An Emigrant Aid Society had been formed in the North, whose object it was to assist in the erection of mills, school-houses, and other buildings, for the public benefit. Their motive was partly financial, inasmuch as all such improvements rapidly increased the value of property in Kansas; and they were well aware that the outward prosperity, as well as the moral strength of a state depended greatly upon encouraging emigrants to go from communities where they had been accustomed to free institutions, educational privileges, orderly habits, and salutary laws. Their motives in extending a helping hand to these infant colonies, were both morally good and worldly wise. There was no partiality in their management of affairs. Emigrants from the Southern states shared their benefits equally with those from the North. Settlers were pouring in from all sections of the country; but chiefly from the North and West, because the hardy inhabitants of those states are always ready for enterprise and toil. Many of them had large families of children, and the small half-furnished tavern, called the Cincinnati House, was quite insufficient to afford them shelter while cabins were prepared for them. In the course of their first summer, John Bradford and his band of pilgrims had the satisfaction of seeing a noble stone hotel, of three stories, rise in Massachusetts street, making the place beautiful with its glazed windows, and doors of polished black walnut. Unfortunately, the only route to Kansas, by rail-road or steamboat, passed through Missouri. Baggage-wagons were continually plundered, and letters broken open and destroyed, by the Border Ruffians. Supplies of provisions, purchased by the settlers, or sent to them by their friends, went to enrich their enemies. Money enclosed in letters met with the same fate. Still the settlers of Kansas pursued a pacific course toward their persecutors. They came from communities where laws were reliable for protection, and, following their old habits, they appealed to the laws; desirous, at all hazards, not to involve the country in civil war. This conscientious patriotism was not appreciated. The banditti on the borders laughed it to scorn; while the slaveholding gentlemen and statesmen, who used them as puppets, to do the disgraceful work they were ashamed to do openly themselves, smiled at the Yankees’ reverence for the Union, and successfully played their old game of practicing on conscientious love of country, in order to tighten the serpent coil of slavery more securely about the neck of freedom. Missourians had voted their own creatures into most of the offices of Kansas. Some of them pitched a tent in that Territory for a while, while others did not even assume the appearance of residing there. From _such_ officers of justice the citizens of Kansas could find no redress for the robberies and wrongs continually inflicted on them, by the band of ruffians