Record Data
Source citation
Orville Chester Brown, Letter from Orville Chester Brown, September 2, 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.
Type
Letter
Date Certainty
Exact
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.
"Our worst fears are being realized. Kansas is the scene of bloody strife. Murder, house-burning, and pillage are the order of the day. Missouri has poured into our border two thousand armed men whose purpose is to starve out Free-State settlers and destroy their homes and utterly rout us from the soil. Our people are in arms, fighting as best they can, and fully determined to conquer or die. Indeed no other alternative is left us. It is fight or starve -- for adhesion to the `Bogus Laws' never will be given. Many of our people are prisoners, and some, we have reason to believe, have been cruelly murdered. Several of the fortified posts of the Georgians, who were stealing and murdering, were broken up by our people. . . . Routed from their strongholds, . . . they broke for Missouri, . . . and then, with Atchison and Stringfellow, they make the seventh invasion of this fair land in less than two years. . . . Leavenworth is shut out from us, the United States mails stopped, several of our people are held as prisoners.
"Five hundred [of the enemy] go on to Lecompton and are now burning houses and crops of Free-State men about that place. Several were burned last night, others the night before. From West Port twelve [26] hundred march out upon the Santa Fé road, and so down to Osawatomie, and burn and pillage that town, after a heroic resistance by a few noble fellows who killed and wounded thirty-seven of the invaders. Another band of seventy-five go on to Ottawa Jones's (an educated Indian, with a white wife) and burn his house, he barely getting away in his night-clothes. Escaping their bullets, he ran four miles to a neighbour's for protection. His wife left the house, with their treasure, five hundred dollars in gold. Of this they robbed her, when she sat down and saw her house burn while the cowards galloped off. Jones is a peaceable man, but has the sin of being Free State. They took a sick man from the house, beat him to death, as they supposed, and threw him into the creek; but he was found and saved. This party next appeared at Prairie City.
Here some ten or fifteen men routed them, when they joined the main force at Bull Creek. Learning all this, the Free-State forces, two hundred and fifty strong, left town at about nine or ten Saturday morning, and, by forced march of thirty-five miles, the cavalry approached the enemy just at dark. Finding them in so large numbers, our cavalry fell back for the infantry to come up. The next day they gave the foe a chance to fight, but he had taken a hasty leave. Getting some provisions, the force returned and are now preparing for another branch of the `chivalry.' If they stand fight there will be a good chance for them to be flogged.
Friday. Our forces surround Lecompton, having charged the invaders from near Clark's into the town. When all is ready to whip them the United States troops step in and another treaty is made, and Woodson gives up fourteen prisoners. . . .
At Osawatomie the `Ruffians' took a lad, Spencer Brown, and, it is said, have sent him down the river. Shall not write his mother about it by this mail. . . . I am to-day utterly stripped of everything but the clothes on my back. And not the first dollar! But I do not despair. God and Free Kansas! My all is burned and stolen but my claim."
"Five hundred [of the enemy] go on to Lecompton and are now burning houses and crops of Free-State men about that place. Several were burned last night, others the night before. From West Port twelve [26] hundred march out upon the Santa Fé road, and so down to Osawatomie, and burn and pillage that town, after a heroic resistance by a few noble fellows who killed and wounded thirty-seven of the invaders. Another band of seventy-five go on to Ottawa Jones's (an educated Indian, with a white wife) and burn his house, he barely getting away in his night-clothes. Escaping their bullets, he ran four miles to a neighbour's for protection. His wife left the house, with their treasure, five hundred dollars in gold. Of this they robbed her, when she sat down and saw her house burn while the cowards galloped off. Jones is a peaceable man, but has the sin of being Free State. They took a sick man from the house, beat him to death, as they supposed, and threw him into the creek; but he was found and saved. This party next appeared at Prairie City.
Here some ten or fifteen men routed them, when they joined the main force at Bull Creek. Learning all this, the Free-State forces, two hundred and fifty strong, left town at about nine or ten Saturday morning, and, by forced march of thirty-five miles, the cavalry approached the enemy just at dark. Finding them in so large numbers, our cavalry fell back for the infantry to come up. The next day they gave the foe a chance to fight, but he had taken a hasty leave. Getting some provisions, the force returned and are now preparing for another branch of the `chivalry.' If they stand fight there will be a good chance for them to be flogged.
Friday. Our forces surround Lecompton, having charged the invaders from near Clark's into the town. When all is ready to whip them the United States troops step in and another treaty is made, and Woodson gives up fourteen prisoners. . . .
At Osawatomie the `Ruffians' took a lad, Spencer Brown, and, it is said, have sent him down the river. Shall not write his mother about it by this mail. . . . I am to-day utterly stripped of everything but the clothes on my back. And not the first dollar! But I do not despair. God and Free Kansas! My all is burned and stolen but my claim."