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Transcription
From Kansas.
CONVICTIONS FOR MURDER AND BUGLARY—RESIGNATION OF SHERIFF JONES—LECOMPTE’S REMOVAL.
Correspondence of the Missouri Democrat.
LECOMPTON, Kansas, Saturday, Dec. 20, 1856.
JOHN CUSHING, indicted for the murder of WM. NORTON (both Pro-Slavery men,) has been on trial for the last week at Tecumseh, before Judge CATO. To-day the examination of witnesses concluded, the attorneys made their plea, the Judge gave his charge, the jury retired and brought in a verdict of “guilty”—the first conviction of the kind in Kansas. His sentence has not yet been pronounced. It is presumed that by some process or other a new trial of CUSHING will be granted by his honor, the Judge. The conviction of “law and order” men is not in the programme of fire-eaters, and it would not do, as Gen. CALHOUN said a few weeks since in this city, “to have our men stained with indictments by an inquisitorial grand jury.” CUSHING has been convicted for murder, and the “law says he shall suffer death.” Judge CATO has declared in an official capacity that “murder is murder, and that there is no first, second, or third degrees to it.”
Mr. WM. PATRIDGE, of Pottawatomie Creek, has been convicted of burglary, and sentenced by Judge CATO to ten years’ imprisonment to hard labor in the penitentiary. Mr. P. is a Free-State man, and had a brother murdered by the Missourians during the attack upon Ossawattomie, so bravely defended by “old Capt. BROWN.”
LAWRENCE, K.T., Sunday, Dec. 21, 1856
“Sheriff” SAMUEL J. JONES, who has gained considerable notoriety in the history of Kansas by his border-ruffianism, has resigned as “Sheriff of Douglas County,” and the bogus Commissioners have appointed a Mr. WM. SHANARD, formerly of Virginia, to fill the vacancy.
An officer sent out by the President to inquire into the official affairs of GEN. CALHOUN, Surveyor-General of this and Nebraska Territories, is now in Lecompton examining the books, &c. It is supposed that the next appointee of the Chief Magistrate for this Territory, that will be removed from office, will be CALHOUN, and a respectable person appointed as his successor.
Judge LECOMPTE, the Jeffreys of Kansas, has received official notice of his removal from a position which he has rendered infamous by his one-sided course and border-ruffiansim.
Maj. GEORGE W. CLARK, Ex-Indian Agent, the murderer of the lamented THOMAS W. BARBER, has an advertisement in the Lecompton Union offering $50 reward for the recover of his runaway slave woman named JUDY. It states that “the last seen of JUDY, she was on her way to Lawrence where she now is, unless she has already secured a passage on the underground railroad to Chicago.”