Naturally no public accounting was ever made of the property taken by the Shubel Morgan Plunder Company, nor has any statement ever been made as to the division of the plunder, or of a division of the proceeds, among the members of it. But it is known that it was the raid and the robbery, that Brown had in view, whereby he expected to raise the money to defray the expense of the return of the party to the East. January 11, 1859, he wrote to his family that he had been unable to finish up his business as rapidly as he had hoped to when he wrote previously--December 2d--and the delay of his departure from Kansas until about January 20th, was probably due to the fact that it required that length of time to close out the company property and make distribution of the proceeds. Final settlement was probably made at or near Lawrence. Mr. Villard says on page 380:
Somehow or other Brown recruited his finances while near Lawrence, and his wagons, when he drove away, were creaking with the weight of provisions contributed by Major Abbott and Mr. Grover.
Pending the sale of the plunder and final settlement for it, Brown remained an unwelcome prowler, in the neighborhood of Moneka, amid a storm of indignation against him that was as general as it was severe. Even his "staunch friend Wattles" severely censured him "for going into Missouri, contrary to our agreement, and getting these slaves." On January 2d, Brown wrote a formal letter to Montgomery "asking him to hold himself in readiness to call out reënforcements at a moment's notice, to prevent a possible invasion because of a raid into Missouri." But Montgomery was not holding himself in readiness to defend Brown, or to repel the retaliatory invasion he had invited; but "was eagerly at work for peace;" seeking to prevent a retaliatory blow from falling upon the Free-State settlement. What Montgomery wrote to Brown in reply to this letter, if he answered it at all, has never been published. He denied having any complicity with Brown, and joined in the general denunciation of him, and in the condemnation of his action. It was this denunciation of him by Montgomery and the Free-State men generally that called forth Brown's personal defense of his conduct, in what he called his "Parallels"; a paper conspicuous in Brown literature.
