The border chiefs felt willing enough to lead their awkward squads against the slight barricades of Lawrence, but quailed at the unlooked-for prospect of encountering the carbines and sabers of half a regiment of regular dragoons and the grape-shot of a well-drilled light battery.

They accepted the inevitable; and swallowing their rage but still nursing their revenge, they consented perforce to retire and be "honorably" mustered out.

But for this narrow contingency Lawrence would have been sacked a second time by the direct agency of the territorial cabal.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN W.GEARY.] [Sidenote] Examination, Senate Ex.Doc., 3d Sess.

34th Cong.
Vol.II., pp.

156-69.
Nothing could more forcibly demonstrate the unequal character of the contest between the slave-State and the free-State men in Kansas, even in these manoeuvres and conflicts of civil war, than the companion exploit to this third Lawrence raid.