Showing posts with label Free State Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free State Party. Show all posts

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Amos A. Lawrence to Franklin Pierce, December 10, 1855

[December 10, 1855.]

From letters which I have seen from the men who exert the most influence in Kansas, and who represent the Free State party there (a party comprising three fourths of the inhabitants), there has been no intention of resisting the execution of the laws of the United States by the proper officers; nor can any circumstances arise which will induce them to resist, or even to question the authority of the United States Executive. They will not recognize the late legislature, nor its enactments, nor its officers.

I believe you do not overrate the intensity of feeling on this subject in the Territory and in the adjoining States; nor the magnitude of the danger which now threatens the peace of the country from this cause. Preparations are making, on the one side for attack, and on the other for defence; and if the latter proves ineffectual, we shall, within a few months, see what never has been seen in this country, and what never can be seen but once — an internal civil and servile war. If future history should trace this back to the repeal of the compromise of 1820, your administration, otherwise so honorable, would receive the condemnation of posterity.

But though we have many national sins to be atoned for, I trust that the same kind Providence which has averted previous dangers to our Union will avert this, and save us from a great national calamity.

SOURCE: William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence, p. 104-5

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Henry H. Williams to John Brown, October 12, 1857

Osawatomie, Oct. 12, 1857.
Captain Brown.

Dear Sir, — Learning that there is a messenger in town from you, I will take the opportunity to drop you a line. We are just through with the October election, and as far as this county is concerned it went off bright. This was owing in a great measure to our thorough military organization here, and the well-known reputation that our boys have for fighting. There were about four hundred and twenty-five votes cast in this county: about three hundred and fifty Free-State. I have a company organized here of about eighty men, and we drilled twice a week for several weeks previous to election, which no doubt had a wholesome effect upon the borderers. Our company is a permanent institution. We have sent on to St. Louis for three drums and two fifes. We are very poorly supplied with arms. However, I understand that you have some arms with you which you intend to bring into the Territory. I hope that you will not forget the boys here, a considerable number of whom have smelt gunpowder, and have had their courage tried on several occasions. I do not like to boast, but I think we have some of the best fighting stock here that there is in the Territory. Speaking of arms reminds me that there was a box containing five dozen revolvers sent to you at Lawrence last fall to be distributed by you to your boys. K. and W. — two renegade Free-State men from here — went up to Lawrence about that time, told a pitiful tale, and said that they were your boys; and the committee that had the revolvers in charge gave them each one, and a Sharpe's rifle. A few days after, I was in Lawrence, and applied to the committee to know if they intended to distribute the revolvers; if they did, that I would like to have one. They refused, however, to let me have one, because forsooth I could not tell as big a yarn about what I had done for the Free-State cause as K. and W. could. I have since learned that the committee have distributed the revolvers to the “Stubs” and others about Lawrence, with the understanding that they are to return them at your order. But I think it is doubtful if you get them. There has been plenty of Sharpe's rifles and other arms distributed at Manhattan and other points remote from the Border, where they never have any disturbances, and a Border Ruffian is a curiosity; while along the Border here, where we are liable to have an outbreak at any time, we have had no arms distributed at all.

Two or three weeks before election I visited the Border counties south of this, and organized a company of one hundred men on the Little Osage, and a company on Sugar Creek; also at Stanton and on the Pottawatomie above this point. According to the election returns, we have done much better in this and the Border counties south than they have in the Border counties north of this point. The boys would like to see you and shake you by the hand once more. Nearly all would unite in welcoming you back here; those that would not, you have nothing to fear from in this locality. The sentiment of the people and the strength and energy of the Free-State party here exercise a wholesome restraint upon those having Border Ruffian proclivities.

Yours as of old for the right,
HENRy H. Williams.1
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1 This letter was addressed “To Captain John Brown, Tabor, Fremont County, Iowa,” and among Brown's papers was accompanied with the following memorandum of the distribution made at Lawrence of the arms which Mr. Williams mentions, and which are the same spoken of by Mr. White in his testimony on page 342.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 364-6