Thanks for all the information, Bill. But I would like a titbit more though, because I've had people say before, some of them red-faced and blurting into my face, often adding lies, that the conspiracy to break John Brown out of jail has been known for over 100 years. And they are absolutely right about that single fact, and I don't deny it. But when the information is in ancient, arcane sources, just how many people on this website knew about it before I made it a prominent contention in my book, Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border. What you could do to clear the air and present an honest, balanced case is to list all the sources in major books and articles that have appeared on that subject in the last fifty years, or even better seventy-five years, to see how current this information is, how well know it is, and if it was not current, not known by many, seeing how significant it is, why wasn't it made prominent in all of these books and articles? But I enjoyed your further information on the subject, and you are quite informed. I'd just like to see a little clarification as to your inference that this information is so well know that it was innocuous in my book rather than a shot across the bow of Yankee historians. My book has left conventional Yankee histories of the Border War in tatters as most Missourian know but few Yankeee-oriented historians will admit. But admission is unnecessary.

Donald L. Gilmore

Author of Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border, Pelican Publishing Co., 2005; U.S. Army Atlas of the European Theater in World War II, Barnes and Noble, 2004; Eyewitness Vietnam: Firsthand Accounts from Operation Rolling Thunder to the Fall of Saigon, Barnes and Noble, 2006; Riding Vengeance with the James Gang, Pelican, 2009 (a historical novel); and an upcoming book, Eyewitness March Against Hitler, Barnes and Noble, 2010.