It was October, 1854, before John Brown's three sons, Owen, Frederick
and Salmon, left Ohio for their long journey to Kansas. In April, 1855,
they crossed the Missouri river and entered the Territory.
John Brown decided to move his family once more to North Elba before
going West. It was June before his people reached this negro settlement
in Northern New York. He placed his wife and children in an unplastered,
four-roomed house. Through its rough weatherboarding the winds and snows
of winter would howl. It had been hurriedly thrown together by his
son-in-law, Henry Thompson. Brown had never stayed on one of his little
farms long enough to bring order out of chaos.
His restless spirit left him no peace. He was now in Boston, now in
Springfield, Massachusetts, now in New York, again in Ohio, or Illinois.
He was giving up the work in Ohio to follow his sons into Kansas. He had
planned to move there two years before and abandoned the idea. He had at
last fully determined to go.
On October the sixth, his party reached the family settlement at
Osawatomie. With characteristic queerness the old man did not enter with
his sons, Oliver, Jason and John, Jr., and their caravan. He stopped
alone on the roadside two miles away until next day.
The party on arrival had plenty of guns, swords and ammunition but their
treasury held but sixty cents.
The family settlement were living in tents around which the chill
autumn winds were howling. The poor crops they had raised had not been
harvested. The men were ill and discouraged. There was little meat,
except game and that was difficult to kill. Their only bread was made
from corn meal ground at a hand-turned mill two miles away.
Brown's sons, who had preceded him, had lost all vigor. The old man was
not slow to see the way out.
The situation called for Action. He determined to get it. He immediately
plunged into Free Soil Politics without pausing to build his first
shanty against the coming rains and snows of a terrible winter.