they had probably come after either himself or Caleb May. So he went up to Mr. May’s, to see what to do about it. After he left, uncle nailed shakes over the window, and cleaned up his old flint-lock musket, and loaded it carefully. Aunt moulded bullets, while mother got the ax and butcher knife, and then stuffed rags in the cracks, and brought in the half-bushel to turn over the light, so that they could not see where to shoot. Then we all took turns standing out in the darkness at the corner of the house, to keep watch, and listen for the sound of guns from Mr. May’s. Father came home at eleven. He said the South Carolinians had asked permission to sleep in an empty cabin. He and Mr. May had followed them, and he had crept under the cabin floor and listened, and they had seemed to be sleeping soundly. So we all went to bed, but father slept with a revolver under his head, which Mr. May had insisted on lending him. The next morning the South Carolinians went quietly on their journey. We learned afterwards that they were on their way to lay out the town of Marysville, in Marshall County, and did not know that they were in the same neighborhood with Pardee Butler and Caleb May.

Father wrote an account of the Atchison mob, and took it to Lawrence to be published in the _Herald of Freedom._ The Congressional Committee summoned him to give his testimony. While there, the Lawrence people gave him a pistol, and insisted that he must carry it. Father told us how the Carolinians had sworn to kill him, when they heard his testimony before the Committee; and as soon as he heard they were coming back, after the destruction of Lawrence, he knew that he was in danger. Brave as he might be, he saw no good in allowing himself to be butchered by those infuriated men, and resolved to keep out of their way. He kept his horse picketed on the grass near where he was at work, with saddle and bridle close by. One day as I was helping him drop sod corn on uncle’s claim–two miles from our own–while uncle worked at his new cabin, we saw some horsemen coming over the hill.

“They are South Carolinians,” said father, and saddling his horse, he rode in the opposite direction. In the afternoon he came back, saying that they had followed him all day, and he had circled here and there over the hills, and he had happened to meet two of them, one at a time, and recognized them as some of the men who had mobbed him; and they knew him too, but they had not dared to attack him single-handed. He thought they were trying to get together, to attack him the next time they saw him.-He wanted uncle to change coats and hats with him, so that, if they saw him in the distance, they would not know him. He wore a black coat and hat, and uncle wore a white palmleaf hat, and had with him, in case of rain, an old-fashioned, light gray overcoat. These father put on, and throwing a white cloth over his horse, rode away, telling us that he would not be at home that night, and that we need not look for him until we saw him. Day after day those men followed him, like hounds after a wolf. Through the day he rode here and there, spending the night with first one neighbor, then another. One day, when uncle was working at his cabin, some South Carolinians rode up, and not seeing father, they searched the woods and ravine near by, and rode away. Father spent one night with Mr. Duncan, and had just gone out of sight in the morning, when the South. Carolinians rode up.

“Does Pardee Butler ride a bay horse?” they asked.

“No, sir,” replied Mr. Duncan.

“We saw a man ride into the woods just now,” said they, “that looked like Pardee Butler, but he was riding a bay horse.”

“Pardee Butler never rides a bay horse.” And so they went the other way. Father rode a spirited young “copper-bottom” horse, named Copper, that looked either bay or gray at a distance, as the light happened to shine.

One day, father went to the post-office after his mail, and two young neighbors riding up, and seeing his horse hitched there, thought to have some fun. With loud shouts they galloped up, and hearing them, he stepped to the door, sprang on his horse, and dashed off over the hill, with them after him. But when they reached the top of the hill they found that he was standing on the ground behind his horse, with his pistol levelled at them across his saddle. They were glad to make themselves known, and own up to the joke.

Father slipped home a few minutes almost every day, to let us know that he was yet alive, and to see if we were safe. Every night we fastened up the house, expecting that before morning the Ruffians would try to burst in to search for father. Those were days of terrible anxiety for mother, for she thought every time father rode away that it was probably their last parting. Yet she was brave and quiet, and said little.

But father grew tired of being dogged, and told us that he was going to Lawrence. He was gone some time and we did not know where he was.

My little four year old brother George heard much talk of Border Ruffians, and he went around flourishing a long thorn for a dagger, and boasting in childish accent: “Bad Border ‘uffians s’an’t get my pa. I hit ’em in ‘e eye wid my dagger.” One day I was helping uncle drop corn, when George came running to us, much excited. “I foun’ a Border ‘uffian! I foun’ a Border ‘uffian! I hit ’em in ‘e eye! I hit ’em in ‘e eye!” We ran to see what he had found, and he ran ahead, picking up pebbles as he ran, “to fro at ‘e bad Border ‘uffian.” What do you think he had found? A mud turtle! And that was his idea of a Border Ruffian. But he had a chance to see one. One day, while father was away, two men rode up to the house, whom we knew to be Border Ruffians by their red shirts and the revolvers in their belts. Mother told George and me to hide behind the door, while she talked to them. They asked for a drink of water, but while they waited for it, one of them rode almost into the door, and looked around the room–we had only one room–evidently looking for father. George became impatient, and kept whispering “Let me out, let me see a Border ‘uffian. I _will see_ a Border ‘uffian.” And he pulled loose from me and peeped around the edge of the door.

When father came home he brought some type, and some half-printed papers, blackened with powder, that he had picked up in the sand on the river bank at Lawrence, where the Border Ruffians had thrown the _Herald of Freedom_ press and papers into the river. On the printed side of the papers was the article he had written about his last mob.,

Years afterwards I asked father what he was doing when he was gone from home in May and June, 1856. He replied: “I was organizing the Republican party in northern Kansas. I first went to Lawrence, and there the leaders insisted that I ought to visit various points in the northern part of the State, and organize the new party, and I did so.”

Soon after father’s return, in June, some of the neighbors announced a meeting for him at Bro. Elliott’s, four miles from our house, of which he speaks in Chapter XVII. To that meeting the people came armed, for the report of the appointment had reached Atchison. They left their guns in their wagons, or set them in convenient corners, while they listened to the preaching; for they were determined to defend father in case of attack.

Mr. John Quiett, who is yet one of our neighbors, was one of three men who stood guard at the fence, watching for approaching enemies, while father preached. But no attack was made.

Uncle Milo had taken us to the meeting; and mother asked father to go home with us, and he replied, “Yes, I am going home once more.”

Mother told him she would be glad to have him go with us, but she was afraid to have him stay all night.

“I am going to stay at home for one night, for I have some letters to write,” was his reply.

Mother was very uneasy on the road home, for she said the Border Ruffians would be watching for us in the woods. But we reached home without molestation. Father sat up until after midnight, writing letters, and then went to bed and slept safely. The next day one of our neighbors told us that just at dark that evening she saw a band of men ride into the woods between her house and ours, but she was afraid to come over and tell us. Other neighbors saw them go out on Monday morning, and ride toward town. A few days afterwards, a neighbor, who stood “on both sides of the fence” in regard to politics, went to Atchison, and he told us that nine South Carolinians hid in our woods to take father that night, but they had seen his light burning so late that they were afraid, and went back and told that he had forty armed men, who stood guard all night, and they could not take him.

But father was not by any means the only one whom the Border Ruffians molested. They were continually riding around the country, frightening the people, and “pressing” horses–which was another name for stealing them. And the Free State man who made himself prominent was liable to be shot any time they could catch him. The Free State men kept their horses hidden in the brush, and often hid there themselves. Every time any of the neighbors saw several horsemen riding over the prairie, they thought it was the Border Ruffians.

One day Caleb May saw quite a company of men riding toward his place. He and his son and hired man stationed themselves under the bank, where both the house and the ford would be within range of their guns. Mrs. May was to talk to the horsemen as they rode past the house, and, if they were Border Ruffians, she was to shut the door, as a signal to the husband to be ready for attack. When they rode up, however, they proved to be Mr. Speck, and about twenty other neighbors from the lower neighborhood, who had brought their horses up to Mr. May’s to guard them from the Ruffians, who stood in great fear of Caleb May.

When the Ruffians returned to Missouri, after one of their raids, some of them told in De Kalb, where Mr. May lived before coming to Kansas, that they had killed him. One of his old neighbors, named Jones, rode into De Kalb one day, and was accosted by on e of the returned Border Ruffians with “We’ve got Caleb May this time; got his head on a ten-foot pole.”

“Anybody killed?” queried Mr. Jones.

“Oh, no.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a lie!” responded Mr. Jones. “I know Caleb May well enough to know that when you get him somebody ‘s going to get hurt.”

Mr. May had for years been a temperance man, in the midst of a drinking population of the frontiers of Arkansas and Missouri, and made the first temperance speech ever made in De Kalb. His oldest son, when fifteen, had never tasted whisky. One day, when Mr. May had gone on a journey, the boy was in town, and loafers, seeing him pass a saloon, shouted, “Cale May’s gone; let’s have some fun with his boy.” So they dragged him into the saloon, and poured whisky down his throat, and sent him home drunk to his mother. When Mr. May returned home they told him what had happened.

At that time there was a local option temperance law in Missouri, under which a majority of the people in a township, by signing a petition to the court, could have the saloons abolished as public nuisances. De Kalb was full of saloons, and there was one on almost every road corner in the county.

Years afterwards I heard Mr. May tell the incident, and his eyes flashed, as he said with his slow, strong emphasis, “When I came home and heard what had happened, _you bet I_ WAS _wrathy_! I just jumped on my horse, and I rode that township up and down, and I never stopped until I had signers enough to my petition, and I cleaned every saloon out of that township.”

Doubtless many a man signed that petition because he dared not refuse; for, although usually kind and quiet, few dared to face his anger.

When Lawrence was besieged, in May, a company of Free State men was raised around here, and they sent John Quiett to Lawrence to offer their services for the defense of the town, but were refused by Mr. Pomeroy. Soon after the return of the South Carolinians from Lawrence they found Mr. Quiett in the Atchison postoffice. They at once seized him as a Free State leader, and began to debate whether to shoot or hang him. But one of the Pro-slavery merchants of Atchison interfered, and begged them to let him go. He got out, mounted his horse, and started for home, twelve miles away. But the Carolinians, like Pharaoh of old, repented that they had let him go, and soon started in pursuit. It was a hot race, for as Mr. Quiett reached the top of each hill he could see his pursuers coming behind him. But he reached home; and when they came to the creek near his home, they were afraid to pass through the woods–probably fearing an ambush–and returned to town. But parties were sent out to take him when he was unprepared; and, finding that he was hunted, he was afraid to stay at home nights. I have heard Mrs. Quiett say, that one day, when her husband had been away several days, he came home for a little while, and she gave him something to eat. After eating he lay down to sleep on a lounge that stood along the front side of the bed. She was rocking her baby in the middle of the cabin, when the Border Ruffians rode up to the house, and one of them, riding so close that his horse’s head was inside of the door, leaned forward and looked around the cabin. The door was at the foot of the bed, and it so happened that the lounge on which Mr. Quiett lay was so close to the bed, and so low, that the edge of the bed just hid his body. The Ruffian said not a word, but looked until he seemed satisfied that there was no one in the room but Mrs. Quiett, and then they both rode away. She said that she could not speak, but felt as though she was frozen to her chair, for she was sure that, if they had seen Mr. Quiett, they would have shot him before her eyes. Not until they were out of sight did she speak or stir.

Mr. Quiett and Mr. Ross went with father to Topeka, when the Free State Legislature and Convention met, July 4, 1856, of which father speaks in chapter XVI. Mr. Quiett says that the Free State men went there determined to defend the Legislature. There were several large companies of well-armed men stationed near, awaiting orders from the Convention; and one company armed with Sharp’s rifles lay behind a board fence by the side of the road. Several speakers made excited speeches, urging the members of the Convention to be men, and defend their lawful rights, even at the risk of their lives. The Free State men were wrought up to the verge of desperation. The vote was about to be taken, whether or not to resist the troops. There was much suppressed excitement; and, had the vote been taken then, it would undoubtedly have been in favor of resistance. Father, in the meanwhile, was on a committee, in a back room. Mr. Quiett began calling for Pardee Butler. Others took up the call, and, hearing it in the committee room, he came out. They demanded a speech on the question in debate. He begged them to bear their wrongs patiently, and to allow no provocation to cause them to resist the United States authorities. He besought them to be loyal to their country, and never fire on the old stars and stripes. Mr. Quiett said it was a powerful speech, timely and eloquent. When he sat down the tide had turned. The vote was taken, and it was decided not to resist the troops. Mr. Quiett says that without a doubt that speech not only saved them from a bloody battle that day, but that it saved the Territory from a long, fierce war.

After they disbanded, the members of the Convention went out and sat down on the prairie grass to eat their dinner, which each took from his pocket, or his wagon. Mr. Quiett and Mr. Ross took theirs from the wagon, in which they had ridden to Topeka; but father had gone on horseback, as he usually did, and took his dinner from the capacious pocket of his preacher’s saddle-bags. Mr. Quiett said that in getting out his dinner, father took a pistol out of his saddlebags. This created much merriment for them, as they thought it would have been of little use to him in case of attack. They told him that if that was where he carried it, the South Carolinians would shoot him some day before he could unbuckle his saddle-bags.

But father disliked very much to carry arms, and I think he never did in his life, except for about two months during that dreadful summer.

About two weeks afterwards we started to Illinois, in the buggy. We crossed the River at Iowa Point. About nine miles northeast of Savannah, in Gentry county, Missouri, father was taken very sick, and we were obliged to stop at the nearest house. The man at whose house we happened to stop was a Mr. Brown, from Maine; and he and his family were very kind to us. There, for four weeks, father lay sick of a fever. One day, while mother was in father’s room, Mrs. Brown questioned me about living in Kansas, and whether the Border Ruffians ever troubled us. So I told her how father had been treated. Father called me into the bed-room, and said that I ought not to have told that, under the circumstances; that it would be a dreadful thing for us to be attacked, with him flat on his back, and we among strangers. I replied that I thought it would do no harm, because Mr. Brown’s folks were from the North, and our friends. But he said it might bring trouble on Mr. Brown if his neighbors should learn that he had harbored Pardee Butler. When Mr. Brown came in at noon, his wife told him the news. He went right in, and told father that Butler was such a common name, that he had no idea that he had the honor of sheltering Pardee Butler. “Now,” said he, “you need not be uneasy while you are here. Yonder hang four good Sharp’s rifles, and I and my boys know how to use them; and nobody shall touch you unless they walk over our dead bodies.”

As soon as father was able to travel we finished our journey in safety. We visited our old friends in Illinois, and father preached on Sundays. While we were at Mt. Sterling, he lectured on temperance one night, and the bad fellows made a little disturbance. The previous afternoon I had visited a little girl in the village, and we had found and thrown away a nest full of rotten eggs. The next time I saw her she said that her big brother was mad at us, for he was saving those eggs, and he and some other big boys had intended to throw them at Pardee Butler while he was making that temperance speech; but when they went to the barn, their eggs were gone. The truth was, that her big brother was one of many boys who were fast being made drunkards by the village saloons.

Mother went to Ohio on a visit, and father went to Iowa to attend to some business. On his return he met one of the State Republican Committee, who insisted on making arrangements for him to stay in Illinois until the presidential election, and speak for Fremont.

It was raw November weather when we started back to Kansas, with a one-horse wagon, drawn by Copper, and a heavily loaded mule team, driven by a boy named Henry Whitaker, who is now one of the merchants of Atchison. Mother was sick, and we had to stop a week. Then the mud became so deep that father had to buy a yoke of oxen and hitch on behind the mules. Then it froze up, rough and hard, and we stopped for a blacksmith to make shoes for the oxen, and were directed to stay