In this typically long letter/report to Franklin Sanborn in Boston, Whitman wrote from Lawrence on November 15, 1860, regarding the difficult situation facing Kansas settlers/farmers as another winter approached--as "the stock of old corn is exhausted and the grass fails, the prospect is dreary enough and without aid from abroad in some form to supply bread stuffs many of our people must suffer severely for want of food." As was the case with their white neighbors, Native Americans throughout the area also suffered a great deal as a result of the wretched weather. After all, the tough conditions helped to decrease the size of the dwindling buffalo herds of the American West.
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
Edmund Burke Whitman to Franklin B. Sanborn - p. 1