CHAPTER XX. 
TWO WEEKS IN JUNE ON THE MISSOURI BORDER. 
Every succeeding day’s fresh enormities clearly show the base 
intention of the pro-slavery men. Major Richardson, Buford, 
Donaldson, and others, who are foremost in this cruel war upon 
the free-state men, often dined at the hotel in Kansas city. The 
threats of Buford’s men against him were neither few nor mild. 
Many of them, without hesitation, said “ they would shoot him 
the first chance they could get,” and he at last went down the 
river. His men came in, every day, worn out and sick. A free- 
state man, pitying the utter wretchedness of one of them, took 
care of him a few days, and sent him down the river. I saw him 
frequently carrying some little nourishment from the hotel to the 
store where the sick man was. A gentleman in from Chicago 
reported help near. He brought letters from well-known friends 
of Kansas. The rumor spread abroad. Its soothing effect upon 
the overwrought passions of the border men could not escape 
notice. Their anxiety in the matter was intense. One of them, 
a native of Burlington, Vt., of fine family, but who has been 
connected with a rabid pro-slavery paper here, though now appa¬ 
rently leaning to the other side off the question, had his seat next 
me at the table. This gentleman said to me, “ It is said two 
thousand men are coming from Chicago; but I think the trouble 
is confined here; it reaches but a little distance.” The reply 
made was, “ You cannot have been East lately, for there is in¬ 
tense feeling throughout the North, and they will not be backward 
in sending many times that number, if emergencies require it.” 
A report of five hundred men coming from Wisconsin also had 
a wonderfully subduing effect upon the Leavenworth law-and- 
order men, and soon after Col. Sumner disbanded their Vigilance 
