secure for her pent-up institution of slavery an ample outlet, and restore her power in congress. If the north secures Kansas, the power of the south in congress will be gradually diminished, and the slave property will become valueless. All depends upon the action of the present moment.” Here was a point on which young Wilkes on the one side, and John Brown on the other, were absolutely agreed; and each went to work in his own way to save Kansas to his side by encouraging immigration from their respective regions. We can, at this distance of time, admit that this was within the right of each; but the free-state men went almost wholly as bona-fide settlers, while numbers of those who went from Missouri, Virginia, and South Carolina viewed the enterprise simply as a military foray, without intending to remain. It was also true that the latter class, coming from communities then more lawless, went generally armed; while the free-state men went at first unarmed, afterward arming themselves reluctantly and by degrees. The condition of lawlessness that ensued was undoubtedly demoralizing to both sides; it was to a great extent a period of violence and plunder — civil war on a petty scale; but the original distinction never wholly passed away, and the ultimate character of the community was fortunately shaped and controlled by the free-state settlers. However it might be with others, for John Brown the Kansas contest was deliberately undertaken as a part of the great war against slavery. He went there with more cautious and far-reaching purposes than most others, and he carried out those purposes with the strength of a natural leader. As early as 1834, by a letter still in existence, he had communicated to his brother Frederick his purpose to make active war upon slavery, the plan being then to bring together some “first-rate abolitionist families” and undertake the education of colored youth. “If once the Christians of the free states would set to work in earnest teaching the blacks, the people of the slave-holding states would find themselves constitutionally driven to set about the work of emancipation immediately.” This letter was written when he was postmaster under President Jackson, at Randolph, Pa., and was officially franked by Brown, as was then the practice. When we consider what were Jackson's views as to anti-slavery agitation, especially through the mails, it is curious to consider what a firebrand he was harboring in one of his own post-offices. It appears from this letter and other testimony that Brown at one time solemnly called his older sons together and pledged them, kneeling in prayer, to give their lives to anti-slavery work. It must be remembered that Prudence Crandall had been arrested and sent to jail in Connecticut, only the year before, for doing, in a small way, what Brown now proposed to do systematically. For some time he held to his project in this form, removing from Pennsylvania to Ohio in 1835-'6, and from Ohio to Massachusetts in 1846, engaging in different enterprises, usually in the wool business, but always keeping the main end in view. For instance, in 1840 he visited western Virginia to survey land belonging to Oberlin college, and seems to have had some plan for colonizing colored people there. At last, in 1846, on the anniversary of West India emancipation, Gerrit Smith, a great land-owner in New York state, offered to give a hundred thousand acres of wild land in northern New York to such colored families, fugitive slaves, or others as would take them in small farms and clear them. It was a terribly hard region into which to invite those children of the south; six months of winter and no possibility of raising either wheat or Indian corn. Brown convinced himself, nevertheless, that he could be of much use to the colored settlers, and in 1848-'9 purchased a farm from Mr. Smith and removed the younger part of his family to North Elba, which was their home until his death. His wife and young children lived there in the greatest frugality, voluntarily practised by them all for the sake of helping others. He, meanwhile, often absented himself on anti-slavery enterprises, forming, for instance, at Springfield, Mass., his former home, a “League of Gileadites,” pledged to the rescue of fugitive slaves. In one of his manuscript addresses to this body he lays down the rule, “Stand by one another and by your friends while a drop of blood remains; and be hanged if you must, but tell no tales out of school.” This was nearly nine years before his own death on the scaffold.
In 1854 five of Brown's sons, then resident in Ohio, made their arrangements to remove to Kansas, regarding it as a desirable home, where they could exert an influence for freedom; but they were so little prepared for an armed struggle that they had among them only two small shot-guns and a revolver. They selected claims eight or ten miles from Osawatomie, and their father, contrary to his previous intention, joined them there in October, 1855. In March of that year the first election for a territorial constitution had taken place. Thousands of Missourians, armed with rifles, and even with cannon, had poured over the border, and, although less than a thousand legal votes were thrown in the territory, more than six thousand went through the form of voting. This state of things continued through that year and the next, and the present writer saw an election precisely similar in the town of Leavenworth, in the autumn of 1856. Hostilities were soon brought on by the murder and unlawful arrest of men known to be opposed to slavery. The Brown family were mustered in as Kansas militia by the free-state party, and turned out to defend the town of Lawrence from a Missourian invasion, which was compromised without bloodshed. A few months later Lawrence was attacked and pillaged. Other murders took place, and a so-called grand jury indicted many free-state men, including in the indictment the “Free State Hotel” in Lawrence. Two of Brown's sons were arrested by United States cavalry, which, at this time, Pierce being president, acted wholly with the pro-slavery party. John Brown, Jr., the oldest, was driven on foot at the head of a cavalry company, at a trot, for nine miles to Osawatomie, his arms being tied behind him. This state of things must be fully remembered in connection with the so-called “Pottawatomie massacre,” which furnishes, in the opinion of both friends and foes, the most questionable incident in Brown's career. This occurrence took place on 25 May, 1856, and consisted in the deliberate assassination of five representatives of the pro-slavery party at night, they being called from their beds for the purpose. It was done in avowed retribution for the assassination of five free-state men, and was intended to echo far beyond Kansas, as it did, and to announce to the slave-holding community that blood for blood would henceforth be exacted in case of any further invasion of rights. It undoubtedly had that effect, and though some even in Kansas regarded it with disapproval, it is certain that leading citizens of the territory, such as Governor Robinson, themselves justified it at the time. Robinson wrote, as late as February,
