The man with the slouched hat and coarse cotton shirt lost no time in
grieving over the dispersal of his one hundred and fifty men. It was the
largest force he had ever assembled. His experience in the three days
in which he had acted as their commander had greatly angered him. The
frontiersman who failed to come under the spell of Brown's personality
by direct contact generally refused to obey his orders.
The crowd of free rangers which his fight with Pate had gathered proved
themselves beyond control. They raided the surrounding country without
Brown's knowledge.
They stole from friend and foe with equal impartiality. There was one
consolation in his surrender to the United States troops. He got rid of
these troublesome followers. They had already robbed him of the
spoils of his own successful raids and not one of them had shown any
inclination to bring in the enemies' goods for common use.
He began to choose the most faithful among them for a scheme of wider
scope and more tragic daring. He was not yet sure of his plan. But God
would reveal it clearly.
He spent a week at his new camp in the woods wandering alone, dreaming,
praying, weighing this new scheme from every point of view.
His mind came back again and again to the puzzle of the failure to raise
a National Blood Feud.
For a moment his indomitable Puritan soul was discouraged. He had obeyed
the command of his God. He could not have been mistaken in the voice
which spoke from Heaven:
"WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION OF SINS."
He had laid the Blood Offering on God's altar counting his own life as
of no account in the reckoning and from that hour he had been a fugitive
from justice, hiding in the woods. He had escaped arrest only by the
accidental assembling of a mob of a hundred and fifty disorderly fools
who had stolen his own goods before they had been dispersed.
Instead of the heroic acclaim to which the deed entitled him, his own
flesh and blood had cursed him, one of his sons had been shot and
another was lying in prison a jibbering lunatic.
Would future generations agree with the men who had met in his own town
and denounced his deed as cruel, gruesome and revolting?
His stolid mind refused to believe it. Through hours of agonizing
prayer the new plan, based squarely on the vision that sent him to
Pottawattomie, began to fix itself in his soul.
This time he would chose his disciples from the elect. Only men tried in
the fires of Action could be trusted. Of five men he was sure. His son,
Owen, he knew could be depended on without the shadow of turning. Yet
Oliver was the second disciple chosen. He had forgiven the boy for
the fight over the pistol and had taken pains to regain his complete
submission. John Henry Kagi was the third chosen disciple, a young
newspaper reporter of excellent mind and trained pen. He had been
captured by United States troops in Kansas as a guerrilla raider and was
imprisoned first at Lecompton and then at Tecumseh. The fourth disciple
selected was Aaron Dwight Stevens, an ex-convict from the penitentiary
at Fort Leavenworth. Stevens was by far the most daring and interesting
figure in the group. His knowledge of military tactics was destined to
make him an invaluable aide. The uncanny in Brown's spirit had appealed
to his imagination from the day he made his escape from the penitentiary
and met the old man. The fifth disciple chosen was John E. Cook, a man
destined to play the most important role in the new divine mission with
the poorest qualification for the task. Born of a well-to-do family in
Haddon, Connecticut, he had studied law in Brooklyn and New York. He
dropped his studies against the protest of his people in 1855, and,
driven by the spirit of adventure, found his way into Kansas and at
last led his band of twenty guerrillas into John Brown's camp. Brown's
attention was riveted on him from the day they met. He was a man of
pleasing personality and the finest rifle shot in Kansas. He was genial;
he was always generous; He was brave to the point of recklessness; and
he was impulsive, indiscreet and utterly reckless when once bent on a
purpose. His sister had married Willard, the Governor of Indiana.
Brown's new plan required a large sum of money. With the prestige
his fighting in Kansas had given him, he believed the Abolition
philanthropists of the East would give this sum. He left his disciples
to drill and returned East to get the money.
In Boston his success was genuine, although the large amount which he
asked was slow in coming.
The old man succeeded in deceiving his New England friends completely as
to the Pottawattomie murders. On this event he early became a cheerful,
consistent and successful liar. This trait of his character had been
fully developed in his youth. Everywhere he was acclaimed by the pious
as, "Captain Brown, the old partisan hero of Kansas warfare."
His magnetic, uncanny personality rarely failed to capture the dreamer
and the sentimentalist. Sanborn, Howe, Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, George L. Stearns and Gerrit Smith became his devoted
followers. He even made Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison his
friends.
Garrison met him at Theodore Parker's. The two men were one on
destroying Slavery: Garrison, the pacifist; Brown, the man who believed
in bloodshed as the only possible solution of all the great issues of
National life. Brown quoted the Old Testament; Garrison, the New.
He captured the imagination of Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
He was raising funds for another armed attack on Slavery in Kansas. The
sentimentalists asked no questions. And if hard-headed business men
tried to pry too closely into his plans, they found him a past master in
the art of keeping his own counsel.
He struck a snag when he appealed to the National Kansas Committee for a
gift of rifles and an appropriation of five thousand dollars. They voted
the rifles on conditions. But a violent opposition developed against
giving five thousand dollars to a man about whose real mind they knew so
little.
H. B. Hurd, the Chairman of the Committee, had suspected the purpose
back of his pretended scheme for operations in Kansas. He put to Brown
the pointblank question and demanded a straight answer.
"If you get these guns and the money you desire, will you invade
Missouri or any slave territory?"
The old man's reply was characteristic. He spoke with a quiet scorn.
"I am no adventurer. You all know me. You are acquainted with my
history. You know what I have done in Kansas. I do not expose my
plans. No one knows them but myself, except perhaps one. I will not be
interrogated. If you wish to give me anything, I want you to give it
freely. I have no other purpose but to serve the cause of Liberty."
His answer was not illuminating. It contained nothing the Committee
wished to know. The statement that they knew him was a figure of speech.
They had read partisan reports of his fighting and his suffering in
Kansas--through his own letters, principally. How much truth these
letters contained was something they wished very much to find out. He
had given no light.
He declared that they knew what he had done in Kansas. This was the one
point on which they needed most light.
The biggest event in the history of Kansas was the deed on the
Pottawattomie. In the fierce political campaign that was in progress its
effects had been neutralized by denials. Brown had denied his guilt on
every occasion.
Yet as they studied his strange personality more than one member of the
Committee began to suspect him as the only man in the West capable of
the act.
The Committee refused to vote the rifles and compromised on the money
by making a qualification that would make the gift of no service.
They voted the appropriation, "in aid of Captain John Brown in any
_defensive_ measures that may become necessary." He was authorized to
draw five hundred dollars when he needed it for this purpose.
The failure rankled in the old man's heart and he once more poured out
the vials of his wrath on all politicians,--North and South.
For months he became an incessant and restless wanderer throughout New
York and the New England States.
He finally issued a general appeal for help through the _New York
Tribune_ and other friendly papers.
The contributions came slowly. The invitations to speak came slower. At
Collinsville, Connecticut, however, after his lecture he placed with
Charles Blair, a blacksmith and forge-master, an important secret order
for a thousand iron pikes. Blair pledged his loyalty. He received his
first payment on account, for a stand of weapons destined to become
souvenirs in marking the progress of civilization in the new world.
In the midst of his disappointing canvas for funds he received a letter
from his son, Jason, that a Deputy United States Marshal had passed
through Cleveland on the way East with a warrant for his arrest for the
Pottawattomie murders.
On the receipt of this news he wrote his friend, Eli Thayer:
"One of the U. S. hounds is on my track: and I have kept myself hid for
a few days to let my track get cold. I have no idea of being taken: _and
intend_ (if God _will_) to go back with Irons _in_ rather than _upon_ my
hands. I got a _fine lift_ in Boston the other day; and hope Worcester
will not be _entirely behind_. I do not mean _you_; or _Mr. Alien &
Company_."
So dangerous was the advent of the U. S. Marshal from Kansas that Brown
took refuge in an upper room in the house of Judge Russell in Boston
and remained in hiding an entire week. Mrs. Russell acted as maid and
allowed no one to open the front door except herself during the time of
his stay.
The Judge's house was on a quiet street and his connection with the
Abolition movement had been kept secret for political reasons. His
services to their cause were in this way made doubly valuable.
Brown daily barricaded his door and told his hostess that he would not
be taken alive. He added with the nearest approach to a smile ever seen
on his face:
"I should hate to spoil your carpet, Madame."
While in hiding at Judge Russell's he composed a sarcastic farewell to
New England. It is in his best style and true character as a poseur:
"Old Brown's _Farewell_: to the Plymouth Rock; Bunker Hill Monument;
Charter Oaks; and _Uncle Tom's Cabins_.
"Has left for Kansas. Was trying since he came out of the Territory to
secure an outfit; or, in other words, the means of arming and equipping
thoroughly, his regular minute men, who are mixed up _with the People of
Kansas_: and _he leaves the States_, with a _deep feeling of sadness_:
that after exhausting _his own_ small means: and with his _family and
his brave men_: suffered hunger, nakedness, cold, sickness, (and some of
them) imprisonment, with most barbarous and cruel treatment: _wounds
and death_: that after laying on the ground for months; in the most
unwholesome _and_ sickly as well as uncomfortable places: with sick and
wounded destitute of any shelter part of the time; dependent in part on
the care, and hospitality of the Indians: and hunted like Wolves: that
after all this; in order to sustain a cause, which _every Citizen_ of
this _Glorious Republic_, is under equal moral obligation to do: (_and
for the neglect of which HE WILL be held accountable TO GOD:) in which
every Man, Woman and Child of the human family;_ has a deep and awful
interest; and that _no wages are asked or expected:_ he cannot secure
(amidst all the wealth, luxury and extravagance of this _'Heaven
exalted'_ people) even the necessary supplies for a common soldier. HOW
ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN?
"JOHN BROWN."
Following his usual tactics of interminable delays and restless, aimless
wandering, it was the 7th of August before he reached Tabor, Iowa, the
appointed rendezvous of his disciples.
Two days after his arrival the Free State election of the ninth of
August was held in Kansas and the heavy vote polled was a complete
triumph of the men of peace within the party. Kansas, in his absence,
had settled down to the tried American plan of the ballot box for the
decision of political disputes. Brown wrote Stearns a despairing letter.
He was discouraged and utterly without funds. He begged for five hundred
to one thousand dollars immediately for secret service and no questions
asked. He promised interesting times in Kansas if he could secure this
money. Of his disciples for the great coming deed but one had arrived
at Tabor, his faithful son Owen. The old man lingered at Tabor with his
religious friends until November before starting for Kansas.
Higginson, his chief backer in Massachusetts, was growing angry over his
repeated delays and senseless inaction. Sanborn, always Brown's staunch
defender, wrote Higginson a letter begging patience:
"You do not understand Brown's circumstances. He is as ready for
revolution as any other man, and is now on the border of Kansas safe
from arrest, prepared for action. But he needs money for his present
expenses and active support.
"I believe that he is the best Dis-union champion you can find, and with
his hundred men, when he is put where he can raise them and drill them
(for he has an expert drill officer with him) WILL DO MORE TO SPLIT THE
UNION than a list of 50,000 names for your Convention, good as that is.
"What I am trying to hint at is that the friends of Kansas are looking
with strange apathy at a movement which has all the elements of fitness
and success--a good plan, a tried leader, and a radical purpose. If you
can do anything for it _now_, in God's name do it--and the ill results
of the new policy in Kansas may be prevented."
The new policy in Kansas must be smashed at all hazards, of course. To
the men who believed in bloodshed as the only rational way to settle
political issues, the ballot box and the council table were the
inventions of the Devil. It was the duty of the children of Light to
send the Lord's Anointed with the Sword of Gideon to raise anew the
Blood Feud.
It is evident from this letter of F. B. Sanborn to Higginson that even
Sanborn had not penetrated the veil of the old Puritan's soul. The one
to whom he had revealed his true plan was his faithful son in Kansas.
The Territory was not the objective of this mission. It was only a feint
to deceive friend and foe.
And he succeeded in doing it.
That his purpose was the disruption of the Union in a deluge of blood,
Sanborn, of course, understood and approved. He was utterly mistaken as
to the time and place and method which the Man of Visions had chosen for
the deed.
On entering the Territory, now as peaceful as any State in the Union,
Brown gathered his disciples, Oliver, Kagi, Stevens, and Cook and
despatched them to Tabor, Iowa. Here they were informed for the first
time of the real purpose of their organization--the invasion of Virginia
and the raising of a servile insurrection in which her soil would be
drenched in blood within sight of the Capitol at Washington. With
Stevens, as drill master, they began the study of military tactics. They
moved to Springdale and established their camp for the winter.