But if there was no public protest, there was plenty of it in private.  The men from the State of Missouri grew sick at heart.  It was a deep, unspoken, bitter and shame-faced feeling, for it was their old neighbors that had done this.

I often asked myself, Can it be hoped that an election can be held that shall fairly express the real sentiment of the people, if they allow themselves to be held down under such a reign of terror?

The prevalent sentiment of the squatters from Missouri was, “We will make Kansas a free white State; we will admit no negroes into it.”  These men regarded the negro as an enemy to themselves.  They said:  “We were born to the lowly lot of toil, and the negro has made labor a disgrace.  Neither ourselves nor our children have had opportunity for education, and the negro is the cause of it.  Moreover, an aristocracy at the South has assumed control of public affairs, and the negro is the cause of that.  Now we propose to make Kansas a free white State, and shut out the negro, who has been the cause of all our calamities.”

There was, however, a class of men among them that had pity for the negro.  I will repeat one story, as it was told me by Bro.  Silas Kirkham.  Bro.  Kirkham belongs to that family of Kirkhams so well known to our brethren in Southeastern Iowa.  Bro.  Kirkham was raised in a slave State.  He said:  “When I was a boy I had never thought of slavery as being wrong.  There was a black boy in the settlement named Jim.  Jim was so good-natured, faithful and well-behaved that we all liked him.  Jim married a black girl and they had twins—­boys—­bright, likely little fellows, and Jim’s wife and twin babies were all the treasure he had in the world.”

Bro.  Kirkham said:  “One day I found Jim in the woods, where he had been sent to split rails.  He was sitting down with his face buried in his hands, apparently asleep.  I thought I would crawl slyly up to him, and spring suddenly on him, and frighten him.  I did so, but Jim was not asleep at all, but lifted up his head with such a look of unutterable woe that I was frightened myself, and said:  ’Why, Jim, what is the matter?’ Jim cried out:  ‘O, my boys! my boys!  Massa sold my boys!’”

Bro.  Kirkham said:  “I have vowed everlasting enmity to an institution that will legalize such treatment of a human being.”

But while these ominous mutterings were heard in so many of the Kansas squatter cabins, little did the high and mighty Atchison Town Company, or the editorial staff of the Squatter Sovereign, or the puissant Territorial Legislature, reck that so soon they must take up the sad refrain of Cardinal Woolsey: 

    Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness! 
    This is the state of man:  To-day he puts forth
    The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
    And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
    The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
    And—­when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
    His greatness is a-ripening—­nips his root;
    And then he falls, as I do.