After crossing the Missouri River I visited some of the principal settlements in the Territory, such as Atchison, Leaven worth, Lawrence and Topeka.  Lawrence, Topeka and Manhattan were settlements made by men from free States, and with an eye single to making Kansas a free State.  There was no town located on the Missouri River, and no settlement made in the counties bordering on the Missouri River, that were properly free State settlements.  I thought this was a mistake.  These counties had by far the largest population, and as these counties would go, the Territory would go; and I thought that no considerations of personal danger ought to hinder, that these counties should have respectable settlements of avowed Free State men among them.

What is now the city of Atchison was then a small village that was being built among—­the cottonwood trees on the banks of the Missouri River, about twenty miles below St. Joseph, and the same distance above Fort Leavenworth.  It had been named after the notable David R. Atchison, who had been a Senator from Missouri, and acting Vice-President of the United States.  D. R. Atchison and Gen. B. F. Stringfellow had at this time won a national notoriety in this struggle now going on in Kansas; and both were leading members in the Atchison town company.  Dr. Stringfellow was deputed to act as editor-in-chief of the Squatter Sovereign, a paper at that time started in Atchison; but the editor was Robert S. Kelly.  Bob Kelly, as he was popularly called, was a born leader among such a population as at that time filled Western Missouri.  The towns along the Missouri River were the outfitting points for that immense overland freighting business, that was at that time carried on across the western plains, to Santa Fe in Mexico and to Salt Lake, Oregon and California; and here congregated a multitude of that wild, lawless, law-defying and law-breaking mob of men, that accompanied these expeditions, and were the habitues of these western plains, or were among the gold seekers of California.

Bob Kelly was left an orphan at an early age, and was from his youth surrounded with such a population.  In person he was handsome as an Apollo, broad-shouldered and muscular, with fair complexion and blue eyes, and was the natural chief of the dangerous men that were drawn to him by his personal magnetism.  Moreover, he possessed so much native eloquence, and such an ability to make passionate appeals, as made him a fit person to fire the hearts of these men to deeds of violence,

I obtained a claim to 160 acres of land, twelve miles from Atchison, and on the banks of the Stranger Creek.  This claim I would be at liberty to buy, at government price, if I should continue to live on it until it should come into market.  My nearest neighbor was Caleb May, a Disciple, and a squatter, from the other side of the river.  Bro.  May was in his way as much a character as Bob Kelly.  He gloried, like John Randolph, of Roanoke, in being descended