They were among the less important people who saw that if “the domestic institutions” were to be left to those who lived there to decide, it was going to be necessary for antislavery men to settle on the land. The brothers’ combined property consisted of eleven head of cattle and three horses. Ten of this number were fine breeds. Thinking of their value in a new country, Owen, Frederick and Salmon took them by way of the Lakes to Chicago and thence to Meridosia where they were wintered. When spring came, they drove them into Kansas to a place about eight miles west of the town of Osawatomie, which the brothers had selected as a likely spot to settle. Seven hundred and fifty men set out that summer under the auspices of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society. Some traveled by wagon over lonely trails. Others sailed down the Ohio River, their farm implements lashed to the decks of the boats. They found a lovely land--wide open spaces, rolling prairies and wooded streams under a great blue dome. They set up their tents and went about breaking soil. They dreamed of cattle herds, waving fields of corn and wheat, orchards and vineyards. There was so much of the good, rich earth in Kansas. Election Day--when members for the first territorial legislature were chosen--came on March 30, 1855. Horace Greeley himself went out to Kansas to cover the election for his paper, the _New York Tribune_. Slaveholders poured into the territory from Missouri by the thousands and took over the polls. “On the evening before and the day of the election,” Greeley wrote, “nearly a thousand Missourians arrived in Lawrence in wagons and on horseback, well armed with rifles, pistols and bowie-knives.” According to his account, they made no pretense of legality, one contingent bringing up two pieces of cannon loaded with musket balls. It was the same everywhere in the territory: the invaders elected all the members of the legislature, with a single exception in either house. These were two Free Soilers from a remote district which the Missourians overlooked. “Although only 831 legal electors in the territory voted, there were no less than 6,320 votes polled.” The people of Kansas repudiated this election and refused to obey the laws passed. Ruffians were called in “to aid in enforcing laws.” Then it was that the sons of John Brown wrote their father asking him to procure and send them arms and ammunition to defend themselves and their neighbors. John Brown had given up his store in Springfield, Massachusetts, and moved to a small farm in the hills of North Elba, New York. Just before the trek West, he had written his son John: “If you or any of my family are disposed to go to Kansas or Nebraska with a view to help defeat Satan and his legions in that direction, I have not a word to say; but I feel committed to operate in another part of the field.”[13] He had not heard from Kansas for many months, when he got the request for arms.