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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Old John Brown, by Walter Hawkins
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+Old John Brown
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+by Walter Hawkins
+
+January, 2000  [Etext #2050]
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Old John Brown, by Walter Hawkins
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+
+
+
+OLD JOHN BROWN
+
+THE MAN WHOSE SOUL IS MARCHING ON
+
+
+by  WALTER HAWKINS
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+This book is for busy people who have not the time to read at
+large upon the subject.  Those who would adequately master all
+the bearings of the story here briefly told must read American
+history, for which facilities are rapidly increasing.  As to John
+Brown himself, his friend F. B. Sanborn's LIFE AND LETTERS is a
+mine of wealth.  To its pages the present writer is greatly
+indebted, and he commends them to others.
+
+W. H.
+
+
+Kilburn, May 1913.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    I.   WHY WE WRITE OUR STORY
+   II.   CHILDWOOD AND THE VOW
+  III.   THE LONG WAITING-TIME
+   IV.   HOW THE CALL CAME
+    V.   BIBLE AND SWORD
+   VI.   THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
+  VII.   HARPER'S FERRY
+ VIII.   THE HALT OF THE BODY AND THE MARCH OF THE SOUL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WHY WE WRITE OUR STORY
+
+There are few who have not a dim notion of John Brown as a name
+bound up with the stirring events of the United States in the
+period which preceded the Civil War and the emancipation of the
+slave.  Many English readers, however, do not get beyond the
+limits of the famous couplet,
+
+  John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
+  But his soul is marching on.
+
+That statement is authentic in both its clauses, but it is
+interesting to learn what he did with the body before it
+commenced a dissolution which seems to have been regarded as
+worth recording.  Carlyle says in his grimly humorous way of the
+gruesome elevation of the head of one of his patriotic heroes on
+Temple Bar, 'It didn't matter:  he had quite done with it.'  And
+we might say the same of the body which was hanged at Charlestown
+in 1859.  In his devoutly fatalistic way John Brown had presented
+his body a living sacrifice to the cause of human freedom, and
+had at last slowly reached the settled opinion that it was worth
+more to the cause dead than alive.  Such a soul, so masterful in
+its treatment of the body, was likely to march on without it.
+And it did in the years that followed, This Abolitionist raider,
+with a rashness often sublime in its devotion, precipitated the
+national crisis which issued in the Civil War and Emancipation.
+
+There are lives of brave men which set us thinking for the most
+part of human power and skill:  we watch bold initiators of some
+wise policy carrying their enterprise through with indomitable
+courage and in-exhaustible patience, and we are lost in
+admiration of the hero.  But there are other brave lives which
+leave us thinking more of unseen forces which impelled them than
+of their own splendid qualities.  They never seem masters of
+destiny, but its intrepid servants.  They shape events while they
+hardly know how or why; they seem to be rather driven by fate
+than to be seeking fame or power.  They go out like Abraham, 'not
+knowing whither they go,' only that, like him, they have heard a
+call.  Sometimes they sorely tax the loyalty of their admirers
+with their eccentricities and their defiance of the conventions
+of their age.  Wisdom is only justified of these, her strange
+children, in the next generation.  Prominent among such lives is
+that of John Brown.  The conscience of the Northern States on the
+question of slavery needed but some strong irritant to arouse it
+to vigorous action, and, the hanging of John Brown sufficed.
+
+The institution of slavery became both ridiculous and hateful to
+multitudes because so good a man must be done to death to
+preserve it.  The verdict of Victor Hugo, 'What the South slew
+last December was not John Brown, but slavery,' found an echo in
+many minds.  And when the long, fierce conflict, through which
+Emancipation came, was begun, the quaint lines,
+
+  John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
+  But his soul is marching on,
+
+became one of the mightiest of the battle-songs which urged the
+Federal hosts to victory.  His name kindled the flame of that
+passion for freedom which made the cause of the North triumphant,
+and there was awe mingled with the love they bore his memory.
+Perhaps no man had been oftener called with plausible reason a
+fool; but those who knew the single-hearted devotion to a great
+cause of this ready victim of the gallows came reverently to
+think of him as 'God's fool.'  When they sang 'John Brown died
+that the slave might be free' they were singing more than a
+record of John Brown's generous motive; it was a record of one of
+God's strange counsels.  'For God chose the foolish things of the
+world that He might put to shame the things that are strong, and
+the base things of the world, and the things that are despised,
+did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that He might
+bring to nought the things that are, that no flesh should glory
+before God.'  Verily, then, it might seem worth while to set the
+story of John Brown in such a plain, brief form as to make it
+available for busy folk who have no time to read longer accounts
+of him.  If it sets some thinking of the ways of God rather than
+admiring John Brown, that will be just what he would have
+ardently wished who desired always that God should be magnified
+in his body, whether in the fighting which he never loved and
+never shirked, or the hanging which he often foresaw and never
+feared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHILDHOOD AND THE VOW
+
+The birth of John Brown is recorded in the following laconic
+style by his father in a little autobiography he wrote for his
+children in the closing days of his life.  'In 1800, May 8, John
+was born one hundred years after his great-grandfather; nothing
+else very uncommon.'  In the year mentioned the family were
+living at Torrington, Connecticut, whence they shortly removed to
+Ohio, then the haunt of the Red Indian.  They were of the pioneer
+farming class, which has supplied so many of the shapers of
+American history.  The one great honour in their pedigree was
+that they descended from a man of the MAYFLOWER--Peter Brown, a
+working carpenter who belonged to that famous ship's company.  We
+might say, indeed, that the story of John Brown flows from the
+events of 1620, the year of the MAYFLOWER.  Two landings on the
+American coast that year were destined to be memorable.  In
+August a Dutch vessel disembarked the first cargo of imported
+slaves--twenty of them; and that day Slavery struck deep root in
+the new land.  And in November of that same year the MAYFLOWER,
+with her very different cargo of brave freemen, dropped anchor in
+Cape Cod Bay.  The stream of ill results from that first landing
+and the stream of Puritan blood, generous in its passion for
+liberty, that flowed unimpoverished from Peter Brown through
+generations of sturdy ancestors--these are the streams destined
+to meet turbulently and to supply us with our story.  Owen Brown,
+the father of John, thus testifies to his own fidelity to the
+tradition of liberty.  'I am an Abolitionist.  I know we are not
+loved by many.  I wish to tell how I became one.  Our neighbour
+lent my mother a slave for a few days.  I used to go out into the
+field with him, and he used to carry me on his back, and I fell
+in love with him.'  There we have the clue to the history of the
+household of the Browns for the next two generations.  They FELL
+IN LOVE With the despised negro, and this glorious trait passed
+like an heritage from generation to generation.
+
+There is a letter extant which supplies us with the best
+information on John Brown's own boyhood.  It was written for a
+lad in a wealthy home where he stayed in later days, who had
+asked him many questions about his experiences in early life.  He
+humorously calls it a 'short story of a certain boy of my
+acquaintance I will call John.'  A few extracts will reveal his
+character in the forming.  Here, for instance, you may trace the
+conscientiousness (often morbid) which was so marked a feature in
+his later days.  'I cannot tell you of anything in the first four
+years of John's life worth mentioning save that at that early age
+he was tempted by three large brass pins belonging to a girl who
+lived in the family, and stole them.  In this he was detected by
+his mother; and after having a full day to think of the wrong,
+received from her a thorough whipping.'  He adds, 'I must not
+neglect to tell you of a very foolish and bad habit to which John
+was somewhat addicted.  I mean, telling lies, generally to screen
+himself from blame or from punishment.  He could not well endure
+to be reproached, and now I think had he been oftener encouraged
+to be entirely frank, by MAKING FRANKNESS A KIND OF ATONEMENT for
+some of his faults, he would not have had to struggle so long
+with this mean habit.'
+
+A story is told of John's schooldays which is an amusing and
+quite characteristic instance of his ethical eccentricities.  For
+a short time he and his younger brother Salmon were at a school
+together, and Salmon was guilty of some offence which was
+condoned by the master.  John had serious concern for the effect
+this might have upon his brother's morals, and he sought the
+lenient teacher and informed him that the fault was much
+deprecated by their father at home, and he was sure castigation
+there would have been inevitable.  He therefore desired it should
+be duly inflicted, as otherwise he should feel compelled to act
+as his father's proxy.  Finding discipline was still lax, he
+proceeded with paternal solemnity to administer it himself.  His
+brother acknowledged that this was done with reluctant fidelity!
+Truly the moral instincts of the family were worthy of their
+Puritan ancestry.
+
+Although naturally self-conscious and shy, his precociousness in
+boyhood, bringing him into association, as it did, with much
+older folk, bred a somewhat arrogant manner.  The rule he
+exercised over younger members of the family also made him
+somewhat domineering, a fault which he diligently sought to
+correct in later life.  At fifteen he had become a miniature man
+of business and was driving cattle on long journeys with all the
+confidence of mid-age.  The letter from which we have already
+quoted has one or two more passages which may enlighten us as to
+his rearing.  Still writing in the third person, he says, 'John
+had been taught from earliest childhood to fear God and keep His
+commandments, and though quite sceptical he had always by turns
+felt much doubt as to his future well being.  He became to some
+extent a convert to Christianity, and ever after a firm believer
+in the divine authenticity of the Bible.  With this book he
+became very familiar, and possessed a most unusual memory of its
+entire contents.'  Here are hints as to his early pursuits:
+'After getting to Ohio in 1805, he was for some time rather
+afraid of the Indians and their rifles, but this soon wore off,
+and he used to hang about them quite as much as was consistent
+with good manners and learned a trifle of their talk.  His father
+learned to dress deer-skins, and at six years old John was
+installed a young Buck-skin.  He was, perhaps, rather observing,
+as he ever after remembered the entire process of deer-skin
+dressing, so that he could at any time dress his own leather,
+such as squirrel, racoon, cat, wolf, and dog skins, and also
+learned to make whiplashes, which brought him some change at
+times, and was of considerable service in many ways.  He did not
+become much of a scholar.  He would always choose to stay at home
+and work hard rather than be sent to school, and during the warm
+season might generally be seen barefooted and bareheaded, with
+buck-skin breeches suspended often with one leather strap over
+his shoulder, but sometimes with two.  To be sent off through the
+wilderness alone to very considerable distances was particularly
+his delight; in this he was often indulged, so that by the time
+he was twelve years old he was sent off more than a hundred miles
+with companies of cattle.  He followed up with tenacity whatever
+he set about so long as it answered his general purpose, and
+thence he rarely failed in some good degree to effect the things
+he undertook.'
+
+'From fifteen years and upward he felt a good deal of anxiety to
+learn, but could only read and study a little, both for want of
+time and on account of inflammation of the eyes.  He managed by
+the help of books, however, to make himself tolerably well
+acquainted with common arithmetic and surveying, which he
+practised more or less after he was twenty years old.'  'John
+began early in life to discover a great liking to fine cattle,
+horses, sheep, and swine; and as soon as circumstances would
+enable him, he began to be a practical shepherd--it being a
+calling for which, in early life, he had a kind of enthusiastic
+longing, together with the idea that as a business it bade fair
+to afford him the means of CARRYING OUT HIS GREATEST OR PRINCIPAL
+OBJECT.'
+
+Here we touch the keynote of this life of manifold outward
+occupations, but of one consuming desire.  That PRINCIPAL OBJECT
+filled his horizon even in childhood.  He loved to tell how, like
+his father before him, he fell captive to the slave's dumb plea
+and pledged his whole strength to the chivalrous task of breaking
+his fetters.  It happened on this wise.  In those long journeys
+he was allowed to take, he was the 'business guest' of a slave-
+owner, who was pleased with his resourcefulness at such an age.
+He was the object of curious attention, and was treated as
+'company' at table.  On the estate was a young negro just his own
+age, and as intelligent as he.  Young John struck up an
+acquaintance with him, and could not fail to contrast the fashion
+in which he himself was pampered with the way the young darkie
+was coarsely treated with scant fare and ill-housing.  His
+frequent thrashings seemed to bruise young John's spirit as much
+as they did his flesh.  They were not always administered with
+the orthodox whip, but with a shovel or anything else that came
+first to hand.  Young John pondered long upon this contrast, and
+tells us how the iniquity of slavery was borne in upon his young
+heart, and he was drawn to this little coloured playmate, who had
+neither father nor mother known to him.  The Bible was the final
+court of appeal in the Brown family, and the verdict of that
+court was that they two--the slave and the guest--were brothers,
+so henceforth the instinct of fraternal loyalty drew young John
+to 'swear eternal war with slavery.'  That vow, never recanted or
+forgotten, became the text of his life.  It interprets all his
+vagaries and reconciles what else were hopeless inconsistencies.
+It was a devout obsession which made him a wanderer all his days,
+and in the end carried him to prison and to death.  To a child a
+great call had come, and a child's voice had replied, 'Speak,
+Lord, Thy servant heareth.'  And ears and heart tingled at
+messages that seemed to come from the Unseen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE LONG WAITING-TIME
+
+For over thirty years did this man both 'hope and quietly wait
+for the salvation of the Lord' to come for the slaves of his
+land.  The interval is full of interest for those who care to
+watch the development of a life-purpose.  Only for three, or four
+years was he destined to figure in the eyes of the world.  Those
+years, as we shall hereafter see, were crowded with events; but
+for a generation he felt an abiding conviction of impending
+destiny.
+
+There is something fateful about the constant indications of this
+spirit of readiness.  His commercial pursuits were multifarious,
+but none of them was greatly successful.  At Hudson, Ohio, till
+1825, and afterwards at Richmond, Pennsylvania, he was tanner,
+land-surveyor, and part of the time postmaster.  He became
+skilful at his father's business of tanning, but is a typical
+Yankee in the facility with which he turns his hand to anything.
+
+From 1835 to 1839 he was at Franklin, Ohio, where we find him
+adding to his former occupations the breeding of horses, and also
+dabbling in land speculation, with the, result that he became
+bankrupt.  But when he failed in business he set to work to pay
+his debts in full.  His death found him still striving to achieve
+that end.  He was regarded as whimsical and stubborn, yet through
+years of struggle, endeavour, and even failure he was known as
+trusty and honourable.
+
+From 1841 to 1846 he lived at Richfield, Ohio, where he took to
+shepherding and wool-dealing, which he continued in 1849 at
+Springfield, Massachusetts.  He seems to have developed much
+capacity for wool-testing.  When he came to England with a cargo
+of wool, some English dealers sought to practise a fraudulent
+joke upon his quick fingers.  They stripped a poodle of the best
+of his fleece and handed it to the oracular Yankee with the
+inquiry, 'What would you do with that wool?'  But there was
+wisdom in him down to the finger-ends, for he rolled it there,
+and in a moment handed it back with the confounding retort,
+'Gentlemen, if you have any machinery in England for working up
+dog's hair I would advise you to put this into it.'
+
+Had he known how to sell wool as well as he knew how to test it;
+had he known how to sell his sheep as well as he knew hundreds of
+sheep faces apart, and like a diviner could interpret their
+inarticulate language; had he been as apt upon the market as he
+was upon the farm, he might have made money.  As it was, there
+was never more than enough for the wants of a severely plain
+household life.
+
+But this business record was (and herefrom its frequent
+misfortune may have largely proceeded) in no wise the history of
+John Brown.  We must catch, if we can, indications of the
+unfolding of his soul, and of the inward preparation for what he
+felt was his divine destiny; and these may best be gathered as we
+watch the simple home life of the family.  At an early age, while
+residing at Hudson, Ohio, he married his first wife, Dianthe
+Lusk; and though he was but twenty years of age, his was no rash
+choice.  A description by one who had been brought up with her
+may be fitly quoted:  'Plain but attractive, because of a quiet
+amiable disposition, sang beautifully, almost always sacred
+music; she had a place in the wood not far from the house where
+she used to go alone to pray.'  John Brown, servant as he already
+accounted himself of the Invisible Powers, is drawn to one who
+thus communes with the Unseen.  She will have sympathy with his
+moral aims and a source of strength when he may be absent from
+her in pursuit of them.  The sketch proceeds, 'She was pleasant
+but not funny; she never said what she did not mean.'  Here,
+truly, was the wife for a man in dead earnest and who could keep
+a boyish oath even unto death.  For twelve years she proved a
+good comrade, and of the seven children of this marriage five
+survived, from whom testimonies concerning the domestic life are
+forthcoming.
+
+The wife who succeeded her (Mary Ann Day) seems to have been no
+less a help-meet in his enterprises.  Thirteen children, many of
+whom died young, were the off-spring of this second marriage, so
+that in a hereditary sense the soul of John Brown may be said to
+have marched on.
+
+He infected all his children with his passionate love of liberty.
+Many are his cares for their spiritual welfare.  Some of them
+sorely tried his patience by their aloofness from the Christian
+conventions that were dear to him; he yearns over their souls as
+he fears their experience of the inner working of grace is not as
+his own, but they swerved not in their allegiance to the cause of
+the slave.  Let us avail ourselves of some of their memories of
+their remarkable father.  How early the house became a city of
+refuge for the runaway negro we learn from the eldest son, who
+tells us he can just recollect a timid knock at the door of the
+log cabin where they lived.  A fugitive slave and his wife were
+there, for they had heard that there were a couple residing in
+the house who loved the negro and would lend him a rescuing hand.
+They were speedily made to know they were welcome, and the
+negress, relieved of her last fear, takes young John in a
+motherly fashion upon her knee and kisses him.  He almost
+instinctively scampers off to rub the black from his face.
+Returning, he watches his mother giving them supper.  Presently
+father's extraordinarily quick ear detects the sound of
+horsehoofs half a mile away; weapons are thrust into the hands of
+the terrified pair, and they are taken out to the woody swamps
+behind the house to lie in hiding.  Father then returns, only to
+discover that it is a false alarm, whereupon he sallies forth to
+bring them into shelter and warmth once more, and tells the
+assembled family on their arrival how he had difficulty in the
+dark in recognizing the hiding-place and really discovered them
+at length by hearing the beating of their frightened hearts.  No
+wonder.  Quick as any faculty he had was that of hearing a
+slave's heart beat.  Had it not been for that keen instinct there
+would have been no tale to tell of John Brown.
+
+The daughter says her earliest memory is of her father's great
+arms about her as he sang to her his favourite hymn:
+
+  Blow ye the trumpet, blow
+  The gladly solemn sound:
+  Let all the nations know
+  To earth's remotest bound.
+  The year of Jubilee is come,
+  Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
+
+Then, ceasing, he would tell her with heart brimming with
+tenderness of poor little black children who were slaves.  What
+were slaves?  she wanted to know.  And he was ready enough to
+tell her of those who were riven from father and mother and sold
+for base coin, whom in some States it was illegal to teach their
+A B C, but quite lawful to flog; and then the daughter would be
+asked, by way of application to his moving discourse, if she
+would like some of them to come some time and share her home and
+food.
+
+Thus continually to that rising family there was unfolded the
+horror of the slavery system.  That horror had faded in the minds
+of many in the Northern States whose ancestry had held freedom
+dear; while in the Southern States, for the most part, the
+possession of your fellow creatures as if they were so much farm
+stock had become too familiar a feature of common life to evoke
+any conscientious misgiving, much less shame.  The enormous
+additions to the cotton trade had made slave labour increasingly
+gainful, and the capital invested in this living property was
+immense.  Careful rearing of slaves for the market as well as
+their purchase brought wealth to many, and fierce was the
+resentment when any one publicly criticized the institution.
+There was by no means an absence of humane regard far the
+wellbeing of the negroes; a kind of patriarchal tenderness
+towards them was distinctly 'good form.'  But there was the
+deadly fact that they were human goods and chattels, with no
+civil rights worth mentioning--for laws in their defence were
+practically worthless, seeing they could not appear as witnesses
+in the court.  Public whipping-houses were provided for the
+expeditious correction of the refractory, and a mere suspicion of
+intent to escape was legal justification for the use of the
+branding-irons upon their flesh.  If they did contrive to escape
+there were dogs bred on purpose to hunt them down.  If the slave
+resisted his master's will he might be slain, and the law would
+not graze the master's head.  Domestic security he had none, for
+wife might be wrenched from husband or child from mother
+according to the state of the market.  And, strangest of all to
+our ears, the pulpits of the South extolled slavery as appointed
+of Heaven, and solemnly quoting the prophecy that Ham should be
+the servant of his brethren, the pulpiteer would ask who would
+dare to resist the will of God Most High?  Not content to hold
+their views tenaciously, the slave-holders and their followers
+dealt out threatenings and slaughter to all who by lip or pen
+opposed them.  The household of Brown pondered all this invasion
+of the great natural right of freedom, and with one accord pined
+for the opportunity of checking, or, it might be, ending it.
+
+It is on record how they were taught to repeat their father's
+vow.  It was in 1839, when they were living at Franklin, Ohio,
+that he called them around him, and on bended knee declared the
+secret mission with which, he believed, High Heaven had charged
+him--to labour by word or sword, by any means opportunity might
+offer, for the overthrow of slavery, which he believed to be the
+very citadel of evil in America.  'Swear, children, swear,' said
+he; and from that little group in the log house there went up an
+appeal for a blessing upon their oath--an oath which they could
+truly protest was likely to bring nought to them but peril,
+disaster, and, perchance, death, but which they were well assured
+must bring glory to Eternal God.  And so their oath was
+registered in heaven.
+
+For many years it was only in indirect ways they could promote
+their end.  Early they gave themselves to help the tentative
+endeavours that were often on foot to educate those slaves who
+did make good their escape, and especially to train them to
+independent agriculture, so that evidence might be afforded that
+they could use their liberty to good purpose, and become useful
+citizens.  The Browns were always active in promoting such
+apprenticeship to freedom.
+
+Two scenes reveal the temper of this united house.  The first is
+at Franklin, where in the Congregational Church there are revival
+services being conducted, in which the Episcopalians and
+Methodists are uniting with their neighbours under the guidance
+of a fervent evangelist.  The folk are greatly wrought upon, and
+are looking for an outpouring of divine grace.  Among the large
+assemblies are many coloured folk, some free and some runaway
+slaves.  The darkies are directed by judicious deacons to seats
+reserved for them near the door, where they will not vex the eyes
+of the worshipping whites.  John Brown has swift argument within
+him as in his boyish days:  'Has God--their Father and ours--set
+any line betwixt His children?  Is He a respecter of persons?
+And, if not, can we expect reasonably an outpouring of His grace
+while in this ungracious manner we are thwarting Him?  We shall
+bar the blessing we seek.'  Rising to his feet, he denounces the
+distinction in God's House, then, turning to his own family, who
+were accustomed to obey him, and whom he knew agreed with him, he
+bade them rise and take the seats near the door while the negroes
+came and took theirs near the front.  Nothing loth, both parties
+did as they were told, to the confusion of the pious community.
+Next day pastor and deacons waited upon the refractory member--
+John Brown--to 'labour with him,' as the old church chronicle has
+it, upon his grave indecorum.  But they found themselves
+belaboured with passages from Old Testament and New, and sundry
+stout doctrines of the Christian faith, till they retired
+discomfited, in their hearts delivering him to Satan that he
+might learn not to blaspheme.  But Satan would have none of him,
+we are sure.
+
+Another instance of the same devotion to the cause of freedom
+belongs to rather later days when they had removed to
+Springfield, Massachusetts.  There they lived with their wonted
+simplicity, but it had been the fond design of mother and
+daughter to furnish the parlour in due course.  The moment had
+arrived when the domestic finances seemed to allow of this modest
+luxury, but already John Brown had designs of another removal to
+North Elba, New York, where an estate was being occupied by
+escaped slaves under the patronage of Gerrit Smith, a wealthy
+Abolitionist.  At this juncture he calls his family together and
+asks for their mind as to whether they should now furnish the
+parlour with their savings or retain them for the help of these
+black settlers who require clothes and other equipment as they
+start their new life of independence.  The blood of the Browns
+flows as one stream, and the ready response of all is 'Save the
+money, father.'
+
+His favourite books were well known by the children--JOSEPHUS,
+Plutarch's LIVES, NAPOLEON AND HIS MARSHALS, LIFE OF OLIVER
+CROMWELL, Baxter's SAINTS' REST, Bunyan's PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, and
+Henry ON MEEKNESS.  What a significant medley of peace and war--
+the wolf and the lamb--Napoleon and Henry on Meekness side by
+side!  But dearest ever was the Book which had been the oracle in
+his father's house--itself the Book of battles and yet the gospel
+of peace, the sacred charter of man's liberties and yet the holy
+statute book for man's government--the Bible.  Swift paternal
+correction was there for any misquotation from that Book; it was
+a Book not to be lightly paraphrased, but LEARNED AND OBEYED.  In
+his own Bible there are pencillings that reveal at once the
+secret springs of his strange, and to outward seeming, erratic
+life.  Thus these passages are marked:  'Remember them that are
+in bonds, as bound with them.'  'Whoso stoppeth his ear at the
+cry of the poor, he also shall cry and shall not be heard.'
+'Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker.'  'He that hath
+pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord.'
+
+Above all passages, perhaps, was this quoted--Isa. lviii. 6:  'Is
+not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of
+wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed
+go free, and that ye break every yoke?  Is it not to deal thy
+bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast
+out to thy house?'  If ever man kept that chivalrous fast before
+the Lord it was John Brown.
+
+The last stage in what we may call the long preparation of John
+Brown for the prominent labours of his life reveals still further
+how the passionate love of the cause of liberty burned as a fire
+in the bones of this family.  They were attracted by the proposal
+of Gerrit Smith, to celebrate the passing of West Indian
+Emancipation with the offer of 100,000 acres of his wild land in
+the north of New York State for coloured families to settle upon.
+Eager for the success of the experiment, Brown and his sons were
+prepared to start pioneering in the new region, so as to be near
+at hand to encourage and assist the new settlers.  Prepared to
+choose their location as they deemed the exigencies of the great
+cause demanded, they settled at North Elba in what was then a
+wilderness in Essex county, and commenced to live a life of
+sterner simplicity than before, hewing in the forests, and
+clearing with axe and fire the land which they then proceeded to
+cultivate, obtaining food and clothes as those must who have
+neither store nor tailor near.  There, with one room beneath that
+served by day, and two rooms overhead that served by night, they
+lived, and not discontentedly, for if there was little space or
+grandeur within there was plenty without; and John Brown, who was
+no mere conqueror of Nature, but a lover of her beauty, revelled
+in the glories of that untamed land, with its mountains wooded to
+their summits, with its frowning gorges and rushing torrents and
+its richly scented air.  Best of all there were black settlers
+around whom they could help and thus forward their life-work,
+proving that the race they vowed should be free could appreciate
+and justify the boon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOW THE CALL CAME
+
+Thus, then, did this family live their life of preparation.  But
+eventful days were at hand, and John Brown felt that his real
+life-work had yet to come.  'I have never,' he said, 'for twenty
+years made any business arrangement that would prevent me at any
+time from answering the call of the Lord.  I have kept my affairs
+in such a condition that in two weeks I could wind them up and be
+ready to obey that call, permitting nothing to stand in the way
+of duty, neither wife, children, nor worldly goods; whenever the
+time should come, I was ready.'  Now truly it seemed as if 'God's
+judgements' were to be abroad in the earth, as if He was
+'travelling in the greatness of His strength, mighty to save' the
+oppressed; as if 'the Day of Vengeance' were in His heart, and
+the 'Year of His redeemed was come'; and, said John Brown's
+heart, 'He shall find one loyal henchman; I am ready.'
+
+John Brown's call seemed to come after this wise.  The enrolment
+of each New State in the Union was the occasion of fierce
+contention as to whether the territories should be free or
+whether slavery should be permitted.  Each party had sought at
+such junctures to score an advantage, for the balance was often a
+very fine one between them,
+
+The spirit of compromise had from the earliest days prevailed
+upon the thorny question.  Washington was against slavery.
+Statesmen like Adams, Franklin, Madison, and Munroe had opposed
+it; but others had been willing to purchase the preservation of
+Union by concessions to the South, and toleration had been their
+consistent policy.
+
+The Missouri compromise in 1820 had apparently settled the
+question as to the new State of Kansas, for all future States
+north of the latitude 36d 30m were to be free.  But at the
+enrolment of Kansas the slave party circumvented this statute,
+and ensured local option for the State upon this matter.  In 1854
+the new State of Kansas proceeded to determine for itself once
+for all by popular election the grave question whether she was to
+be a Slave or a Free State.  But in these young States, which
+were being almost daily reinforced by new residents, each at once
+entitled to vote, the slave party saw a rare opportunity for the
+manufacture of faggot votes.  What was to hinder the inhabitants
+of Missouri, the neighbouring State--who were slavery men--from
+going over in a body and voting!  Couldn't men migrate and change
+their minds?  Scandalous, you say.  It was.  But the scandal was
+actually perpetrated.  None other than the acting Vice-President
+of the United States advised this course, and he found many ready
+to improve upon his instructions.  One official stated:  'To
+those who have qualms of conscience as to violating laws, State
+or National, I say the time has come when such impositions must
+be disregarded, since your rights and property are at stake.  And
+I advise you one and all to enter every election district in
+Kansas and vote at the point of the bowie-knife and, the
+revolver.'
+
+Thus, a thousand strong, with two cannon in their procession, the
+armed ruffians went to vote at an election out of their own
+State.  If brave election judges protested--and some did, in
+spite of cocked pistols at their heads (like true lawyers ready
+to die for justice' sake)--and required the mob to establish
+their claims, they were overpowered; the ruffians seized the
+ballot-boxes, and in the end there were 4,908 votes cast, though
+there were only 1,410 genuine voters in the State.  Such was the
+deliberate report of a committee years after.  The Legislature
+thus elected met and were suffered to make a Statute Book for the
+young State.  Penalties of imprisonment and death were liberally
+appointed for all who should dare to resist the institution of
+slavery.
+
+With such legislation to shield their lawlessness, ruffians
+belonging to the class of 'mean whites ' commenced a series of
+barbarous outrages in the interests of the slave-holders--a
+series sickening to contemplate.  Two instances may be quoted
+which are typical:
+
+A ruffian bets that he will scalp an Abolitionist in true Indian
+fashion, and rides out in search of his prey.  A gentleman known
+to be opposed to slavery is met in a gig and shot; and, taking
+his scalp, the drunken fiend rides back, and producing the
+promised spoil, claims his due.
+
+Another leader of the Free-State men is surrounded by these
+desperate ruffians, and his skull and brain are cloven with a
+hatchet.  In fiendish glee they dance upon the almost breathless
+man, who vainly pleads, 'Do not abuse me, I am dying.'  The only
+response is a shower of tobacco juice from their filthy lips into
+his pleading eyes.  With his last breath he says, 'It is in a
+good cause,' and so dies--slaughtered because he dared to say
+others should share in his right of liberty.  True, dying man,
+the cause is good and will triumph, though thou and many others
+die first!
+
+Such scenes roused the ire of the long-suffering Free-State men
+of Kansas.  Redress there was none, save in their own right arm,
+for, as Emerson says, 'A plundered man might take his case to the
+court and find the ring-leader who has robbed him dismounting
+from his own horse and unbuckling his knife to sit as judge.'
+
+They were not without allies.  There might be no government aid
+from Washington, but throughout the North were men who loved the
+cause of Abolition better than their own ease, and they came in
+ever-increasing numbers.  Amongst them were several of Brown's
+upgrown sons, followed by their father, ready to settle in this
+new State, where they might turn the tide of public opinion in
+favour of Freedom.
+
+Thus slowly the ranks of the righteous lovers of liberty were
+replenished, and they began to form into bands for mutual
+protection, farming and soldiering by turns as necessity
+dictated.
+
+Some of John Brown's Northern friends, who knew the stuff of
+which he was made, and saw that if Freedom had no blow struck on
+her behalf she would be driven by outrage-mongers out of Kansas,
+equipped him with money and rifles, or, as they had come to be
+called, 'Beecher Bibles'--a tribute to Henry Ward Beecher's
+ardent championship of advanced views upon the slavery question.
+
+On October 6, 1855, he arrived at Osawatomie, and we find him
+writing cheery words to his brave second wife and their family
+whom he had left, telling them to hope in God and comfort one
+another, humbly trusting they may meet again on God's earth, and
+if not--for his vow is 'to the death'--that they may meet in
+God's heaven.  Of that second wife--heroine in obscurity, sharer
+of the oath which ever knit the household in one, mother of
+thirteen children--we might say much, but her spirit breathes in
+these words she speaks concerning her solitary days:
+
+'That was the time in my life when all my religion, all my
+philosophy, and all my faith in God's goodness were put to the
+test.  My husband was away from home, prostrated by sickness; I
+was helpless from illness; in one week three of my little ones
+died of dysentery--this but three months before the birth of
+another child.  Three years after this sad time another little
+one, eighteen months old, was burned to death.  Yet even in these
+trials God upheld me.'
+
+Such was the wife who, while John Brown fought for liberty,
+grudged him not to such a cause, and patiently trained others who
+should bear his name worthily in days to come.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BIBLE AND SWORD
+
+John Brown was now at his work; no longer the mere fingers, but
+the soul of him had found a task.  He set before himself this
+object, to free Kansas from the slave-holders' grip.
+
+The Free-State men had met and agreed to pay no taxes to a
+Legislature illegally elected.  They organized a rival
+government, and brought themselves into violent antagonism to the
+Federal Authorities at Washington--for President Pierce and his
+Cabinet, which included the renowned Jefferson Davis, backed the
+pro-slavery Legislature and its following of ruffians.  The town
+of Lawrence, which the Free Staters held, was taken and pillaged
+by a wild mob under the leadership of the United States Marshal,
+and we find the Browns in a company marching to its relief.
+There was much skirmishing, during which two of Brown's sons were
+taken prisoners.  Only the constant vigilance and undaunted
+courage of a few desperately bold men kept heart in the lovers of
+liberty.  But they (often led by John Brown) escaped the
+government officials who sought to arrest them and sped to the
+help of those who were marked as the victims of the marauders.
+So slowly did the Federal Authorities awake to the situation that
+for a time there seemed little protection to be expected for
+persecuted lovers of liberty.
+
+We must now form.  some estimate of the two sides in this
+irregular warfare in which John Brown all through the summer of
+1856 was so prominently engaged.
+
+On the one hand were those whom the slave-holders relied upon for
+the most part to do their dirty work--ruffians, many of them from
+the neighbouring State; men who did not work, but who lived a
+wild life--not cultivating a tract of land around their rude
+dwelling-place like honest settlers, but fishing, shooting, and
+thieving for a living--preferring the atmosphere of a Slave State
+as more favourable to their life of lawlessness and plunder, and
+finding inspiration in the whisky-bottle for such deeds of
+devilry as have been described.
+
+Upon the other side, waging a guerilla warfare--for little else
+was possible against enemies who preferred sneaking outrages to
+pitched battles--were little companies of some score or two.
+Captain John Brown's company was ever to the fore.  He felt that
+outrage had gone far enough unchecked, and that it was time
+honest men took the aggressive and struck terror into cowards'
+hearts.  They were not without fierceness, but it was the fruit
+of honest anger.  Rifles in their judgement went not ill with
+Bible-reading and prayer--but we have heard of such before.
+Armed Roundheads and Scotch Covenanters combined prayer with
+sword exercise.  In this camp, morning and evening prayers were
+an institution; uncivil treatment of prisoners was a gross
+offence; no intoxicating liquors were permitted.  One by-law
+runs:  'All profane, vulgar, or ungentlemanly talk shall be
+discountenanced.'  What!  do these rough men set themselves up to
+be gentlemen!  Yes, according to Emerson's own meaning when he
+says of Brown's supporters:
+
+'All gentlemen, of course, are on his side.  I do not mean by
+"gentlemen" people of scented hair and perfumed handkerchiefs,
+but men of gentle blood and generosity, "fulfilled with all
+nobleness," who, like the Cid, give the outcast leper a share of
+their bed; like the dying Sidney, pass the cup of cold water to
+the wounded soldier who needs it more.  For what is the oath of
+gentle blood and knighthood!  What but to protect the weak and
+lowly against the strong oppressor!  Nothing is more absurd than
+to complain of this sympathy, or to complain of a party of men
+united in opposition to slavery.  As well complain of gravity or
+the ebb of the tide.  Who makes the Abolitionist!  The slave-
+holder.  The sentiment of mercy is the natural recoil which the
+laws of the universe provide to protect mankind from destruction
+by savage passions.  And our blind statesmen go up and down, with
+committees of vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of
+this new heresy.  They will need a very vigilant committee,
+indeed, to find its birthplace, and a very strong force to root
+it up.  For the arch-abolitionist, older than Brown, and older
+than the Shenanndoah Mountains, is Love, whose other name is
+Justice--which was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, before
+Slavery, and will be after it.'
+
+John Brown and, at one time, six of his sons were in the company.
+Many were rejected who offered for service, not for lack of
+physical stature, but moral.  'I would rather,' said John Brown,
+'have the smallpox, yellow fever, and cholera all together in my
+camp than a man without principles.  It is a mistake to think
+that bullies are the best fighters.  Give me God-fearing men
+--men who respect themselves; and with a dozen of them, I will
+oppose a hundred of these ruffians.'  These are the men, then,
+who were found in Kansas woods, with bare heads and unkempt
+locks, in red-topped boots and blue shirts, taking their hasty
+meals or fitful sleep, their horses tied to the tree-trunks ready
+for swift mounting at the first signal of danger.  No sounds of
+revelry betray their hiding-place; the spirit of the man in their
+midst, with Puritan nobility in his rugged face, and a strange,
+awe-inspiring unworldliness in his talk, has entered into them.
+No novice is he in the affairs of either world--this or the
+Unseen.  At night he will look up to the stars that glitter above
+the still camp and talk like a theologian, moralizing upon the
+fact that while God's stars are unerring in their courses God's
+human creatures are so erratic.  But he is no mere dreamer; you
+may see him, when the enemy is known to be near, sleeping in his
+saddle, with his gun across it, that he may be no sooner awake
+than ready.  One who knew not of this habit was once imprudent
+enough to touch him in his sleep, as he wanted to speak to him;
+he had only time to knock up the swiftly pointed barrel with his
+hand and John Brown's bullet grazed the intruder's shoulder.
+
+One of the first deeds in this campaign, and the one that
+certainly first turned the tide and caused the pro-slavery
+ruffians to feel that they had need to look to their own safety,
+and would not be suffered with impunity to murder whom they chose
+and fire honest men's houses like fiends let loose, was the
+midnight massacre at Pottawatomie.  Along a certain creek there
+lived five of these incendiaries and outrage-mongers who were
+specially notorious.  A report reached Brown that they were sworn
+to sweep the neighbourhood clear of Abolitionists, not forgetting
+'those Browns.'  That they were to be kept in terror by such a
+gang seemed to Brown an unrighteous state of things, and he
+formed the desperate design of visiting them first.  But he loved
+not slaughter for slaughter's sake.  Not only could he strike
+upon occasion, but he could be just in his rough-and-ready
+fashion.  He argued within himself, 'I shall be right in killing
+these men if I am sure they intend these murders, but I will not
+act upon mere report.'  Disguising himself, he started with two
+men to carry a surveyor's chain, and one to carry a flag.  No
+coward was this man.  He would put his life in peril rather than
+act on mere suspicion.  So he ran his lines past the houses of
+these five men, and they naturally came out to see what this
+surveying business was.  Brown told them, as he looked through
+his instrument and waved the flagman to this side or that, 'Yours
+is a grand country.  Are there many Abolitionists about here?'
+In his pocket-book he jotted down the answer 'Yes,' and, swearing
+great oaths, they told him that they meant to sweep the region
+clear of them in a week.  'Are there some called Brown?'  'Yes,'
+and man by man they swore the Browns should be killed by their
+hands.  Back he went saying to himself, 'If I understand the Book
+these are murderers, they have committed murder in their hearts.'
+Ere many nights were passed eight men were requisitioned from the
+camp.  They stole forth armed with short cutlasses, and next
+morning the ghastly news spread abroad that five corpses had been
+found by that creek.  John Brown, jun., said, 'The only statement
+that I ever heard my father make in regard to this was "I did not
+myself kill any of those men at Pottawatomie, but I am as fully
+responsible as if I did."'  It was a terrible act; we cannot
+wonder that it came as a great shock to many who had the cause of
+liberty at heart, but when questioned about it the old man was
+always reticent, and would only say, 'God is my Judge.'
+
+The result was unmistakable.  From that moment John Brown's name
+became a terror to the evildoers of that quarter.  The free
+settlers felt there was another fate than extermination for them,
+and the impotent administration at Washington first began to see
+that this hitherto submissive majority of free settlers must be
+reckoned with.  A writer said years after, 'It was like a clap of
+thunder from a clear sky.'  There are acts that can only be
+morally estimated by a careful consideration of the prevailing
+circumstances, and in this case they are such as we, well housed
+and protected folk, thank God, know not.  Those who knew this man
+through and through were swift to testify, 'Whatever may be
+thought of John Brown's acts, John Brown himself was right.'  No
+personal end had he to serve; his harvest was privation,
+suffering, death.  He had no personal vengeance to wreak, and
+when revengeful words were spoken in his hearing he soon lifted
+the conversation to a sublime level.
+
+'That,' said he, 'is not a Christian spirit.  If I thought I had
+one bit of the spirit of revenge I would never lift my hand.  I
+do not make war on slave-holders, but on slavery.'
+
+Henceforth John Brown's little band was famous.  A few days after
+the Pottawatomie tragedy we find him engaging a company under
+Captain Fate, who professed, with doubtful authority, to be the
+emissary of the Government.  Hearing after prayer meeting one
+Sunday they are in the neighbourhood, he is quickly in pursuit as
+soon as night has set in, and in the morning with a handful of
+men he is exchanging brisk fire with the enemy.  Presently Fred
+Brown, a wild-looking man of the woods, who has been left in
+charge of the horses, comes riding upon a pony none too large for
+its ungainly burden.  He waves his long arms, shouting, 'Come on,
+boys, we've got 'em surrounded and cut off their communications.'
+The enemy are scared at the apparition, and their captain,
+thinking there is no fathoming the plots of these Browns, sends a
+lieutenant forward with a flag of truce.  John Brown asks, 'Are
+you captain!'  'No.'  'I will talk with him, not with you.'
+Captain Fate advances with much parley.  'Any proposition to
+make?'  impatiently asks John Brown.  'No.'  Then he (John Brown)
+has one--unconditional surrender; and with eight men he has soon
+secured twenty prisoners.  So all through that summer Brown was
+wellnigh ubiquitous in harassing the enemy, and their dispatches
+betray their terror of him by ludicrous exaggerations of his
+achievements.  But it is certain he lived as nearly up to his
+terrible reputation as he could.  At Franklin, at Washington
+Creek, and at Osawatomie we find him in evidence.  Here are
+extracts from his letters in reference to the attack made by the
+pro-slavery men at the last-mentioned place.  'On the morning of
+August 30 an attack was made by the ruffians on Osawatomie,
+numbering some 400, by whose scouts our dear Frederick was shot
+dead.'  (This was his son, and it was by a Methodist preacher's
+rifle he was killed.  Such was the support which the pulpit
+sometimes gave in those turbulent days to the slavery cause.)
+'At this time I was about three miles off, where I had some
+fourteen or fifteen men over-night that had just enlisted under
+me.  These I collected with some twelve or fifteen more, and in
+about three-quarters of an hour I attacked them from a wood with
+thick undergrowth.
+
+'With this force we threw them into confusion for about fifteen
+or twenty minutes, during which time we killed or wounded from
+seventy to eighty of the enemy--as they say--and then we escaped
+as we could with one killed, two or three wounded, and as many
+more missing.  Jason (another son) fought bravely by my side.  I
+was struck by a partly spent shot which bruised me some, but did
+not injure me seriously.  "Hitherto the Lord has helped me,
+notwithstanding my afflictions."'
+
+Later there was a futile attack upon Lawrence by 2,700 Of the
+Border ruffians, and while the governor claimed afterwards the
+credit for the failure of the attack, it is certain that his
+dilatory intervention had less to do with the result than the
+prompt action of a couple of hundred defenders of the place who
+made a dash outwards towards the advancing rabble.  Mounted on a
+grocer's box in the main street, John Brown thus addressed them
+before action:  'If they come up and attack don't yell, but
+remain still.  Wait till they get within twenty-five yards of
+you:  get a good object:  be sure you see the hind sight of your
+gun--then fire.  A great deal of powder and lead is wasted on
+aiming too high.  You had better aim at their legs than at their
+heads.  In either case, be sure of the hind sights of your guns.
+It is from the neglect of this that I myself have so many times
+escaped; for if all the bullets that have ever been aimed at me
+had hit, I should have been as full of holes as a riddle,'
+
+All these skirmishes from a military point of view were trivial,
+but from a political standpoint they were crucial.  They saved
+Kansas, and made free election at length possible.  Brown and his
+men were 'incarnate earnestness,' says one writer, and it was
+that fervent devotion which made all that followed possible.  It
+became impossible for a government to wink at arson and murder.
+'Take more care to end life well than to live long,' the old man
+used to say, and he exemplified his doctrine.
+
+His reckless bravery was proverbial.  After one of their
+successful skirmishes a wounded Missourian wished greatly to see
+the redoubtable John Brown before he died.  The captain went to
+the wagon where he lay and said, 'Here I am; take a good look at
+me; we wish you all no harm.  Stay at home, leave us alone, and
+we shall be friends.  I wish you well.'  The dying man looked at
+him from head to foot, and, reaching out his hand, said, 'I don't
+see as you are so bad.  You don't look or talk like it.  I thank
+you.'  Clasping his hand, the old captain said, 'God bless you,'
+and his tears were the Amen.  Thus tender was he ever with his
+prisoners, despite his fierceness.
+
+At length the United States Government saw the free settlers were
+in no abject mood, and stepped in to their relief.  John Brown
+saw the dawn of better days, and then travelled away northward,
+worn and sick, with a fugitive slave as a kind of trophy hidden
+in his wagon.  Before long he found security and peace for a
+while at North Elba, New York, at the house of Gerrit Smith.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
+
+We now find John Brown busy for a while in the Northern States
+addressing Abolitionist meetings, collecting funds for the cause,
+and co-operating with the Anti-slavery Committees, of which there
+were several thousands.  In many homes where the friends of
+freedom lived he was a welcome guest, not least welcomed by the
+children, who always seemed to refresh his weary heart.  'Out of
+the mouths of children,' as the psalmist says (according to one
+version), 'God gives strength to true men.'  You might often have
+seen him holding up a little two-year-old child, saying, 'When
+John Brown is hanged as a traitor she can say she used to stand
+on John Brown's hand.'  He was no false prophet!
+
+Now also he was able to revisit, after two years' absence, the
+old homestead where his wife and children were awaiting him, down
+to the little one whom he had left an infant in the cradle.
+'Come,' says the strange father to the little prattler, 'I have
+sung it to all of them; I must sing it to you.'
+
+  Blow ye the trumpet, blow
+  The gladly solemn sound:
+  Let all the nations know
+  To earth's remotest bound.
+  The year of Jubilee is come,
+  Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
+
+In strains to which a soul on fire gave enchantment and a
+tunefulness of their own he sang that song of Moses and the Lamb,
+telling of the Jewish charter of Liberty to which Christ in His
+turn gave larger meaning; and the little eyes in the room beheld
+a transfigured face which they remembered when he had ceased
+blowing the trumpet of Jubilee, and when they sang the same hymn
+as they laid him beneath the sod outside that cabin door.
+
+But not long could he stay at home.  The year of Jubilee for all
+these bondmen was his one thought, and he found friends who
+regarded him as a tried man and were prepared to trust him
+implicitly.  Such men as Beecher and Theodore Parker gave him
+help spiritual; men like the wealthy Stearns gave him help
+financial to the extent of many thousand dollars, and were
+content to know that John Brown, however he spent it (and
+concerning his plans he was always reticent), would have but one
+object--liberty to the captive.
+
+One way in which it was spent was in the working of what was then
+known as the underground railway.  The opportunist statesman--
+Henry Clay--had led many Northern voters to tolerate the passing
+of the Fugitive Slave Law, under which the Federal Government
+facilitated the enforced return of fugitive slaves found in free
+states to the plantations of the South.  And the Abolitionists in
+the North, as a set-off against this detested legislation, gave
+themselves with much zest to aid the runaway slave.  If a slave
+could escape to the swamps or the forest and elude the
+bloodhounds on his track, he knew that at certain points he would
+find those who were prepared to house him, and, passing him on
+secretly from station to station, ensure his arrival at a
+terminus where he would be safe for life.  That was Canada, the
+country where the Union Jack waves--the flag of 'Britons' who
+'never shall be slaves' and are prepared to grant to all the
+priceless boon they claim themselves.  This escape was called
+'shaking the paw of the lion.'  May that British lion never be
+transformed into a sleek tiger; may his paw ever be outreached to
+a runaway slave, and his roar be a terror to all who would market
+in human flesh and blood!
+
+This chain of well-known houses and locations was called the
+underground railway; and, spite of penalties of imprisonment oft
+inflicted, it never lacked porters or guards; and if the trains
+did not always run to time it was because they were very cautious
+against accident.  Some 30,000 passengers were probably conveyed
+on this line.  You will not be surprised to find John Brown an
+active 'guard,' and under the name of 'Shubel Morgan' or
+'Hawkins' he did good service there.  See him making his way with
+twelve fugitive slaves from Missouri, through Kansas, Nebraska,
+Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan to Canada.  It is the dead of
+winter, and the rough wagons travel heavily and slowly along the
+drifted roads.  There is a price on his head in these Southern
+States--3,250 dollars offered conjointly by the Governor of
+Missouri and President Pierce--and the stations are sometimes
+thirty miles apart.  They come to a creek, and there is the State
+Marshal awaiting them with eighty armed men--for he thought he
+had better have a good force, as he heard it was John Brown he
+might encounter.  John puts his host of twenty-three men all told
+into battle array in front of the wagons, and gives the laconic
+order, 'Now go straight at 'em, boys, they are sure to run.'
+Into the water his men charge--but the baptism of water is all
+they are fated to pass through; there is no baptism of fire to
+follow, for, scared at the impulsive charge, and filled with
+vague terror at that irrepressible John Brown, the Marshal
+springs upon his horse and skedaddles.  His men scramble to their
+horses.  Some cannot untie them from the shrubs quickly enough;
+several animals carry two men, and, to complete the ludicrousness
+of the scene, one man, fearing he might be too late, grips fast
+the tail of the steed to which the proper rider has just set
+spurs, and, vainly trying to spring on behind, is seen with his
+feet off the ground, being whirled through the air.  A few
+prisoners are speedily added to Brown's little company, who,
+thinking it is perhaps prudent to keep men off horseback who were
+so prone to flight, orders them to walk.
+
+But he has ideas of courtesy, has this rough old warrior, and
+says he means them no unkindness and will walk with them.  Such a
+favourable opportunity must in no wise be missed, so the old
+soldier-prophet gives them his mind upon the wickedness of slave-
+holding and the meanness of slave-hunting, which discourse, let
+us hope, is not wholly unfruitful.  When he has held them for one
+night he thinks they have been brought far enough from their
+haunts to prevent further mischief, and sets them free.  That one
+night spent with him they are not likely to forget.  He would not
+so much as allow them the privilege of swearing.  'No taking of
+God's name in vain gentlemen; if there is a God you will gain
+nothing, and if there is none you are fools indeed.'  Such is the
+old man's plain argument.
+
+One of them, a harum-scarum young physician, is taken specially
+under charge by John Brown.  Before retiring Brown desires him to
+pray.  'I can't pray,' he says, with an oath.  'What, did your
+mother never teach you?'  asks Brown.  'Oh yes,' he replies; 'but
+that was a long time ago.'  'Well, you still remember the prayer
+she taught you?'  continued Brown.  'Yes,' is the answer.   'Say
+that for want of a better,' is the order.  Then, to the amusement
+of all, the poor doctor repeats the rhyme:
+
+  And now I lay me down to sleep,
+  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
+
+Said the young doctor after he was released, 'John Brown knows
+more about religion than any man I ever met.  He never used harsh
+language; we were treated like gentlemen; we shared food with
+them.  Only it went against the grain to be guarded by niggers.'
+
+Thus the journey proceeds.  As they get farther north there is
+more bark than bite about the opposition they encounter.  In the
+street at one town where they are sheltered, Brown strolls alone
+and finds a champion of slavery haranguing the crowd and
+denouncing Brown as a reckless, bloody outlaw, a coward who
+skulked and would never fight in the open.  Warming to a climax
+the orator proclaims, 'If I could get a sight of him I would
+shoot him on the spot; I would never give him a chance to steal
+any more slaves.'  'My friend,' says a plain-looking countryman--
+no other than John Brown himself--on the outskirts of the throng,
+'you talk very brave; and as you will never have a better
+opportunity to shoot old Brown than right here and now, you can
+have a chance.'  But his powder was damped--or his courage!
+
+Now the journey is over.  The twelve fugitives have become
+thirteen, for a little infant has been born on the march, never
+to know, thank God, the horrors the mother has left behind.  The
+child is named after his deliverer 'John Brown,' who conducts
+them safely across the ferry and places them under the shelter of
+the Union Jack on the Canadian shore.  Then the old man
+reverently pronounces his 'Nunc dimittis,' 'Lord, now lettest
+thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy
+salvation.'  'I could not brook the thought that any ill should
+befall them, least of all that they should be taken back to
+slavery.  The arm of Jehovah has protected us.'  Before many
+months those rescued ones were weeping at the news that John
+Brown was condemned to die, and were saying 'Would that we could
+die instead.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HARPER'S FERRY
+
+John Brown now prepared for his final effort, for the enterprise
+he had espoused and the sacrifice he had sworn to make for it
+were to be completed by his death.  'There is no way of
+deliverance but by blood,' had become his settled conviction upon
+this slavery question.  And truly it seemed so.  The Slave States
+were waxing fiercer in their unholy enterprise.  The reopening of
+the market for freshly imported slaves from Africa was openly
+advocated--indeed, prices were offered for the best specimens, as
+if it were a mere cattle trade.  'For sale, 400 negroes just
+landed,' was placarded in Southern streets; and to complete the
+grim situation a prize was proposed for the best sermon in
+defence of the slave trade.  Surely the Lord gave not 'the word,'
+but 'great was the company of the preachers' who were prepared to
+publish it.
+
+John Brown felt that the fullness of time was come for a
+desperate stroke.  Desperate indeed it was.  From a military
+point of view it was madness.  He resolved to hire a farm in
+Maryland, near to the great armoury at Harper's Ferry in the
+Slave State of Virginia, and there diligently and silently to
+store arms.  Then with a small company he would seize Harper's
+Ferry.  Having possessed himself of its stores, he would retreat
+to the mountains, where he hoped there would be considerable
+rallying to his standard.  Holding his own amid mountain
+fastnesses of which he had acquired an intimate knowledge, he
+thought he might at last become strong enough to make terms with
+the Government.
+
+We next find him passing as Isaac Smith, a Maryland farmer--known
+to his neighbours as a demure, somewhat eccentric, son of the
+soil.  Three of his sons, true to the vow, were with him.  Little
+thought the farmers around that hard by that farmhouse a few
+thousand weapons were stored and that a little band of mysterious
+strangers was gathering there, but so it was.  To the last there
+was much opposition to Brown's impulsive scheme.  Once, indeed,
+he resigned leadership, but the little group passed a horrible
+five minutes of bereavement and then re-elected him with many
+promises of support.  Sublime old madman!--if mad indeed he was!
+Had he not made them all feel like himself, 'that they have but
+one life and once to die; and if they lose their lives perchance
+it will do more for the cause than their lives would be worth in
+any other way?'
+
+One reluctant darkie, rescued by him from slavery, was challenged
+to say what he would do.  He hesitated--looked at his shaggy old
+benefactor, and then, with heart surcharged with gratitude, said,
+'I believe I'll go wid de ole man.'
+
+Ah!  the old man's soul had entered into them--it kept them
+'marching on.'  In the dark, wet night of October 16, 1859, they
+mustered quietly.  The captain addressed them, and he was no
+reckless destroyer of human life who thus spake:  'Gentlemen, let
+me press this one thing on your minds.  You all know how dear
+life is to you, and how dear your lives are to your friends; and
+in remembering that, consider that the lives of others are as
+dear.  Do not therefore take the life of any one if you can
+possibly avoid it, but if it is necessary to take life in order
+to save your own, then make sure work of it.'
+
+Two of them were deputed to hasten, when the town was in their
+hands, to Colonel Washington's house, four miles distant--to
+seize him, free his slaves, and take the relic of the house, the
+famed sword of his illustrious ancestor George Washington, that
+with this in hand John Brown might head the campaign.  That feat
+they actually performed, and for one brief day their leader bore
+that sword.
+
+Silently marched that little band of about a score under shelter
+of the darkness.  They had their plans complete, even a
+Constitution ready framed, should they be successful.  The
+telegraph wires were cut.  They contrived to terrify all on guard
+without firing a shot, and as the sun rose, Harper's Ferry,
+arsenal, armoury, and rifle works, and many prisoners were in the
+hands of John Brown.  The day wore on, but the expected
+reinforcements came not; the spreading news, however, brought
+hostile troops around the captured place, and they hourly
+increased.  Brown took not his one chance of escape to the
+mountains--why, it is difficult to say.  In prison afterwards he
+said his weakness in yielding to the entreaties of his prisoners
+ruined him.  'It was the first time I ever lost command of
+myself, and now I am punished for it,' he added.  At another time
+when questioned he gave fatalistic answers, and said it was
+'ordained so ages before the world was made.'  By afternoon he
+was on the defensive within the armoury, and a fierce fight
+ensued. Even then his simple notions of justice were uppermost,
+and to the last as his men fired from the portholes he would be
+heard saying of some one passing in the street, 'That man is
+unarmed don't shoot.'  Two of his sons--Watson and Oliver Brown--
+were pierced with bullets.  As he straightened out the limbs of
+the second, he said, 'This is the third son I have lost in the
+cause.'  Always the cause!  The night fell and the fight was in
+abeyance, but in the morning he was summoned to surrender, and
+refused, saying he would die there.  At length the engine-house,
+their last resort, held stubbornly, was captured, and Brown fell,
+wounded by the sword of a young lieutenant who had marked him for
+his stroke.  One of his prisoners who was by says truly of his
+last fight, 'Almost any other man who saw his sons fall would
+have exacted life for life, but he spared all of us who were in
+his power.'  Of the force of twenty-two men, ten were killed,
+seven captured and hanged, and five escaped.  On the other side
+six were killed and eight wounded.
+
+He was now a captive, suffered to recover from his wounds that he
+might die a felon's death.  Many were those who, from various
+motives, came to see the wounded prisoner, and from many
+interviews reported at the time we may take a few extracts:
+
+Q. Can you tell us who furnished money for your expedition?
+A. I furnished most of it myself.  I cannot implicate others.  It
+is by my own folly I have been taken.  I could have saved myself
+had I not yielded to my feelings.
+
+Q. If you would tell us who sent you, who provided means, it
+would be valuable information.
+A. I will answer freely and faithfully about what concerned
+myself, anything I can with honour, but not about others.  It was
+my own prompting and that of my Maker or the devil--whichever you
+please to ascribe it to--I acknowledge no master in human form.
+
+Q. Why came you here?
+A. To liberate the slaves--the cry of the oppressed is my only
+reason.  I respect the rights of the poorest coloured folk as
+much as those of the most wealthy and powerful.
+
+Q. How do you justify your acts?
+A. I think, my friend, you are guilty of a great wrong against
+God and humanity--I say it without wishing to be offensive and
+it would be perfectly right for any one to free those you
+wickedly hold in bondage.  I am not here to gratify revenge, but
+because I pity those who have none to help them.
+
+Q. Do you consider this a religious movement?
+A. The greatest service man can render to God.
+
+Q. Do you consider yourself an instrument in the hands of
+Providence?
+A. I do.
+
+Q. Brown, suppose you had every nigger in the United States, what
+would you do with them?
+A. Set them free.
+
+Said Governor Wise of Virginia, 'Mr. Brown, the silver of your
+hair is reddened by the blood of crime, and you should eschew
+these hard words and think of eternity.  You are committing
+felony by these sentiments.'  Brown replied, 'Governor, I have by
+all appearances not more than fifteen or twenty years the start
+of you in the journey to eternity, and whether my time has to be
+long or short I am equally prepared to go.  There is an eternity
+behind and an eternity before, and this speck in the centre,
+however long, is but comparatively a minute.  The difference
+between your tenure and mine is trifling, and you have all of you
+a heavy responsibility and it behoves you to prepare more than it
+does me.'
+
+The Governor's public testimony was:  'They are mistaken who took
+Brown to be a madman.  He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever
+saw.  He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and
+simple ingenuousness.  He is cool, collected, and indomitable;
+and it is but just to him to say that he was humane to his
+prisoners, and he inspired me with great trust in his integrity
+as a man of truth.  He is a fanatic, vain and garrulous, but
+firm, truthful, and intelligent.  He professes to be a Christian
+in communion with the Congregational Church of the North, and
+openly preaches his purpose of universal emancipation, and the
+negroes themselves were to be the agents, by means of arms, led
+on by white commanders.  Colonel Washington says that he was the
+coolest and firmest man he ever saw in defying danger and death.
+With one son dead by his side, and another shot through, he felt
+the pulse of his dying son with one hand, held his rifle with the
+other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure,
+encouraging them to be firm, and to sell their lives as dearly as
+they could.'
+
+The trial for treason and murder took place in the Virginian
+Court on October 27-31, ere he had recovered.  He pleaded for
+delay till his health allowed him to give more attention to his
+defence, but the request was refused.  So, weak and wounded, he
+had to lie upon his pallet with a blanket thrown over him.  His
+words were few, and to the same effect as those we have quoted.
+There was only one verdict possible in that court--GUILTY--and he
+was sentenced to be hanged.  Technically there was no other
+course possible.  The calm verdict of the CAMBRIDGE MODERN
+HISTORY upon the raid is correct:  'It was the mad folly of an
+almost crazed fanatic . . . the stain still upon him of the
+bloodiest of the lawless work done in the name of Freedom; a
+terrible outlaw because an outlaw for conscience' sake; intense
+to the point of ungovernable passion--heeding nothing but his own
+will and sense of right; a revolutionist upon principle; a
+lawless incendiary, and yet seeking nothing for himself.'
+
+But while we feel the veracity of these words there comes to our
+mind one of Charles Kingsley's impulsive sayings:  'Get hold of
+one truth, let it blaze in your sky like a Greenland sun, never
+setting day or night.  See it in everything, and everything in
+it.  The world will call you a bigot and fanatic, and then fifty
+years after will wonder how it was the bigot and fanatic managed
+to do so much more than all the sensible men round about him.'
+
+John Brown vindicated that opinion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE HALT OF THE BODY AND THE MARCH OF THE SOUL
+
+The journeys of John Brown's body were now at an end.  Only his
+soul was free to travel, and it found its vehicle in letters
+which carried thoughts that breathed and words that burned far
+and wide.
+
+This condemned prisoner had five weeks left of mortal life, and
+they were the most fruitful he ever spent.  The greatest
+achievement of his life was the marvellous advocacy of the cause
+conducted from his prison.  His friend F. B. Sanborn says:
+'Here was a defeated, dying old man, who had been praying and
+fighting and pleading and toiling for years, to persuade a great
+people that their national life was all wrong, suddenly
+converting millions to his cause by the silent magnanimity or
+the spoken wisdom of his last days as a fettered prisoner.'
+
+He had spoken of a Samson's victory as possibly the great
+triumph in store for him.  Even so it was, and in his death and
+by the manner of it he mortally wounded his old enemy, Slavery.
+As the great continent watched from afar his last days, a thrill
+passed through it that made Emancipation a triumphant cause.
+Efforts to save Brown's life might be in vain, but Brown's death
+was helping to save the life of the nation.  His letters from
+the prison were many and widely circulated.  All he has to say
+of himself is that he knows no degradation.  'I can trust God
+with the time and manner of my death, believing that for me now
+to seal my testimony with my life will do vastly more for the
+Cause than all I have done before.  Dear wife and children, do
+not feel degraded on my account.'  Humorously he remarks, 'I am
+worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose.'
+'Say to my poor boys never to grieve for one moment on my
+account; and should many of you live to see the time when you
+will not blush to own your relation to old John Brown, it will
+not be more strange than many things that have happened.'  '" He
+shall BEGIN to deliver Israel out of the hand of the
+Philistines." This,' said he, 'I think is true of my commission
+from God and my work.'  The scaffold had no terrors for him.
+His trust, he averred, was firm in that Redeemer who, to
+European and Ethiopian, bond and free alike, had brought a year
+of Jubilee and a great salvation.  But though he asked no pity
+for himself, he pleaded in every letter for those who, as he
+said, were on the 'under-hill' side.  'Weep not for me,' he
+wrote home, 'but for the crushed millions who have no
+comforter.'  The old text was continually repeated, 'Remember
+them that are in bonds as bound with them,' and he bade them
+abhor with undying hatred that 'sum of all villanies--slavery.'
+
+His only cause of agitation in the prison was the intrusive
+ministration of certain pro-slavery parsons.  He refused to let
+a man who 'had the blood of the slaves on his skirts' minister
+to him.  'I respect you as a gentleman, but a HEATHEN
+gentleman,' he would say.  'Don't let such go with me to the
+scaffold,' he asked.  'I would rather have an escort of
+barefooted, bareheaded, ragged slave boys and girls led by some
+old grey-headed slave mother.'
+
+A sculptor who had conceived a great admiration for the brave
+old man was ambitious to execute a marble bust of him.  He
+applied to Mrs. Stearns--Brown's old wealthy supporter--to aid
+him in his enterprise.  She readily promised to supply all
+funds, but, said she, 'You will have a vain journey for the
+measurements.  He will just say, "Nonsense; give the money to
+the poor." You will then say, "Mr. Brown, posterity will want to
+know what you looked like," and he will reply, "No consequence
+to posterity how I looked; better give the money to the poor."
+But go if you will and use my name.'  And off went the eager
+artist.  With some difficulty he procured an interview with the
+prisoner.  But woman is far-sighted; sure enough the answer
+came, 'Nonsense; give the money to the poor.'  But the artist
+pleaded, 'Posterity will want to see what you were like.'  Said
+the man who longed that his work rather than his memory should
+live, 'No consequence to posterity how I looked; give the money
+to the poor.'  However, the name of Mrs. Steams prevailed at
+last, and with a thankful look he said, 'She must have what she
+desires; take the measurements.'
+
+The day of execution, December 2, 1859, drew near.  Excitement
+increased, and for the first time in the history of the Union
+the passport system was introduced by the State Government of
+Virginia, and was maintained during the last eight days of
+Brown's life, lest haply aid from the North should be organized.
+Troops were present to the number of 3,000, around the scaffold
+at Charlestown, when he was carried forth to die.  Rumour
+alleged that he had on the way to the scaffold taken a slave
+child from its mother's arms and kissed it.  But, credible as it
+may have been to many, those who were present knew he was too
+closely pinioned and guarded for it to be possible.  He had
+little to say--only one word of the glory of the surrounding
+scenery, for he was a true son of Nature to the last.  He had
+placed in an official's hands a slip of paper with the following
+words upon it:  'I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the
+crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with
+blood.  I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that
+without very much bloodshed it might be done.'
+
+Upon the scaffold he only bade them be quick, as he was quite
+ready.  Ready!  Yes, he had been ready many a year, and it was
+no unwilling victim that swung mid-air that December morning.
+
+They carried his body to the old log-house he occupied at North
+Elba, where it was buried upon the farm.  That farm has been
+recently purchased for a public park; and the grave, with the
+big boulder upon it, forms a conspicuous feature.  Thousands
+approach it with reverent feet, not so much because of the body
+which lies mouldering there, but for the sake of the soul which
+is marching on.  They had sung in Northern streets a grim ditty
+during those days of suspense before his execution, with the
+refrain, addressed to the Southerner:
+
+  And Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown,
+  May trouble you more than ever
+  When you've nailed his coffin down.
+
+It contains a true word of prophecy.  Says an American writer:
+soon after, 'I meet him at every turn.  John Brown is not dead;
+he is more alive than ever he was.'  As that same year the
+Northern States gird themselves for the great Presidential
+contest, determined that at length a thorough Abolitionist named
+Abraham Lincoln shall tenant the White House, it is evident that
+John Brown's soul is marching on.
+
+When at length fierce civil war breaks out, and those same
+Northern States month by month are brought to the sure
+conviction that Freedom as certainly as Union is the cause for
+which they fight, and as through long disappointment and
+suspense, lavish effusion of blood, generous sacrifice of their
+bravest sons they steadily press to victory under the ever-
+patient, dogged leadership of President Lincoln and General
+Grant, it is evident that John Brown's soul is marching on.
+
+In the tramp of ten thousands of armed men, in the strains of
+that grand old battle-hymn of the Republic, I hear the march of
+his soul:
+
+  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
+  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
+     stored;
+  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift
+     sword:
+  His truth is marching on.
+      Glory, glory, hallelujah, &c.
+
+  He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call
+     retreat;
+  He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgement-seat;
+  Oh, be swift, my soul!  to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet!
+      Our God is marching on.
+
+  I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;
+  They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
+  I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
+      His day is marching on.
+
+  In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
+  With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
+  As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free!
+     While God is marching on.
+
+When Lincoln's first Emancipation Decree (made necessary by the
+fact that so many blacks belonging to the disloyal were fighting
+for the Union), that all slaves in the Rebel States from New
+Year's Day, 1863, shall be free, is promulgated; and when, two
+years later, the Constitution is amended so as to forbid slavery
+all through the Republic, now again united; when the nation
+generously provides food, shelter, and education for the
+emancipated; and when the freed bondmen greet their liberty-
+loving President in Southern streets with shouts of gratitude
+and cries of 'Father Abraham'--you may know that John Brown's
+soul is marching on.
+
+There in America and elsewhere it continues its march.  Wherever
+the swift cruiser speeds in pursuit of the infamous slave-ship,
+in every heart-beat of the brave seamen who feel they are on a
+righteous errand and will overhaul her in the King's--aye, in
+God's--name, we hear the march of John Brown's soul.
+
+When a nation of free men rises up in wrath at the issue of some
+official document that seems to be couched in temporizing
+language on this supreme subject, or at some government that has
+tolerated conditions that approximate slavery, and will have
+none of it, we know the old hero's soul is marching on.
+
+Whenever in secret council the ambassador of a free people
+negotiates a treaty, and, backed by the most sacred impulses of
+those he represents, urges an anti-slavery clause, we know John
+Brown's soul is on the march.
+
+And march it shall, while nations learn to prize liberty as
+God's great chartered right to every man, while they read the
+shining letters of the Golden Rule, while they remember that God
+made all men of one blood and that all are redeemed by the blood
+of One.
+
+While God looks down from His heaven and sees the distressed
+face, or hears the piercing cry of the oppressed, and can turn
+the hearts of men to fight His battles upon earth, the soul of
+John Brown will be marching still.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Old John Brown, by Walter Hawkins
+
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