and Order” party to rally and avenge Cook’s death, and in an answer to this appeal the “Kickapoo Rangers” and Captain Dunn’s company, from Leavenworth, in all about fifty men, turned out to go to Easton on this errand.  A number of gentlemen had gone from Leavenworth to Easton to attend the election, and had stayed over night, among whom were Captain R. P. Brown, a resident of Salt Creek Valley, near Leavenworth.  Captain B. was a man well esteemed in his neighborhood, and was a member-elect of the Legislature.  Captain Dunn and his company met these men returning to Leavenworth, and took them prisoners, carrying them back to Easton.  Here they got up a sort of Lynch-law trial for Captain Brown, but the rabble composing Dunn’s company, having maddened themselves with drink, broke into the room where the trial was going on, seized Captain Brown, who was unarmed and helpless, and tortured him with barbarity that has been supposed to be only possible among savages, and then threw the wounded and dying man into an open lumber wagon, in which they hauled him home to his wife, over the rough, frozen roads, in one of the coldest nights of that bitter cold January; stopping meantime at the drinking-houses by the way, they consumed seven hours in making the journey.  His wife became insane at the sight of her butchered and dying husband, thrown into the door by these brutal wretches, and was, in that condition, taken to her brother in Michigan.  All this was testified to, with every minutia of detail, before the Investigating Committee.

The border papers were aflame with appeals to the “Law and Order” party to go over into Kansas and wipe out the pestiferous Free State men, who set at naught the Territorial Legislature.  The following sample of these appeals we extract from a speech made by David R. Atchison, at Platte City: 

They held an election on the 15th of last month, and they intend to put the machinery of a State in motion on the 4th of March, “I say, prepare yourselves; go over there.  And if they attempt to drive you out, then drive them out.  Fifty of you with your shot-guns are worth two hundred and fifty of them with their Sharpe’s rifles.”

Meanwhile a great cry of wrongs and outrages against the Free State men had filled the whole North, and Congress could not choose, but had to pay attention to it.  Ex-Governor Reeder came forward and contested the seat of Mr. Whitfield as Territorial delegate to Congress, alleging that Mr. W. owed his election to the votes of men not residents of the Territory.  As a result, a Committee of Investigation was appointed to go to Kansas to take testimony, this committee being composed of Sherman of Ohio, Howard, of Michigan, and Oliver, of Missouri.  These took an immense number of depositions, which were published in a volume of more than 1,200 octavo pages, and of which 20,000 were ordered to be printed.  This investigating committee made a majority report signed by Howard and Sherman, in which they summed up their conclusions under eight heads.  Of these we shall copy four: