INTRODUCTION. 
From this period, the passage of the bill, and the throwing 
open of the territory to settlement upon the principles of “ squat¬ 
ter sovereignty,” let us note carefully the whole course of those 
men, who so strenuously urged its passage, and see to what extreme 
measures, bringing untold sufferings upon the innocent people of 
Kansas, they have resorted, to bring about their first design — 
that of making Kansas a slave state. As early as the spring of 
1854, String Pel low, and other men of like calibre in Western Mis¬ 
souri, founded secret societies, called Blue Lodges, Friends’ 
Societies, etc. Their members were sworn, upon peril of their 
lives, to make Kansas a slave state. There were published 
accounts of meetings held in several towns in Western Missouri, 
with most fiery resolutions, denouncing northern men, offering 
large rewards for the heads of some, and explicitly avowing their 
purpose of settling the territory with pro-slavery men, and keeping 
all others out. In May, at a meeting held in Westport, one of 
the principal speakers continually interlarded his harangue from 
the court-house steps with “ Ball to the muzzle, knife to the hilt! ” 
“ Damn the abolitionists! ” “ We ’ll put them all in the Missouri 
river.” Two gentlemen from Massachusetts, who travelled in 
Western Missouri in June and July, 1854, saw Mr. Stringfellow 
on their way up the river. He was continually reiterating, with 
horrid oaths, that “ Kansas would and should be a slave state,” 
and “ no abolitionist should be allowed to live in the territory; ” 
that “ if he had the power, he would hang every abolitionist in 
the country, and every man north of Mason and Dixon’s line was 
an abolitionist; ” that “ every means should be used to drive free- 
state men from the territory.” 
