Description
A Cure For Abolitionism. - - The following recipe we commend to our friends. It has been tried and gave instantaneous relief. If the case is not in its most malignant form, a certain cure is warranted:
Not very many years since, in one of the “Platte Counties,” lived a wealthy and hospitable gentlemen. His house being on one of the public highways, he frequently had to entertain travelers.
One evening, just as the sun was setting, a young, well-dressed traveler, mounted on a fine horse, rode up, and, in a rather important manner, informed “the Major” that he wanted to stay all night. He was courteously invited to alight, and a negro man was called to attend to his horse.
From the peculiar accent he gave the word down, when ordering the man to be careful and have his horse well rubbed down, our friend “the Major” knew he was from an infected district.
At supper, the disease began to develop itself, and the deoun-east gent commenced a regular lecture upon the sin of slavery - that negroes were the equals of the white man, and should be treated as such - that the Major should in justice set his free and recognize them as equals.
The Major, being a man of grant equanimity of temper, humored the matter by discussing it with his deoun-east guest till bed time, when, upon being desired to show him his bed, quietly called Jack, his negro man, and ordered him to take the gentleman to the kitchen and give him part of his bed.
Perfectly thunderstruck, the abolition gent finally found breath to ask what the Major meant.
“I mean,” said the Major, raising his tall, portly form to its full height and looking sternly at the Yankee, “to make you reduce your theory to practice.”
The abolitionist implored, but the Major was inexorable, and off Jack took him to his own bed, knowing from his master's eye that he must be obeyed to the letter.
After some 2 hours elapsed, the Major went out and called to his now crest-fallen guest to get up, and he might sleep the real of the night in the “house.”
Early in the morning the Yankee called him up, and after apologizing for his rudeness in preaching his abolition doctrines the night before, informed the Major that upon testing his principles, he found they would not work satisfactorily, and that he was no longer an abolitionist.
(Researcher's note: From the Library of Congress, "Founded in Atchison, Kansas, the Squatter Sovereign was the shrillest, most widely read voice of Kansas proslavery opinion. Based on the principle of “squatter sovereignty,” which stated that the citizens of any state or territory should have the right to regulate their domestic institutions as they see fit, the first issue of the paper featured the tagline: “The Squatter claims the same sovereignty in the territories that he possessed in the states.”
The Squatter was first published on February 3, 1855, by Robert S. Kelley and John H. Stringfellow through the Atchison Town Company. The paper immediately endorsed the extension of slavery in Kansas and opposed the abolitionists arriving in the territory.
When the Squatter was sold to Robert McBratney, Franklin G. Adams, Samuel C. Pomeroy, and Thaddeus Hyatt in 1857, what had been the virulent voice of the proslavery faction in the territory became a free-state paper. Stringfellow and Kelley left Kansas and eventually served in the Confederate Army. When the paper came into the hands of John A. Martin in 1858, it was renamed Freedom’s Champion and, later the Atchison Daily Champion.)Date(s) of Creation
2/5/1856
