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 subjects upon which to employ the military force."[8] [Sidenote] "Washington Union," August 1, 1856.