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Osawatomie Oct 23, 1856 Dear Father, We get your letters with great regularity. We have not arrived a week since the burning of the town. This week we received yours of Oct. 8. We have written and mailed regularly every week, but owing to a little irregularity in the time of starting the mail one or two of our letters lay in the P.O. here a week. One week the mail lay at Paola 8 miles from here 3 days. The mail contractor carried the mail himself a few weeks after his last duunclear had been shipped down the river by those conservators of the peace who call themselves law and order (!) men. There some of these same gentry tried to kill him because he prosecuted them for stealing his horses and carriage while he was carrying the mail for the U.S. So he had to hire Indians and any one he could get for a few weeks. This is Law and Order in Kansas! Now we have a regular mail rider again and we hope the mails will be regular until they send this man down the river or murder him. Either would be perfectly natural and right for Law and Order men to do to a Free State man. Our quaker neighbors are all here yet, and do not think of leaving as long as there is any hope for Kansas as a free State. We have very little news of the election (bogus) in the territory. In the County West of us, Franklin, there are only 2 proslavery men, I have been told, and 80 free State. The free State men did not vote I believe. We regard this bogus election as the House of Rep. did Whitfield's right to his seat. Every free state man in the territory might be