From Washington, D.C., on February 16, 1856, Mark Delahay, the Free State Party's representative to the 34th Congress, wrote to his free state colleagues regarding President Franklin Pierce's directive to Governor Wilson Shannon. The latter was "to arrest and punish all who may take part in the making and putting inforce any law in oposition to the Territorial laws now upon the Statute Book." Delahay warned against "the organization of an independent State Government" and wrote "we are upon the brink of a crisis of serious import." (See D.W. Wilder, Annals of Kansas, 109-110.)
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
M. W. Delahay to Charles Robinson, James H. Lane and others - p. 2