Personal Recollections

Butler (1816-88) was a farmer and preacher born in Onondaga County, NY, who arrived in Kansas in 1855 and was involved there in the run-up to the American Civil War. He is remembered in Kansas history for being set adrift on a raft on the Missouri River by pro-slavery men for his abolitionist beliefs. After the war he continued to preach and farm, turning from the abolitionist cause to the temperance movement. He devoted much time to writing and lecturing on temperance and the Atchison Daily Globe of the 1880s contains several of his polemics. The Republican Party was begun in the early 1850s by anti-slavery activists and Butler was among the early organizers of the Party in Kansas in May and June 1856. He was active in the presidential campaign of 1872, speaking at the Republican State Congressional Convention at Lawrence and serving as an elector. Though urged by his friends to run for office, he invariably refused them claiming he considered the office of a Christian preacher to be the highest office on earth. Butler's Personal Recollections were first published in book form in 1889, following his death resulting from an injury incurred while dismounting an unbridled colt, and include reminiscences from his daughter, Mrs Rosetta B Hastings. The portions written by Butler himself had first been serialised by the Christian Standard in 1888.