commissioned to drive them out of the Territory, by any means that would do it most effectually. Our wrongs from the British government were slight, compared with theirs. Still these Western Colonies refrained from revolution. They sent agents to Washington, with well-attested evidence of their outrageous wrongs. They received fair words, and no relief. Every day it became more evident that the President of the United States was in league with the power that was crushing free Kansas. The Missourians, emboldened by their knowledge of this fact, played their bad game more and more openly. They paid men a dollar a day, with plenty of whiskey, and free passage across the ferries, to go into Kansas and vote down the rights of the citizens. More and more, the conviction grew upon the people of Kansas that they could not trust the government of the United States, and consequently had only their own energies to rely upon. They published a paper called the Herald of Freedom, in which they maintained the right of all American citizens to choose their own magistrates, and make their own laws. They rejected the legislators imposed upon them by the rabble of Missouri, at the point of the bayonet. They declared that a large majority of the settlers were desirous to have Kansas a Free State, and that they would maintain their right to be heard. To this paper, John Bradford and William Bruce were constant contributors, and Kate’s brother, Thomas, was diligent in setting the types. Of course, the family became odious to those who were bent on driving freedom out of Kansas. A Convention of the free-soil citizens of the Territory was called at Topeka. There were representatives from nearly all sections of the Union. Emigrants from Carolina, Virginia, and Missouri, agreed with emigrants from Ohio and Massachusetts, that the introduction of slavery would prove disastrous to the prosperity of the state. They framed a Constitution for Kansas, and chose legislators. Some required that free coloured people should be excluded from the Territory, as well as slaves. Others deemed that such a regulation would be an infringement upon freedom, and urged that no man could calculate the future bad consequences of introducing one wrong principle into the basis of their government. No one urged this point more strenuously, than did William Bruce, in his mild firm way. But Southern emigrants were opposed to that view of the case, and the Convention, desirous to concede as far as possible, yet unwilling to introduce such a clause into their Constitution, concluded to leave that question to the votes of the people.