As soon as it became apparent that the people of new territories were to determine for themselves the question of slavery, very naturally each party began a struggle for possession of the new territory according as its sentiments or interests dictated. The struggle began by the {LXIII} abolition party of the north organizing "Emigrant Aid Societies," and sending emigrants of their own faith into Kansas. The slave holders of Missouri also sent settlers representing their faith and interests into the new territory in the hope of bringing it into the Union as a slave state. This brought on a border warfare in which the settlements of western Missouri and eastern Kansas alternately suffered from the raids and counter raids of the respective parties through some six years before the outbreak of the Civil War. As to which were the more lawless or cruel, the fanatical abolitionists or the pro-slavery party, the "jayhawkers," as the organized bands of ruffians of the former party were called, or the "bushwhackers," as the similarly organized bands of the pro-slavery men were called, is not a question necessary for me to discuss here. Both held the laws in contempt, and vied with each other in committing atrocities. The western counties of Missouri, where the Latter-day Saints had suffered so cruelly at the hands of people of those counties some eighteen or twenty years before, were in this border warfare laid desolate, and all the hardships the Missourians had inflicted upon the Saints were now visited upon their heads, only more abundantly. Speaking of the situation in Missouri in 1861, the out-going Governor, Robert M. Stewart, in his address to the legislature, and referring to Missouri and her right to be heard on the slavery question, said: "Missouri has a right to speak on this subject, because she has suffered. Bounded on three sides by free territory, her border counties have been the frequent scenes of kidnapping and violence, and this state has probably lost as much, in the last two years, in the abduction of slaves, as all the rest of the Southern States. _At this moment several of the western counties are desolated, and almost depopulated, from fear of a bandit horde, who have been committing depredations--arson, theft, and foul murder--upon the adjacent border_" [56] Brigadier-General Daniel M. Frost, who had been employed in repressing lawlessness in the western counties of Missouri, in reporting conditions prevailing there in November, 1860, said: