How did such growth in Kansas come to be? Not in division, but in union. We have thought it would do us good to look squarely in the face that hard, cruel, and bloody period when it seemed the business of the people to cut each other's throats. But cutting each other's throats does not create such growth as we have had in Kansas. Two peoples came together in Kansas, one from the South and one from the North. They were of one original stock, but circumstances had intervened and made them two peoples. For two years this bloody strife had been going on. It is said that in revolutions men live fast. It was two years, if we count the time by the revolutions of the earth around the sun, but if we count by the experience men had gained, it was many years. Dr. Gihon tells that when Gov. Geary disbanded this Missouri army on the Wakarusa, there grew up a marked antagonism of sentiment among its leaders. He says: "Some of the more judicious of the officers were not only willing but anxious to obey this order, whilst others, resolved upon mischief, yielded a very reluctant assent." There was really a large majority that accepted the result with hearty good will, but there was also a small and malcontent minority determined on mischief. Gen. B. F. Stringfellow, because of the vehement zeal with which he had addicted himself to the enterprise of making Kansas a slave State, had won for himself a national notoriety. He had staked life and good fame and everything on the final issue of his work, yet himself and his law partner, Peter T. Abell, went back from the Wakarusa never to lift a finger again in that business. Mr. S. is a high-spirited, hot-blooded, proud-spirited Virginian. His law partner, Col. Abell, had a temper as unbending as Andrew Jackson, and did to the day of his death hold a faith in the institution of slavery as abiding as John C. Calhoun. But he was a wise and a just man, and both himself and Mr. Stringfellow recognized the fact that, with such a population as had come into Kansas, its becoming a free State was only a question of time; and both these men were too sagacious to be found fighting against fate. Mr. S. had always relished a joke, and, when rallied by his friends on his sudden abandonment of this enterprise, he facetiously replied: "Yes, I did try to make Kansas a slave State; but I could not do it without slaves, and the South would not send slaves, and so I had to give it up." From the time these gentlemen returned from the Wakarusa there was a general softening of the asperities of feeling of the people of Atchison and vicinity, and one year after they were prepared to announce to the Free State people, "You deal fairly with us, and we will deal fairly with you"--and they made their words good by deeds, for they took Free State men into partnership with themselves in the management of the Atchison Town Company.