[18] Gihon, pp. 142-3. Geary, Executive Minutes, Senate Ex. Doc., No. 17, 1st Sess. 35th Cong. Vol. VI., p. 195. [19] The Kansas Territorial Legislature, in the year 1859, by which time local passion had greatly subsided, by law empowered a non-partisan board of three commissioners to collect sworn testimony concerning the ravages of the civil war in Kansas, with a view of obtaining indemnity from the general Government for the individual sufferers. These commissioners, after a careful examination, made an official report, from which may be gleaned an interesting summary in numbers and values of the harvest of crime and destruction which the Kansas contest produced, and which report can be relied upon, since eye-witnesses and participants of both parties freely contributed their testimony at the invitation of the commissioners. The commissioners fixed the period of the war as beginning about November 1, 1855, and continuing until about December 1, 1856. They estimated that the entire loss and destruction of property, including the cost of fitting out the various expeditions, amounted to an aggregate of not less than $2,000,000. Fully one-half of this loss, they thought, was directly sustained by actual settlers of Kansas. They received petitions and took testimony in 463 cases. They reported 417 cases as entitled to indemnity. The detailed figures and values of property destroyed are presented as follows: "Amount of crops destroyed, $37,349.61; number of buildings burned and destroyed, 78; horses taken or destroyed, 368; cattle taken or destroyed, 533. Amount of property owned by pro-slavery men, $77,198.99; property owned by free-State men, $335,779.04; property taken or destroyed by pro-slavery men, $318,718.63; property taken or destroyed by free-State men, $94,529.40." About the loss of life the commissioners say: "Although not within our province, we may be excused for stating that, from the most reliable information that we have been able to gather, by the secret warfare of the guerrilla system, and in well-known encounters, the number of lives sacrificed in Kansas during the period mentioned probably exceeded rather than fell short of two hundred.... That the excitement in the Eastern and Southern States, in 1856, was instigated and kept up by garbled and exaggerated accounts of Kansas affairs, published in the Eastern and Southern newspapers, is true, most true; but the half of what was done by either party was never chronicled!"--House Reports, 2d Sess. 36th Cong. Vol. III., Part I, pp. 90 and 93. [20] We quote the following from the executive minutes of Governor Geary to show that border strife had not entirely destroyed the kindlier human impulses, which enabled him to turn a portion of the warring elements to the joint service of peace and order: