The foregoing is the record, to date, of John Brown's "activities" in Kansas. The peace and tranquility of the Osawatomie district to which he came in October, 1855, had not theretofore been disturbed by any distracting contentions. The settlers were pursuing the even tenor of their way. They were comfortable, prosperous, and contented; living in the security vouchsafed, by the usages of our civilization and the laws of our country, to all of its citizens. They so continued to live, during a period of eight months thereafter, wholly unsuspicious of the designs their neighbor, Brown, was maturing against their peace, their property, and their lives. From 1854 to 1860, the great political contest in the country was over the question of the extension of slavery into the public domain. It was the paramount issue in National politics. New alignments were then formed throughout the country in relation to it, as men were differently moved by their sympathies or interests. In Kansas, the division in public sentiment was more pronounced than elsewhere, for reasons that have been stated. Naturally, the settlers in the Osawatomie neighborhood were divided upon this political question; but certainly not with very much greater intensity of feeling than this same neighborhood was divided afterward, upon the great moral question of prohibition, or upon the equally great economic question of free-coinage of silver. The differences of opinion there did not promote or arouse personal animosities, or bitterness of feeling, among the settlers. Ample authority for this conclusion of fact is found in the letters written, at the time, by John Brown and others of his family, and in the statement which he voluntarily made in 1857, before a committee of the Massachusetts legislature, heretofore quoted. A large majority of the settlers in that district belonged to the Free-State party which made the security and peace of the Free-State settlers complete, beyond debate. These conditions of peace and tranquility continued undisturbed, until the night of May 24, 1856, when John Brown opened his "school" of plunder, and cast the baleful shadow of his presence upon the settlement. The Pottawatomie horror inaugurated a season of assassination and robbery unprecedented in Kansas history: a period of public disorder and crime, that ended only when the Territory was finally rid of John Brown and his marauders. CHAPTER VIII HYPOCRISY _He was a man Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven To serve the Devil in._ --POLLOCK, COURSE OF TIME