The six years intervening between 1854 and 1860 constitute a momentous period in the history of Atchison county. No new community was ever organized under more unpromising circumstances. It was not merely land hunger and lust for personal gain that were the impelling motives which brought men to Kansas in that day. Neither gold, nor gas, nor oil, nor precious gems lured men here. Kansas was then, as it is now, an agricultural paradise, and such an environment has ordinarily but little charm for the daring adventurer and the seeker after sudden riches, who toil not and spin less. It is true that a large number of peaceful, plodding home-seekers—the tillers of the soil—the hewers of wood and the haulers of water, immigrated to Kansas to take up land and build permanent homes, but they were in the minority prior to 1860. The tremendous issue of human slavery was the all absorbing fact, and the long struggle here wrought a complete revolution in the political thought of the whole country. Men came to Kansas for the most part for political rather than for business or agricultural reasons. The settlement of Kansas was an inspired political movement of partisans. There was little room for neutrals, and those who were “too proud to fight” went elsewhere. There was little consideration on the part of the early settlers of Kansas, of any questions except slavery and anti- slavery. They came in large numbers from the South and from the North, and met here upon the frontier in a final test of strength. The Free Soilers won, but only after bitter contests in which passion, prejudice and bloody partisanship ran riot, and Atchison county played a most conspicuous part in this great battle. The Nation and the world looked on as the battle lines surged forward and backward. And while they fought here in a last desperate struggle for supremacy, these courageous men and women on both sides founded their towns, built their court houses, their primary schools and their churches with an abiding faith in the hearts of each of them that victory would finally crown their efforts. Atchison county made progress in spite of the fact that her leaders were wrong. We gave promise here of being the metropolis of Kansas, for we had many geographical and commercial advantages over other struggling communities of the Territory. But before the well laid plans of our citizens matured, before projects for the development of steam transportation to bring us nearer the outside world could be concluded the mighty conflict which ended in four bloody years of civil war, broke upon the Nation, and Kansas within three months after being admitted as a State enrolled itself on the side of the Union. Atchison county sprang to arms almost a thousand strong, and may it ever be said to its everlasting glory that few, if any, counties in the State had a more patriotic record. One hundred and thirty-one Atchison county men enlisted in the First Kansas regiment; twenty-five in the Seventh;