Description
“THE BRUTALITY OF SLAVERY.” - - Some 2 or 3 weeks since, a fugitive negro, who was living with his wife and children in our city, was enticed away and delivered up to his master, who lives a few miles below St, Joseph, by three of our citizens. After keeping him bound hand and foot for a short time, the negro was shot and it is stated that his betrayers, knew that this was to be his fate at the time they engaged to deliver him to his mister, for which service they received the sum of $100 dollars. Through the active exertions of Captain Allen, our faithful and energetic Provost Marshal, the scoundrels who enticed him away and delivered him up were ferreted out and secured, one of them being arrested in Missouri, and on Wednesday last, under charge of a suitable escort, they were sent down to Fort Leavenworth.
(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
5/17/1862
