At length an old man came near to me, and dropping his voice to a half-whisper, said in a confidential tone: "N-e-ow, Mr. Butler, I want to advise you as a friend, and for your own good, when you get away, just keep away."
I knew this man was a Yankee, for I am a Yankee myself. His name was Ira Norris. He had been given an office in Platte county, Mo., and must needs be a partisan for the peculiar institution. I gave my friend Norris to understand that I would try to attend to my own business.
Others sought to persuade me to promise to leave the country and not come back. Then when no good result seemed to come from our talk, I said to them: "Gentlemen, there is no use in keeping up this debate any longer; if I live anywhere, I shall live in Kansas. Now do your duty as you understand it, and I will do mine as I understand it. I ask no favors of you."
Then the leaders of this business went away by themselves and held a consultation. Of course I did not know what passed among them, but Dr. Stringfellow afterwards made the following statement to a gentleman who was getting up a history of Kansas:
A vote was taken upon the mode of punishment which ought to be accorded to him, and to this day it is probably known but to few persons that a decided verdict of death by hanging was rendered; and furthermore, that Mr. Kelley, the teller, by making false returns to the excited mob, saved Mr. Butler's life. Mr. Kelley is now a resident of Montana, and volunteered this information several years ago, while stopping at St. Joe with the former senior editor of the Squatter Sovereign, Dr. J. H. Stringfellow. At the time the pro-slavery party decided to send Mr. Butler down the Missouri River on a raft, Dr. Stringfellow was absent as a member of the Territorial Legislature.
The crowd had now to be pacified and won over to an arrangement that should give me a chance for my life. A Mr. Peebles, a dentist from Lexington, Mo., who was working at the business of dentistry in Atchison, and himself a slave-holder, was put forward to do this work. He said: "My friends, we must not hang this man; he is not an Abolitionist, he is what they call a Free-soiler. The Abolitionists steal our niggers, but the Free-soilers do not do this. They intend to make Kansas a free State by legal methods. But in the outcome of the business, there is not the value of a picayune of difference between a Free-soiler and an Abolitionist; for if the Free-soilers succeed in making Kansas a free State, and thus surround Missouri with a cordon of free States, our slaves in Missouri will not be worth a dime apiece. Still we must not hang this man; and I propose that we make a raft and send him down the river as an example."
And so to him they all agreed. Then the question came up, What kind of a raft shall it be? [1] Some said, "One log"; but the crowd decided it should be two logs fastened together. When the raft was completed I was ordered to take my place on it, after they had painted the letter R. on my forehead with black paint. This letter stood for Rogue. I had in my pocket a purse of gold, which I proffered to a merchant of the place, an upright business man, with the request that he would send it to my wife; but he declined to take it. He afterwards explained to me that he himself was afraid of the mob. They took a skiff and towed the raft out into the middle of the Missouri River. As we swung away from the bank, I rose up and said: "Gentlemen, if I am drowned I forgive you; but I have this to say to you: If you are not ashamed of your part in this transaction, I am not ashamed of mine. Good-by."
Floating down the river, alone and helpless, I had opportunity to look about me. I had noticed that they had put up a flag on my raft, but had paid no attention to it; now I looked at it and it charged me with stealing negroes; and it was thought by many to be no sin to shoot a "nigger thief." Down that flag must come; and then I remembered that they had said they would follow me down the river and shoot me if I did pull it down. The picture on the flag was that of a white man riding at full gallop, on horseback, with a negro behind him. The flag bore this inscription: "GREELEY TO THE RESCUE: I HAVE A NIGGER. THE REV. MR. BUTLER, AGENT FOR THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD."
This flag I pulled down, cut off the flag with my pen-knife, and made a paddle of the flag staff, which was a small sapling which they had cut out of the brush, and was forked at the upper end. Between these forks they had carefully sewed this flag with twine, and this part of the canvas I left and made it serve as the blade of my paddle; and so in due time I paddled to the Kansas shore. The river was rapid, and there were in the river heaps of drift-wood, called "rack-heaps," dangerous places into which the water rushed with great violence; but from these I was mercifully saved, and though I could not swim, I landed a few miles below Atchison without harm or accident, and made my way to Port William, a small town about twelve miles down the river.