The Charleston Daily Courier, 4 Jul 1856, p. 2, c. 1, quoting an article from the Washington Union, reported the following:

NATIONAL HOTEL, June 30, 1856

Mr. Editor: I observe in the papers telegraphic and other accounts of a reported difficulty between the United States Troops and a party of "Missourians," on the 19th inst. Being in Kansas at that time, and near the place where the collision is said to have occurred, I can speak with certainty. No such difficulty happened. The pro-slavery party of Kansas -- or, as the abolitionists persist in calling them, the "Missourians," have never resisted in any manner whatever the troops or authority of the United States.

This is written that the friends of the law-and-order party may not be deceived as to their true position. Out of the huge mass of matter in the shape of Kansas correspondence published daily at the North, the smallest imaginable us true; it is gotten up and spread abroad by those who would "tear in inch-pieces" the constitution itself if it were necessary, in order to being odium on the administration of Mr. Pierce; and it is well to receive such stories as the above with allowance. For every report, in fact, to the St. Louis Democrat, Chicago Tribune and New York Tribune, the editors are largely indebted to the rich imagination of a hired writer, who is not very particular as to the truth of what he writes, which has been proven several times by myself and others. That correspondent is especially "down on the Pierce Adminsitration;" and he is not very fond of the New York Day Book.

Your servant, H. CLAY PATE.