Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/64

54. Their freedom from that was perhaps caused by their lack of school and post office facilities common to frontiersmen, but bearing hardest against anti-slavery family life in slave States, so much so that the emigration movement was at this time rather away from than into the frontier slave States. These very families gathering to follow Cornelius Gilliam to Oregon had the getting away from the institution of slavery very generally as a motive. Yet, while they remained in Missouri, they had demonstrated their determination not to submit to organized power which to their minds was more repulsive than African slavery. Many of the very men who in 1843 selected P. H. Burnett as their leader to Oregon had followed Gilliam 's lead in the trouble arising between the Mormon settlement at Far West, Missouri, and the pioneer settlers previously located. As it is an admirable illustration of the character of the men who followed Burnett and Gilliam to Oregon later, I quote from Burnett's "Recollections of an Old Pioneer," page 59. Mr. Burnett, then residing at Liberty, Missouri, practicing law, was a member of an independent militia company at that place called the Liberty Blues, who .were ordered to the battle ground, where Captain Bogard's company and Patton's company of the Mormon Danite band met. Mr. B. says: "We were ready and were off before night, and marched some ten miles under General Doniphan. The next day we reached the scene of the conflict, and encamped in open oak wood next to the prairie that extended from that point to 'Far West.' * * * Among those who had fallen in with us was a lad of about eighteen, quite tall, green and awkward. He was dressed in thin clothing, and when put on guard was told by the officer not to let any one take his gun. He said: ' No one would get his gun. ' When the officer went around to relieve the guard this boy would not permit him to come near, presenting his gun with a most determined face. In vain the officer explained his purpose; the boy was inflexible and stood guard the remainder of the night, always at his post and always wide awake. The second night Doniphan's command were aroused from their sleep by the guards reporting the approach of a body supposed to be Mormons.