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By Root 1800 0

them away neatly. I didn’t feel any of the fear I had felt before—on coming to K.T., on the commencement of the Wakarusa War, or any other time. Rather, I felt that cheerful peace you always seem to feel when a long dreaded event begins to happen. It is as if something about you is suspended, and while you are waiting for the worst, you get a few moments of actual joy—your room looks pleasing and comfortable, your tasks seem light and delicious, the present life, which you know is about to go away from you, seems the best possible life, and you are grateful for it. When I finished, I went out. Not much business was being done, only the business of arrests. The citizens of Lawrence looked out their windows or stood in the streets or congregated in shops. The day wore on and got a little warm, but it was a pleasant change from the recent damp, chilly weather. We each expected different things. Women and children had been told to leave town in the morning, and some did, crying and carrying off what things they could manage, not having been allowed to take horses or mules with them (the Missourians wanted all of those). I suppose those people expected the worst, burning and shooting and clearing out. But most of us wanted to stay; Thomas didn’t even ask me to leave, knowing that I would leave only when he did. I suppose we expected to see something we had never seen before in our lives.

I strolled down Massachusetts Street, then up some other streets. I should have felt in danger, but I didn’t. Instead, I marveled at how much Lawrence had changed since September—how many more permanent buildings there were, how the streets had straightened and widened themselves, how much the place looked like a town instead of a congeries of structures. There were even flower boxes and patches of garden here and there, fenced off carefully from pigs and other marauding herbivores. It was a wonder, really.

The arresting party, or at least the leaders, went over to the Free State Hotel and enjoyed their midday dinner. Some even went into shops and came out with goods, though whether they paid for them was a point of some dispute later. Mr. Eldridge, the manager of the hotel, said for years afterward that none of the "duly constituted authorities" had so much as offered to pay for his dinner. But people went along with them, whatever they cared to do.

Another example of that was the way General Pomeroy, who had come back from the east, where he’d gone after the Wakarusa War to raise money and support for the Free-Soil cause, let the southerners have our cannon. These artillery pieces, which were smuggled into K.T. by means of various ruses in the winter, had been buried under the foundation of someone’s house—Mr. Roberts’s house, Louisa said—in early May. General Pomeroy had some men go out and dig them up, and then he handed them over as a gesture of good faith. More women and children were leaving town now, not carrying even what they could. They were all crying. Perhaps they expected to be shot and never to need anything. There was no logic to what folks did—each did what he or she thought best, and so each one might do just about anything. There was no logic to my own alternating waves of fear and curiosity, but they came one after the other.

It got to be afternoon. Thomas, Louisa, Frank, and I had done only one thing, which was to move the mules, horses, and wagons out of the center of town, We were threatened only once, and not very seriously, by two very young men. We just pushed past them and went on. Because of this, we were away from Massachusetts Street when the arresting party under their marshal decided to disband themselves and join the men on the hill. We did see Senator Atchison (Louisa knew what he looked like) ride toward town with some men. Senator Atchison had acted as our enemy throughout the spring, agitating his constituents and promoting our conquest. I remember thinking that it wasn’t good to be seeing him right there on a downtown street. And he looked drunk, too.

Once the arrests had been made in the morning, the