A letter from Osawatomie, Kansas, gave a vivid picture in the _Evening Post_ of July 14, 1856, of the perils of the free-soil settlement there, and asked for funds sufficient to keep thirty or forty horsemen in the field, well mounted and armed with breechloading rifles, Colt’s revolvers, and sabers. Other pleas were backed by editorials. A month after the Dred Scott decision a correspondent writing from Leavenworth told how the North had rallied to meet the crisis. “Emigration to Kansas and Nebraska has now set in with wonderful vigor, and such force as none have anticipated. Every train from Boston and New York to St. Louis is crowded to excess. More boats are running on the Missouri River than ever before, yet all are crowded. I have been nearly a week on the river and have slept on the cabin floor every night, with some hundred of other bed- or rather floor-fellows, being unable to get a stateroom. It is estimated that 7,000 Kansas emigrants have landed at Kansas City since the opening of navigation, and thousands more have gone on to Wyandotte, Quindaro, Leavenworth, etc.... And still they come. A single party of a thousand persons was expected in St. Louis last Tuesday.” The later correspondence had an equally confident note, which was justified when in October the free-soilers swept the Territorial election. When the pro-slavery legislators that autumn, faced with the loss of their control, hastily drew up the Lecompton Constitution, providing for the establishment and perpetuation of slavery, the _Evening Post_ attacked them angrily. Its fear was that the Buchanan Administration would induce Congress, which was Democratic in both branches, to admit Kansas under this illegal instrument. Thayer, its Washington correspondent, wrote that the Administration leaders were employing bribery to that end. The protests of the _Evening Post_ day in and day out contributed to the overwhelming Northern sentiment which made this fraud impossible. While the _Herald_, _Journal of Commerce_, and _Express_ were filled with horror by John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry in the closing days of 1859, the _Evening Post_ pointed to it as a just retribution upon the South for its own crimes. Douglas believed and said that the raid was the natural result of the teachings of the Republican party; Bryant believed it the natural result of that Southern violence which he had excoriated after Brooks’s assault upon Sumner. His editorials almost recall John Brown’s own favorite text: “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.” Of course, he condemned the lawlessness of the act, but he did not believe Brown solely responsible: