me 350 in
number, had brought up a brass four-pounder, lately captured from the
pro-slavery men, and with this and their rifles kept up a long-range
fire for about six hours, when the garrison of Border Ruffians capitulated
on condition of 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 termin