In my judgment no other course was left open to the community. “Not less than 500 men were driven out of Kansas on the charge of disloyalty in 1861 and 1862, with the approval of men of excellent character, by thugs and scoundrels, who made no concealment of the fact that they lived by horse stealing and house breaking. From the beginning of the Civil war until peace was declared, the Kansas border from the Nebraska State line to the Indian Territory, was a scene of lawlessness and disorder. In the earlier years of the war, thieves regularly organized into companies, with captains whose authority was recognized by the rank and file, with headquarters in the towns and cities of eastern Kansas, masqueraded as saviors of the Union, and upon the pretense that they were serving the cause, thrived amazingly by pillaging the farm houses and barns of neighboring counties in Missouri. Atchison was the headquarters of the Cleveland gang—the most active and the boldest of the banditti. The gang did not hesitate to cross over to Missouri and steal horses, and returning to Atchison sell them in broad daylight. Usually these raids were made at night, but there was no concealment of the business they were engaged in, nor of the fact that hundreds of the horses sold by them were stolen from farmers of Buchanan, Platte and Clinton counties. In the capacity of saviors of the Union, they took upon themselves the task of driving all persons suspected of sympathy for ‘the lost cause’ out of Kansas. P. T. Abell, J. T. Hereford, Headley & Carr, prominent lawyers, were notified to leave or they would be killed. They departed. Headley, Carr and Hereford served in the Confederate army. Abell lived in exile until after the war was over, and then returned to Atchison. He was one of the founders of the town, and before the war was the partner of Gen. B. F. Stringfellow. Tom Ray, proprietor of an extensive blacksmithing and wagon shop, was banished. In a month or two he returned, but not until after he had halted at Winthrop, a village opposite Atchison and opened up negotiations which resulted in a grant of permission to remain in Atchison long enough to settle up his business and collect considerable sums due from his customers. He registered at the old Massasoit House, but did not tarry long. Maj. R. H. Weightman, an early settler, who left Atchison in 1861, and accepted a colonel’s commission in the Confederate army, had been killed at Wilson’s Creek. While sitting in the Massasoit House barroom, Ray was approached by Sandy Corbin, a somewhat notorious character, who handled most of the horses stolen by Cleveland’s thieves. Corbin mentioned Weightman’s death, expressing satisfaction at his untimely end, and applying all the epithets known to the abandoned, to the dead man. Ray expostulated, and finally warned Corbin to desist or expect a thrashing. Corbin rushed to his room and returned with two revolvers, so adjusted upon his belt that Ray could not help seeing them.