NEW INVASION — RELEASE OF STATE PRISONERS. 381 
tinned refusals by the ruffians, she at last succeeded in getting on 
board a boat bound down the Missouri. The others were re¬ 
tained as prisoners of war, and untold anxiety was felt for 
their safety. 
When this intelligence reached Lawrence, G. W. Hutchinson, 
one of the merchants whose wagons had been taken, and Mr. 
Sutherland, the mail-carrier between Lawrence and Leavenworth, 
whose hack and driver were of the same number, were despatched to 
Woodson, also to Col. Cook, to inform them of the facts. Col. 
Cook could not move with his troops to Leavenworth without 
orders from Woodson. He advised these gentlemen to see Wood- 
son. They went to Lecompton, and while in his office were taken 
prisoners by his brutal “ militia,” he offering no word of protest. 
When Col. Cook heard of this unprecedented outrage, he sent 
again and again to Woodson, demanding their release. His inva¬ 
riable reply was, “ They were taken as spies, and we hold them 
as prisoners of war.” 
The same day eighty of the troops went to Lawrence under 
command of Deputy Marshal Newsem, who had rendered himself 
conspicuous by breaking open and searching the trunks of five 
free-state men on the road a few days before. He had a writ of 
replevin for a horse, and a writ of habeas corpus for a man who 
had been detained at Lawrence over night as a spy, but who had 
been released the same morning. He read his writ, signed by 
John P. Wood, Judge of Probate for Douglas County. It was 
directed to “ JamesH. Lane,” “the Safety Committee,” and the 
people of “ Lawrence generally.” There was too large a share 
of the ridiculous in this parade of troops on so trivial a matter 
to occasion any show of dignity among the people at Lawrence. 
So the free-state boys laughed with the soldiers, and made sport 
of the simpleton who held the writ. When they left, the boys 
gave three cheers for the troops, and a groan for the official. 
On the thirtieth, Saturday morning, about six o’clock, Fred¬ 
eric Brown, son of Capt. John Brown, walking on the road near 
his house, not far from Osawattomie, was shot by two scouts of 
the invaders. Two hours later, a force of three hundred men 
under Gen. Heed attacked Osawattomie. Seeing the vast supe- 
