The Southern ruffians of whom they had heard so much had not materialized. Although the Radical wing of the Northern Party had made Lawrence its Capital and through their paper, the Herald of Freedom, issued challenge after challenge to their enemies.
The Northern settlers began to divide into groups whose purposes were irreconcilable. Six different conventions met in Lawrence on or before the fifteenth of August. Each one of these conventions was divided in councils. In each the cleavage between the Moderates and Radicals became wider.
Out of the six conventions of Northerners at Lawrence, out of resolution and counter resolution, finally emerged the accepted plan of a general convention at Big Springs.
The gathering was remarkable for the surprise it gave to the Radicals of whom Brown was the leader. The Convention adopted the first platform of the Free State party and nominated ex-Governor Reeder as its candidate for delegate to Congress.
For the first time the hard-headed frontiersmen who came to Kansas for honest purposes spoke in plain language. The first resolution settled the Slavery issue. It declared that Slavery was a curse and that Kansas should be free of this curse. But that as a matter of common sense they would consent to any reasonable adjustment in regard to the few slaves that had already been brought into the Territory.
Brown and his followers demanded that Slavery should be denounced as a crime, not a curse, as the sum of all villainies and the Southern master as a vicious and willful criminal. The mild expression of the platform on this issue wrought the old man's anger to white heat. The offer to compromise with the slave holder already in Kansas he repudiated with scorn. But a more bitter draught was still in store for him.
The platform provided that Kansas should be a Free White State. And in
no uncertain words made plain that the accent should be on the word
WHITE. The document demanded the most stringent laws excluding ALL
NEGROES, BOND AND FREE, forever from the Territory.
The old man did not hear this resolution when read. So deep was his brooding anger, the words made no impression. Their full import did not dawn on him until John Brown, Jr., leaned close and whispered:
"Did you hear that?"
The father stirred from his reverie and turned a dazed look on his son.