On April 9 Robinson wrote an almost identical letter to Edward Everett Hale,[1] one of the most active members of the Emigrant Aid Company, strongly urging that two hundred rifles and two field- pieces be sent at once to Lawrence. But, not satisfied with the uncertainties of correspondence, he now despatched George W. Deitzler, who was in his employ as clerk of the Emigrant Company, with a second letter to Thayer again asking for rifles. Mr. Deitzler, who later attained the rank of brigadier-general during the Civil War, described the result of this mission in a letter written for the " Old Settlers' Meeting " in 1879, in which he tells of his appointment by Robinson and his trip to Worcester and Boston, and how he got the desired Sharps rifles :
Within an hour after our arrival in Boston, the executive committee of the Emigrant Aid Society held a meeting and delivered to me an order for one hundred Sharps rifles and I started at once for Hart- ford, arriving there on Saturday evening. The guns were packed on the following Sunday and I started for home on Monday morning. The boxes were marked "Books." I took the precaution to have the (cap) cones removed from the guns and carried them in my carpet sack, which sack would have been missing in the event of the capture of the guns by the enemy. . . . I have not referred to this transaction from any motives of personal vanity, but simply to revive a feeling of gratitude toward Mr. Thayer and his associates for the kind and patriotic assistance rendered by them to the free state people from the beginning to the end of the great struggle which terminated, happily, in the overthrow of American Slavery, and to show how promptly they gave attention to the business which took me to Boston. Those rifles did good service in the " border war." ... It was perhaps the first shipment of arms for our side and it incited a healthy feeling among the unarmed free state settlers, which permeated and energized them . until even the Quakers were ready to fight.[2]
The Boston end of this transaction appears in the following letter from the secretary of the New England aid society which has but recently come to notice :[3]
No. 3 Winter St. Boston, May 8th 1855.
Dr. Charles Robinson.
Dear Sir:
Mr. Deitzler presented himself at this office on Wednesday last, with a letter from Mr. Thayer relative to a certain business intrusted to him; no one in this village having received any advices.
We were busily occupied in getting ready for special meeting No. 2.
- ↑ MS. private letters in possession of Edward Everett Hale.
- ↑ Charles S. Gleed (editor), The Kansas Memorial, a Report of the Old Settlers' Meeting held at Bismarck Grove, Kansas, September 15th and 16th. 1879 (Kansas City, Mo., 1880). pp. 184-185.
- ↑ From MS. Letter-Book of New England Emigrant Aid Company, vol. I., p. 146.
