The year 1860 was characterized by great excitement and local disturbances. Many affrays occurred and numerous murders were perpetrated. The excitement and bitterness of feeling involved in the issues at stake between the great political parties of the country in the pending Presidential election extended to and pervaded the entire population of the civilized tribes of Indian Territory. They were many of them slaveholders, especially the half-breeds and mixed bloods. They therefore vehemently resented the introduction and dissemination of any doctrines at variance with the dogma of the divine origin of slavery or that should set up any denial of the moral and legal right of the owner to the continued possession of his slave property. The missionaries and many of the school teachers among the Cherokees were persons of strong anti-slavery convictions, and the former especially were zealous in their dissemination of doctrines fatal alike to the peace and endurance of a slave community. In September John B. Jones, a Baptist missionary, who had devoted much of his life to Christian work among the Indians, was notified by the agent to leave the country within three weeks, because of the publication of an article from his pen in a Northern paper, wherein he stated that he was engaged in promulgating anti-slavery sentiments among his flock.[554] Others were in like manner compelled to leave, and the excitement continued to increase daily until the outbreak of hostilities precipitated by the attack on Fort Sumter.