Thus it was that John Brown came to Kansas and stood ready to fight for freedom. But no sooner had he arrived than it was plain to him that the cause for which he was fighting was far different from that for which most of the settlers were willing to risk life and property. John Brown publicly protested the resolution already drawn up, excluding all Negroes—slave or free! His words were coldly received.
From Frederick Douglass came more money and a letter.
“We are directing the eyes of the country toward Kansas,” Douglass wrote. “Charles Sumner in the Senate is speaking as no man ever spoke there before; Henry Ward Beecher has turned his pulpit into an auction block from which he sells slaves to freedom; Gerrit Smith and George L. Sterns have pledged their money; Lewis Tappan and Garrison have laid aside all former differences. Garrison is no longer bitter about my politics. He can see that we are accomplishing something. Free Soilers, Whigs, Liberals and antislavery Democrats are uniting. The state-wide party which we initiated some time ago has grown into a national movement.... We have adopted the name Republican, which was, you may recall, the original name of Thomas Jefferson’s party. Our candidate is John C. Frémont. His enemies say he is a dreamer who knows nothing of politics. If the people gather round in full strength we will show them.”
John Brown folded the letter. There was an unusual flush on his seared face.
“What is it, father?” Owen asked.
“From Douglass,” Brown replied. “God moves in mysterious ways!” That was all he said, but the sound of prairie winds was in his voice.
It was in December when rumor that the governor and his pro-slavery followers planned to surround Lawrence came to the Browns. On getting this news, they at once agreed to break camp and go to Lawrence. The band, approaching the town at sunset, loomed strangely on the horizon: an old horse, a homely wagon, and seven stalwart men armed with pikes, swords, pistols and guns. John Brown was immediately put in command of a company. Negotiations had commenced between Governor Shannon and the principal leaders of the free-state men. They had a force of some five hundred men to defend Lawrence. Night and day they were busy fortifying the town with embankments and circular earthworks. On Sunday Governor Shannon entered the town, and after some parley a treaty was announced. The terms of the treaty were kept secret, but Brown wrote jubilantly to New York that the Kansas invasion was over. The Missourians had been sent home without fighting any battles, burning any infant towns, or smashing a single Abolitionist press. “Free-state men,” he said, “have only hereafter to retain the footing they have gained, and Kansas is free.”
Developments in Kansas did not please the powerful slavocracy. Furious representatives hurried to Washington. And President Pierce, who had once sent a battleship to Boston to bring back one trembling, manacled slave, denounced the free-state men of Kansas as lawless revolutionists, deprived them of all support from the Federal government, and threatened them with the penalty for “treasonable insurrection.” Regular troops were put into the hands of the Kansas slave power, and armed bands from the South appeared, one from Georgia encamping on the “swamp of the swan” near the Brown settlement.
Surveying instruments in hand and followed by his “helpers”—chain carriers, axman and marker—John Brown sauntered into their camp one May morning. He was taken for a government surveyor and consequently “sound.” The Georgians talked freely.
“We’ve come to stay,” they said. “We won’t make no war on them as minds their own business. But all the Abolitionists, such as them damned Browns over there, we’re going to whip, drive out, or kill—any way to get shut of them, by God!”[16]