On my own part, I also had much to learn from this man, so shrewd and well-informed, and yet so ignorant.  What did it mean that citizens of Missouri should go over in force and vote in the Territory of Kansas?  We had heard something of this in Illinois, but supposed it was something done by that turbulent and somewhat lawless element that gathers along the borders of civilization; but now it was apparent that this movement was under control of leading citizens of Missouri, and had been participated in by conscientious men, members of the various churches of Missouri, who would in no wise knowingly do anything wrong.  What did it mean?

The reader will not be surprised that we should sit up to a late hour of the night, nor that we should renew the subject again in the morning.  When I had got ready to leave this man, who had so hospitably entertained me, he explained that he had business on the road on which I was traveling, and that he would accompany me a number of miles.

This emigrant from Pennsylvania, now a citizen of Missouri, who carried his library in his brain and read his books when he conversed with men, and kept his own counsel and lived in peace with his neighbors, was now about to say farewell.  With some hesitation he said:  “Mr. Butler, I thank you for all you have told me.  I feel just as you do; but I must advise you to be careful how you talk to other men as you have talked to me.  There are many in this country that would shoot such a man as you are.  Good-bye.”

CHAPTER III.

It is said, “There are two sides to every question.”  In my association with men in the free States I had learned one side of this question; now I was learning the other side, and began to be able to put in intelligible shape to myself those reasonings by which these men justified their action.  They reasoned thus:  “War is a state of violence and always involves a trenching upon what we call natural rights; and its decisions depend not so much on who is right or wrong, as on who wields the longest sword and commands the heaviest battalions.  And if in carrying on a war some evil comes to innocent parties, this is only one of its necessary consequences, and is justified by the final result; provided always that the war, as a whole, is right and just.  And in such a strained and unnatural condition of affairs men can not be governed by the same scrupulous regard for others’ rights by which they are governed in time of peace.  But the North and South are already practically in a state of war.  This comes of the mistakes made at the formation of our government.  Thomas Jefferson and the fathers of the Revolution were mistaken in holding slavery wrong.  It is a rightful and natural relation, as between an inferior and superior race.  The black race is far better off here in America, in slavery, than they would be in Africa, in freedom and in paganism; and if there is something of hardship in their lot, it is only because there is hardship in the lot of every human being.”