“The cowardly mean conduct of Osawatomie and vicinity did not save them; for the ruffians came on them, made numerous prisoners, fired their buildings, and robbed them. After this a picked party of the bogus men went to Brown’s Station, burned John’s and Jason’s houses, and their contents to ashes; in which burning we have all suffered more or less. Orson and boy have been prisoners, but we soon set them at liberty. They are well, and have not been seriously injured. Owen and I have just come here for the first time to look at the ruins. All looks desolate and forsaken,—the grass and weeds fast covering up the signs that these places were lately the abodes of quiet families. After burning the houses, this self-same party of picked men, some forty in number, set out as they supposed, and as was the fact, on the track of my little company, boasting with awful profanity, that they would have our scalps. They, however, passed the place where we hid, and robbed a little town some four or five miles beyond our camp in the timber. I had omitted to say that some murders had been committed at the time Lawrence was sacked.
“On learning that this party was in pursuit of us, my little company, now increased to ten in all, started after them in company of a Captain Shore, with eighteen men, he included (June 1st). We were all mounted as we traveled. We did not meet them on that day, but took five prisoners, four of whom were of their scouts, and well armed. We were out all night, but could find nothing of them until about six o’clock next morning, when we prepared to attack them at once, on foot, leaving Frederick and one of Captain Shore’s men to guard the horses. As I was much older than Captain Shore, the principal direction of the fight devolved on me. We got to within about a mile of their camp before being discovered by their scouts, and then moved at a brisk pace, Captain Shore and men forming our left, and my company the right. When within about sixty rods of the enemy, Captain Shore’s men halted by mistake in a very exposed situation, and continued the fire, both his men and the enemy being armed with Sharps rifles. My company had no long shooters. We (my company) did not fire a gun until we gained the rear of a bank, about fifteen or twenty rods to the right of the enemy, where we commenced, and soon compelled them to hide in a ravine. Captain Shore, after getting one man wounded, and exhausting his ammunition, came with part of his men to the right of my position, much discouraged. The balance of his men, including the one wounded, had left the ground. Five of Captain Shore’s men came boldly down and joined my company, and all but one man, wounded, helped to maintain the fight until it was over. I was obliged to give my consent that he should go after more help, when all his men left but eight, four of whom I persuaded to remain in a secure position, and there busied them in the horses and mules of the enemy, which served for a show of fight. After the firing had continued for some two to three hours, Captain Pate with twenty-three men, two badly wounded, laid down their arms to nine men, myself included,—four of Captain Shore’s men and four of my own. One of my men (Henry Thompson) was badly wounded, and after continuing his fire for an hour longer, was obliged to quit the ground. Three others of my company (but not of my family) had gone off. Salmon was dreadfully wounded by accident, soon after the fight; but both he and Henry are fast recovering.
“A day or two after the fight, Colonel Sumner of the United States army came suddenly upon us, while fortifying our camp and guarding our prisoners (which, by the way, it had been agreed mutually should be exchanged for as many free state men, John and Jason included), and compelled us to let go our prisoners without being exchanged, and to give up their horses and arms. They did not go more than two or three miles before they began to rob and injure free state people. We consider this in good keeping with the cruel and unjust course of the administration and its tools throughout this whole Kansas difficulty. Colonel Sumner also compelled us to disband; and we, being only a handful, were obliged to submit.
“Since then we have, like David of old, had our dwellings with the serpents of the rocks and wild beasts of the wilderness, being obliged to hide away from our enemies. We are not disheartened, though nearly destitute of food, clothing, and money. God, who has not given us over to the will of our enemies, but has moreover delivered them into our hand, will, we humbly trust, still keep and deliver us. We feel assured that He who sees not as men see, does not lay the guilt of innocent blood to our charge.”[[115]]
It was John Brown’s hope that the courage engendered by the striking success of the fight at Black Jack, would spread the spirit of resistance to the whole free state party. Lawrence, then the capital, was still surrounded by a chain of forts held by bands of pro-slavery marauders: one at Franklin just east of the city; another just south and known as Fort Saunders; and a third between Lawrence and the pro-slavery capital, Lecompton, known as Fort Titus. When it was rumored that the United States troops would disperse the free state legislature about to meet at Topeka, John Brown hurried thither, hoping that resistance would begin here and sweep the Territory. One of the free state leaders met him at Lawrence and journeyed with him toward Topeka. Brown and he took the main road as far as Big Springs, he says, and continues:
“There we left the road, going in a southwesterly direction for a mile, when we halted on a hill, and the horses were stripped of their saddles, and picketed out to graze. The grass was wet with dew. The men ate of what provision they had with them, and I received a portion from the captain,—dry beef (which was not so bad), and bread made from corn bruised between stones, then rolled in balls and cooked in the ashes of the camp-fire. Captain Brown observed that I nibbled it very gingerly, and said, ‘I am afraid you will be hardly able to eat a soldier’s harsh fare.’
“We next placed our two saddles together, so that our heads lay only a few feet apart. Brown spread his blanket on the wet grass, and when we lay together upon it, mine was spread over us. It was past eleven o’clock, and we lay there until two in the morning, but we slept none. He seemed to be as little disposed to sleep as I was, and we talked; or rather he did, for I said little. I found that he was a thorough astronomer; he pointed out the different constellations and their movements. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it is midnight,’ as he pointed to the finger-marks of his great clock in the sky. The whispering of the wind on the prairie was full of voices to him, and the stars as they shone in the firmament of God seemed to inspire him. ‘How admirable is the symmetry of the heaven; how grand and beautiful! Everything moves in sublime harmony in the government of God. Not so with us poor creatures. If one star is more brilliant than others, it is continually shooting in some erratic way into space.’
“He criticized both parties in Kansas. Of the pro-slavery men he said that slavery besotted everything, and made men more brutal and coarse—nor did the free state men escape his sharp censure. He said that we had many noble and true men, but too many broken-down politicians from the older states, who would rather pass resolutions than act, and who criticized all who did real work. A professional politician, he went on, you never could trust; for even if he had convictions, he was always ready to sacrifice his principles for his advantage. One of the most interesting things in his conversation that night, and one that marked him as a theorist, was his treatment of our forms of social and political life. He thought that society ought to be organized on a less selfish basis; for while material interests gained something by the deification of pure selfishness, men and women lost much by it. He said that all great reforms, like the Christian religion, were based on broad, generous, self-sacrificing principles. He condemned the sale of land as a chattel, and thought that there was an indefinite number of wrongs to right before society would be what it should be, but that in our country slavery was the ‘sum of all villanies,’ and its abolition the first essential work. If the American people did not take courage and end it speedily, human freedom and republican liberty would soon be empty names in these United States.”
Early next morning the party pressed on until they came in sight of the town. Brown would not enter but sent a messenger ahead, and the narrator continues:
“As he wrung my hand at parting, he urged that we should have the legislature meet, resist all who should interfere with it, and fight, if necessary, even the United States troops. He had told me the night before of his visit to many of the fortifications in Europe, and criticized them sharply, holding that modern warfare did away with them, and that a well-armed brave soldier was the best fortification. He criticized all the arms then in use, and showed me a fine repeating-rifle which he said would carry eight hundred yards; but he added, ‘The way to fight is to press to close quarters.’”[[116]]