"This is the first effort, it is believed, to make any serious study of the conditions prevailing on the border. The state of society about Lawrence as shown in the year 1860 may be accepted as representative of the general conditions found in Kansas up to the Civil War, and no attempt to describe them has been found. The state of disorder in Missouri was the result in some degree of the reaction upon itself of its course in Kansas. The time has not yet come when a dispassionate study of the conditions which existed in Missouri will be acceptable to all the people of the great commonwealth"--P. 5-6.