Our gunpowder moderator cut the matter short by saying, “It is moved that Butler be tarred and feathered and receive thirty-nine lashes.”  A majority said “Aye,” though a number of voices said “No.”  The moderator said, “The affirmative has it; Butler has to be tarred and feathered and whipped.”  I began to speculate how that sort of thing would work as far north as the latitude of Kansas.  There was a good deal of whispering about the house.  I saw dark, threatening and ominous looks in the crowd.  The moderator again came forward, and, in an altered voice, said:  “It is moved that the last part of the sentence be rescinded." It was rescinded, and I was given into the hands of my South Carolina overseers to be tarred and feathered.  They muttered and growled at this issue of the matter.  They said, “If we had known it would come out in this way, we would have let shoot Butler at the first.  He would have done it quicker than a flash.”  One little, sharp-visaged, dark-featured South Carolinian, who seemed to be the leader of the gang, was particularly displeased.  With bitter curses he said, “I am not come all the way from South Carolina, spending so much money to do things up in such milk-and-water style as this.”

They stripped me naked to my waist, covered my body with tar, and for the want of feathers applied cotton.  Having appointed a committee of seven to certainly hang me the next time I should come into Atchison, they tossed my clothes into my buggy, put me therein, accompanied me to the outskirts of the town, and sent me naked out upon the prairie.  It was a cold, bleak day.  I adjusted my attire about me as best I could, and hastened to rejoin my wife and little ones on the banks of the Stranger Creek.  It was a sorrowful meeting after so long a parting, still we were very thankful that, under the favor of a good Providence, it had fared no worse with us all.

Many will ask now, as they have asked already, what is the true and proper cause of all these troubles I have had in Atchison?  I have told the world already; I can only repeat my own words.  I have said, The head and front of my offending hath this extent, no more:  I had spoken among my neighbors favorably to making Kansas a free State, and said in the office of the Squatter Sovereign, “I am a Free-soiler, and intend to vote for Kansas to be a free State.”

Still it will be regarded as incredible that a man should receive such treatment for uttering such words as I report myself to have uttered.  The matter is plain enough when the facts are understood.

Prior to August 17, 1855, there was no Free-soil party organized in Atchison county—­perhaps not in the whole Territory of Kansas.  Free-soilers did not know their own strength, and were disposed to be prudent; some were timid.  Here in Atchison county we determined that if the Border Ruffians were resolved to drive matters to a bloody issue, the responsibility of doing so should rest wholly with themselves.