This record of personal experiences will serve the main purpose for which it is written if it lays bare to the reader in some degree the difficulties and dangers, the trials and sacrifices, of the Free State settlers whom John Brown led at last to victory in the Kansas struggle for freedom.
In closing this chapter, I will give my readers the only explanation I am able to proffer of the strange faculty of localization which has been mentioned. No voice is heard, nothing like an impression is felt, there is no experience of any occult power of vision. Indeed, I have already stated all that I am conscious of, in the words, "it seems to me" that the object of quest, or the locality sought, lies in a certain direction or place, whenever this faculty is brought into play to find it.
XVI
The Osawatomie Battle
THE engagement at Sugar Mound (also called Middle Creek) took place on Monday, the 25th of August. Five days later, on Saturday, August 30th, was fought the really famous battle of Osawatomie, the Bunker Hill of the Kansas struggle.
In the early dawn of that day some four hundred of the enemy, well mounted and equipped,—with their bayonets glistening in the morning sun,—bore down upon the devoted town and its stanch defenders. There, in that day's notable battle, John Brown showed that he possessed real military talent. In this case he was acting on the defensive, and manifested coolness and caution equal in effectiveness to the dash and daring displayed on other occasions.
To our settlement on the South Pottawatomie, the same thing occurred on this memorable occasion as on the earlier one already described. A rider came up the creek twenty miles, asking for our aid.