During the first Winter—1879-80—as mild as it was, more than one hundred refugees were found with frozen feet fingers. Five were frozen to death coming through the Indian Territory with their teams. Through faithful agents, with supplies forwarded from other States, and even from friends in England in response to appeals sent out by Elizabeth L. Comstock, very many sufferers were relieved. The goods from England were forwarded mostly by James Clark, of Street. Over seventy thousand dollars' worth of supplies have passed through my hands for the relief of the refugees between September, 1879, when I commenced working for them, and March, 1881 Thirteen thousand dollars of this amount came from England, having been sent by Friends or Quakers Besides money, we received new goods, as follows,

Warm, new blankets, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000
New garments for women and girls, . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,000
New garments for men and boys, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
New garments for babies and small children, . . . . . . . 5,000
New knitted socks and hose, five hundred dozen pairs, . . 6,000
Large quantity of sheets, pillow-cases, bed-quilts,
towels etc, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
Queensware—Six large crates, one hundred and nineteen
dozen plates in each, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,568
Cups and saucers, nearly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000
Bowls and mugs, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
Platters, pitchers, and chamber wares, . . . . . . . . . . 3,500
Scissors, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000
Sets of knives and forks, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
Spoons, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,000
Needles, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,000
Knitting needles, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,500
Rags, with sewing materials, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,500
Papers of pins, six hundred and fifty dozen, and tape, 350, 1,000
Tin-cups and basins, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000
Bed-ticks, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500
Wash-dishes and pans, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000
Woolen dresses for women and girls, valued at . . . . . . $1,680
New overcoats for men and boys, valued at . . . . . . . . $650
Three whole bolts of Welch flannel (seventy-two yards each) $150
Two bolts heavy broadcloth, for overcoats, valued at . . . $144
Women's cloaks and shawls, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . $2,250
New red flannel, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $150
Muslins, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $150
Gray flannel and three hundred pairs mittens, valued at . $500
Buttons, hooks and eyes, cotton thread, silk, etc., . . . $500
New pieces goods, chiefly cotton, valued at . . . . . . . $5,000

Over ninety thousand dollars in money and supplies were distributed by the Kansas Relief Association, until it was disbanded in May, 1881, and its head-quarters removed to Southern Kansas, where thousands of these Southern emigrants are congregated. That locality is more favorable to cotton raising. Many of the refugees know but little of other business; hence the necessity for an agricultural, industrial, and educational institute, of which Elizabeth L. Comstock is the founder. At the present date (August, 1881) eight thousand dollars are invested. This includes the Homestead Fund. To meet the crying need of this people she, in connection with her daughter, Caroline DeGreen, are untiring in their efforts to establish a permanent or systematized work. They have established this much needed institution on four hundred acres of good land, which is tilled by colored people, who receive pay for their work in provision, clothing, or money until they can purchase cheap land for their own homes.

It has been no small task to disburse wisely the large supplies sent from every Northern State and England in various portions of the State of Kansas. It has been done through the instrumentality of self-sacrificing men and women. The noble women of Topeka did their full share. They districted the city, appointed a large investigating committee, and gave tickets calling for the articles most needed in the families found in a suffering condition. By this plan impositions were avoided.

While we have entered bitter complaints against our Southern ex-slave States, we ought to call to mind many persecutions endured by the opponents of slavery in our own States of the North. I have still in remembrance the many mobs to which abolitionists were exposed for discussing their views. I have not forgotten the burning shame and disgrace upon our whole North because of the treatment it allowed to an earnest Christian philanthropist, Prudence Crandall, of Windham County, Connecticut. She opened a school in Canterbury Green for girls, and was patronized by the best families, not only of that town, but of other counties and States. Among those who sought the advantages of her school was a colored girl. But Prudence was too thorough a Quaker to regard the request of bitter prejudice on the part of her other patrons to dismiss her colored pupil. But she did not wait for them to execute their threat to withdraw their children. She sent them home. Then she advertised her school as a boarding school for young ladies of color.

The people felt insulted, and held indignation meetings and appointed committees to remonstrate with her. But she stood by her principles regardless of their remonstrance. The excitement in that town ran high. A town meeting was called to devise means to remove the nuisance. In 1833 Miss Crandall opened her school against the protest of an indignant populace. Another town meeting was called, at which it was resolved, "That the establishment of a rendezvous, falsely denominated a school, was designed by its projectors as the theater to promulgate their disgusting theory of amalgamation and their pernicious sentiments of subverting the Union. These pupils were to have been congregated here from all quarters under the false pretense of educating them, but really to scatter fire-brands, arrows, and death among brethren of our own blood."

I well remember the voice of more than seven thousand, even at that day, who had never bowed the knee to the Baal of slavery that was raised in favor of the course pursued by the noble woman. Against one of these young colored girls the people were about to enforce an old vagrant law, requiring her to give security for her maintenance on penalty of being whipped on the naked body. Thus they required her to return to her home in Providence. Canterbury did its best to drive Prudence from her post. Her neighbors refused to give her fresh water from their wells, though they knew their own sons had filled her well with stable refuse. Her father was threatened with mob-violence. An appeal was sent to their Legislature, and that body of wise men devised a wicked enactment which they called law, which was brought to bear upon her parents on this wise: An order was sent to her father, in substance, as follows: "Mr. Crandall, if you go to visit your daughter you are to be fined one hundred dollars for the first offense, two hundred dollars for the second offense, doubling the amount every time. Mrs. Crandall, if you go there you will be fined, and your daughter, Almira, will be fined, and Mr. May,—and those gentlemen from Providence [Messrs. George and Henry Benson], if they come here, will be fined at the same rate. And your daughter, the one that has established the school for colored females, will be taken up the same way as for stealing a horse or for burglary. Her property will not be taken, but she will be put in jail, not having the Liberty of the yard. There is no mercy to be shown about it."

Soon after this Miss Crandall was arrested and taken to jail for an alleged offense. Her trial resulted in an acquittal, but her establishment was persecuted by every conceivable insult. She and her school were shut out from attendance at the Congregational Church, and religious services held in her own house were interrupted by volleys of rotten eggs and other missiles. At length the house was set on fire, but the blaze was soon extinguished.

In 1834, on September 9th, just as the family was retiring for the night, a body of men with iron bars surrounded the house, and simultaneously beat in the windows and doors. This shameful outrage was more than they could endure. Prudence Crandall was driven at last to close her interesting school and send her pupils home. Then another town meeting was held, a sort of glorification, justifying themselves, and praising their Legislature for passing the law for which they asked. All this abominable outrage I well remember, and am glad to see it called up in Scribner's Magazine for December, 1880. A scathing denunciation of the outrage was published in the Boston Liberator, edited by William Lloyd Garrison.

Prudence Crandall did more for the cause of freedom by her persistence in the "Higher Law" doctrine of eternal right than the most eloquent antislavery lecturer could have accomplished in molding public sentiment of the whole North. Her name became a household word in thousands of Northern homes. When we see the changes forty and fifty years have wrought in the North, surely we may look forward in strong faith for like changes to take place over the South. It may take longer, but come it will.