Letter from Orville Chester Brown to Mary Ann Cozzens Brown, 1856

My Dear Wife:

Osawatomie is all in ashes. The boys are safe, but our house is burned and the safe broken and robbed. Three Free-State men were killed, and there were three wagon-loads of killed and wounded among the Pro-Slavery men. It was a desperate fight between thirty or forty Free-State men and three hundred Missourians. The whole country is now one scene of fighting, plunder, robbery, and murder. Nearly one thousand Free-State men are in the field and giving the `Border Ruffians' fight where they can find them. . . . A company of cavalry go down to Osawatomie in the morning, to bring up the families still there. . . . I have been sick, but am better. I have not a dollar in money. I shall stay here now. The United States troops will all be here to-morrow with the prisoners. No man can get out of the Territory now. It is fight or die, with many of us. . . . A nobler set of fellows never graced a cause, never were gathered in an army. You see boys of sixteen and men of eighty carrying guns, camping upon the prairie, and living upon melons and green corn, making forced marches by day and night. One hundred and fifty have left this evening to make a forced march to save Topeka. They will, probably, have a fight on the way, as the Lecompton Pro-Slavery forces, five hundred strong, are camped near the road. But they fear nothing -- their cause is just, their wrongs unnumbered. But enough! I am glad you are away from these scenes of strife and blood. I hope to see the boys in a day or two. . . . Love to all. When Hoyt left his friends, just before he was murdered, he remarked (it was in the prospect of a shower), `The thunder meets my ear.' A sad farewell.