These counties had by
far the largest population, and as these counties would go, the
Territory would go; and I thought that no considerations of personal
danger ought to hinder, that these counties should have respectable
settlements of avowed Free State men among them.
What is now the city of Atchison was then a small village that was being
built among--the cottonwood trees on the banks of the Missouri River,
about twenty miles below St. Joseph, and the same distance above Fort
Leavenworth. It had been named after the notable David R. Atchison, who
had been a Senator from Missouri, and acting Vice-President of the
United States. D. R. Atchison and Gen. B. F. Stringfellow had at this
time won a national notoriety in this struggle now going on in Kansas;
and both were leading members in the Atchison town company. Dr.
Stringfellow was deputed to act as editor-in-chief of the _Squatter
Sovereign_, a paper at that time started in Atchison; but the editor was
Robert S. Kelly. Bob Kelly, as he was popularly called, was a born
leader among such a population as at that time filled Western Missouri.
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