John Brown plunged into politics in Kansas under the impression that his
will could dominate the rank and file of the Northern party. He quickly
faced the fact that the frontiersmen had opinions of their own. And they
were not in the habit of taking orders from a master.
His hopes were raised to their highest at the Free State Convention
which met at Lawrence on Monday, the twenty-fifth of June, 1855. This
Convention spoke in tones that stirred Brown's admiration.
It meant Action.
They elected him a vice president of the body. He had expected to be
made president. However, his leadership was recognized. All he needed
was the opportunity to take the Action on which his mind had long been
fixed. The moment blood began to flow, there would be but one leader. Of
that, he felt sure. He could bide his time.
The Convention urged the people to unite on the one issue of making
Kansas a Free Soil State. They called on every member of the Shawnee
Legislature who held Free Soil views to resign from that body, although
it had been recognized by the National Government as the duly authorized
law-making assembly of the Territory. They denounced this Legislature as
the creature of settlers from Missouri who had crowded over the border
before the Northerners could reach their destination. They urged all
people to refuse to obey every law passed by the body.
The final resolution was one inspired by Brown himself. It was a bold
declaration that if their opponents wished to fight, the Northerners
were READY! The challenge was unmistakable. Brown felt that Action was
imminent. Only a set of poltroons would fail to accept the gauge of
battle thus flung in their faces.
To his amazement the challenge was not received by the rank and file of
the Free Soil Party with enthusiasm. Most of these Northerners had moved
to Kansas as bona fide settlers. They came to build homes for the women
they had left behind. They came to rush their shacks into shape to
receive their loved ones. They had been furnished arms and ammunition by
enthusiastic friends and politicians in the older States. And they had
eagerly accepted the gifts. There were droves of Indians still roaming
the plains. There were dangers to be faced.
The Southern ruffians of whom they had heard so much had not
materialized. Although the Radical wing of the Northern Party had made
Lawrence its Capital and through their paper, the _Herald of Freedom_,
issued challenge after challenge to their enemies.
The Northern settlers began to divide into groups whose purposes were
irreconcilable. Six different conventions met in Lawrence on or before
the fifteenth of August. Each one of these conventions was divided in
councils. In each the cleavage between the Moderates and Radicals became
wider.
Out of the six conventions of Northerners at Lawrence, out of resolution
and counter resolution, finally emerged the accepted plan of a general
convention at Big Springs.
The gathering was remarkable for the surprise it gave to the Radicals of
whom Brown was the leader. The Convention adopted the first platform of
the Free State party and nominated ex-Governor Reeder as its candidate
for delegate to Congress.
For the first time the hard-headed frontiersmen who came to Kansas for
honest purposes spoke in plain language. The first resolution settled
the Slavery issue. It declared that Slavery was a curse and that Kansas
should be free of this curse. But that as a matter of common sense they
would consent to any reasonable adjustment in regard to the few slaves
that had already been brought into the Territory.
Brown and his followers demanded that Slavery should be denounced as a
crime, not a curse, as the sum of all villainies and the Southern master
as a vicious and willful criminal. The mild expression of the platform
on this issue wrought the old man's anger to white heat. The offer to
compromise with the slave holder already in Kansas he repudiated with
scorn. But a more bitter draught was still in store for him.
The platform provided that Kansas should be a Free White State. And in
no uncertain words made plain that the accent should be on the word
WHITE. The document demanded the most stringent laws excluding ALL
NEGROES, BOND AND FREE, forever from the Territory.
The old man did not hear this resolution when read. So deep was his
brooding anger, the words made no impression. Their full import did not
dawn on him until John Brown, Jr., leaned close and whispered:
"Did you hear that?"
The father stirred from his reverie and turned a dazed look on his son.
"Hear what?"
"The infamous resolution demanding that Kansas be made a white man's
country and no negro, bond or free, shall ever be allowed to enter it?"
The hard mouth twitched with scorn. And his jaws came together with a
snap.
"It doesn't matter what they add to their first maudlin plank on the
Slavery issue."
"Will you sit here and see this vile thing done?"
A look of weariness came over the stern face with its deep-cut lines.
"It's a waste of words to talk to politicians."
John, Jr. was grasping at the next resolution which was one surpassing
belief. He rubbed his ears to see if he were really hearing correctly.
This resolution denounced the charge that they were Radicals at all. It
denounced the attempt of any man to interfere by violence with slaves or
Slavery where protected by the supreme law of the land. It repudiated
as stale and ridiculous the charge of Abolitionism against them. And
declared that such an accusation is without a shadow of truth to support
it.
Charles Stearns, the representative of the New England Society, leaped
to his feet and denounced the platform in withering tones. He fairly
shrieked his final sentence:
"All honest anti-slavery men, here and elsewhere, will spit on your
platform!"
He paused and faced the leaders who had drafted it.
"And all pro-slavery men must forever despise the base sycophants who
originated it!"
John Brown, Jr., applauded. The crowd laughed.
Old John Brown had paid no further heed to the proceedings of the
Convention. His eyelids were drawn half down. Only pin points of
glittering light remained.
The resolutions were adopted by an overwhelming majority.
In the East, Horace Greeley in the _Tribune_ reluctantly accepted
the platform: "Why free blacks should be excluded it is difficult to
understand; but if Slavery can be kept out by compromise of that sort,
we shall not complain. An error of this character may be corrected; but
let Slavery obtain a foothold there and it is not so easily removed."
Brown's hopes were to be still further dashed by the persistence
with which the leaders of this Convention followed up the program of
establishing a white man's country on the free plains of the West.
When the Convention met at Topeka on the twenty-third of October, to
form a Constitution, the determination to exclude all negroes from
Kansas was again sustained. The majority were finally badgered into
submitting the issue to a separate vote of the people. On the fifteenth
of December, the Northern settlers voted on it and the question _was_
settled.
Negroes were excluded by a three-fourths majority.
Three-fourths of the Free State settlers were in favor of a white man's
country and the heaviest vote against the admission of negroes was
polled in Lawrence and Topeka, where the Radicals had from the first
made the most noise.
The Northern men who had come to Kansas merely to oppose the extension
of Slavery were in a hopeless minority in their own party. The American
voters still had too much common sense to be led into a position to
provoke civil war.
John Brown spent long hours in prayer after the final vote on the negro
issue had been counted. He denounced the leaders in politics in Kansas
as trimmers, time servers, sycophants and liars. He walked beneath
the star-sown skies through the night. He wrestled with his God for a
vision.
There must be a way to Action.
He rose from prayer at dawn after a sleepless night and called for his
sons, Owen, Oliver, Frederick and Salmon, to get ready for a journey. He
had received a first hint of the will of God. He believed it might lead
to the way.
He organized a surveyor's party and disguised himself as a United States
Surveyor. He had brought to Kansas a complete outfit for surveying land.
He instructed Owen and Frederick to act as chain carriers, Salmon as
axeman and Oliver as marker. He reached the little Southern settlement
on the Pottawattomie Creek the fifteenth of May.
He planted his compass on the bank of the creek near the Doyles' house
and proceeded to run a base line.
The father and three boys were in the fields at work beyond the hill.
He raised his compass and followed the chainman to the Doyles' door. The
mother and little girl trudged behind, delighted with the diversion of
the party, so rare on the lonely prairies. Little could they dream the
grim deed that was shaping in the soul of the Surveyor.
When they reached the house she turned to the old man with Southern
courtesy:
"Won't you come in, sir, and rest a few minutes?"
The strange, blue-gray eyes glanced restlessly toward the hill and he
signaled his sons:
"Rest awhile, boys."
Frederick and Oliver sat down on a pile of logs. Salmon and Owen, at
a nod from their father, wandered carelessly toward the stable and
outhouses.
Owen found the dog Doyle had brought from Virginia and took pains to
make friends with him.
Brown's keen, restless eyes carefully inspected the door, its fastenings
and the strength of its hinges. The iron of the hinges was flimsy. The
fastening was the old-fashioned wooden shutters hung outside and closed
with a single slide. He noted with a quick glance that there was no
cross bar of heavy wood nor any sockets in which such a bar could be
dropped.
The windows were small. There was no glass. Solid wooden shutters hung
outside and closed with a single hook and eye for fastenings.
The sun was setting before the surveying party stopped work. They
had run a line close to the house of every Southern settler on the
Pottawattomie Creek, noting carefully every path leading to each house.
They had carefully mapped the settlement and taken a census of every
male inhabitant and every dog attached to each house. They also made an
inventory of the horses, saddles and bridles.
Having completed their strange errand, they packed their instruments and
rode toward Osawatomie.