Record Data
Source citation
Orville Chester Brown, Letter from Orville Chester Brown to Mary Ann Cozzens Brown, 1856, Spencer Kellogg Brown, His Life in Kansas and His Death as a Spy, 1842-1863, As Disclosed in His Diary, Smith, George Gardner, editor, New York, NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1903, p. 380.
Recipient (to)
Brown, Mary Ann Cozzens
Type
Letter
Date Certainty
Estimated
Transcriber
Michael Blake
Transcription date
Transcription
The following text is presented here in complete form, as it originally appeared in print. Spelling and typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.
"Yesterday a grand battle was to have been fought. Some six hundred `Border Ruffians' were encamped four miles out of Lecompton. Our army, with General Lane at its head, marched for them at 8 A. M. They fled, as usual, going to Lecompton, around which place were four hundred United States troops. Our army surrounded the town, cannon were all planted -- could have knocked them all to `kingdom come' -- when Woodson [29] sends up a white flag, gets the troops to interfere. So another `treaty' is made. Colonel Cook agrees to disperse the whole invading army, force open the road to Leavenworth, and give up all our prisoners. [30] We give nothing. Dayton, Gardner, Doctor Avery, . . . and lots of others, are there, taken at Leavenworth. At Leavenworth they are driving the Free-State settlers all out, pressing some of the men into their service, and the women are fleeing -- to the woods, to the fort, and down the river in boats. Several men have been shot this week. One came in at five this morning who was shot twenty miles from here. They supposed him dead; but he crawled away, and in two nights and two and a half days he found his way here, through the woods. His face was black with powder and his jaw was broken.
The power of the enemy in the Territory is broken for the present. And yet nothing secures us permanent peace but to break the power of the Missourians. If the States do not do that, we might as well leave.
West Port is expecting an attack, and will, probably, be demolished before the thing is settled. . . . Several hundred more of our friends from the North are expected here in a day or two." . . .
The power of the enemy in the Territory is broken for the present. And yet nothing secures us permanent peace but to break the power of the Missourians. If the States do not do that, we might as well leave.
West Port is expecting an attack, and will, probably, be demolished before the thing is settled. . . . Several hundred more of our friends from the North are expected here in a day or two." . . .