[Mound City, Kansas, November 20, 1860.]
In the winter of ’59, after the second expulsion of
Border-ruffians, a county meeting, duly advertised and largely attended,
composed mainly of Democrats and conservative men, Bob Mitchell himself among
them, passed a series of resolutions sustaining the jayhawkers, and condemning
to perpetual banishment those violent men, who had been forcibly expelled. The
resolutions passed unanimously, even Bob Mitchell voting in the affirmative.
In fact, it was plain to the common sense of every man that
if it had been necessary to drive them out, it was necessary to keep them
out. Such were their habits, and the violence of their character, that it were
vain to think of living with them on peaceable terms. Our “Free-state”
Democrats are, to-day, more venomous and less disposed to forgive and forget
than their Border-ruffian brethren.
Cowardly and sneaking, they are the men to plan the
schemes for assassination which they depend on the “Border-ruffians” to
execute. Striking in the dark, and keeping their names and numbers concealed,
they hoped to stampede the whole antislavery force of the territory Of the
existence of this “dark lantern fraternity,” we have incontestable evidence.
We are in possession not only of their plans, but even their
private signals, and, as in the case of More, we have evidence
sufficient to warrant handling several of them individually.
We have had several additions to our colored population
within the week, while several of our Democratic friends have left the country.
A friend observed to me yesterday: “The Democrats are leaving and the Black
Republicans are coming in.”
SOURCE: Preston Stearns, The Life and Public
Services of George Luther Stearns, p. 235-6
