But there appeared one cloud in our horizon, one cause to hinder the perfect success of this, our second yearly meeting. The country was full of rumors of war, and there seemed impending a great national conflict. Bro. Hutchinson had been for one year an eminently successful evangelist; but now he went into the Union army as an army chaplain, and thus his work among us ceased. And now the war was upon us; we were predestined to see dark days, and the hearts of the people were full of forebodings of evil. Many of our young men went into the army, and for two years the produce raised by the farmers brought almost nothing, and many of our preachers retired from their work. And then there appeared in the land wolves in sheep's clothing--thieves wearing the disguise of loyalty to the "old flag," and who held themselves self-elected to punish "rebel sympathizers," and in the estimation of this gentry the best evidence that could be had that a man was a rebel sympathizer was, that he owned a good span of horses. It is said, "There is no great loss without some small gain," and these evil days gave opportunity to some of us who owed a debt of gratitude for kindness rendered to us when we were in sore straits, to pay back this debt by demanding justice on behalf of loyal citizens of Kansas, whose only offense was that they had been born in the South. It is the purpose of this series of articles to tell how two peoples, the one from the South and the other from the North--the one the sons of the Puritans, and the other the children of the younger sons of the old English cavaliers--came together and settled in one Territory; how they were divided by the question of American slavery, and how they strove in an antagonism as fierce as that which once subsisted between the Saxon and Norman in Old England; how they peacefully settled their controversy, and in one-third of a century have grown into an eminently peaceful, prosperous, enterprising and well-ordered commonwealth, that stands conspicuous as an illustration and proof of the excellence of our national institutions. We are also to tell how that, out of the furnace fires of such a strife, a community of churches grew up that have for their purpose a restoration of primitive and apostolic Christianity, and the unity of all Christians under a supreme loyalty, to the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Leader and Lawgiver, and as the great Author of our American civilization. We are also to tell how the discipline of such a strife has created a people of such heroic temper, that this has been the first government among the nations to grapple with the saloon power in a final and decisive battle, which has banished it beyond the boundaries of the State, and has branded it as an enemy to Christian homes, an enemy to our Christian civilization, and an enemy to the welfare of the whole human race. Other States have paltered with the evil by means of