Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

[285] hundred Missourians down at Franklin, and that they will be here in two hours. You can see for yourselves the smoke they are making by setting fire to the houses in that town. Now is probably the last opportunity you will have of seeing a fight; so that you had better do your best. If they should come up and attack us, don't yell and make a great noise, but remain perfectly silent and still. Wait till they get within twenty-five yards of you; get a good object; be sure you see the hind-sight of your gun: then fire. A great deal of powder and lead, and very precious time, are wasted by shooting too high. You had better aim at their legs than at their heads. In either case, be sure of the hind-sights of your guns. It is from this reason that I myself have so many times escaped; for, if all the bullets which have been aimed at me had hit me, I should have been as full of holes as a riddle.

He proceeded to post his men so admirably as to conceal entirely their paucity of numbers, taking advantage of a gentle ridge running east and west, at some distance south of the town. The hostile forces remained through the night about half a mile from each other, with a corn-field between, each man covered by the grass and the inequalities of the ground, their positions only revealed by the flashes and reports of their guns. When the sun rose next morning, the Missourians had decamped.

Capt. Brown left soon after for the East by the circuitous land route through Nebraska and Iowa; that through Missouri being closed against Free-State men. He took a fugitive slave in his wagon, and saw him safely on his way to freedom. He made two or three visits to the East in quest of aid and of funds, returning for the last time to Southern Kansas in the Autumn of 1858. Peace had finally been secured in all that part of the Territory lying north of the Kansas river, by the greatly increased numbers and immense preponderance of the Free-State settlers, rendering raids from Missouri, whether to carry elections or devastate settlements, too perilous to be lightly undertaken. When the Missourians still rallied, in obedience to habit, at Kansas elections, they did so at Oxford, Santa Fe, and other polls held just along the border, where they could suddenly concentrate force enough to make the operation a tolerably safe one. But Southern Kansas was still very thinly settled, in part by Missourians; while Fort Scott, a military post and land-office in the heart of that section, afforded a nucleus and a rallying-point for pro-Slavery terrorism. The Missourians, recognizing and acting under the Territorial Legislature and local officers created by the Border Ruffian irruptions and fraudulent elections, claimed to be the party of Law and Order, and often, if not usually, committed their outrages under the lead of a marshal or a sheriff. The Free-State men, repudiating and scouting those elections and their fruits, were regarded and treated, not only by the pro-Slavery party on either side of the border, but by the Federal Administration and its instruments in Kansas, as outlaws and criminals. At length, Fort Scott itself was captured¹ by Montgomery,² one of the boldest of the Free-State leaders, who, with 150 men, entered it by night, made temporary prisoners of its dignitaries, and liberated a Free-State man imprisoned there. Montgomery soon after surrendered himself to the Federal Governor of the Territory, when a treaty or understanding was had between them,