Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/54

44 J^'- L. Fleming " Our hearts have been made glad," wrote one of the Southerners, " by the late arrival of large companies from South Carolina and Alabama. They have responded nobly to our call for help. The noble Buford is already endeared to our hearts ; we love him ; we will fight for him and die for him and his noble companions.'" On the free-state side, ex-Governor Reeder writes in his diary : " There have come to the territory this spring three or four hundred young men, including Buford's party, who evidently came here to fight, and whose leaders probably understood the whole program before they left home." Before the party left Westport there was a meet- ing of the citizens to make the presentation to Major Buford of a fine horse, with fine saddle and bridle.^ Nearly half a century later an old citizen of Westport writes : " The people of Westport were glad to see Buford's men come. They were doubly glad when they went away finally." By May 7 the colonists had scattered over different portions of the territory with the intention of locating permanently as citizens, and Buford was seeking some central location for himself in order that he might maintain communication with the members of his colony.' Blue Jacket on the Wakarusa was suggested to him as a desirable place in which to settle. The emigrants had not yet settled permanently, or at least few of them had done so, but were seeking favorable locations for claims on the government lands before pre-empting their quarter-sections. Most of them were destined never to make their homes in Kansas, for at the very time when they came over the border there was trouble again between the territorial government and the free-state settlers at Lawrence. Indictments had been found by the Douglas County grand jury against a number of free-state men living at Lawrence, and the United States marshal feared to undertake their arrest without a strong posse. So on May 1 1 he summoned the citizens of Kansas to appear in Lecompton in force sufficient to execute the laws. In response to this call for men, Buford gathered his colonists, some of them at Lecompton, but the greater part of them at Frank- lin, where they were enrolled and armed by Governor Shannon as territorial militia.* Buford's force at Franklin numbered four hun- ' Manager of Lafayette County Emigration Society. •^Border Times (Westport), May 3, 1856. 'Letter from J- M- Thompson, Liberty, Missouri, to General Strickler, of Kansas (copy in possession of writer). •Letter to Alabama Journal ol May 31, from a former printer on that paper (Wil- son?). Also Mrs. S. T. L. Robinson's Kansas : Its Interior ami Exterior Life ; J. F. Rhodes, United States.