Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/560

 550 JK H. Isely that shaped the free-state programme ; it was Robuison that stood as the chosen leader of the band of men and women as heroic as the founders of Plymouth and as brave as the farmers who stood in line at Lexington. In August, 1854, the present town-site of Lawrence was established. During that fall seven companies were sent from New England ; By June of the following year eleven more entered the promised land. These companies consisted each of from ten to more than two hundred persons. These early set- tlers were sober, industrious, God-fearing ; they generall_- came un- armed, interested only in peaceable husbandry and in the estab- lishment of a free state. The easiest approach to the territor}- was by steamboat through Missouri. As boatload after boatload of detested Yankees and Northern settlers passed up the tawny river, the naturally hospitable Missouri slaveholder was surprised, astounded, then disturbed ; and as the volume of Northern emigration swelled in numbers, his soul was filled with fury and bitter hatred. Even at the present day different sections of the L^nion seriously misjudge each other ; but in 1854 an impassable gulf intervened between free and slave sec- tions. They could never fairly comprehend each other's motives. To the slave-owner the " peculiar institution " was God-ordained ; it was inextricably bound up with his whole industrial and social system. By what principle did these " pauper " laborers and abo- lition fanatics dare to approach the borders of western Missouri and disturb the already unstable equilibrium of a slave community? Had it not been agreed that Nebraska should be a free state and that Kansas should be a slave state? Was not this a fair propo- sition? If threats and bluster would not deter these Northern in- terlopers, then more serious measures must be employed. In June, 1854, before a single Eastern colony had set foot on Kansas soil, the PlaWc County Argus declared that they [Northern emigrants] must be met, if need be, with the rifle. We must meet them at the very threshold and scourge them back to their caverns of darkness. They have made the issue, and it is for us to meet and repel them, even at the point of the bayonet. Prompt steps were taken to put this programme into practice. In October. 1854, an unsuccessful effort was made to drive Robin- son and his associates from Lawrence.' In November the first territorial election was held. Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine^ armed Missourians crossed the border and elected Whitfield dele- gate to Congress. In the meantime Reeder was appointed governor. 'Frank W. Blackmar, The Life of Charles Robinson (Topeka, 1902), p. 118. - Leverett W. Spring, Kansas (Boston, 1885). p. 41.