As John Brown left for Kansas, he turned to his wife and the remaining
members of his family and said: “If it is so painful for us to part
with the hope of meeting again, how must it be with the poor slaves,
who have no hope?”
John Brown was always sanguine in his ventures; but the events before
him would have tried the hope of a superman; they were to be bloody,
exacting, terrible. It was what he needed, however, for John Brown went
to Kansas with a greater project in his mind, the attack on Virginia
and the South, and Kansas was to be for him the rough, harsh school in
which he could train himself for that supreme effort.
With his youngest son, Oliver, then about eighteen years old, and a
son-in-law, Henry Thompson, John Brown left Chicago in August. The
party had a heavily loaded wagon drawn by a “nice, stout young horse,”
that was stricken with distemper when they reached Missouri, and could
barely drag himself along. Their progress was therefore slow; a scant
seven or eight miles a day. But it gave them an opportunity to see and
hear things in Missouri, then fiercely pro-slavery, and the reservoir
from which were drawn most of the Border Ruffians who were raiding
Kansas, and trying to force it into the phalanx of slavery states.
Companies of armed men were constantly passing and re-passing on the
route to Kansas, and they were continually boasting “of what deeds of
patriotism and chivalry they had performed there, and of the still more
mighty deeds they were yet to do.” As Brown wrote home in a letter,
“No man of them would blush when telling of their cruel treading down
and terrifying of defenceless Free State men; seemed to take peculiar
satisfaction in telling of the fine horses and mules they had killed in
their numerous expeditions against the damned Abolitionists.”
John Brown was roused by all this; already he was changing from the
peaceful patriarch to the fearless warrior in the field. One incident
illustrates this. When the little party reached the Missouri River at
Brunswick, Missouri, they sat themselves down to wait for the ferry.
There came to them an old man, frankly Missourian, frankly inquisitive
after the manner of the frontier. “Where are you going?” he asked. “To
Kansas,” replied John Brown. “Where from?” asked the old man. “From New
York,” answered John Brown.
“You won’t live to get there,” the old Missourian said, grimly.
“We are prepared,” John Brown answered, “not to die alone.” Before that
spirit and that eagle eye the old Missourian quailed; he turned and
left.
It was in October, after an arduous trip, that John Brown and his party
reached the family settlement at Osawatomie. They arrived weary and all
but destitute, with about sixty cents between them. And they found the
settlement in great distress; all of the Browns, except the wife of
John, Jr., were completely prostrated with fever and ague, gotten from
the rough conditions. They were living in a tent exposed to the chill
winds, and were shivering over little fires on the bare ground. All the
food left was a small supply of milk from their cows, some corn and a
few potatoes. It was an unusually cold winter that year; on October
26 John Brown saw the hardest freezing he had ever witnessed south of
his bleak farm-house in the Adirondacks; and all the Kansas pioneers
suffered in it as did the Browns.
Nobody in Kansas that first winter knew what comforts were. While the
Browns paid the penalty for living on low ground in a ravine and in
tents, their bitter experience with sickness and hunger was not as bad
as that of many other Northern families. Starvation and death looked
in at many a door where parents lay helpless, while famished children
crawled about the dirt floors crying for food, and shrieking with
fear if any footstep approached, lest the comer be a Border Ruffian,
(as the Southerners were called) instead of a friend. For pure misery
and heart-breaking suffering these pioneer tales of Kansas are not
surpassed by any in the whole history of the winning of the West.
But old John Brown was indomitable; he put new life and energy into his
six sons; by November two shanties were well advanced, and the food
problem had been lightened. They were getting into good shape for the
winter, and preparing to take up their share in the settling of Kansas,
when the hot breath of war scorched all these plans, as it did many
another Northern settler’s.
There would be little time for growing corn for the Browns thereafter,
or for the other settlers; the slavery question demanded an answer
first.
One dread that had worried the Browns before leaving home proved
unnecessary. It was their fear of the Indians. The Browns were
terrified when the first big band of Sacs and Foxes in war-paint
surrounded their tent, whooping and yelling, but they had the good
sense to ground their arms, and the Indians did likewise. Thereafter
both sides were great friends. John, Jr., went often to visit their old
chief; once, when in the following summer, the Indians came to call
again, they were “fought” with gifts of melons and green corn. “That,”
said Jason Brown, “was the nicest party I ever saw.”
John Brown, Jr., used to ask the old chief questions, as, “Why do you
Sacs and Foxes not build houses and barns like the Ottawas and the
Chippewas? Why do you not have schools and churches like the Delawares
and Shawnees? Why do you have no preachers and teachers?” And the
chief replied in a staccato which summed up wonderfully the bitter,
century-long experience of his people: “We want no houses and barns. We
want no schools and churches. We want no preachers and teachers. We bad
enough now.”
No, the Indians were friends. The men really to be feared were not long
in putting in their appearance. One night six or seven heavily-armed
Missourians rode up to the door, and asked whether any stray cattle had
been seen. The Browns replied in the negative; and then, as newcomers,
they were asked, in the border slang, how they were “on the goose.”
“We are Free State,” was the answer, “and what is more, we are
Abolitionists.”
The men rode away, but from that moment the Browns were marked for
destruction. They did not shrink from danger, however. They nailed
their flag to the mast; armed themselves, and plunged into the thick of
all the political battles then raging. In a short time their settlement
was to become known as a center of fearless, and if necessary, violent
resistance to all who wished to see human slavery introduced into the
Territory. John Brown’s life work had begun.