By this time, Douglas County was mostly in the hands of the Free-Staters and the pro-slavery element had given up the fight. However, in southeast Kansas, this was not the case. In Linn County, most all earlier Free-State settlers had been driven out by pro-slavery factions and in February, 1857, Augustus and his brother, John O. Wattles, along with other Free-State incorporators established the town of Moneka. In the winter 1857, the Wattles family moved to Linn County where the struggle for Kansas continued unabated.

Augustus built a home for his family in Moneka, which also served as a station on the Underground Railroad. In May, 1858, Augustus was in Leavenworth on business when he encountered John Brown, who was returning from a fund-raising tour in the east. As this was just after the Marais des Cygnes Massacre, Wattles convinced Brown to come back to Linn County with him. Making his headquarters in Augustus' home in Moneka for a time, Brown was soon was raiding into Missouri. Though Augustus believed in freeing slaves, he did not agree with Brown's violent methods.

Following a raid on December 20, 1858, Brown brought eleven slaves and two white hostages to the Wattles home. After learning a slave owner had been killed in the raid, Wattles and another abolitionist named John Montgomery confronted Brown for breaking Governor Denver's "Sugar Mound Peace Agreement," which John Brown had signed only a few weeks earlier, promising to discontinue acts of robbery, theft, or violence.

Brown, feeling forced to defend his raid, wrote a letter in Wattle's home to the Lawrence Republican which later became known as "John Brown's Parallels." Not wanting to reveal his location and trying to protect his friend, Brown indicated the letter was written at Trading Post rather than Moneka. In this document, Brown compared his Missouri raid to the Marais des Cygnes Massacre where five free-state men were killed.

On January 20, 1859, John Brown departed from Moneka, telling Wattles before he left, "I considered the matter well; you will have no more attacks from Missouri; I shall now leave Kansas; probably you will never see me again; I consider it my duty to draw the scene of the excitement to some other part of the country."

Later that year, on October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of men raided the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The raid failed and the band was captured. After Brown's capture, Wattles corresponded with him and Augustus, along with John Montgomery and two others met at the  Moneka Hotel to devise a plan to rescue the famous abolitionist. Wattles, along with several others then traveled east where they met with Brown, who refused to be rescued. The disappointed group returned to Kansas and John Brown was hanged for treason on December 2, 1859.

Later, Wattles was summoned to Washington to answer Congressional questions about his role, if any, in the Harpers Ferry Raid, of which he denied any knowledge. In the meantime, many of the Free-Staters had been driven away from Moneka and the pro-slavery sympathizers had put a price of $1,000 on Augustus' head. However, despite the reward, Wattles survived. By 1861, he was working for the War Department, inspecting the condition and activities of several Native American tribes living in Kansas.

He discovered that most were more than willing to exchange their homes in Kansas for a place in Oklahoma Indian Territory, which was supposed to be neutral during the Civil War. Wattles submitted his report to the House of Representatives in February, 1862, and though the country was in the midst of the Civil War, negotiations began to move the Indians.

A few years later, his health began to fail and he died in Mound City at the age of 69 in 1876.

The town of Moneka, which he had helped to found with his brother, John Otis Wattles, did not survive. It was all but abandoned in the mid 1860's and its post office closed its doors forever in 1866.

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