Gideons International association would be to unite traveling salesmen for evangelism. In July, 1899, Nicholson, Hill, and Will J. Knights met at the YMCA in Janesville. Two of them continued with the distribution of the Bibles. Gideons began distributing free Bibles, the work they are chiefly known for, in 1908, when the first Bibles were placed in the rooms of the Superior Hotel in Superior, Montana. The organization describes its link to the story of Gideon: "Gideon was a man who was willing to do exactly what God wanted him to do, regardless of his own judgment as to the plans or
Beecher's Bibles far as the slaveholders of Kansas were concerned, than in a hundred Bibles. You might just as well. . . read the Bible to Buffaloes as to those fellows who follow Atchison and Stringfellow; but they have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied in Sharp's rifle. The arms purchased by anti-slavery organizations were, on at least one occasion, shipped in wooden crates marked "books," though there is no verifiable evidence that any firearms were shipped in boxes marked "Bibles." The New England Emigrant Aid Society also disguised shipments of arms intended for Kansas in crates marked "Tools"