correspondent for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune and did some writing for the Boston Atlas and several other newspapers, reporting on the territory's first difficulties with border raiders. As an active abolitionist, he covered the antislavery movement in the Kansas Territory, including reports dealing with the armed and sometimes deadly conflicts between the territory's Pro-Slavery advocates and those aligned with the Free-State movement. Tappan was also actively involved in the Underground Railroad, moving slaves through Kansas to northern states. He also participated in 1855 in Jacob Branson's rescue during the short-lived Wakarusa War. Tappan became active in the volatile political activity in the territory. In 1855, accompanied by political activist Martin F. Conway, he traveled through southern and western Kansas, speaking in favor of the free-state movement. He also maintained close ties to both the Kansas-based and East Coast leadership of the New England Emigrant Aid Company and participated in helping to smuggle arms (nicknamed "Beecher's Bibles") and other assistance to Free-Soil settlers. Tappan was clerk of the Topeka constitutional convention, assistant clerk of the House of Representatives in 1856, and the following year performed the duties of Speaker of the Topeka House of Representatives. He was secretary of the Leavenworth constitutional convention in 1858, and acted as clerk of the Wyandotte convention in 1859. His first cousin, Lewis N. Tappan, also emigrated to Kansas in 1857, and was Secretary of the Senate under the Topeka Constitution. Lewis Tappan was one of the Fort Scott Treaty Commissioners. Both Lewis and Sam were among the 15 armed men who captured the box containing the altered election returns at Lecompton, the discovery of which resulted in the overthrow of the pro-slavery party in Kansas. In 1860, Tappan relocated as a "Pike's Peaker" to the settlement that became Denver, Colorado. This move was part of a business arrangement involving his cousin Lewis N. Tappan and the then relatively unknown Henry Villard, who had both preceded him to the gold fields by a year. Sam Tappan worked as a journalist for the Daily Herald and became involved in gold and other mineral exploration and township settlement. His cousins Lewis N. Tappan (1831–1880), George H. Tappan (1833–1865), joined later in 1865 by William H. Tappan (1821–1907), operated Tappan & Co, one of the first general stores serving Colorado miners, with branches in Denver, Colorado City, Golden, and Central City. Civil War Enlistment With the outbreak