Personal Recollections of Pardee ButlerButler, Pardee
Religion
Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler
Butler, Pardee
Kansas -- History -- 1854-1861
That great party, of which the President was the official head, was
convulsed with such internal feuds and contentions, consequent on
these very Kansas troubles, as threatened its existence. A
Presidential election was pending, and attention must be paid to this
fact, rather than to the desperate schemes of this Kansas faction.
John W. Geary was, therefore, announced as the appointee of the
President. Mr. G. came with high claims to public favor. He had passed
through the Mexican war with honor; he had discharged high public
trust in California with such fidelity and skill as won for him a
distinguished reputation. He was the friend, and almost the neighbor,
of the incoming President, James Buchanan, and he enjoyed the
confidence of the outgoing President, Franklin Pierce; and was
closeted with him and with his Secretary of State, Mr. Marcy, before
leaving Washington. That nothing might be wanting to his success, he
spent a day at Jefferson City, Mo., with Gov. Sterling Price, and with
him arranged to have the blockade removed from the Missouri River.
Mr. Geary met at Glasgow, Mo., the retiring ex-Governor, and Dr. Gihon
reports that he was fleeing in terror that his life would be taken by
the men for whom he had been such an abject tool.
While these parting ceremonies were being performed a
steamboat bound down the river, and directly from Kansas,
came along side the Keystone. Ex-Governor Shannon was a
passenger, who, upon learning the close proximity of Gov.
Geary, sought an immediate interview with him. The
ex-Governor was greatly agitated. He had fled in haste and
terror from the Territory, and still seemed laboring under
an apprehension for his personal safety. His description
of Kansas was suggestive of everything that is frightful
and horrible. Its condition was deplorable in the extreme.
The whole Territory was in a state of insurrection, and a
destructive civil war was devastating the country. Murder
ran rampant, and the roads were everywhere strewn with the
bodies of slaughtered men.
Dr. Gihon afterwards published a small volume of 348 pages, from which
the preceding extract has been taken. The work is entitled "Governor
Geary's Administration in Kansas." This work does not bear the sign
manual of Gov. Geary, but as it was written by the Governor's private
secretary, it must be taken as an authentic statement of what these
gentlemen saw with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, as
touching the condition of things in the Territory. Dr. Gihon gives the
following testimony concerning the troubles in and around Leavenworth
and their cause:
After the removal of Shannon on the 21st of August, when
Secretary Woodson became acting Governor until the arrival
of Gov. Geary in September, the belligerents had matters
pretty much their own way, and the ruffians improved the
time, under pretense of authority from Woodson, to
perpetrate with impunity the most shocking barbarities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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