It was more than two months after the arrival of the squatters at Lawrence before the first governor of the new territory, Andrew H. Reeder, made his appearance at Fort Leavenworth and established civil government in Kansas. One of his first experiences was with the attempt of United States officers at the post to secure for themselves pieces of the Delaware lands which surrounded it. "While lying at the fort," wrote a surveyor who left early in September to run the Nebraska boundary line, "we heard a great deal about those d--d squatters who were trying to steal the Leavenworth site." None of the Delaware lands were open to settlement, since the United States had pledged itself to sell them all at public auction for the Indians' benefit. But certain speculators, including officers of the regular army, organized a town company to preëmpt a site near the fort, where they thought they foresaw the great city of the West. They relied on the immunity which usually saved pilferers on the Indian lands, and seem even to have used United States soldiers to build their shanties. They had begun to dispose of their building lots "in this discreditable business" four weeks before the first of the Delaware trust lands were put on sale. However bitter toward each other, the settlers were agreed in their attitude toward the Indians, and squatted regardless of Indian rights or United States laws. Governor Reeder himself convened his legislature, first at Pawnee, whence troops from Fort Riley ejected it; then at the Shawnee mission, close to Kansas City, where his presence and its were equally without authority of law. He established election precincts in unceded lands, and voting places at spots where no white man could go without violating the law. The legal snarl into which the settlers plunged reveals the inconsistencies in the Indian policy. It is even intimated that Governor Reeder was interested in a land scheme at Pawnee similar to that at Fort Leavenworth. The fight for Kansas began immediately after the arrival of Governor Reeder and the earliest immigrants. The settlers actually in residence at the commencement of 1855 seem to have been about 8500. Propinquity gave Missouri an advantage at the start, when the North was not yet fully aroused. At an election for territorial legislature held on March 30, 1855, the threat of Senator Atchison was revealed in all its fulness when more than 6000 votes were counted among a population which had under 3000 qualified voters. Missouri men had ridden over in organized bands to colonize the precincts and carry the election. The whole area of settlement was within an easy two days' ride of the Missouri border. The fraud was so crude that Governor Reeder disavowed certain of the results, yet the resulting legislature, meeting in July, 1855, was able to expel some of its anti-slavery members, while the rest resigned. It adopted the Missouri code of law, thus laying the foundations for a slave state.