ation. 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, reenlisting 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, Augus