Much more can be written of this Kansas period in John Brown’s life;
a large bibliography of Robin Hood literature has gathered about it.
John Brown, and other men like him, hastened the solution of the
slavery question by their firm stand in Kansas. If the South had been
allowed to add Kansas to the roster of slave states, it would have
crept further north, until perhaps there would have been slavery up to
Canada. It is easy for any institution to become permanent; man is a
creature of conventions. Slavery, like cannibalism among savages, would
have in time become a matter-of-fact doctrine with all America, had not
the Kansas abolitionists challenged it.
John Brown left Kansas in 1857, and made a trip through New England,
gathering friends, money, arms and recruits for a new great plan that
was working in his mind.
He saw that the abolitionists would be successful in making Kansas a
free state. The job was already half done; but when it was completed,
what next? There would still be the vast groaning empire of slavery
in the South; there would still be five million black folk bought and
sold like cattle; beaten, raped, murdered as if they were lower than
cattle. The South would still be in the saddle at the White House; the
fugitive slave law would still be enforced; and churches, business men,
newspapers, mobs, and United States troops, all would join in upholding
the devil’s doctrine that slavery was respectable, the law of the land.
The Abolitionists, with their few journals, were ever agitating against
this infamy that was being protected by the United States flag. But
John Brown knew that only a bold deed could shake the union; could make
men see clearly what slavery was.
Slavery had become so firmly settled into the national life that the
few thousand abolitionists only seemed like gadflies biting at the hide
of a rhinoceros. John Brown saw that a pick-axe was needed to draw
the blood. The pocket-books of the slave-holders must be attacked.
Slavery must be sabotaged, and made unprofitable. It was such a safe
and sane business now; it must be made dangerous. John Brown planned
to go boldly into Virginia, with a band of men, and start there a
large movement of runaway slaves. When slaves were no longer meek and
submissive, when every slave became a potential runaway and rebel,
slavery would cease to be a paying business. Thus reasoned John Brown.
In December, 1858, with things at last peaceful in Kansas Territory,
and a Free State almost assured, John Brown made a last stirring raid
into Missouri. A Negro slave named Jim Daniels had come to one of
Brown’s men with a pathetic tale. He and his wife and babies were to
be sold at auction in a few weeks, and perhaps separated forever. He
was a fine-looking, intelligent mulatto, and he wept as he told the
story. John Brown and ten of his men rescued Daniels’ little family and
carried off to freedom eleven other slaves of the vicinity. At dawn
the next day the caravan of freedom set forth on its long journey to
the Northern Star--to Canada, where slaves were free. It was a perilous
and arduous undertaking. The party had to sleep by stealth in barns
and icy fields, with armed sentinels posted all night. The Governor of
Missouri wired to Washington; money rewards were offered for Brown,
armed posses were sent searching for him, the Federal troops combed the
state. There were prairie snowstorms, and there were little provisions.
But the old lion brought his charges through to Canada.
One incident of the trip is worth repeating. It shows what a terror the
mere name of John Brown had become in Kansas.
At one place, the ford of a river, Brown’s party learned there was a
posse of 80 armed slavery ruffians waiting to capture him. The old
man did not turn back, though he had only 22 men, black and white. He
marched down on the ruffians. “They had as good a position as 80 men
could wish,” wrote one of Brown’s men, “they could have defeated a
thousand opponents, but the closer we got to the ford, the farther they
got from it. We found some of their horses, for they were in such haste
to fly that some of them mounted two on a saddle, and we gave chase and
took three or four prisoners, whom we later released. The marshal who
led them went so fast one would think he feared the fate of Lot’s wife.”
“Old Captain Brown is not to be taken by boys,” said the Leavenworth
Times, now Free State, “and he invites cordially all pro-slavery men to
try their hands at arresting him.”
On March 12th the slaves were safe in Canada, rejoicing in their happy
fortune, after having been brought in the dead of winter, through
hostile country, some 1,100 miles in 82 days. One of the slave women
had had six masters, and four of the party had served sixteen owners in
all. Now they were free. And their little children were free, and would
never be whipped by a Southern gentleman, or stood on the auction block
like a horse or cow. The outlaw John Brown had done what was forbidden
by the Supreme Court and the President of the United States; and now he
was planning greater deeds.