pro-slavery
Missourians were in the great majority. They harassed the Free-soilers
considerably and committed many petty persecutions, but no blood was
shed. Father's brother, Elijah, who kept the store at Weston, was known
to be a pro-slavery man, and for a time it was taken for granted that
father held the same views. But he was never at any pains to hide his
own opinions, being a man who was afraid of nothing. John Brown of
Ossawatomie, later hanged, for the Harper's Ferry raid, at Charlestown,
Va., was his friend. So were Colonel Jim Lane and many other
Abolitionists. He went to their houses openly, and they came to his. He
worked hard with the men he had hired, cutting the wild hay and
cordwood to sell to the Fort, and planting sod corn under the newly
turned sod of the farm. He also made a garden, plowing and harrowing
the soil and breaking up the sods by hitching horses to branching trees
and drawing them over the ground. He minded his own business and
avoided all the factional disputes with which the neighborhood
abounded.

In June, 1856, when I was ten years old, father went to the Fort to
collect his pay for hay and wood he had sold there. I accompanied him
on my pony. On our return we saw a crowd of drunken horsemen in front
of Riveley's trading-post--as stores were called on the frontier. There
were many men in the crowd and they were all drunk, yelling and
shooting their pistols in the air. They caught sight of us immediately
and a few of them advanced toward us as we rode up. Father expected
trouble, but he was not a man to turn back. We rode quietly up to them,
and were about to continue on past when one of them yelled:

"There's that abolition cuss now. Git him up here and make him declar'
hisself!"

"Git off that hoss, Cody!" shouted another.

By this time more than a dozen men were crowding about father, cursing
and abusing him. Soon they tore him from his horse. One of them rolled
a drygoods box from the store.

"Now," he said, "git up on that thar box, and tell us whar' ye stand."

Standing on the box, father looked at the ringleaders with no sign of
fear.

"I am not ashamed of my views," he said, quietly. "I am not an
Abolitionist, and never have been. I think it is better to let slavery
alone in the States where it is now. But I am not at all afraid to tell
you that I am opposed to its extension, and that I believe that it
should be kept out of Kansas."

His speech was followed by a wil