Mr. Howard, during our stay in Kansas, was not in very good health, but he never relaxed in his labor until the testimony closed. He was a man of marked ability, a good lawyer, conservative in all his ideas and tendencies, and throughly fair and impartial. At his request I accompanied him, with our excellent corps of assistants, to his home in Detroit, where his health so failed that he was confined to his bed for a week. This threw upon me the preparation of the report. The resolutions, under which we were acting, did not require a report from the committee, but only required a report of all the evidence collected, to the House of Representatives, but we felt that such a report without a summary of the evidence and principal facts proven would not be satisfactory to the House. The majority and minority reports contained 109 pages of printed matter and entered into full details as to the condition of affairs in that territory, and of every election held therein. When the act to organize the Territory of Kansas was passed, May 30, 1854, the greater portion of the eastern border of the territory was included in Indian reservations not open for settlements, and in no portion were there more than a few white settlers. The Indian population of the territory was rapidly decreasing, while many emigrants from different parts of the country, were anxiously waiting the extinction of the Indian title, and the establishment of a territorial government, to seek new homes on the fertile prairies which would be opened to settlement. It cannot be doubted that if the free condition of Kansas had been left undisturbed by Congress, that territory would have had a rapid, peaceful, and prosperous settlement. Its climate, its soil, and its easy access to the older settlements, would have made it the favored course for the tide of emigration constantly flowing to the west, and in a brief period it would have been admitted to the Union as a free state, without sectional excitement. If so organized, none but the kindest feelings would have existed between its citizens and those of the adjoining State of Missouri. Their mutual interests and intercourse, instead of endangering the harmony of the Union, would have strengthened the ties of national brotherhood. The testimony taken by the committee clearly showed that before the proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise was introduced into Congress, the people of western Missouri were indifferent to the prohibition of slavery in the territory, and neither asked nor desired its repeal.