The importance of exchanging the Pottawatomie horses immediately, and getting them out of the country was a high card in Brown's play. If he and his gang had been caught with their murdered neighbors' horses in their possession the next morning, there would not have been any sophistical discussion fifty years after about how the "killings on the Pottawatomie" could be "justified"; or about Brown's "sudden impulses"; or of his altruistic convictions that it was necessary to "_remove_" anybody. The men of that outraged neighborhood, regardless of party affiliation, would have promptly hanged the outlaws. But the robbers were too deep for them. The neighbors lost the trail of the robbers and murderers; also, they lost the trail of the Browns. The horror of these murders, aggravated by the brutal mutilation of the bodies of the victims, seems to have shocked that community into a condition of semi-insensibility. In a lot of resolutions adopted at a public meeting of citizens at Osawatomie, on the 27th, "denouncing the murders"; the motive prompting the crime, _the theft of the horses owned by the victims_, is not referred to. It is probable that the Osawatomie people, who drew the resolutions, did not then know that any horses had been stolen. At any rate, these resolutions came to be regarded as the public or official announcement of what had occurred; and since they contained no reference to any robbery, in connection with the murders, the public was thus, unintentionally, led to believe that the assassinations were acts of partisan warfare; a killing of obnoxious pro-slavery men by unknown, but over zealous Free-State men. The resolutions are as follows:[137] _Whereas_, an outrage of the darkest and foulest nature has been committed in our midst by some midnight assassins unknown, who have taken five of our citizens at the hour of midnight, from their homes and families, and murdered and mangled them in the most awful manner; to prevent a repetition of these deeds, we deem it necessary to adopt some measures for our mutual protection and to aid and assist in bringing these desperadoes to justice. Under these circumstances we propose to act up to the following resolutions: _Resolved_, that we will repudiate and discountenance all organized bands of men who leave their homes for the avowed purpose of exciting others to acts of violence, believing it to be the duty of all good disposed citizens to stay at home during these exciting times and protect and if possible restore the peace and harmony of the neighborhood; furthermore we will discountenance all armed bodies of men who may come amongst us from any other part of the Territory or from the States unless said parties come under the authority of the United States.