“My mission here today is, if possible, to awaken the people of this country to the danger ahead and to suggest the means to avoid it. The people of Kansas in their first elections will decide the question whether or not the slave-holder was to be excluded, and it depends upon a majority of the votes cast at the polls. Now, if a set of fanatics and demagogues a thousand miles off could afford to advance their money and exert every nerve to abolitionize the territory and exclude the slave- holder, when they have not the least personal interest in the matter, what is your duty? When you reside within one day’s journey of the territory, and when your peace, your quiet, and your property depend upon this action you can without any exertion send five hundred of your young men who will vote in favor of your institutions.” On November 28, the day preceding the election, the secret society voters in Missouri began to cross over into Kansas. They came organized to carry the election and in such overwhelming numbers as to completely over-awe and out-number the legal voters of the territory at many of the precincts. They took possession of the polls, elected many of the judges, intimidated others to resign and refusing to take the oath qualifying themselves as voters and prescribe to the regulations of the election, cast their ballots for General John W. Whitfield and hastily beat their retreat to Missouri. The whole number of votes cast in that election was 2,233, of which number Whitfield received 2,258; Wakefield, 248; Flenneken, 305, with twenty-two scattering votes. The frauds which were at first denied by both the pro-slavery newspapers and General Whitfield himself, were not long in being discovered. In the Fifteenth district, of which Atchison county was a part, the total number of votes cast was 306, of which Wakefield got none; Flenneken, 39, and Whitfield, 267. The total number of votes given by the census was 308, and in the majority report of the congressional committee of the following year 206 illegal votes were shown to have been cast in that district. However, there was little immediate disturbance following the election. The settlers continued to busy themselves in completing their homes and were more interested in securing titles to their lands than in the future destiny of the territory.