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state men of the expected attack, and to hold themselves in readiness to come to the rescue. Arms, ammunition and provisions were collected from the vicinity and stored in the city. The Free State Hotel was a barrack for soldiers; pistols and guns lay on the mantle pieces, stood in the chimney corners; officers slept in their council rooms.

On the 4th of January the Executive Committee appointed a deputation, consisting of Messrs. Lane, Emery, Hunt, Goodin, Dickey and Holliday, to visit all the principal towns of the free States "to plead the cause of the people of Kansas, and convey and lay before Congress the Constitution of the State recently adopted." The Governors of the free States were addressed by the same committee and appealed to for aid. Governor Wright, of Indiana, responded at length, refusing any such assistance, on the ground that it would be derogatory to the principles of nonintervention, and that if the people of the Territory were aggrieved it was the duty of the President of the United States to redress them. But letters of sympathy and promises of aid came in abundance from other quarters. The protection of the general Government was invoked by the following letter to the President:

"LAWRENCE, K. T., January 21, 1856. "HON. FRANKLIN PIERCE, President of the United States: "SIR: We have authentic information that an overwhelming force of the citizens of Missouri are organized on the Border, amply supplied with artillery, for the avowed purpose of invading the Territory, demolishing our towns and butchering our unoffending free state citizens. We respectfully demand, on behalf of the citizens of Kansas, that the commandant of the United States troops in this vicinity, be instructed to interfere to prevent such an inhuman outRespectfully, "J. H. LANE, Chairman of Executive Committe, Kansas Territory. "C. ROBINSON, Chairman Executive Committee of Safety. "J. K. GOODIN,

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Secretary of Executive Committee, Kansas Territory. "GEORGE W. DEITZLER, Secretary of Committee of Safety."

In two days afterwards they addressed another letter to the same official, requesting him to issue his proclamation forbidding an invasion. The President, whose ear had already listened to other representations, numbered the free state men among the disturbers of the peace, and equally as guilty as the Border Ruffians, in the following proclamation:

"WHEREAS, Indications exist that public tranquillity and the supremacy of law in the Territory of Kansas, are endangered by the reprehensible acts, or purposes of persons, both within and without the same, who propose to control and direct its political organizations by force; it appearing that combinations have been formed therein to resist the execution of the Territorial laws, and thus, in effect, subvert by violence all present constitutional and legal authority; it also appearing that persons residing without this Territory, but near its borders, contemplate armed intervention in the affairs thereof; it also appearing that other persons, inhabitants of remote States, are collecting money and providing arms for the same purpose; and it further appearing that combinations in the Territory are endeavoring, by the agencies of emissaries and otherwise, to induce individual States of the Union to interfere in the affairs thereof in violation of the Constitution of the United States; and, whereas, all such plans for the determination of the future institutions of the Territory, if carried into action from or within the same, will constitute the fact of insurrection, and from without that of invasive aggression, and will in either case justify and require the forcible interposition of the whole power of the General Government, as well to maintain the laws of the Territory as those of the Union.

"Now, therefore, I, Franklin Pierce, President of the United States, do issue this my proclamation, to command all persons engaged in unlawful combinations against the constituted authority of the Territory of Kansas, or of the United States, to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes, and to warn all such persons that an attempted insurrection in said Territory, or aggressive intrusion into the same, will be resisted, not only by the employment of the local militia, but also by that of any available

forces of the United States; to the end of assuring immunity from violence and full protection to the persons, property and civil rights of all peaceful and law abiding inhabitants of the Territory.

"If in any part of the Union the fury of faction or fanaticism, inflamed into disregard of the great principles of Popular Sovereignty, which, under the Constitution, are fundamental in the whole structure of our institutions, is to bring on the country the dire calamity of an arbitrament of arms in that Territory, it shall be between lawless violence on one side and conservative force on the other, wielded by legal authority of the General Government.

"I call on the citizens, both of adjoining and of distant States, to abstain from unauthorized intermeddling in the local concerns of the Territory, admonishing them that its organic law, is to be executed with impartial justice; that all individual acts of illegal interference, will incur condign punishment, and that any endeavor to interfere by organized force, will be firmly withstood.

"I invoke all good citizens to promote order by rendering obedience to the law; to seek remedy for temporary evils by peaceful means; to discountenance and repulse the counsels and the instigations of agitators and disorganizers; and to testify their attachment to their pride in its greatness, their appreciation of the blessings they enjoy, and their determination that republican institutions shall not fail in their hands, by co-operating to uphold the majesty of the laws and to vindicate the sanctity of the Constitution.

"In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed to these presents.

"Done at the City of Washington, eleventh day of February, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, and of the Independence of the United States the eightieth.

"By the President.

"W. L. MARCY, Secretary of State."

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

This proclamation was evidently aimed at the free state men, and only tended to render their condition more helpless. While it arrayed their movements in disowning the Shawnee Legislature and refusing to observe its enactments

directly against the power of the United States, it in no way restrained the violence of the Border Ruffians, who claimed to be acting under the laws and officers of their own making. This proclamation was received with general satisfaction among the pro-slavery men, except in one particular, viz: that they were engaged in open resistance to the laws of the Territory. At a meeting in Independence, Missouri, called to consider the proclamation, they passed resolutions denying that the people of the Border had in any way sought to resist the laws of the Territory, and proffering their assistance to the President to aid in the execution of said laws. Surely this was cool. Why should Missourians resist the laws? They made them and could change them whenever they wished. Said one of their spokesmen in the Wakarusa war. "We made them-Missouri made them-sir, and she has a right to enforce them; and if she don't who will?" Then this proclamation added "the whole force of the Government" to that of Missouri, in upholding the "bogus laws" of the Territory.

On the 16th of February, by a letter from Secretary Marcy, Governor Shannon was authorized "to make requisition upon the officers commanding the United States military forces at Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley, for such assistance as may be needed" "for the suppression of insurrectionary combinations, or armed resistance to the execu tion of the laws."

CHAPTER XXVII.

STATE LEGISLATURE.

The winter passed by without any attack from the Missourians. It was the opinion of many that if the assault should be deferred, it would take place on the 4th of March, when the State Government should' go into operation. "Senator Atchison, in his speech in Platte City," some time in February, "told his friends to hold themselves in readiness against the 4th of March, when they should be called upon to march into the Territory." A notice likewise appeared in the Independence "Dispatch," "for the militia of the border counties of Missouri to rendezvous at Fort Scott" on the 29th of February. These militia consisted of mounted riflemen, who could sweep through the Territory without opposition.

It was confidently asserted by the pro-slavery men after the President had issued his proclamation, that the assembling and organization of the free state Legislature, by its members taking the oath of office, would render them guilty of treason. President Pierce, in his message to Congress, had denounced the free state movement as revolutionary in character, and that if it should reach an organized resistance to the Territorial laws, it should be suppressed by the power of the General Government, and denominated it "treasonable insurrection." It was, therefore, feared by the friends of the free state movement that the members of

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