and each man took his
turn in cross-questioning me, while I replied, as best I could, to this
storm of questions, accusations and invectives. We went over the whole
ground. We debated every issue that had been debated in Congress. They
alleged the joint ownership the South had with the North in the common
Territories of the nation; that slaves are property, and that they had a
natural and inalienable right to take their property into any part of
the national Territory, _and there to protect it by the strong right arm
of power_, while I urged the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and
that under it free State men have a right to come into the Territory,
and by their votes to make it a free State, if their votes will make it
so.

At length an old man came near to me, and dropping his voice to a
half-whisper, said in a confidential tone: "N-e-ow, Mr. Butler, I want
to advise you as a friend, and for your own good, _when you get away,
just keep away._"

I knew this man was a Yankee, for I am a Yankee myself. His name was Ira
Norris. He had been given an office in Platte county, Mo., and must
needs be a partisan for the peculiar institution. I gave my friend
Norris to understand that I would try to attend to my own business.

Others sought to persuade me to promise to leave the country and not
come back. Then when no good result seemed to come from our talk, I said
to them: "Gentlemen, there is no use in keeping up this debate any
longer; if I live anywhere, I shall live in Kansas. Now do your duty as
you understand it, and I will do mine as I understand it. I ask no
favors of you."

Then the leaders of this business went away by themselves and held a
consultation. Of course I did not know what passed among them, but Dr.
Stringfellow afterwards made the following statement to a gentleman who
was getting up a history of Kansas:

A vote was taken upon the mode of punishment which ought to be accorded
to him, and to this day it is probably known but to few persons that a
decided verdict of death by hanging was rendered; and furthermore, that
Mr. Kelley, the teller, by making false returns to the excited mob,
saved Mr. Butler's life. Mr. Kelley is now a resident of Montana, and
volunteered this information several years ago, while stopping at St.
Joe with the former senior editor of the _Squatter Sovereign_, Dr. J. H.
Stringfellow. At the time the pro-slavery party decided to send Mr.
Butler down the Missouri River on a r