James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

[96] though he was, he still lived; and, as they kicked him, he said, ‘ Don't abuse me; it is useless; i am dying.’ It was a vain appeal. One of the wretches [since a United States Deputy Marshal] stooped over the prostrate man, and, with a refinement of cruelty exceeding the rudest savage, spit tobacco juice in his eyes. Satiated brutality at last went back to its carousala and it was then that a few of their number, whom a little spark of conscience or a fear of punishment had animated, raised the dying man, still groaning, and, placing him in a wagon, his gaping wounds but poorly sheltered from the bitter cold of that winter's day, drove him to the grocery, where they went through the farce of dressing his wounds; but, seeing the hopelessness of his case, took him home to his wife. ... The pulse of life was ebbing out. She asked him what was the matter, and how he came thus. ‘I have been murdered by a gang of cowards, in cold blood, without any cause!’ he said. And, as the poor wife stooped over the body of her gallant husband, he expired.

And, as she thus stooped, with a fiendishness truly Southern, one of the ruffians dared to offer her an insult.

No notice has ever been taken of this atrocious murder by the powers that be; never once did they interfere to preserve the purity of the ballot box or the right of free speech. The polls were not permitted to be opened either at Kickapoo, or Atchison, or the other pro-slavery villages; and a. clergyman, who, at Atchison, said in a private conversation, that he was a Free State man, was tarred and feathered, and sent down the river on a raft-Federal officeholders leading and encouraging the rioters.

John Brown, Junior, was elected a member of the Topeka Legislature.

In the month of February, the President, in an official proclamation, denounced the Topeka Legislature as an illegal assembly; endorsed the code of the invaders