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 make some headway against the Missourians, who did not come as settlers, but rode across the line into the territory to vote fraudulently, to shoot and rob, and to ride back to the security of their homes in a slave State. Brown bestirred himself promptly against these invaders, and in December, 1855, was made captain of a band organized to resist a Missourians' raid on the Free State town of Lawrence. The raiders were repulsed ignominiously, after killing one settler. Brown described in a letter to his wife the heart-rending scene when the wife of the murdered man, whose body the Free State men had found, was brought in to see him.

In a letter written in February, 1856, Brown showed that he had no respect for the federal authority, which was doing its best to bolster up the slavery cause in Kansas. "We hear," he said, "that Frank Pierce means to crush the men of Kansas. I do not know how