Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

I have read and admired your speech. It is a whole sheaf of spears against slavery. Alas! the tyranny over us is complete. Will the people submit? When you read this, I shall be saying to the Senate, “They will not!” Would that I had your strength! But I shall pronounce the most thorough philippic ever uttered in a legislative body.

The Missourians were reinforced in the spring of 1856 by recruits from the remote South, for which they had appealed,— notably by those from South Carolina and Alabama, led by Buford. the judiciary of the Territory, at the head of which was Lecompte, began its sessions. Early in May the grand jury, following its instructions, found indictments for treason against the Free State leaders,—Reeder, Robinson, and Lane,— who were obliged to seek safety in flight. An attempt was made to arrest Reeder, even in the presence of the investigating committee of Congress, which had arrived in April. The grand jury, in its fanaticism, was not content with processes against persons, but found bills against Free State newspapers and a Free State hotel. Ruffianism, breaking out in assaults and murders, was rampant throughout the Territory, and everywhere Free State men were in constant peril of life. The Administration, still inspired by Jefferson Davis, proceeded with its scheme for subjugating the Free State men of Kansas; and the federal officers in the Territory were its ready instruments. The United States marshal for the Territory spread a proclamation in Missouri for a posse to execute a process against a Free State man, and in response the Missourians—among them Atchison, Stringfellow, and Buford—came again into the Territory; and on Monday, May 19, the (lay when Sumner began his speech, they had been for some days in the neighborhood of Lawrence, armed and committing depredations. The next day they came nearer, and on the morning of Wednesday, the day after he had concluded his speech, they occupied the bluffs overlooking the town. Before the day closed, although the marshal had executed his process of arrest without resistance, they had entered the town with muskets and fixed bayonets, broken up printing presses and thrown them into the river, and opened fire on the hotel belonging to the Emigrant Aid Company; but being built of stone, and resisting effectually cannon shot, as well as the attempt to explode it, they set it on fire, and then pillaged the stores and homes of the inhabitants. They withdrew and dispersed on the 22d,—a day remarkable in