... You do not understand Brown's circumstances.... He is as ready for a revolution as any other man, and is now on the borders of Kansas, safe from arrest, but prepared for action, but he needs money for his present expenses and active support. I believe he is the best Disunion champion you can find, and with his hundred men, when he is put where he can raise them, and drill them (for he has an expert drill officer with him) he will do more to split the Union than a list of 50,000 names, for your convention, good as that is.
What I am trying to hint at is that the friends of Kansas are looking with strange apathy at a movement which has all the elements of fitness and success—a good plan, a tried leader, and a radical purpose. If you can do anything for it now, in God's name do it—and the ill result of the new policy in Kansas may be prevented.
On August 13th, the "Cromwellian Trooper" wrote Mr. Sanborn a long letter,[261] which he intended "as a kind of report of my progress and success, as much for your committee or my friend Stearns as yourself." The letter has no public significance. It is a prolonged whine because he had not received all the money that had been promised him; also it incidentally but artistically put Mr. Stearns and Mr. Lawrence in a position that practically compelled them to make good the thousand dollars which he had theretofore pressed Mr. Lawrence for.[262] He said:
... It was the poor condition of my noble-hearted wife and her young children that made me follow up that encouragement with a tenacity that disgusted him and completely exhausted his patience. But after such repeated assurances from friends I so much respected that I could not suspect they would trifle with my feelings, I made a positive bargain for the farm; and when I found nothing for me at Peterboro', I borrowed one hundred and ten dollars of Mr. Smith for the men who occupied the farm, telling him it would certainly be refunded, and the others that they would get all their money very soon, and even before I left the country. This has brought me only extreme mortification and depression of feeling; for all my letters from home, up to the last, say not a dime has been paid in to Mr. Smith. Friends who never knew the lack of a sumptuous dinner little comprehend the value of such trifling matters to persons circumstanced as I am. But, my noble-hearted friend, I am "though faint, yet pursuing."...
Brown's hope for a "disturbance" in Kansas was nourished by the reports that he received from General Lane, which, doubtless, encouraged him to prolong his stay at Tabor. Concerning this, Mr. Villard says:[263]
Only the erratic Lane, who was then the sole person trying to stir up strife in Kansas, and is accused by respectable witnesses, of planning schemes of wholesale massacre of pro-slavery men through a secret order; was on fire for Brown's presence in the Territory, but it was the Tabor arms, rather than their owner, he really desired.
Lane wrote Brown, confidentially, September 7th, as follows:[264]
(Private)
Sir: