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Updated: May 17, 2025
All the Border-Ruffian chiefs were there, headed by Atchison in person, who was evidently the controlling spirit, though a member of the Legislature of the State of Missouri, named Reid, exercised nominal command. He found his orders unheeded and on every hand mutterings of impatience and threats of defiance.
Opportunely for them, about this time Governor Shannon, appointed to succeed Reeder, arrived in the Territory. Coming by way of the Missouri River towns, he fell first among Border-Ruffian companionship and influences; and perhaps having his inclinations already molded by his Washington instructions, his early impressions were decidedly adverse to the free-State cause.
At once commenced that long and terrible struggle between the friends of Free-Soil and the friends of Slavery, for the possession of Kansas, which convulsed the whole Country for years, and moistened the soil of that Territory with streams of blood, shed in numerous "border-ruffian" conflicts.
Upon fuller information and more mature reflection, the General found that he had no need of either the four regiments from Illinois and Kentucky, or Border-Ruffian mobs led by skeleton militia generals, neither of which he had asked for. Both the militia generals and the Missourians were too eager even to wait for an official call.
That wily chief, seeing that refusal would put him in the attitude of a law-breaker, feigned a ready compliance, and he and Reid, his factotum commander, made eloquent speeches "calculated to produce submission to the legal demands made upon them." Some of the lesser captains, however, were mutinous, and treated the Governor to choice bits of Border-Ruffian rhetoric.
Burning with the thirst of personal revenge, Sheriff Jones now accused the town of Lawrence of the violation of law involved in this rescue, though the people of Lawrence immediately and earnestly disavowed the act. A Border-Ruffian foray against the town was hastily organized. The murder occurred November 21; the rescue November 26. Same order to Strickler, same date.
Twice married, nineteen children had been born to him, of whom eleven were living when, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska bill plunged the country into the heat of political strife. Four of his sons moved away to the new Territory in the first rush of emigrants; several others went later. When the Border-Ruffian hostilities broke out, John Brown followed, with money and arms contributed in the North.
On receiving an affirmative reply, he said, with tearful eye: "To-morrow morning the ground will be frozen, and I will go with you where the most of these poor people are." I procured lodging with a widow Johnson and her son, who was with Captain John Brown's party all through the border-ruffian troubles.
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