Personal Recollections of Pardee ButlerButler, Pardee
Religion
Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler
Butler, Pardee
Kansas -- History -- 1854-1861
Kansas was becoming the graveyard of Territorial Governors. Reeder
and Shannon had already lost their official heads. Within six months
Gov. Geary's head was also to drop into the basket. Three more
governors were to succeed him, each one of whom should in his turn
lose his official head. Gov. Geary's position was indeed very like
that of the wife of the wicked Blue Beard, only that she had certainly
some advantages over the Governor. She had a great and fine castle,
rich and costly dresses, many servants ready to come and go at her
beck and call, and the company of great lords and fine ladies; but
when Gov. Geary came to his castle, his private Secretary shall tell
us what he found:
Lecompton is situated on the south side of the Kansas
River, upon as inconvenient and inappropriate a site for a
town as any in the Territory. It was chosen simply for
speculative purposes. It contained, at the time of Gov.
Geary's arrival, some twenty or more houses, the majority
of which were employed as groggeries of the lowest
description. It was the residence of the celebrated
Sheriff Jones, who is one of the leading members of this
town association, and was the resort of horse-thieves and
ruffians of the most desperate character. Its drinking
saloons were infested by these characters, whose
drunkenness, gambling, fighting, and all sorts of crime,
were indulged in with impunity.
Here was congregated, and here was the headquarters of, that band of
desperate men, who were in a conspiracy to make Kansas a slave State
at whatever cost of blood, of fraud, or violence. Here the Territorial
Legislature met to enact their bloody code of laws, and here the
Territorial Judges held their courts, which were a burlesque on the
very name of a civilized and Christian jurisprudence; and here, also,
were kept the treason prisoners, while atrocious murderers were not
molested, because they were "sound on the goose question."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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