As a counter-irritant to the activities of the Free State men, and for the purpose of allaying the insane excitement of the territorial legislature, the pro-slavery followers organized a Law and Order party, which was pledged to the establishment of slavery in Kansas. From thenceforth it was open warfare between the two great forces contending for supremacy in the territory. Atchison was the stronghold of the Law and Order party, as Lawrence was the stronghold of the Free State party. The Free State party was looked upon by the Law and Order advocates as made up of revolutionists and the Law and Order party was determined to bring them to time as soon as possible, but as the members of the Free State party held themselves apart from the legal machinery devised for the government of the territory, bringing no suits in its courts; attending no elections; paying no attention to its county organizations; offering no estates to its probate judges, and paying no tax levies made by authority of the legislature, they were careful to commit no act which would lay themselves liable to the laws which they abhorred. They settled all their disputes by arbitration in order to avoid litigation, but as they could build, manufacture, buy and sell and establish schools and churches without coming under the domination of the pro-slavery forces, they managed to do tolerably well. Where the inhabitants were mostly Free State, as in Lawrence and Topeka, conditions were reasonably satisfactory, but in localities like Atchison and Leavenworth, where the Law and Order party dominated affairs, the Free State inhabitants were forced to suffer many indignities and insults. During the month of August, 1855, a negro woman belonging to Grafton Thomassen, who ran a sawmill in Atchison, was found drowned in the Missouri river. J. W. B. Kelley, a rabid anti-slavery lawyer, from Cincinnati, who became a resident of Atchison, expressed the opinion that if Thomassen’s negro woman had been treated better by her master she would not have committed suicide by jumping into the river. Thomassen was greatly angered at this personal illusion and deluded himself into believing that if he satisfied his own vengeance he would at the same time be rendering the pro-slavery party a service. He therefore picked a quarrel with Kelley and they came to blows, after which Thomassen’s conduct was sustained by a largo meeting of Atchison people. While it is said that Thomassen was a larger and more powerful man than Kelley, the people did not consider this fact, but rather considered the principle involved, and as a result they commended the act in the following resolution: