Author: Pardee ButlerPublisher:
ISBN: 9781409955085
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Reverend Pardee Butler (1816-1888) was a farmer and preacher. In 1850 he developed quinsy, causing him to give up preaching in Ohio and move to Cedar County, Iowa to improve his health. Over the next several years he preached in various places in Illinois and Missouri and in early 1855 went to Kansas. It was there that 'the rafting episode' took place on August 18, 1855. He was set adrift on the Missouri River on a raft by pro-slavery men for his abolitionist beliefs. Butler's first-hand account of the episode appears in his Recollections (1889). In 1856 the Republicans became a national party and in 1860 Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican president. The passions of which Butler was a victim continued to ferment in Kansas and the rest of the country and soon led to the Civil War. After the war, Butler continued to preach and farm. He was active in the presidential campaign of 1872. Though often urged by his friends to run for office, Butler invariably refused telling them he "considered the office of a Christian preacher the highest office on earth. "