e war on the town of Topeka.

If, as had been alleged, General Smith was at first inclined to regard
the pro-slavery side with favor, its arrogance and excesses soon
removed his prejudices, and he wrote an unsparing report of the
situation to the War Department. "In explanation of the position of
affairs, lately and now, I may remark that there are more than two
opposing parties in the Territory. The citizens of the Territory who
formed the majority in the organization of the territorial government,
and in the elections for its Legislature and inferior officers, form
one party. The persons who organized a State government, and attempted
to put it in operation against the authority of that established by
Congress, form another. A party, at the head of which is a former
Senator from Missouri, and which is composed in a great part of
citizens from that State, who have come into this Territory armed,
under the excitement produced by reports exaggerated in all cases, and
in many absolutely false, form the third. There is a fourth, composed
of idle men congregated from various parts, who assume to arrest,
punish, exile, and even kill all those whom they assume to be bad
citizens; that is, those who will not join them or contribute to their
maintenance. Every one of these has in his own peculiar way (except
some few of the first party) thrown aside all regard to law, and even
honesty, and the Territory under their sway is ravaged from one end to
the other.... Until the day before yesterday I was deficient in force
to operate against all these at once; and the acting Governor of the
Territory did not seem to me to take a right view of affairs. If Mr.
Atchison and his party had had the direction of affairs, they could
not have ordered them more to suit his purpose."[7]

All such truth and exposure of the conspiracy, however, was
unpalatable at Washington; and Secretary Jefferson Davis, while
approving the conduct of Colonel Cooke and expressing confidence
in General Smith, nevertheless curtly indorsed upon his report: "The
only distinction of parties which in a military point of view it is
necessary to note is that which distinguishes those who respect and
maintain the laws and organized government from those who combine for
revolutionary resistance to the constitutional authorities and laws of
the land. The armed combinations of the latter class come within the
denunciation of the President's proclamation and are proper subjec