xorable facts of the
situation won to the side of the Free-State men, and accordingly lost
favor and their office. Meantime the usurping Legislature had enacted an
extraordinary code of laws. By these statutes, decoying a slave from his
master was punishable by death or hard labor for ten years; the
circulation of writings inciting to revolt was made a capital offense;
and the assertion by speech, writing, or the circulation of any book or
paper, that slavery was not lawful in the Territory, was punishable by
two years' hard labor.

It was not in the blood of free men to submit to such usurpation and
tyranny. In the autumn of 1855 the Free State party held a convention,
adopted a State constitution, and petitioned for admission to the Union.
They elected State officers with Charles S. Robinson as Governor. This
organization had really no legal standing; in form it was revolutionary.
But the Free State party were not only resolute, but adroit. They had no
mind to actively rebel against the United States Government, or come
into collision with its forces. Governor Robinson, their foremost
leader, was a man of New England birth, who had served a profitable
apprenticeship in the settlement of California, and learned a lesson
amid the complications of Federal authority and pioneer exigencies.
Counseled by him and men of like mind, the Free State party, while
maintaining the form of a State government, and disavowing the
Territorial Legislature as fraudulent, always deferred to any express
mandate of Federal authority. The Federal troops in the Territory were
commanded by Colonel Sumner, afterward a distinguished commander in the
Union army, and Governor Robinson (_The Kansas Conflict_), credits him
with a loyal and generally successful purpose to preserve order and
peace. In the mixed population there was much bad blood, many threats,
and occasional violence, but no general conflict. The "border ruffians"
were often insulting, and some murders were committed, but the Free
State men kept steadily on the defensive, though there was among them a
faction which favored more aggressive measures.

At last, a Free-State man was wantonly murdered; then an eye-witness of
the murder was got away on an apparently trumped-up charge; this was
followed by a bloodless rescue and the witness was carried off to
Lawrence. Then a sheriff with his posse went to Lawrence to arrest one
of the rescuers. In the night the sheriff was fired at and wo