Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[210] who was a noble-looking girl of twenty, but rather needlessly defiant in manner, as we thought, till at last she said frankly, “Why, I thought you were Missourians, and I was resolved that you should hear the truth.” We being three to one, this attitude was certainly plucky; but I heard later that this girl had walked alone into the midst of the Missourians, while the mill was burning, and had called on one of them to give up her favorite horse which he had taken. This she did with such spirit that his comrades compelled him to dismount and surrender it. She mounted it and was riding away, when the man followed and attempted to get the halter from her hand; she held on; he took his bowie-knife and threatened to cut her hand off; she dared him to do it; he cut the rope close to her hand and got control of the horse. She slipped off, defeated; but presently two of the fellow's companions rode up and gave her the horse once more. It was a time when a horse was worth more than a life in Kansas, and we can estimate the completeness of the triumph.

As I had been urged to preach to the people of Lawrence, it seemed well to take for my text that which was employed by the Rev. John Martin on the Sunday after he had fought at Bunker Hill: “Be not ye afraid of them; remember ”