DEAR SIR: Your letter to my mother was received to-night. You wish me to give you the facts in regard to the Pottawatomie execution, or murder, and to know whether my father was a participant in the act. I was one of the company at the time of the homicide, and never away from him one hour at a time after we took up arms in Kansas; therefore, I say positively, that he was not a participator in the deed,--although I should think none the less of him if he had have been there; for it was the grandest thing that was ever done in Kansas. It was all that saved the Territory from being overrun with drunken land-pirates from the Southern States. That was the first act in the history of Kansas which proved to the demon of Slavery that there was as much room to give blows as to take them. It was done to save life and to strike terror through their wicked ranks. Yours respectfully, SALMON BROWN. Criminals who are tried and judged upon testimony furnished by themselves are usually acquitted. In this important case it is unfortunate that the distinguished author accepted the statements which these men made to him, as being the whole truth, and that he certified them to the public and wrote them into history as the exact facts therein. Salmon Brown and Henry Thompson could not fructify the desert, but they held the secrets of the Pottawatomie, and if they had revealed them to Mr. Villard instead of practicing a deception upon him, he would have written the history of the tragedy differently. But Mr. Villard was zealous in a quest for evidence that would sustain the conception of the character of John Brown which he desired to establish for him in history: a "complex character," which only those can understand who hold a chart upon the mysteries of the soul. He said:[144] How may the killings on the Pottawatomie, this terrible violation of the statute and the moral laws, be justified? This is the question that has confronted every student of John Brown's life since it was definitely established that Brown was, if not actually a principal in the crime, an accessory and an instigator. It thus appears that it was not historical facts that he sought, but evidence that would counteract the force of the historical facts already existing. It was a partisan zeal that led him to seek the testimony of partisans.