No man living could have done the bloody work better to the slaveholders' liking. The propaganda sustained him, and boldly declared that he would succeed and be re-elected. But Missouri would not and did not re-elect him; whereas, without the blast of the slavery curse upon him, no man could have been his competitor. Hence every change was

one notch further down for the border leader.

When the border war was over, and Geary had so effectually circumvented and defeated him, he went down to the bottom in a plunging lurch, and Woodson, Calhoun, Reid, Stringfellow, Sheriff Jones, and a host of smaller fellows, went rattling into obscurity like the deadened forest in the winter wind. Soon Geary declared a peace. Atchison was out of office, and his occupation was gone. He could not further serve the bad cause, and to be true to their unvarying ingratitude to a wornout servant, or broken leader, they were as unmindful of him as they were of Pierce, Marcy, or Benton. Oblivion came to him almost before he died, and thousands of pretty well-informed people know little of the great border leader, and there are thousands of his own Missourians who do not know that such a man as Atchison ever lived. Some people believed during their time that he and Jim Lane "were well matched antagonists;" but wild, uncouth, and vicious as Lane no doubt became in a hand-to-hand conflict for years, it stands to his credit that he always fought for the rights of his fellow-men.

The war made Lane and many such the wild, daring, reckless, and adventurous partisans of the border, who took up the business of hunting and killing men, because they were hunted and killed themselves. Atchison, on the other hand, was a capable man, ruined and obliterated by the consequences of the murderous warfare he planned and executed. He remains the undisputed leader of a war against helpless men, women, and children, that he might sell other men, women, and children, and in the progress of it pillage,

devastation, and murder were not only common, but the most of it.

Following this, the Legislature elected under the Topeka Constitution met at that place on the 6th of January, 1857, and organized next day. The United States marshal arrested the President of the Senate, the Speaker of their Assembly, and several prominent members, who were taken to Tecumseh, charged with "having taken upon themselves the office and trust of the Legislators for the State of Kansas, without lawful deputation or appointment.” The Houses, thus left without a quorum for business, met next day, and adjourned to meet in June following. Shortly afterwards a Territorial Legislature, made up altogether of pro-slavery men, chosen in an election by pro-slavery men, in which free State men did not participate because of illegality, assembled at Lecompton.

They here began the celebrated contest of the Lecompton Constitution. They passed the act providing for the election of delegates to a Convention which was to frame and submit a State Constitution.

About the same time, in January, 1857, the House of Representatives at Washington passed an act declaring all laws, resolutions, and enactments of the Lecompton Assembly, as they were denominated, null and void, by reason that they were cruel and oppressive, and that the said Legislature was not elected by the legal voters of Kansas, but forced upon them by non-residents, as declared upon the testimony of hundreds of witnesses.

This act clearly set forth the feeling and force of public sentiment in the free States; but it failed to pass the Senate, which was still strongly pro-slavery. The Senate, too, failed to confirm Judge Harrison, of Kentucky, who had been appointed successor of the thin-headed and narrow-minded Lecompte, who, by reason of this failure to confirm his successor, remained the chief judge of the

Kansas Territorial Court. This was in accord with the desire of Buchanan's Administration, learning which, Governor Geary resigned and left the Territory, not only disgusted, but wrought up to all his powers, ready for work elsewhere. He had great influence in his home in Pennsylvania, where the next year Buchanan's Administration got a much better knowledge of the man. He and Thad. Stevens and a few other such leaders brought on the revolution that almost obliterated the long-time powerful Democratic party in that State, where, as far as men know, the party has not recovered to this day.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

N Buchanan's inauguration he formed a Cabinet and instituted an Administration as fully committed to the service of the slave-power, led and managed, as Pierce's outgoing one had been, by the daring cabal of the Southern pro-slavery leaders. Buchanan and his chief man of affairs and reliance, Jere Black, were surely not as zealous pro-slavery men as Jefferson Davis and Alex. Stephens, if they had been untrammeled; but while in office, in every visible way they seemed, as far as their capacities and willingness permitted to be, as docile and bidable servants of slavery as the latter. When elected, Buchanan was a soured, disappointed old man, who had been neglected and forgotten so long, and sent away so much, that, when he gained his ambitious desire, the channels of his blood ran low. As a statesman, metaphorically, he was cold even in July. Black, on the other hand, could fire up to fever heat on an "Abolitionist" any time, even in January.

Thad. Stevens made them his prey, under whose hands they were as green cheese beneath the paring-knife of the German Burghers, whose horror of slavery was next to their hope of a better future. The story of what Geary saw and did on the border, and how those bandits were sustained by their own citizen, Buchanan, told in any town or village, and retold to the President, as imprudent persons were constantly doing, would throw the poor, shivering old man into a chill and paroxysm any day, and Abolitionist-hating Jere into a wrath and fever that consumed his senses for a week. Nevertheless, the story

told turned Pennsylvania, with fifty thousand votes, against Jefferson Davis Democracy; and it is still a wonder in the Pennsylvania hills that such things happened, that a State that should hold the treasured memory of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin must shiver and roast and argue over the descent of man, from those to Buchanan and Jere Black.

The civil war in Kansas was a bloody sacrifice. Hundreds had been slain, and thousands were to suffer on under as bad or worse inflictions of the power of human greed; for it is one of the truths of our being and tenure of life that tyrants and oppressors will usurp all available power, and grind men down as long as men will bear it. Hence God favors the nations and the men who fight and die, when need be, for their liberties; but he wants true, devoted, heroic men, and never a hypocrite. The fattened ones, sluggards in wealth and ease, nations as men, whether in one year or a thousand, all perish.

The Kansas Legislature, in 1859, when the excitement was over and the passions of men had subsided as much as could be in the ante-bellum period, created and empowered a non-partisan board to collect testimony concerning the ravages of their civil war. The board, after a careful investigation of all that was left to guide them, made an official report of all the facts and information available. These facts are accurate and reliable, most of which were given by present witnesses and the participants on both sides. They fixed the beginning of the war about November 1, 1855, and its termination about December 1, 1856. The entire loss and destruction of property, at a gross estimate, was over two million dollars. Half of this or more was taken from or expended by the people of Kansas. They reported four hundred and seventeen cases for payment in full or in part. Among the items are: Crops destroyed, over $37,000; buildings burned and destroyed, $78,000; horses taken or destroyed, $368,000; cattle taken or de