David Rice Atchison (D-MO)
David Rice Atchison gave a speech outside Lawrence, interrupted by cheers as Samuel Jones came back with the town’s cannons. Then the proslavery mob, after waiting so long, finally moved in with flags waving. Rumors of mined streets delayed them only briefly. Many of the women and children exited, some of the former looking back over their shoulders and telling the proslavery mob just what they thought of affairs.
They had come to do more than visit. Early in the month, Samuel Lecompte’s grand jury declared the antislavery papers and free state hotels public menaces in need of suppression. The mob got to that straightaway, starting with Josiah Miller’s Free State. Miller operated out of the second story of what William Phillips calls “a concrete building”. I think he means cemented stone, not a modern poured concrete structure. A store occupied the first floor and the border ruffians went there first.
One of the ruffian officers entered the store and demanded of the proprietor if there was a mine under the building to blow it up. The merchant assured him there was not, when the interrogator told him that they were going up into the printing office, and that if anything happened he would hold him responsible.
A keg of gunpowder wouldn’t blow up a building quite like a modern artillery shell, but expecting to survive the experience still sounds awfully hopeful. Satisfied, the proslavery men entered the Free State office.
The press and other articles were first broken, so as to be rendered perfectly useless, and then thrown into the Kansas river. As this was some distance to carry the articles, they got tired of it, and began throwing the remainder in the street. Books and papers were thrown in the street.
If the Free State had machinery anything like the Herald of Freedom did, which seems likely, then the proslavery men had to lug a lot of metal around just in the steam press. The lead type would only add to the fun. Since this meant free books, some of the mob helped themselves. Some officers intervened to stop that, claiming that the antislavery men would use the theft against them. William Phillips, just the antislavery man who did, must have related that with particular relish.
Colonel Zadoc Jackson, of Georgia, exerted himself to prevent the plunder, as did several others; they were prepared for the most desperate war against Freedom and American rights, but they had too much honor, or too much pride, to wish to occupy the position of highwaymen. Unfortunately, these officers were unable to prevent these outrages, or restrain the villains they had gathered up to do their lawless work.
Honor and pride had their pleasures, but free books offered still greater joys.
Freedmen's Patrol 
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