30 BUFFALO LAND. 



blood, wrote on the page toward which all the world 

 was gazing, " I am Kansas, latest-born of America. 

 I would be free, yet they would make me a slave. 

 •Save me, my sisters ! " The great heart of our nation 

 was sorely distressed. Conscience pointed to one 

 path — Policy, that rank hypocrite, to another. 



And so it was that the young queen, with her 

 grand domain in the West, struggled forward to lay 

 her fealty at the feet of our great mother, Liberty. 

 She made a body-guard of her own sons, and their 

 number was quickly swelled by brave hearts from the 

 north, cast, and west. The new territory, begging 

 admission as a State, became a battle-ground. 

 Slavery had reached forth its hand to grasp the new 

 State and fresh soil, but the mutilated member was 

 drawn back with wounds Vvhich soon reached, cor- 

 ru[)ted and destroyed the body. In this land of the 

 Far West a nation of young giants had been suddenly 

 developed, and Kansas was forever won for freedom. 



But there was yet another enemy and another dan- 

 ger. Westward, toward Colorado, the savage's toma- 

 hawk and knife glittered, and struck among the 

 affrighted settlements. Ad Asfra per Aspera, " to the 

 stars through difliculties," the State exclaims on the 

 seal, and to the stars, through blood, its course has 

 been. 



Those old pages of liistor}^ are too bloody to be 

 brought to light in the bright present, and we purpose 

 turning them only enough to gather what will be 

 now of practical use. Kansas suffered cruelly, and 

 brooded over her wrongs, but she has long since struck 

 hands with her bitterer foe. Most of the "Border 



