important discovery, as some Southern officers once naively
owned at Lecompton, that "Yankees _would_ fight." Patient to the verge
of humiliation, the settlers rose at last only to achieve a victory so
absurdly rapid that it was almost a new disappointment; the contest was
not so much a series of battles as a succession of steeplechases, of
efforts to get within shot,--Missouri, Virginia, and South Carolina
invariably disappearing over one prairie-swell, precisely as the
Sharp's rifles of the emigrants appeared on the verge of the next. The
slaveholders had immense advantages: many of the settlers were in league
with them to drive out the remainder; they had the General Government
always aiding them, more or less openly, with money, arms, provisions,
horses, men, and leaders; they had always the Missouri border to retreat
upon, and the Missouri River to blockade. Yet they failed so miserably,
that every Kansas boy at last had his story to tell of the company of
ruffians whom he had set scampering by the casual hint that Brown or
Lane was lurking in the bushes. The terror became such a superstition,
that the largest army which ever entered Kansas--three thousand men, by
the admission of both sides--turned back before a redoubt at Lawrence
garrisoned by only two hundred, and retreated over the border without
risking an engagement.

It is idle to say that these wore not fair specimens of Southern
companies. They were composed of precisely the same material as the
flower of the Secession army,--if flower it have. They were members of
the first families, planters' sons and embryo Wigfalls. South Carolina
sent them forth, like the present troops, with toasts and boasts and
everything but money. They had officers of some repute; and they had
enthusiasm with no limit except the supply of whiskey. Slavery was
divine, and Colonel Buford was its prophet. The city of Atchison was
before the dose of 1857 to be made the capital of a Southern republic.
Kansas was to be conquered: "We will make her a Slave State, or form a
chain of locked arms and hearts together, and die in the attempt." Yet
in the end there were no chains, either of flesh or iron,--no chains,
and little dying, but very liberal running away. Thus ended the war in
Kansas. It seems impossible that Slavery should not make in this case a
rather better fight, where all is at stake. But it is well to remember
that no Border Ruffian of Secession can now threaten more loudly,