From 1854 to 1860, the great political contest in the country was over the question of the extension of slavery into the public domain. It was the paramount issue in National politics. New alignments were then formed throughout the country in relation to it, as men were differently moved by their sympathies or interests. In Kansas, the division in public sentiment was more pronounced than elsewhere, for reasons that have been stated. Naturally, the settlers in the Osawatomie neighborhood were divided upon this political question; but certainly not with very much greater intensity of feeling than this same neighborhood was divided afterward, upon the great moral question of prohibition, or upon the equally great economic question of free-coinage of silver. The differences of opinion there did not promote or arouse personal animosities, or bitterness of feeling, among the settlers. Ample authority for this conclusion of fact is found in the letters written, at the time, by John Brown and others of his family, and in the statement which he voluntarily made in 1857, before a committee of the Massachusetts legislature, heretofore quoted. A large majority of the settlers in that district belonged to the Free-State party which made the security and peace of the Free-State settlers complete, beyond debate. These conditions of peace and tranquility continued undisturbed, until the night of May 24, 1856, when John Brown opened his "school" of plunder, and cast the baleful shadow of his presence upon the settlement. The Pottawatomie horror inaugurated a season of assassination and robbery unprecedented in Kansas history: a period of public disorder and crime, that ended only when the Territory was finally rid of John Brown and his marauders.
[CHAPTER VIII]
HYPOCRISY
He was a man
Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
To serve the Devil in.
—Pollock, Course of Time
John Brown "struck the trail" of "easy money" June 28, 1855, when Gerrit Smith presented his case to the Syracuse convention and collected sixty dollars to assist him in migrating to Kansas. He had followed it up with profit, while en route thereto, at Springfield, Hudson, Akron, and Cleveland. Now he was returning to the East to work the field again. It was the same graft which he had theretofore worked, but upon greatly improved plans and along broader lines.
He had two schemes in view. Robinson's letter of September 14th addressed "To the Settlers of Kansas," showed that Brown was their accredited defender "from invaders and outlaws." Under the pretext of enlisting, arming, equipping, and maintaining in Kansas, a company of fifty mounted men to protect the settlers from "invaders and outlaws," he intended to try to secure $30,000, in cash, to finance the pretense. The other scheme was to have the Legislatures of Massachusetts and New York appropriate large sums of money—$100,000 each—to reimburse persons who had emigrated to Kansas from these States, for losses which they were supposed to have "suffered in advancing the Free-State cause." Naturally, Brown and all the members of his family were "sufferers," and would be eligible as beneficiaries of this legislation.
"The National Kansas Committee" was a company formed to promote emigration to Kansas Territory. It was also a sort of clearing-house for the various committees which had been organized in the Northern States for a similar purpose. It had offices in New York, Chicago, and other places. Mr. E. B. Whitman was the resident agent of the company in Kansas, a fact which the Browns had not overlooked.