Having completed my business in St. Louis I turned my face toward my old field of labor in the “Military Tract,” via the Illinois River.  The reader will believe that my reflections were full of anxieties.  What would the brethren say of me?  Were my prospects blighted from this time forward?

CHAPTER IX.

The brethren in Illinois were at the first amazed at what they heard, and did not know what to think or say.  Before they could make up their minds, the following editorial appeared in the Schuyler County Democrat, published at Rushville: 

ELDER PARDEE BUTLER,

The gentleman who was placed on a raft in the Missouri River, with a proper uniform for a Northern fanatic, is in Rushville.  We saw handbills posted around town stating that he would hold a meeting in the Christian Church.  We are informed he will deliver a series of lectures, in which, of course, he will give vent to his indignation toward the people of Kansas, Judge Douglas and the Administration.  We thought Schuyler county was the last place which a Northern fanatic would visit for sympathy.  We hope that those that go to hear his lectures, which differ with him in their sentiments, will not interrupt him or give him any pretext by which he could denounce our citizens.

To the above notice of myself I made the following reply: 

[For the Prairie Telegraph.]

MESSRS.  EDITORS:  Sirs—­I find the above notice of myself in the last issue of the Schuyler Democrat.

While in Kansas I diligently worked six days of the week, and on Lord’s day spoke to my neighbors, not in reference to affairs in Kansas, but in reference to our common interest in a better and heavenly country.  I do not know that I indicated my political proclivities, in any word or allusion, on any such occasion, But I did, in private conversations with my neighbors, avow my intention to vote for Kansas to be a free State, and gave my reasons for so doing. This was my only offence.

What must you think of yourself, sir, in this notice you take of this transaction?  And you pretend to be a conservator of public morals!  If there is in town a clergyman that will consent to teach you a few lessons upon the items of justice and gentlemanly behavior, I suggest it may be to your advantage to put yourself under his tuition.  You may perhaps learn that it is neither just nor gentlemanly gratuitously to insult a man, because you have surmised that he will show some resentment at the ruffianism of a Kansas mob, with which you seem to sympathize.

Since I came into Illinois I have steadily declined to make any statement of this affair in any public address.  Still it is perhaps due to the world to know some additional facts.  How the mob deliberated among themselves . . .