James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

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[93]

Chapter 3: “Southern rights to all.”

The siege of Lawrence raised, the ruffians, on returning homeward, on the 15th of December, 1855, destroyed the Free State ballot box at Leavenworth; and, on the 20th, threw the press and types of the Territorial Register, the political organ of the author of the Kansas-Nebraska act, into the muddy streets of the little town, and the still muddier bed of the Missouri River. The leaders of the riot did the writer of this volume the honor to say that the outrage was occasioned by an offensive paragraph emanating from his pen, and expressed themselves exceedingly solicitous to see him dangling in the air — for daring “freely” to exercise the rights of a free press! This was my first public honor; a good beginning, I hoped, for a friend of the slave; and one which, ever since, I have striven to deserve.

The election, thus riotously interrupted by the ruffians at Leavenworth, was held under the auspices of a voluntary political organization; and the question submitted was — Shall the Topeka Constitution be rejected or sustained?