nta, when the latter protested against the banishment of the
inhabitants, was appreciated by the Rebels after our final campaigns.
"War is cruelty--you cannot refine it," speaks a volume in a few
words.

When hostilities commenced, the Kansas regiments were clamorous to be
led into Missouri. During the border war of '55 and '56, Missourians
invaded Kansas to control the elections by force of arms, and killed,
often in cold blood, many of the quiet citizens of the Territory. The
tier of counties in Missouri adjoining Kansas were most anxious
to make the latter a slave State, and used every possible means to
accomplish their object.

The Kansas soldiers had their wish. They marched through Missouri.
Those who had taken part in the outrages upon Kansas, five years
earlier, were made to feel the hand of retribution. If they had burned
the buildings of free-State settlers in '56, they found their own
houses destroyed in '62. In the old troubles they contended for their
right to make whatever warfare they chose, but were astounded and
horrified in the latter days, when the tables were turned against them
by those they had wronged.

Along the frontier of Missouri the old system of warfare was revived.
Guerrilla bands were formed, of which Quantrel and similar men
were the leaders. Various incursions were made into Kansas by these
marauders, and the depredations were worse than ever.

They culminated in the burning of Lawrence and the massacre of its
inhabitants.

To break up these guerrilla bands, it became necessary to depopulate
the western tier of counties in Missouri, from the Missouri River down
to the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude. The most wealthy of these
was Jackson County. Before the war it had a slave population of not
far from four thousand, and its fields were highly productive. Two
years after the war broke out it contained less than three hundred
slaves, and its wealth had diminished in almost as great proportion.
This was before any freedom had been officially declared to the
slaves in the Border States. The order of depopulation had the desired
effect. It brought peace to the border, though at a terrible cost.
Missouri suffered greatly, and so did Kansas.

The most prominent officer that Kansas furnished during the Rebellion,
was Brigadier-General Blunt. At the beginning of the war he enlisted
as a private soldier, but did not remain long in the ranks. His
reputation in the field was that of a bra