Let future emissaries from the north Beware.
Our Hemp crop is sufficient to reward all such scoundrels.’
“They threatened to shoot me if I pulled the flag down. I pulled it down, cut the flag off the flag staff, made a paddle out of the flag staff and ultimately got ashore about six miles below.”
The mob was considerate enough to provide Mr. Butler a loaf of bread and permitted him to take his baggage on board, afterwards escorting him down the river for some distance.
When Mr. Butler landed he returned overland to his home near Pardee. On April 30, 1856, he again ventured to make his appearance in Atchison, where he says: “I spoke to no one in town save two merchants of the place with whom I had business transactions since my first arrival in the territory. Having remained only a few minutes I went to my buggy to resume my journey when I was assaulted by Robert S. Kelley, junior editor of the Squatter Sovereign; was dragged into a grocery and there surrounded by a company of South Carolinians who are reported to have been sent out by a Southern Emigrant Aid Society. After exposing me to every sort of indignity they stripped me to the waist, covered my body with tar and then for the want of feathers applied cotton wool, having appointed a committee of three to certainly hang me the next time I should come to Atchison. They tossed my clothes into the buggy, put me therein, accompanying me to the suburbs of the town and sent me naked upon the prairie. I adjusted my attire about me as best I could and hastened to rejoin my wife and two little sons on the banks of Stranger creek. It was rather a sorrowful meeting after so long a parting.”
The above incident gives some idea of the prevailing sentiment in Atchison county during the period beginning in 1854 and ending in 1857.
There was little chance of Free State settlers to avoid trouble except by discreet silence. It would not be just, however, to fail to disclose the fact that the Free State men also had their secret organizations. The Kansas Legion was a military organization for defensive purposes only. Its members were organized into companies, battalions and regiments and were officered and armed with rifles and pistols sent from the East. These organizations were the natural result of the secret pro-slavery organizations of Missouri and were known to exist to protect the Free State settlers against the attacks of the Blue Lodges, Sons of the South, and the Social Bands.
A man by the name of Pat Laughlin became a member of the Kansas Legion and was very active in organizing companies of that organization at different points in the territory. He subsequently became a traitor to his associates and gave out information to the enemy, thereby creating great indignation among his former friends whom he had betrayed. Later Laughlin and Samuel Collins, of Doniphan county, became engaged in a fierce altercation and friends of both parties to the dispute were present and armed. Laughlin shot Collins and killed him on the spot and was slightly wounded himself. This affair occurred October 25, 1855. No attempt was made by the appointed peace officers of the territory to bring the guilty parties participating in the Pardee Butler outrage or the murder of Collins to justice. Shortly after Laughlin recovered from his wound he secured a position in a store in Atchison and lived there for many years.
This condition of affairs could not long exist without an open rupture between the two opposing forces and from this time on there was a succession of personal encounters of wide significance, and in addition there was the war along the border in which Atchison county played a conspicuous but not a glorious part. The activities here at that crucial period were largely in the interest of the pro-slavery forces. It was at this juncture that the immortal John Brown appeared on the scene to begin his work of driving the slavery advocates from Kansas and making it and the Nation free. His first appearance among the Free State men was December 7, 1855, but he had been in the territory several months before that with his four sons. John Brown did not reach Atchison county during his stormy career in Kansas. The nearest he ever came was in 1857 when he passed through Jackson county with a party of slaves which he was taking from Missouri to Nebraska for the purpose of setting them free. In the historical edition of the Atchison Daily Globe of July 16, 1894, there appears the following short reference to this excursion:
“In 1857 John Brown made a trip from Missouri into Nebraska with a party of slave negroes which he intended to set free. His route was through Jackson county, Kansas, and up by where the town of Centralia now stands. A lot of the pro-slavery enthusiasts in Atchison heard of the affair and went out to intercept Brown. They came up with him near Centralia, but Brown had heard of their coming and captured the entire party. One of the men in the pro-slavery party was named George Ringo; afterwards he soldiered with Dwight Merlin in the Thirteenth Kansas and often talked of the trip to Merwin around their camp fires. Ringo says that James T. Herford was another member of the pro-slavery party, and a man named Cook was another. John Brown looked at Cook critically after the capture and asked his name. Cook said his name was Thomas Porter. “I believe you are lying. I believe your name is Cook and if I was certain of it I would kill you,” Brown said. Cook was one of the men accused of killing Brown’s son at Osawatomie, but Brown was not certain of his identity and let him go with the others. George Ringo says that Brown held a prayer meeting in his camp every evening and asked a blessing at every meal.