Footnotes
[1] When they were making the raft father noticed that one of the logs was sound and the other rotten. They fastened them together by nailing shakes—shingles—from one to the other. Some one remarked that the nails would pull out the first time the raft struck a snag. Then they said they would drive in long wooden pins. But father noticed that the long pins were driven into the sound log, while the ends on the rotten log were only fastened by the nails.
One of the logs of which the raft was made was much longer than the other, and on the end of the longer log they put the flag. And over the rough swift current father walked the dizzy length of that single log and took down the flag. Mother still keeps that flag as a precious relic. Several years ago one of the men engaged in that mob ran for office in Northern Kansas. His opponent borrowed the flag, to use in the campaign, and returned it in good order. But we have since learned that he had several copies of it painted, and that one of them is now in the rooms of the Kansas Historical Society, in the showcase with John Brown's cap, and is shown as the veritable flag that was on Pardee Butler's raft.
[2] The Thirteenth Kansas Regiment, which was raised in 1862, was composed of Atchison County men. They voted to request father to become their chaplain, and they sent him word, requesting him to apply to Gen. Lane for the appointment. He did so, and received a letter from Gen. Lane, asking, "How much will you pay for the place?" Father replied, "If the position of chaplain is sold for a price, I do not want it."
[3] Bro. Garrett not only gave freely of his money to the church, but he gave freely of time, and trouble, and anxious watching. He also gave liberally and constantly of provisions and other necessaries to his poorer neighbors. His brother-in-law, Dr. Moore, complained that he was spoiling the church by taking such constant care of it. "O well," said Bro. Garrett one day, "every church has to have a wheel-horse, and I might as well be the wheel-horse as any body."
[4] When father took this letter to Lawrence, he met Mr. Redpath, the Tribune reporter, who requested permission to copy it for the New York Tribune.
Before Mr. Redpath had completed his copy, the editor of the Herald of Freedom demanded the manuscript to put in type. The edition of the Herald of Freedom containing it was destroyed, and father only obtained a mutilated copy of it. But from that portion printed in the Tribune, and what was left of the Herald of Freedom, he secured a complete copy of the letter.
[5] When Col. Sumner's soldiers were asked what they would do if they were ordered to fire on the Free State men, they replied, "We would aim above their heads."
[6] When father reached the east bank it was so slippery that the oxen would not go down. So he hitched them to the back of the sled, and, with a handspike, pried it to the edge of the bank, and started it down. Of course it slid down the hill, and pulled the oxen with it.
[7] Mr. May was not the blustering rough that many people suppose a frontiersman to be. He was a quiet, hard-working farmer, kind and neighborly, but ready to defend his own rights, and those of his friends, or of the poor and down-trodden. His proverbial phrase was, "Whatever I do, I want to do it so well that the world will be none the worse for my having lived in it." His son, E. E. May, says that he used to say that he learned from his Bible to hate slavery. He could lead a prayer-meeting as easily as he could lead a regiment, and he could defend the Scriptures as readily as he could defend his home. I once heard him say that he had never kept a hired man for any length of time, but that he succeeded in persuading him to join the church before he left him. MRS. R. B. H.