He accordingly made a tour of the territory, and although he did not come to Atchison county his tour included many important and remote settlements in the territory. Upon his return he concluded that if the election for a delegate to Congress should be postponed until an election could be had for the legislature, which, in the one case required no previous census, and in the other a census was required, the greater part of the session of Congress, which would terminate on the fourth of March, would expire before a congressional delegate from the territory could reach Washington. He, therefore, ordered an election for a delegate to Congress, and postponed the taking of the census until after that election. He prepared, without unnecessary delay, a division of the territory into election districts, fixed a place of election in each, appointed election officers and ordered that the election should take place November 29, 1854. Atchison county was in the fifteenth election district, which comprised the following territory: Commencing at the mouth of Salt creek on the Missouri river; thence up said creek to the military road and along the middle of said road to the lower crossing of Stranger creek: thence up said creek to the line of the Kickapoo reservation, and thence along the southern and western line thereof to the line of the fourteenth district: thence between same, and down Independence creek to the mouth thereof, and thence down the Missouri river to the place of beginning. The place of the election was at the house of Pascal Pensoneau, on the Ft. Leavenworth and Oregon road, near what is now the town site of Potter. The election which followed was an exciting one. Public meetings were held in all of the towns and villages, at which resolutions were passed against the eastern abolitionists, the _Platte County Argus_ sounding the following alarm: “We know we speak the sentiments of some of the most distinguished statesmen of Missouri when we advise that counter-organizations be made, both in Kansas and Missouri, to thwart the reckless course of the abolitionists. We must meet them at their very threshold and scourge them back to their covers of darkness. They have made the issue, and it is for us to meet and repel them.”