David Atchison Quotes

Draw your revolvers & bowie knives, & cool them in the heart’s blood of all those damned dogs, that dare defend that damned breathing hole of hell,” David Atchison, a former U.S. senator from Missouri, told cheering Southerners encamped outside Lawrence on May 21, “never to slacken or stop until every spark of free-state, free-speech, free-niggers, or free in any shape is quenched out of Kansas!” When

As we know, Kansas borders Missouri. And at a time in American history when the future of the institution of slavery was going to be determined, Missouri - a then-slave state - wished for their new neighbor - Kansas - to come into the union as slave state as well…like Missouri. In 1854, Missouri Senator David Atchison led his border ruffians into the territory of Kansas to wreak havoc on Missouri's abolitionist-leaning neighbor.