The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-07-07
THE FIRST SHOT.
Cannon Shot Fired in Lawrence in 1856 Stin in Existence; Picked
 Up Years Later.

When Lawrence was first sacked on May 21, 1856, by Missourians and pro- slavery men directed by territorial of ficials, Divad A. Atchison, at one time United States, Senator from Missouri. figured prominently in the work of i'm citing the mob to its rash deeds. At chison had at one time served as Vice President of the United States, but during the Kansas trouble he lowered about the border towns of Kansas and Missouri helping greatly to incite the lower classes of Missourians to vio- lence toward the free state settlers, especially those in Lawrence.
 When Eherin Jones and his allies came to Lawrence on May 21, 1856, to abate the Free State Hotel and the two newspapers offices as nuisances- technically they were charged with "constructive treason"-Atchison was in the front ranks, and incidentally slightly tipsy. He made a famous speech that day. to the effect that By God. boys, I'm . Kicapoo ranger" !" and among other things urged his men to shoot down women and chill dren if 1t seemed at all necessary. But it was not until the work of de- ;stroying the Free. State Hotel com menced that Atchison really did him. self justice. The offices of the Her aid of Freedom and the Kansas Free State had already been sacked and demolished, and then the mob turned on the Free State Hotel. First the hotel was bombarded with cannon, but with little success; the shot simply made holes in the walls, and the ac- tual work of destruction was finally accomplished by blowing the building up with kegs of powder and firing 1t with paper from the newspaper. Of flces.
 Not to be kept out of the public eye, Atchison insisted on firing the first shot at the hotel. A small howitzer was dragged out into the street east of the hotel and slightly north-about where the car track now turns east, or possibly few yards further east and Atchison went about aiming the gun at the hotel. The howitzer used was not loaded with the customary round cannon ball. but with a shell set in a brass jacket-the only one of the kind the company had.
 Atchison sighted down the gun bar rel. but his good right eye told him the gun, was not properly aimed.
 Lower her a. little bit higher. boys; lower hera little bit higher," he com handed.
 That done. he touched the cannon of and completely missed the hotel!
 The shell went screaming over into the west part of the town and was heard distinctly by many people, who described its passage as being accom- panied by a peculiar whistling sound unlike that of any other shot fired that day.
 Twenty-nine years later. in street in West Lawrence that was being graded down. Sam Elliott (now in the local post office) picked that missile out of the earth and carried 1t home to his father. whose paper was de- stroyed on the day of the sacking. Be- cause of it's shape, the place where 1t was found and the fact that the in vaders had but one shot of it's kind there seems little doubt that the shot is no other than the one aimed by Atchison.
 According to R. G. Elliott, who is still in possession of the missile, that shot was the first shot fired in the Civil War" That is, following this attack on Lawrence bloody border warfare ragged in Kansas until late in the fall of 1856. The Kansas troubles attracted so much attention the coun- try over and the pro-slavery powers were so bitterly denounced for their actions in Kansas that this first shot in the war that started five years later.-Exchange.