him, clung the more loyally to his wife, as though her Christian excellencies would save them both.  At her request he invited me to preach a sermon at his house, and I consented.  But when the South Carolinians in Atchison heard of it, they sent an insulting message to Barnett that they would come and shoot me.  Barnett’s Southern blood was all on fire.  Who were these men that had come to Atchison county to ride rough-shod over him in his own house?  He sent a message equally defiant back to them, that if they did come he and his neighbors would shoot them.  But there was one man in the county that needed to have no nervousness as touching his reputation for personal bravery.  That man was Caleb May; and he interposed and said:  “Let us wait patiently for more peaceful times.  The Son of man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”  But this adjourned without date our meetings.

One incident must illustrate the strained and peculiar condition of affairs in Atchison county.  Archimedes Speck lived on the Stranger Creek, several miles below the residence of the writer.  He was a man of magnificent physical development, and was a pronounced Free State man.  His wife’s people originally came from North Carolina, and she was proud of her Southern blood; and the husband and wife did not come to Kansas to be run over by anybody.  Yet they were eminently peaceable people, if let alone.  These gentlemen in Atchison had determined to disarm the Free State people living in the country; and Mr. Speck, being a Free State man, open and avowed, they called on him, but he was not at home.  They therefore asked his wife:  “Has your husband a rifle, musket, or fire-arms of any kind?” She brought out an old Queen Anne’s musket, as rusty and worn as if it had been in service ever since the Revolutionary war.  But while they were inspecting the rusty old thing, whether it was worth carrying away, she took from a closet a bran span new double-barrel fowling-piece, and, putting her finger on the trigger, she said, “Now, sir, if you do not lay down that musket and leave the house, I will shoot you.”  If this gentleman had suddenly roused up a female tiger, he would not have been more terror-stricken than when he found himself facing this woman, blazing with scorn and irrepressible resentment, and he concluded he did not want the rusty old musket, and did not ask to examine the other one.

Mr. S. had threatened to flog one of his Pro-slavery neighbors who had insulted him, as he alleged, and the man went to Atchison and made oath that he was in fear of his life, and the Sheriff was sent out with a warrant to arrest Mr. Speck.  But at this time Leavenworth county was full of murder and bloodshed; guerrilla parties, both Free State and Pro-slavery, were fighting in many parts of the Territory, and Lane had returned, and was leading the Free State men in this warfare, and had threatened with many oaths to wipe out Atchison, and there were rumors that he was already near at hand.  And so, to provide against all contingencies, the Sheriff was accompanied by a posse of forty armed men, who took with them a cannon which had been loaned to Atchison by the people of Missouri.