Violence has been loosed in our city. Madness has seized the hearts and minds of my countrymen.
     At first I ignored the New York Herald's report that our senators and congressmen were carrying knives and guns on their persons in the halls of Congress. I dismissed it as an outrageous fabrication of greedy newspapermen. Then, late this afternoon, I received word of the outrageous thrashing of Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts by Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina. The thrashing occurred on the Senate floor in retaliation for his May 19th speech. Sumner had slandered Brooks' uncle, Senator Butler of South Carolina, and all of the South.
     "Murderous robbers and hirelings picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization," Sumner had bellowed from behind his desk. He raved on, arguing that the whole history of South Carolina should be blotted out, for its "shameful imbecility toward slavery confessed throughout the Revolution." He scurrilously compared Butler to a whoremonger whose whore was slavery, and said that Butler, like the Egyptians, "worshiped divinities in brutish forms."
     Brooks pummeled him until he was nearly unconscious. Sumner has a concussion, and his scalp has been torn open all the way down to his skull.

     This morning I received a letter from an old friend of the family, Mrs. Doyle. Her husband, Jim, and their two sons had been murdered at their homestead near Pottawatomie Creek in Osawatomie, Kansas, some forty miles southwest of Shawnee Mission.
     She claimed that her family, as well as three other pro-slavery farmers, had been butchered by the abolitionist John Brown and a small band of violent men armed with swords. The murders were in retaliation for the actions of the Border Ruffians, a pro-slavery lynch mob which had swept into Lawrence, Kansas, the day following Sumner's speech. They laid waste to several free-state printing presses and a half-dozen private homes, killing five men in the process.
     As Brown and his murderous crew dragged her husband and sons away, she begged him to release them. He retorted with Scripture: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth." Within minutes her husband and sons were dead. O God, I pray, help her to forgive, like You have helped me.
     There is one final piece to this story worth noting. As Mrs. Doyle wept over her dead loved ones, she claims to have seen a wiry, dark haired man on horseback appear from the shadow of nearby trees. A crescent moon emerged from behind a bank of clouds and illuminated his face, a cruel face with a long dark scar. He watched briefly, then snapped his reins and rode off in the same direction through the prairie grass Brown and his gang had departed. She does not know who he was or why he was there, but that his presence filled her with great fear.
     What will heal Kansas now that her ground is stained with the blood of innocent men?

     The events of that bloody week in May have driven me to reconsider a question voiced by the early church theologian Tertullian over seventeen hundred years ago: unde malum.
     Whence comes evil?
     Without doubt it is a deep mystery. I ask You, O Lord, what is in the hearts of men that leads them down the path of violence and bloodshed? And Lord, what does Your church have to say in this matter? Will we arise with the voice of truth to deliver this nation from the seeming inevitability of separation? Or will Your church follow this troubled union down the dark path of trial and suffering?
     Despite the fear that seeks to grip me regarding our rising sectional differences I must continue to trust in the Lord and His hand of providence. Yes Lord, You control all things.

     John Kline appeared at my door two days ago. He told of Bones' passing and how Mr. Cowger found him resting peacefully against the old twisted oak. Bones had left instructions with Mr. Cowger to give me his guitar. The Cowgers were kind to see his request fulfilled.
     After an evening of prayer with John, I have decided to once again pursue my original course of studies at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia, studies I began nearly twenty years ago before taking up the rallying cry of the abolitionist. I now have no obligations to keep me here in Washington. Mr. Pitkins of the Charleston Observer has agreed to publish an extensive series on recent advances in medicine and surgical procedures.
     I will return to school following the harvest at John Ezra's farm. Corn, late beets, carrots, and winter squash will need to be gathered in. I look forward to working my hands in the soil and watching God's creation make its quarterly changes.
     Indeed, my brother, John Ezra, is one of the most blessed men on earth. With the psalmist, he can say, "The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places." No one could ask for a better wife and companion than Elizabeth Rachel. Their son, Thomas Peter, now age seven, is already helping with the farm. Adams County, Pennsylvania, must be the garden of Eden.