THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
We now find John Brown busy for a while in the Northern States
addressing Abolitionist meetings, collecting funds for the cause, and
co-operating with the Anti-slavery Committees, of which there were
several thousands. In many homes where the friends of freedom lived he
was a welcome guest, not least welcomed by the children, who always
seemed to refresh his weary heart. 'Out of the mouths of children,' as
the psalmist says (according to one version), 'God gives strength to
true men.' You might often have seen him holding up a little
two-year-old child, saying, 'When John Brown is hanged as a traitor she
can say she used to stand on John Brown's hand.' He was no false
prophet!
Now also he was able to revisit, after two years' absence, the old
homestead where his wife and children were awaiting him, down to the
little one whom he had left an infant in the cradle. 'Come,' says the
strange father to the little prattler, 'I have sung it to all of them;
I must sing it to you.'
Blow ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound:
Let all the nations know
To earth's remotest bound.
The year of Jubilee is come,
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
In strains to which a soul on fire gave enchantment and a tunefulness
of their own he sang that song of Moses and the Lamb, telling of the
Jewish charter of Liberty to which Christ in His turn gave larger
meaning; and the little eyes in the room beheld a transfigured face
which they remembered when he had ceased blowing the trumpet of
Jubilee, and when they sang the same hymn as they laid him beneath the
sod outside that cabin door.
But not long could he stay at home. The year of Jubilee for all these
bondmen was his one thought, and he found friends who regarded him as a
tried man and were prepared to trust him implicitly. Such men as
Beecher and Theodore Parker gave him help spiritual; men like the
wealthy Stearns gave him help financial to the extent of many thousand
dollars, and were content to know that John Brown, however he spent it
(and concerning his plans he was always reticent), would have but one
object--liberty to the captive.
One way in which it was spent was in the working of what was then known
as the underground railway. The opportunist statesman--Henry Clay--had
led many Northern voters to tolerate the passing of the Fugitive Slave
Law, under which the Federal Government facilitated the enforced return
of fugitive slaves found in free states to the plantations of the
South. And the Abolitionists in the North, as a set-off against this
detested legislation, gave themselves with much zest to aid the runaway
slave. If a slave could escape to the swamps or the forest and elude
the bloodhounds on his track, he knew that at certain points he would
find those who were prepared to house him, and, passing him on secretly
from station to station, ensure his arrival at a terminus where he
would be safe for life. That was Canada, the country where the Union
Jack waves--the flag of 'Britons' who 'never shall be slaves' and are
prepared to grant to all the priceless boon they claim themselves.
This escape was called 'shaking the paw of the lion.' May that British
lion never be transformed into a sleek tiger; may his paw ever be
outreached to a runaway slave, and his roar be a terror to all who
would market in human flesh and blood!
This chain of well-known houses and locations was called the
underground railway; and, spite of penalties of imprisonment oft
inflicted, it never lacked porters or guards; and if the trains did not
always run to time it was because they were very cautious against
accident. Some 30,000 passengers were probably conveyed on this line.
You will not be surprised to find John Brown an active 'guard,' and
under the name of 'Shubel Morgan' or 'Hawkins' he did good service
there. See him making his way with twelve fugitive slaves from
Missouri, through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan to
Canada. It is the dead of winter, and the rough wagons travel heavily
and slowly along the drifted roads. There is a price on his head in
these Southern States--3,250 dollars offered conjointly by the Governor
of Missouri and President Pierce--and the stations are sometimes thirty
miles apart. They come to a creek, and there is the State Marshal
awaiting them with eighty armed men--for he thought he had better have
a good force, as he heard it was John Brown he might encounter. John
puts his host of twenty-three men all told into battle array in front
of the wagons, and gives the laconic order, 'Now go straight at 'em,
boys, they are sure to run.' Into the water his men charge--but the
baptism of water is all they are fated to pass through; there is no
baptism of fire to follow, for, scared at the impulsive charge, and
filled with vague terror at that irrepressible John Brown, the Marshal
springs upon his horse and skedaddles. His men scramble to their
horses. Some cannot untie them from the shrubs quickly enough; several
animals carry two men, and, to complete the ludicrousness of the scene,
one man, fearing he might be too late, grips fast the tail of the steed
to which the proper rider has just set spurs, and, vainly trying to
spring on behind, is seen with his feet off the ground, being whirled
through the air. A few prisoners are speedily added to Brown's little
company, who, thinking it is perhaps prudent to keep men off horseback
who were so prone to flight, orders them to walk.
But he has ideas of courtesy, has this rough old warrior, and says he
means them no unkindness and will walk with them. Such a favourable
opportunity must in no wise be missed, so the old soldier-prophet gives
them his mind upon the wickedness of slave-holding and the meanness of
slave-hunting, which discourse, let us hope, is not wholly unfruitful.
When he has held them for one night he thinks they have been brought
far enough from their haunts to prevent further mischief, and sets them
free. That one night spent with him they are not likely to forget. He
would not so much as allow them the privilege of swearing. 'No taking
of God's name in vain gentlemen; if there is a God you will gain
nothing, and if there is none you are fools indeed.' Such is the old
man's plain argument.
One of them, a harum-scarum young physician, is taken specially under
charge by John Brown. Before retiring Brown desires him to pray. 'I
can't pray,' he says, with an oath. 'What, did your mother never teach
you?' asks Brown. 'Oh yes,' he replies; 'but that was a long time
ago.' 'Well, you still remember the prayer she taught you?' continued
Brown. 'Yes,' is the answer. 'Say that for want of a better,' is the
order. Then, to the amusement of all, the poor doctor repeats the
rhyme:
And now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Said the young doctor after he was released, 'John Brown knows more
about religion than any man I ever met. He never used harsh language;
we were treated like gentlemen; we shared food with them. Only it went
against the grain to be guarded by niggers.'
Thus the journey proceeds. As they get farther north there is more
bark than bite about the opposition they encounter. In the street at
one town where they are sheltered, Brown strolls alone and finds a
champion of slavery haranguing the crowd and denouncing Brown as a
reckless, bloody outlaw, a coward who skulked and would never fight in
the open. Warming to a climax the orator proclaims, 'If I could get a
sight of him I would shoot him on the spot; I would never give him a
chance to steal any more slaves.' 'My friend,' says a plain-looking
countryman--no other than John Brown himself--on the outskirts of the
throng, 'you talk very brave; and as you will never have a better
opportunity to shoot old Brown than right here and now, you can have a
chance.' But his powder was damped--or his courage!
Now the journey is over. The twelve fugitives have become thirteen,
for a little infant has been born on the march, never to know, thank
God, the horrors the mother has left behind. The child is named after
his deliverer 'John Brown,' who conducts them safely across the ferry
and places them under the shelter of the Union Jack on the Canadian
shore. Then the old man reverently pronounces his 'Nunc dimittis,'
'Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have
seen Thy salvation.' 'I could not brook the thought that any ill
should befall them, least of all that they should be taken back to
slavery. The arm of Jehovah has protected us.' Before many months
those rescued ones were weeping at the news that John Brown was
condemned to die, and were saying 'Would that we could die instead.'