It was thus that John Brown came to Kansas and stood ready to fight for freedom. No sooner had he stepped on Kansas soil, however, than it was plain to him and to others 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. The difference came out at the first meeting of settlers in the little Osawatomie township. Redpath says: “The politicians of the neighborhood were carefully pruning resolutions so as to suit every variety of anti-slavery extensionists; and more especially that class of persons whose opposition to slavery was founded on expediency—the selfishness of race, and caste, and interest: men who were desirous that Kansas should be consecrated to free white labor only, not to freedom for all and above all.” The resolution which aroused the old man’s anger declared that Kansas should be a free white state, thereby favoring the exclusion of Negroes and mulattoes, whether slave or free. He rose to speak, and soon alarmed and disgusted the politicians by asserting the manhood of the Negro race, and expressing his earnest, anti-slavery convictions with a force and vehemence little likely to suit the hybrids.[[94]]
Nothing daunted by the cold reception of his radical ideas here, Brown strove to extend them when a larger opportunity came at the first beleaguering of Lawrence. It was in December, 1855, when rumors of the surrounding of Lawrence by the governor and his pro-slavery followers came to the Browns. The old man wrote home: “These reports appeared to be well authenticated, but we could get no further accounts of the matters; and I left this for the place where the boys are settled, at evening, intending to go to Lawrence to learn the facts the next day. John was, however, started on horseback; but before he had gone many rods, word came that our help was immediately wanted. On getting this last news, it was at once agreed to break up at John’s camp, and take Wealthy and Johnnie to Jason’s camp (some two miles off), and that all the men but Henry, Jason, and Oliver should at once set off for Lawrence under arms; those three being wholly unfit for duty. We then set about providing a little corn bread and meat, blankets, and cooking utensils, running bullets and loading all our guns, pistols, etc. The five set off in the afternoon, and after a short rest in the night (which was quite dark), continued our march until after daylight; next morning, when we got our breakfast, started again, and reached Lawrence in the forenoon, all of us more or less lamed by our tramp.”[[95]]
The band approached the town at sunset, looming 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. He found that already “negotiations had commenced between Governor Shannon (having a force of some fifteen or sixteen hundred men) and the principal leaders of the free state men, they having a force of some five hundred men at that time. These were busy, night and day, fortifying the town with embankments and circular earthworks, up to the time of the treaty with the governor, as an attack was constantly looked for, notwithstanding the negotiations then pending. This state of things continued from Friday until Sunday evening,”[[96]] when Governor Shannon was induced to enter the town and after some parley a treaty was announced. Immediately Brown’s suspicions were aroused. He surmised that the governor’s party had not thus lightly given up the fight for slavery, and he feared that the leading free state politicians had sacrificed the principles for which he was fighting for the sake of the temporary truce. Already the drunken governor was making conciliatory remarks to the crowd in front of the free state hotel, the free state Governor Robinson replying, when John Brown, mounting a piece of timber at the corner of the house, began a fiery speech. “He said that the people of Missouri had come to Kansas to destroy Lawrence; that they had beleaguered the town for two weeks, threatening its destruction; that they came for blood; that he believed, ‘without the shedding of blood there is no remission’; and asked for volunteers to go under his command, and attack the pro-slavery camp stationed near Franklin, some four miles from Lawrence.... He demanded to know what the terms were. If he understood Governor Shannon’s speech, something had been conceded, and he conveyed the idea that the territorial laws were to be observed. Those laws he denounced and spit upon, and would never obey—no! The crowd was fired by his earnestness and a great echoing shout arose: ‘No! No! Down with the bogus laws. Lead us out to fight first!’ For a moment matters looked serious to the free state leaders who had so ingeniously engineered the compromise, and they hastened to assure Brown that he was mistaken; that there had been no surrendering of principles on their side.”[[97]] The real terms of the treaty were kept secret, but Brown with his usual loyalty accepted their word as true and wrote exultingly home: “So ended this last Kansas invasion,—the Missourians returning with flying colors, after incurring heavy expenses, suffering great exposure, hardships, and privations, not having fought any battles, burned or destroyed any infant towns or Abolition presses; leaving the free state men organized and armed, and in full possession of the Territory; not having fulfilled any of all their dreadful threatenings, except to murder one unarmed man, and to commit some robberies and waste of property upon the defenseless families, unfortunately within their power. We learn by their papers that they boast of a great victory over the Abolitionists; and well they may. Free state men have only hereafter to retain the footing they have gained, and Kansas is free.”[[98]]
The Wakarusa “treaty,” however, was but a winter’s truce as John Brown soon saw; his distrust of the compromisers and politicians grew, and he tried to get his own channels of news from the seat of government at Washington. “We are very anxious to know what Congress is doing. We hear that Frank Pierce means to crush the men of Kansas. I do not know how well he may succeed, but I think he may find his hands full before it is all over.”[[99]] And Joshua R. Giddings assures him that the President “never will dare to employ the troops of the United States to shoot the citizens of Kansas.”[[100]] Yet the President did dare. Not only were regular troops put into the hands of the Kansas slave power, but armed bands from the South appeared, and one in particular from Georgia encamped on the Swamp of the Swan near the Brown settlement. John Brown’s procedure was characteristic. With his surveying instruments in hand one May morning, he sauntered into their camp. He was immediately taken for a government surveyor and consequently “sound on the goose,” for “every governor sent here, every secretary, every judge, every Indian agent, every land surveyor, every clerk in every office, believed in making Kansas a slave state. All the money sent here by the national government was disbursed by pro-slavery officials to pro-slavery menials.”[[101]] Brown took with him, his son says, “four of my brothers,—Owen, Frederick, Salmon, and Oliver,—as chain carriers, axman, and marker, and found a section line which, on following, led through the camp of these men. The Georgians indulged in the utmost freedom of expression. One of them, who appeared to be the leader of the company, said: ‘We’ve come here to stay. 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!’”[[102]]
Many of the intended victims were openly mentioned, and every word said was calmly written down in John Brown’s surveyor’s book. Soon this information was corroborated by the Southern camp being moved nearer the Brown settlement. Secret marauding and stealing began. Brown warned the intended victims, and, at a night meeting, it seems to have been decided that at the first sign of a move on the part of the “border ruffians” the ringleaders should be seized and lynched. Not only was this the opinion at Osawatomie, but secret councils throughout the state were beginning to lose faith in conciliation and compromise, and to listen to more radical advice. From Lawrence, too, there came encouragement to John Brown to take the lead in this darker forward movement. There was little open talk or explicit declaration, but it was generally understood that the next aggressive move in the Swamp of the Swan meant retaliation and that John Brown would strike the blow.
While, however, the free state leaders were willing to let this radical hater of slavery thus defend the frontiers of their cause, they themselves deemed it wise still to stick to the policy of passive resistance, and their wisdom cost them dear. On the 21st of May the pro-slavery forces swooped on Lawrence, and burned and sacked it, while its citizens stood trembling by and raised no hand in its defense. John Brown knew nothing of this until it was too late to help. Notwithstanding, he hurried to the scene, and sat down by the smoldering ashes in grim anger. He was “indignant that there had been no resistance; that Lawrence was not defended; and denounced the members of the committee and leading free state men as cowards, or worse.” It seemed to Brown nothing less than a crime for men thus to lie down and be kicked by ruffians. “Caution, caution, sir!” he burst out at a discreet old gentleman, “I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution—it is nothing but the word of cowardice.”[[103]] Yet there seemed nothing to do then, and he was about to break camp when a boy came up riding swiftly. The ruffians at Dutch Henry’s crossing, he said, had been warning the defenseless women in the Brown settlement that the free state families must leave by Saturday or Sunday, else they would be driven out. The Brown women, hastily gathering up their children and valuables, had fled by ox-cart to the house of a kinsman farther away. Two houses and a store in the German settlement had been burned.
John Brown arose. “I will attend to those fellows,” he said grimly. “Something must be done to show these barbarians that we too have rights!”[[104]] He called four of his sons, Watson, Frederick, Owen and Oliver, his son-in-law, Henry Thompson, and a German, whose home lay in ashes. A neighbor with wagon and horses offered to carry the band, and the cutlasses were carefully sharpened. An uneasy feeling crept through the onlookers. They knew that John Brown was going to strike a blow for freedom in Kansas, but they did not understand just what that blow would be. There were hesitation and whispering, and one at least ventured a mild remonstrance, but Brown shook him off in disgust. As the wagon moved off, a cheer arose from the company left behind.
It was two o’clock on Friday afternoon that the eight men started toward the Swamp of the Swan. Arriving in the neighborhood they spent Saturday in quietly and secretly investigating the situation, and in gathering evidence of the intentions of the “border ruffians.” Although the exact facts have never all been told, it seems clear that a meeting of the intended victims was secured at which John Brown himself presided. Probably it was then decided that the seven ringleaders of the projected deviltry must be killed, and John Brown was appointed to see that the deed was done. The men condemned were among the worst of their kind. One was a liquor dealer in whose disreputable dive the United States court was held. His brother, a giant of six feet four, was a thief and a bully whose pastime was insulting free state women. The third was the postmaster, who managed to avoid direct complicity in the crime, but shared the spoils. Next came the probate judge, who harried the free state men with warrants of all sorts; and lastly, three miserable drunken tools, formerly slave-chasers who had come to Kansas with their bloodhounds and were ready for any kind of evil.
These were not the leaders of the pro-slavery party in Kansas, but rather the dogs which were to worry the free state men to death. The ringleaders sat securely hedged back of United States bayonets and the Missouri militia, but their tools depended for their safety on terrorizing the localities wherein they lived. Here then, said John Brown, was the spot to strike and, once sentence of death had been formally passed, the band hurried to its task. The saloon lay on the creek where the great highway from Leavenworth in the northeastern part of the state crossed on its way to Fort Scott. Around it within an hour’s walk were the cabins of the others. In all cases the proceeding was similar: a silent approach and a quick sharp knocking in the night. The inmates leapt startled from their beds, for midnight rappings were ominous there. They hesitated to open the door, but the demand was peremptory and the door was frail. Then the dark room was filled with shadowy figures, the man dressed quickly, the woman whimpered and listened, but the footsteps died away and all was still. Three homes were visited thus; two of the number could not be found, but five men went out into the darkness with their captors and never returned. They were led quickly into the woods and surrounded. John Brown raised his hand and at the signal the victims were hacked to death with broadswords.
The deed inflamed Kansas. The timid rushed to disavow the deed. The free state people were silent and the pro-slavery party was roused to fury. Even the silent co-conspirators of Pottawatomie rushed to pledge themselves “individually and collectively, to prevent a recurrence of a similar tragedy, and to ferret out and hand over to the criminal authorities the perpetrators for punishment.” But they took no steps to lay hands on John Brown and as he said, their cowardice did not protect them. Four times in four years the wrath of the avengers flamed in the Swamp of the Swan, and swept the land in fire and blood, and the last red breath of the expiring war in Kansas glowed in these dark ravines.