“No; I have not written a line to the Tribune since I came to Kansas.”

By this time a great crowd had gathered around, and each man took his turn in cross-questioning me, while I replied, as best I could, to this storm of questions, accusations and invectives.  We went over the whole ground.  We debated every issue that had been debated in Congress.  They alleged the joint ownership the South had with the North in the common Territories of the nation; that slaves are property, and that they had a natural and inalienable right to take their property into any part of the national Territory, and there to protect it by the strong right arm of power, while I urged the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and that under it free State men have a right to come into the Territory, and by their votes to make it a free State, if their votes will make it so.

At length an old man came near to me, and dropping his voice to a half-whisper, said in a confidential tone:  “N-e-ow, Mr. Butler, I want to advise you as a friend, and for your own good, when you get away, just keep away.”

I knew this man was a Yankee, for I am a Yankee myself.  His name was Ira Norris.  He had been given an office in Platte county, Mo., and must needs be a partisan for the peculiar institution.  I gave my friend Norris to understand that I would try to attend to my own business.

Others sought to persuade me to promise to leave the country and not come back.  Then when no good result seemed to come from our talk, I said to them:  “Gentlemen, there is no use in keeping up this debate any longer; if I live anywhere, I shall live in Kansas.  Now do your duty as you understand it, and I will do mine as I understand it.  I ask no favors of you.”

Then the leaders of this business went away by themselves and held a consultation.  Of course I did not know what passed among them, but Dr. Stringfellow afterwards made the following statement to a gentleman who was getting up a history of Kansas: 

A vote was taken upon the mode of punishment which ought to be accorded to him, and to this day it is probably known but to few persons that a decided verdict of death by hanging was rendered; and furthermore, that Mr. Kelley, the teller, by making false returns to the excited mob, saved Mr. Butler’s life.  Mr. Kelley is now a resident of Montana, and volunteered this information several years ago, while stopping at St. Joe with the former senior editor of the Squatter Sovereign, Dr. J. H. Stringfellow.  At the time the pro-slavery party decided to send Mr. Butler down the Missouri River on a raft, Dr. Stringfellow was absent as a member of the Territorial Legislature.