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treason were arrested, and the printing-presses were thrown into the river.

The final act, however, was still to come. A crier announces: Marshal Donaldson is done with you, Sheriff Jones now summons you for his posse, as he has something for you to do. Here was the pivot of the whole scheme, evidently gotten up by the Marshal and the Sheriff together. Jones had attained the long-sought end of wreaking vengeance upon Lawrence. The Free-State Hotel, already dismantled, was bombarded and blown up, and then the torch was applied to the ruins. Stores were rifled, houses were pillaged, the residence of Governor Robinson was given to the flames. In fine the town was gutted, but the people were left; the threats to exterminate the Free-State men were not yet carried out. Such was the deed known in History as the Sack of Lawrence, the outcome of the Third Invasion.

But the victory had a number of consequences which wrought worse than defeat. It introduced dissension into the ranks of the invaders. Two Colonels from the distant South openly disapproved of the conduct and work of the malignant Jones. Atchison was again present and exerted himself to restrain the outrages, " riding on horseback to the different companies and making speeches in the interest of peace." But Jones' was their hero and they followed him. Governor Shannon condemned the Marshal's posse,

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so did President Pierce, doubtless beholding in his mind's eye the Democratic Convention ready to meet. Even Judge Lecompte thought that Donaldson's action was illegal. It was evident that the invaders were breaking loose from the control of their leaders, and that this Missouri plan of making Kansas a Slave-State must be abandoned. All the higher officials disclaimed the deed of violence, which seems to have been concocted by the Marshal and Sheriff in secret concert. The Topeka Legislature met not long after these events, but it was dispersed by United States soldiers which act, however, was disapproved even by the Administration Washington.

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What now has become of Robinson's antigovernment with its machinery broken, its capital sacked, its leader a prisoner of his foes? Strange to say, it has won a victory more complete than ever before. The principle of these Missouri invasions is now seen in its true character and purpose, and is discredited, temporarily at least, even by the Administration. Though another invasion takes place, it will be turned back and thwarted by the great United States Government itself instead of the little outlawed anti-government, and a real Governor, Geary, will do the work of the shadowy Governor, Robinson, now more shadowy than ever in the prison of his enemies.

But the chief effect and the great historic purpose of the Sack of Lawrence was the mighty response of the Northern Folk-Soul to the woes of Kansas, which kept agitating it, and working it over and kneading it through and through with a new conviction that not only Kansas must be a Free-State, but that there must be no more SlaveStates in this Union. A little over a year has passed since the First Invasion, and now the Third has spent itself, bringing results freighted with the future. We may deem it the first year of the Ten Years' War which is the theme of the present book. We have seen the irritation going forth continuously from Washington, followed by the agonies of Kansas, which, echoing from press, pulpit and platform, have been the school of the North preparing it for the great task looming up ever more distinctly in the future.

And that small town of Lawrence- what a burden has been laid upon it by the time, by the Spirit of the Age, which seems to have chosen and trained it as the bearer of the conflict ever getting more visible. It was born in a war of titles; the very land was contested; when the Northern settler would begin to work upon his property, a Missouri counter-claim would be sure to appear. Thus the soil, after it was bought and cultivated, had to be won anew and freed from the foreign invader. But the greater, universal task was the institutional one: to

secure the Free-State. Of this task Lawrence was the very soul as well as the most energetic performer; no wonder that the enemy thought that if they could destroy her, the cause itself would be destroyed. Truly Lawrence during this period was the World-Spirit incarnate, the little town had in it the presence of History, yea of Universal History, at whose behest she seemed to be moving and suffering.

But tell us, ye Powers, will there be no requital for these deeds of violence? Lies it not in the Divine Order that the Missouri towns and counties which have sent forth and maintained these men of wrong, will see an invasion coming the other way? Wait; a little more than half a decade will pass when the Kansas borderers, trained by these acts to rapine and murder, and burning for revenge, will feel that their turn has come and will be let loose upon the Missouri side, sweeping down upon it under the command of the Devil himself called up from Inferno by these iniquities - Mephistopheles Lane - in whose path the site of thriving villages will be marked by charred ruins and a few standing chimneys in the desert.

Still further we may carry our outlook in this matter. Among these invaders we hear of contingents from South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, which States seem to lie far away from the scene of danger, quite out of the reach of

retribution. But Nemesis has long arms, and can stretch them, given her time, to any point on this terraqueous globe. Not a decade will pass before Sherman will be in Georgia at the head of an irresistible army which rips open the State from North-West to South-East, and then passes to South Carolina which also is to get a taste of the return of the deed upon the doer. Thus we again behold an interlinking of the beginning and end of the Ten Years' War, in a circling chain of events; there is an inner connection between the first invasion of Kansas and the last counter-invasion of the South by Sherman. A great national house-cleaning has started on the Western border, not to be held up till every Slave-State, new and old, has been wiped out and made over into a Free-State. But just now what a trouble in getting Kansas free, that small first link in the great chain of the total War!

Another result of the Sack of Lawrence may be here noted. John Brown has already been observed making a protest against the Wakerusa peace. Deeming himself the divine instrument of vengeance, he has gone forth to begin his own war against slavery. According to Brown's reckoning five Free-State men had been murdered in his locality; God's justice demands five victims of the opposite party. The result is the Pottawatomie massacre of five Slave-State men at the hands of Brown and his

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