The _Champion_ publishes, this morning, some extracts from
its own columns, when it was a newspaper with another name
and other principles, narrating some of the incidents of
his early life in Kansas. They are historic. During a
marvelous era they stirred the heart and aroused the
conscience of the Nation. This humble preacher, coming to
the Territory for a cause, and bravely enduring the pangs
of martyrdom for his opinions, became, at once, the
representative of millions of men. The story of his wrongs
was told in every newspaper of the land, and was discussed
around the firesides of a million homes. The brutal
pro-slavery mob of Atchison saw in him only an impudent
and absurd opponent of an institution that controlled
courts, legislatures and congress; the awakening Nation
saw that he stood for Free Speech, for Liberty, for Law,
and for Humanity; and the indignities heaped upon him
touched and stirred the heart of the North in its
profoundest depths.
Pardee Butler, facing the drunken, ignorant, howling,
brutal pro-slavery mobs of Atchison, must have been, to
them, a unique figure.
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