35th Cong.Vol.VI., p.

195.
[19] The Kansas Territorial Legislature, in the year 1859, by which time local passion had greatly subsided, by law empowered a non-partisan board of three commissioners to collect sworn testimony concerning the ravages of the civil war in Kansas, with a view of obtaining indemnity from the general Government for the individual sufferers.

These commissioners, after a careful examination, made an official report, from which may be gleaned an interesting summary in numbers and values of the harvest of crime and destruction which the Kansas contest produced, and which report can be relied upon, since eye-witnesses and participants of both parties freely contributed their testimony at the invitation of the commissioners.
The commissioners fixed the period of the war as beginning about November 1, 1855, and continuing until about December 1, 1856.

They estimated that the entire loss and destruction of property, including the cost of fitting out the various expeditions, amounted to an aggregate of not less than $2,000,000.

Fully one-half of this loss, they thought, was directly sustained by actual settlers of Kansas.
They received petitions and took testimony in 463 cases.