Camp Of U. S. Cavalry, Near Lecompton, Kansas,
Aug. 16, 1856.
Dear Brother Jason
And Others, — Agreeably with my promise to write often, I have sent you
lately not less than four letters, — one or two by private hands, the others by
mail. Events of the most stirring character are now passing within hearing
distance. I should think more than two hundred shots have been fired within the
past half hour, and within a mile of our camp. Have just learned that some eighty
of our Free-State men have “pitched into” a proslavery camp this side of
Lecompton, which was commanded by a notorious proslavery scoundrel named Titus,
one of the Buford party from Alabama. A dense volume of smoke is now rising in
the vicinity of his house. The firing has ceased, and we are most impatient to
learn the result.
During the past month the Ruffians have been actively at
work, and have made not less than five intrenched camps, where they have in
different parts of the Territory established themselves in armed bands, well
provided with provisions, arms, and ammunition. From these camps they sally
out, steal horses, and rob Free-State settlers (in several cases murdering
them), and then slip back into their camp with their plunder. Last week a body
of our men made a descent upon Franklin,1 and after a skirmishing
fight of about three hours took their barracks, and recovered some sixty guns
and a cannon, of which our men had been robbed some months since, on the road
from Westport. Our loss was one man killed and two severely wounded, but it is
thought they will recover. The enemy were in a log building, from which they
kept up a sharp fire, while they themselves were quite unexposed. Our men then
had recourse to a system of tactics not laid down in Scott. They procured a
wagon loaded with hay, and running it down against the building set it on fire,
when the rascals immediately surrendered. Yesterday our men had invested
another of their fortified camps on Washington Creek, a south branch of the
Wakarusa; and it was expected that an attack would be made upon it last night.
Hurrah for our side! A messenger has just come in,
stating that on the approach of our men, some two hundred and fifty or three
hundred in number, at Washington Creek yesterday, towards evening, the enemy
broke and fled, leaving behind, to fall into the hands of our men, a lot of
provisions and a hundred stand of arms. But this is not all. The notorious
Colonel Titus, who only a day or two since was heard to declare that “Free-State
men had only two weeks longer to remain in Kansas,” went out last night on a
marauding expedition, in which he took six prisoners and a lot of horses. This
morning our men followed him closely and fell upon his camp, killed two of his
men, liberated the prisoners he had taken, took him and ten other prisoners,
set fire to his house, and with a lot of arms, tents, provisions, etc.,
returned, having in the fight had only one of our men seriously wounded.
_______________
1 Four miles south of Lawrence. The fights that
followed are those mentioned by Atchison on page 309.
SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of
John Brown, p. 311-2
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