Abraham Lincoln: a History -- Volume 2 | Page 9

being allowed "honorably" to

evacuate their stronghold and retire. The casualties were one man killed
and several wounded.
[Sidenote] Gihon, p. 158.
[Sidenote] Record of examination, Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess. 34th Cong.
Vol. II., pp. 156-9.
The rejoicing of the free-State men over this not too brilliant victory
was short-lived. Returning home in separate squads, they were
successively intercepted by the Federal dragoons acting as a posse to
the Deputy United States Marshal,[16] who arrested them on civil writs
obtained in haste by an active member of the territorial cabal, and to the
number of eighty-nine[17] were taken prisoners to Lecompton. So far
the affair had been of such frequent occurrence as to have become
commonplace--a frontier "free fight," as they themselves described and
regarded it. But now it took on a remarkable aspect. Sterling G. Cato,
one of the pro-slavery territorial judges, had been found by Governor
Geary in the Missouri camp drilling and doing duty as a soldier, ready
and doubtless more than willing to take part in the projected sack of
Lawrence. This Federal judge, as open a law-breaker as the Hickory
Point prisoners (the two affairs really forming part of one and the same
enterprise), now seated himself on his judicial bench and committed the
whole party for trial on charge of murder in the first degree; and at the
October term of his court proceeded to try and condemn to penalties
prescribed by the bogus laws some eighteen or twenty of these
prisoners, for offenses in which in equity and good morals he was
personally particeps criminis--some of the convicts being held in
confinement until the following March, when they were pardoned by
the Governor.[18] Inter arma silent leges, say the publicists; but in this
particular instance the license of guerrilla war, the fraudulent statutes of
the Territory, and the laws of Congress were combined and perverted
with satanic ingenuity in furtherance of the conspiracy.
The vigorous proceedings of Governor Geary, the forced retirement of
the Missourians on the one hand, and the arrest and conviction of the
free-State partisans on the other, had the effect to bring the guerrilla
war to an abrupt termination. The retribution had fallen very unequally

upon the two parties to the conflict,[19] but this was due to the legal
traps and pitfalls prepared with such artful design by the Atchison
conspiracy, and not to the personal indifference or ill-will of the
Governor. He strove sincerely to restore impartial administration; he
completed the disbandment of the territorial militia, reënlisting into the
Federal service one pro-slavery and one free-State company for police
duty.[20] By the end of September he was enabled to write to
Washington that "peace now reigns in Kansas." Encouraged by this
success in allaying guerrilla strife, he next endeavored to break up the
existing political persecution and intrigues.
[Sidenote] Marcy to Geary, August 26, 1856. Gihon, p. 272.
It was not long, however, before Governor Geary became conscious, to
his great surprise and mortification, that he had been nominated and
sent to Kansas as a partisan manoeuvre, and not to institute
administrative reforms; that his instructions, written during the
presidential campaign, to tranquillize Kansas by his "energy,
impartiality, and discretion," really meant that after Mr. Buchanan was
elected he should satisfy the Atchison cabal.
In less than six months after he went to the Territory, clothed with the
executive authority, speaking the President's voice, and representing the
unlimited military power of the republic, he, the third Democratic
Governor of Kansas, was, like his predecessors, in secret flight from
the province he had so trustfully gone to rule, execrated by his party
associates, and abandoned by the Administration which had appointed
him. Humiliating as was this local conspiracy to plant servitude in
Kansas, a more aggressive political movement to nationalize slavery in
all the Union was about to eclipse it.
---------- [1] Shannon, proclamation, June 4, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d
Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 47.
[2] Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, to General Smith, Sept. 3, 1856.
Senate Ex. Doc., 3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 29.
[3] August 18, 1856. Senate Executive Documents, 3d Session 34th

Congress. Vol. III., pp. 76-7.
[4] Richardson to General Smith, August 18, 1856. Senate Ex. Doc., 3d
Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 75.
[5] George Deas, Assistant Adjutant-General to Lieut.-Colonel Cooke,
August 28, 1856. Senate Executive Documents, 3d Session 34th
Congress. Vol. III., p. 85.
[6] Cooke to Deas, August 31, 1856. Ibid., p. 89.
[7] Smith to Cooper, Sept. 10, 1856. Senate Executive Document, 3d
Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., pp. 80, 81.
[8] Sec. War, indorsement, Sept. 23, on letter of Gen. Smith to
Adjutant-General Cooper, Sept. 10, 1856. Senate Executive Documents,
3d Sess. 34th Cong. Vol. III., p. 83.
[9] Woodson, proclamation, August 25, 1856. Senate