Josiah Miller, responding to his family's concerns about traveling West, wrote to his Father and Mother in South Carolina. He told them that they would be better off leaving the South, and that they should begin their travels west as soon as they were ready, in spite of any violent conflict that might be taking place in Kansas Territory. Miller referred to a specific incident occurring a few days earlier on January 17, when free state men, on their way home from an election of State officers under the Topeka Constitution, were attacked by a group of Missourians. Miller also communicated that, although he was a free state man, he did not like the "Yankees' " approach to the conflict with the proslavery supporters.