This letter is written by a Kansas settler named J. A. Davies who was originally from Massachusetts. It is addressed to Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an agent for the Massachusetts Kansas Aid Committee and an ardent Northern abolitionist. The main topic of the letter is the Leavenworth municipal election on September 1, 1856, and the other "outrages" witnessed by Davies. On the date of that election, border ruffians had crossed the border and hampered the legal voters of the territory from casting their votes. The mob violence was so terrible that virtually every free state settler was driven from the town, and Mr. Hops was murdered by Mr. Fugent. Davies and his family fled to St. Louis, Missouri, and then left for Alton, Illinois, but he writes that he hoped to return to the territory.