[83]
Chapter 2: the work begun.
Before John Brown reached Kansas, the South had thrown off its flimsy disguises. Its hypocritical pretence of enabling the people to determine the nature of “their own domestic institutions” that is to say, in honest English, to establish or prohibit the cowardly crime of American slavery — was finally abandoned in the month, and on the fourth, of March, 1856; when, instead of permitting the inhabitants of the Territory “freely” to vote for the members of their legislature, four thousand nine hundred and eight non-residents, citizens of Missouri, invaded Kansas, and controlled the elections at every precinct save one.1 They elected several men who did not live in Kansas; who never intended to settle there; who are citizens of Missouri still. The writer was present at the first session of the legislature thus chosen, and saw it pass laws establishing human slavery, and punishing [84] “offences” against it — such as liberating negroeswith the penalty of death; prohibiting, by incarceration in the penitentiary, the exercise of the rights of free speech and a free press; excluding Northern (if anti-slavery) men from the bar, the bench, the ballot box, and the jury chamber; and many other statutes, transcribed from Southern codes, of equal moral atrocity and despotic character.The Free State men declared that they would never recognize the code thus compiled, or obey the executive officers, whom, by an unprecedented usurpation, this legislature had chosen to enforce their statutes. During the last week of November, 1855, an incident occurred to test the sincerity of the Free State--men. A cowardly murder was committed by a person named Coleman, a pro-slavery settler, on Mr. Dow, a quiet New England emigrant. The authorities, instead of arresting the assassin, leagued themselves with him; and seized an innocent Free State squatter, in order to have him rescued in Lawrence — the Boston of the prairies-that, thereby, they might have a plausible excuse for calling on Missouri to destroy the town, under the pretence of enforcing the territorial laws. The prisoner was unexpectedly rescued several miles from Lawrence; but, despite of this accident, the “territorial militia” --as the rabble from Missouri was officially styled — were called to arms; and, in December, Lawrence was invested by a force of fifteen hundred armed men. Not more than seventy-five, at any time, were residents of Kansas “Missouri,” confessed Governor [85] Shannon, “sent not only her young men, but her gray-haired citizens were there; the man of seventy winters stood shoulder to shoulder with the youth of sixteen.”
The writer and three companions were taken prisoners at this period a few miles from Lawrence, by a company of eighteen men, who were presently joined by a still larger number; and not one of them, as their leader confessed, was, or had ever been, a resident of Kansas, or had any social or pecuniary interest in its present or future prosperity.
To Lawrence at once repaired the fighting men from every district of the Territory. Five hundred Free State men were soon gathered there, drilled daily, and prepared to defend the town to a “bloody issue.” The Southern invaders, although three to one, and armed with United States muskets,--although furnished with heavy artillery, and having horsemen in great numbers, were afraid to attack the free men of the North in Lawrence assembled. Governor Shannon, alarmed at the tempest he had raised but could not control. hastened up from the Shawnee Mission to effect a compromise with the leaders of the rebels. He saw hundreds of ruffians around Lawrence armed with guns, which they acknowledged to have stolen from a United States arsenal in Missouri; yet he never complained of them, and none of them have ever been indicted or arrested, although the affidavits attesting the fact of the robbery are in the archives of Government, and the perpetrators of it are well-known persons, men of influence and position in the border districts. [86]
This army encamped around Lawrence nearly two weeks. The Free State boys were impatient for a fight. But it was the policy of the leaders to avoid a collision, if possible; or, at least, to compel the enemy to commence the conflict.
“When the siege was pending,” writes an eye witness, “the old man, John Brown, and his four sons, arrived in Lawrence. The balance he reported sick. As they drove up in front of the Free State hotel, they were all standing in a small lumber wagon. To each of their persons was strapped a short, heavy broadsword. Each was supplied with a goodly number of fire-arms and navy revolvers, and poles were standing endwise around the wagon box, with fixed bayonets pointing upwards. They looked really formidable, and were received with great eclat. A small military company was organized at once, and the command was given to Old Brown. From that moment, he commenced fomenting difficulties in camp, disregarding the command of superior officers, and trying to induce the men to go down to Franklin, and make an attack upon the pro-slavery forces encamped there. The Committee of Public Safety were called upon several times to head off his wild adventure, as the people of Lawrence had planted themselves on the law, claiming that they had not been guilty of its infraction, and that no armed body of men should enter the town for any purpose whatever, and that they would not go out of town to attack any such body. Peace was established, and Old Brown retired in disgust.”
I have quoted this passage rather to contrast it [87] with the ideas of John Brown than for the facts that it contains, and to show the timid spirit of politicians as compared with the undaunted bearing of earnest, truth-devoted men. The Free State party, when it first met, resolved unanimously and with unbounded enthusiasm to resist the enforcement of the invader's code: if need be--“to a bloody issue.” Now that the test came, the people were armed and ready to translate their resolution into revolution; to repeat their acclamations of that brave determination through the muzzles of their rifles and with the edges of their swords. But the politicians quibbled; sought other grounds to stand on; “planted themselves on the law;” restrained the ardor of the people which sought to drive the ruffians homeward or to the grave; saw the good Thomas Barber murdered in the open day for the crime of having visited their town; and yet, with hundreds of invaders of their soil within sight, who were sacking their cabins and robbing and imprisoning their citizens, they calmly “urged them not to allow the daily outrages to drive them to commence hostilities!” 2
The leading military man made frequent fierce speeches; but, as the Kansas phrase is, “they all fizzled out” --in urging inaction. He loved to have the citizens under arms, for in tumults he was king; while the leading politician dreaded war for the sake of the republican party.
John Brown was not of this spirit. Slavery to him was a heinous crime, and its propagandists the enemies [88] of his God; and with hosts of such men embattled and in view, who added to their championship of slavery the additional crime of invading the soil set apart for freedom, he did not hesitate to express his contempt for the Committee of Safety --most of them ox-intellects, vainly striving to fill an office fit for lion-hearts only — and to denounce the political preachers of peace as recreant to their recent and loudly-vaunted resolutions. He went out once with a dozen men to meet the Missouri invaders-“to draw a little blood,” as he styled it — but, at the earnest entreaties of General Lane, he returned to the town without doing it.
Lane sent for him to attend a council of war. The reply was characteristic of the brave old man, who despised all manner of assumptions with no fact behind them to give them vitality and a title to respect.
“Tell the General,” he said, “that when he wants me to fight, to say so: but that is the only order I will ever obey.” 3
Governor Shannon soon arrived in Lawrence, and was duly made drunk by the sagacious Free State leaders. While in this condition, or approaching it, he [89] made a treaty with General Lane and Dr. Robinson, in behalf of the “abolition rebels;” and, after guaranteeing that he would disperse the Missourians, or take from them, at least, the cover of legality, he authorized these gentlemen to “take such measures, and use the enrolled force under their command in such manner, for the preservation of the peace, and protection of the persons and property of the people of Lawrence and vicinity, as, in their judgment, should best secure that end.” 4
This negotiation undoubtedly exhibited both diplomatic tact and Yankee ingenuity; but John Brown, a prophet by virtue of his purity of life and devotion to ideas, foresaw that it was in fact a coming victory to the South. For what was this enrolment of the Free State men but a tacit acknowledgment of Southern usurpation?
Governor Shannon, on recovering from his drunkenness, made a speech to the people assembled in Lawrence. He said,--
There was a part of the people of this Territory, who denied the validity of the laws of the Territorial Legislature. He was not there to urge that validity, but these laws should be submitted to until a legal tribunal set them aside. He did not see how there was any course but such submission to them, and it certainly was not his part, as an executive officer, to set them aside or disregard them. He was happy to announce that, after having an interview with the officers of their Committee of Safety, he had induced them thus far to respect those laws, they being willing to see them enforced, provided they had the reserved right of testing and escaping from them legally. He [90] was happy to announce that all difficulties were settled. (Faint cheers.) There was a perfect understanding between the Executive and the Committee.
Lane uttered a few fiery sentences, “which were cheered heartily,” when Dr. Robinson was called for; who is reported as having “nothing to say but that they had taken an honorable position.”
I now quote the book of Mr. William Phillips, the most trustworthy historian of Kansas as to facts:
[91]There was an evident suspicion among the people that the negotiations had been closed too easily, and that their leaders had concealed something.
Captain Brown got up to address the people; but a desire was manifested to prevent his speaking. Amid some little disturbance, he demanded to know what the terms were. If he understood Governor Shannon's speech, something had been conceded, and he conveyed the idea that the Territorial laws were to be observed. Those laws they denounced and spit upon, and would never obey — no!
Here the speaker was interrupted by the almost universal cry, No, no! Down with the bogus laws. Lead us down to fight first!
Seeing a young revolution on the tapis, the influential men assured the people that there had been no concession. They had yielded nothing. They had surrendered nothing to the usurping Legislature. With these assurances the people were satisfied and withdrew. At that time it was determined to keep the treaty secret, but before many days it was sufficiently public.
The politicians feared the old man, knowing that neither cunning nor duplicity would please him. Hence their desire to prevent his speaking; hence their determination to keep the Treaty secret; hence their unblushing announcement that nothing had been conceded.
This Treaty, when published, justified the old man's suspicions. By an adroit but dishonest use of the phrases, “legal process” and “the laws,” the Treaty was susceptible of a double interpretation; the most obvious and honest one, construing them to refer to Territorial enactments and Territorial legal instruments; while the other, or the Free State translation, rendered it Federal laws and Federal processes only.
John Brown ever afterwards regretted that he returned at General Lane's request, and maintained that this Treaty, and the policy which led to it, only served to postpone the inevitable conflict then rapidly approaching, and to demoralize the spirit of the Free State party. It occasioned, he thought, the death of many Northern men, whom, encouraged by this compromising action, the marauders, on their return, murdered in cold blood or in desultory warfare.
“I have often heard him lament,” says an able correspondent of the New York Tribune, “the loss of this chance, with the most earnest sincerity. The odds of five to one he accounted as nothing. ‘What are five to one?’ said he, ‘ when our men would be fighting for their wives, their children, their homes and their liberties against a party, one half of whom were mercenary vagabonds, who enlisted for a mere frolic, lured on by [92] the whiskey and the bacon, and a large portion of the others had gone under the compulsion of opinion and proscription, and because they feared being denounced as abolitionists if they refused? ’ ”
The politicians 5 called John Brown an “impracticable man,” but their own subsequent history, and the history of Lawrence, afford an ample vindication of his conduct at this crisis. His predictions, in less than a year, were historical facts.
