The writer will say to the reader that Gov.  Walker, an ex-Senator from Mississippi, and the ablest Governor Kansas ever had, admitted afterwards that this reasoning of the Kansas squatters was perfectly correct.  But however this might be, here was a patent fact.  Here was Col.  Sumner with his United States dragoons, and he was a man to obey orders; and what were we going to do about it?  Should we fight, or should we not fight?  The writer submitted the following resolution: 

Resolved, That this Convention expresses its determination not to resist the United States troops.

The resolution was carried, and a committee was sent to Col.  Sumner to inform him of its adoption.  His answer was one to draw the hearts of the people to himself:  “I knew,” said he, “that you were loyal to the old flag.”

Our readers will be incredulous that such a resolution should be needed, or that there should be any division of sentiment as touching its adoption.  It is for this reason we call this incident up.  It is that the reader may understand how strained was the state of feeling of many of the Free State men.  They had spent the past months fighting, and they, in their own minds, associated the United States troops with the oppressors of Kansas Free State men.

When Mr. Sumner went into the Legislative hall to disperse the Legislature, he spoke as tenderly as a woman.  He said:  “Gentlemen, this is the most painful act of my life But I must obey orders, and you must disperse.”  When he wheeled his dragoons to march away the boys cheered Col.  Sumner.  They cheered the old flag and the United States soldiers, but they gave such groans for the Lecompton Legislature as, it was said, frightened the dragoons’ horses.

There was now no further cause that the writer should tarry longer, and he immediately mounted his horse and rode towards home, with a heart heavy with the thought of all the distempers that had come on unhappy Kansas.

CHAPTER XVII.

We have already told how the campaign was opened, in the spring of 1856, in Atchison county, in a letter which we at that time addressed to the editor of the Herald of Freedom.  This paper was printed at Lawrence, on the printing press destroyed by the “Law and Order” mob.  The weekly issue in which this letter was published was passing through the press on the day the town was sacked, one side having been printed, the other side being yet blank.  Then the Border Ruffians came into the town, broke up the press and threw it into the river, and tumbled the half printed weekly issue into the street.  The above-named article was on the printed side, and was read by the whole crowd, and they were terribly angry.  If the writer had been in town he certainly would not have escaped alive, if this mob could have found him.  As it was, their curses would not be edifying reading in a Christian newspaper.