Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

[243] The call was promptly made by proclamation from the governor, and the whole Missouri border came over to execute vengeance on Lawrence and the Free-State men. This army encamped at Franklin, a pro-Slavery settlement, a few miles from Lawrence, and there remained several days, during which Thomas W. Barber, a Free-State man, returning from Lawrence to his home, seven miles off, was shot dead by some of them, but no other serious damage done. Finally, articles of negotiation and adjustment were agreed upon between Gov. Shannon and the Free-State leaders, in Lawrence, which suspended the feud for the present. The Missourians dispersed, and the troubled land once more had peace.

In the Spring of 1856, the pro-Slavery party on the Kansas border were reenforced by Col. Buford, from Alabama, at the head of a regiment of wild young men, mainly recruited in South Carolina and Georgia. They came in military array, armed, and with the avowed purpose of making Kansas a Slave State at all hazards. On one of their raids into Kansas, a party of Buford's men, who were South Carolinians, took a Mr. Miller prisoner, and, finding that he was a Free-State man, and a native of South Carolina, they gravely tried him for treason to his native State! He was found guilty, and escaped with his life only, losing his horse and money.

Kansas now swarmed with the minions of the Slave Power, intent on her subjugation; their pretext being the enforcement of the laws passed by the fraudulent Legislature.

On the morning of the 21st of May, 1856, Lawrence was surrounded and surprised by various parties of enemies, part of them under Gen. Atchison, who, with the “Platte County rifles,” and two pieces of artillery, approached from Lecompton on the west, while another force, composed in good part of the volunteers from the Atlantic Southern States, under Col. Buford, beleaguered it on the east. They bristled with weapons from the United States Armory, then in charge of the Federal officers in Kansas. Nearly all the pro-Slavery leaders then in Kansas, or hovering along the Missouri border, were on hand; among them, Col. Titus, from Florida, Col. Wilkes, from South Carolina, Gen. String-fellow, a Virginian, Col. Boone, hailing from Westport, and many others of local and temporary fame. The entire force was about 800 strong, having possession of Mount Oread, a hill which commanded the town. The pretext for this raid was a desire to serve legal processes in Kansas, although deputy marshal Fain, who held a part of those processes, had been in Lawrence the evening before, and served two writs without a sign of resistance, as on several previous occasions. He now rode into the town with ten men, and arrested two leading Free-State citizens, no one making objection. Meantime, the posse, so called, were busy in the suburbs, breaking open houses and robbing their inmates. Fain remained in town until afternoon, eating dinner with his party at the principal hotel, but neglecting to pay for it; then returned to the camp on the hill, and was succeeded by “Sheriff Jones” of that county, whose authority, being derived from