September 10, 1863, The Missouri Republican,
 “Spirit of the German Press”

The Westliche Post says:

THE LOYAL BORDER RUFFIANS IN KANSAS.

We must confess history often makes very bitter satires. Jean Paul says humor is the sublime reversed, and thus we might say that our misery and our trouble ends with a farce--with a murkyish comedy, which, like the clowns in Shakespeare's dramas, only relieves by its folly so much more vividly the dark background. Such a clown is now General Schofield, who has taken it into his head to pacify the people of Kansas and of Lawrence. We must remind the general, on this occasion, that there are many other things between heaven and earth than army regulations, and that the revenge-thirsty widows of Lawrence, and all other citizens who have lost their fathers, sons, and friends, will not permit themselves to be regulated by any paper ordinance whatever. Only consider the bitter dramatic irony of the drama in which assuredly many fools figure. The case stands thus: In a certain night the citizens of Lawrence are attacked and murdered, their houses burned down, and every feeling heart in the country is horrified at such an unheard-of deed; but neither Mr. Lincoln nor Mr. Schofield have known anything about the matter. Mr. Lincoln has not even the courage to address a letter of condolence to the deserted widows and orphans of Lawrence. But General Schofield goes to the border as a pacificator, and his first action is an ordinance for the protection of the bushwhackers in Missouri, for he says "The militia of Kansas must not cross the border of Missouri." The blood of every friend of humanity must boil in his veins when he witnesses such cold-blooded cowardice and reads such miserable trash. We maintain that by this absurd ordinance General Schofield has made himself the accomplice and protector of the bushwhackers. The loyal conspiracy develops itself daily more; the men of "law and order" are those who have been from the first the right hand of the reactionaries, the parasites of our party; the fellows who eat from Uncle Sam's pocket while they fight against the interests of the true party of freedom; that half-blooded, mongrel race of men who have no particular creed whatever, and only lean to that side where success seems to beckon and where no danger is to be feared. Such are now our Union men a la Gamble and Schofield. Such are the men who want to raise the flag of peace on the blood-drenched border of Kansas, in order to protect the rebels from a just revenge. Every brave heart of the Kansas patriots is filled with grief, and their faith in the existence of liberty must vanish more every day that this disgraceful government continues.

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