At the time the pro-slavery party decided to send Mr.
Butler down the Missouri River on a raft, Dr.Stringfellow was absent as a member of the Territorial Legislature.
The crowd had now to be pacified and won over to an arrangement that should give me a chance for my life.

A Mr.Peebles, a dentist from Lexington, Mo., who was working at the business of dentistry in Atchison, and himself a slave-holder, was put forward to do this work.
He said: "My friends, we must not hang this man; he is not an Abolitionist, he is what they call a Free-soiler.

The Abolitionists steal our niggers, but the Free-soilers do not do this.

They intend to make Kansas a free State by legal methods.

But in the outcome of the business, there is not the value of a picayune of difference between a Free-soiler and an Abolitionist; for if the Free-soilers succeed in making Kansas a free State, and thus surround Missouri with a cordon of free States, our slaves in Missouri will not be worth a dime apiece.
Still we must not hang this man; and I propose that we make a raft and send him down the river as an example." And so to him they all agreed.