"The Reign of Terror," 1856

From New York Tribune, June 12, 1856.

KANSAS TO THE NORTH

There is a Reign of Terror in Kansas. The prospects of Freedom are gloomy. The Northern Squatters are yielding to despair. Their only hope is in Northern resolution. If the people of the North command their Representatives to STOP THE SUPPLIES, unless Kansas be immediately admitted into the Union, they will fight and struggle till the end; but if the supplies are granted, without this proviso, they must yield to the overwhelming foreign forces united to subdue them. The position of the Northern people of Kansas will be one of imminent peril. The troops, the Courts, the Blue Lodge, and the Southern army under Buford and others, are incessantly employed in robbing and harassing them.

If Northerners unite for mutual protection, the troops immediately disperse them, and a party of Missouri or Alabama ruffians, following in the footsteps of the soldiery, plunder and insult them with impunity. Every man who is capable of acting as a leader is either under arrest or under indictment. The farmers are forced to be idle in their fields for several hours daily, in order to keep up a watch for the approach of guerillas. . . .

Unless the Free North does her duty, without a moment's delay, this threat will soon be fact.

Such is the belief of Northern squatters in the State. Having stated it, and indoors it, I will now chronicle facts.

FIVE MEN KILLED

Horrible stories are told in Missouri of the murder of five Pro-Slavery men at Osawattamie. It is said that their throats were cut, and their corpses mangled and chopped into inches. Of course, the Free-State party, as a party--every Northern man and every Southern man with Northern principles--in the Territory, is accused by the organs of the ruffians with this imaginary and revolting atrocity.

It is stated their houses were entered at midnight, and the victims of this outrage murdered in their beds.

I remained a day in Prairie City, in order to find out the truth of this report. I sent a messenger to Osawattamie to investigate the circumstances.

The facts, of course, refute the Missouri version of the affair.

Five men were killed. There is no doubt of that fact.

Their names are William Sherman, better known as Dutch Henry; a father and two sons, named Doyle; and Mr. Wilkinson, a Member of the House of Representatives of the Bogus Kansas Legislature.

They were shot by a party of Free-State boys--at least I infer so, from the cause of their summary execution.

These men have bullied and threatened the lives of the Northern Squatters in that section ever since the invasion of November last. Doyle and his sons have been particularly active in harassing and assaulting the Free-State men.

On the day on which these men were killed, a flag inscribed, "Headquarters of the Pro-Slavery Army," was hoisted over Sherman's store. A Free-State man went in and inquired the price of powder. The man told him he charged ten cents a pound to Pro-Slavery men, but as he was a d--d nigger thief he would have to pay twenty-five cents.

Some angry words passed between the parties. Wilkinson then seized on the squatter and told him that as he refused to acknowledge the Territorial laws as valid enactments they would give him a lesson to teach him what his principles would lead to. They said he ought to have been hanged long ago; and now as they had him in their power, by G-d they would give him his due. They kept him confined an hour or two. After dusk they took him out, went down with him to the woods, put a rope around his neck, and an end of it over the limb of a tree, and were prepared to hoist him up.

"Fire!"

The report of five rifles was heard simultaneously with this unexpected command. Five corpses--the bodies of the Doyles, Sherman and Wilkinson were seen stretched on the grass as soon as the smoke cleared away.

"Fly!"cried the same voice who had given the order to fire.

The man whose life was so mysteriously and unexpectedly saved, as soon as he removed the rope from his neck, went into the woods and shouted for his friends.

But they had disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as they came.

This act will be made the excuse for arresting every man in that section of the State who has made himself obnoxious, or is likely to be a leader in defending the lives and property of Northern men.