John Henry Kagi, sometimes known as Brown's "Secretary of War," is "in prison at Lecompton," Kansas Territory, when he writes this letter to his sister on November 20, 1856. Kagi, along with John Ritchie and several other free-state partisans, had been arrested by U.S. Marshal I. B. Donelson, supported by federal troops, on September 18 at Topeka, and subsequently charged with "highway robbery." (See, Kansas Historical Collections, 4:561) Although "in prison," Kagi assures his sister that he is safe and could be rescued at anytime; "I hesitate only because we may get out some other way, and because a forcible rescue would bring on a terrible winter war, which I do not wish to see." Kagi was killed during John Brown's Harpers Ferry raid in October, 1859.