Part 3

Meanwhile, some of our number, who had been cool enough to observe the fiercely advancing cavaliers, perceived that they were friends, not foes. It was old Captain Brown himself and his trusty band. With joy, this news rang through our ranks. All eyes were then directed toward them, enchained and enchanted. It was a splendid sight.

They at first, naturally, took us for enemies, not dreaming but that we were miles away, where they left us the evening before. They suspected us to be the force, encamped there, which they had been riding all night to overtake,—the same force we had awaited.

They came swiftly up over the brow of the hill, in full view, with Brown at their head, and, without halting or even slackening their speed, swung into line of battle. Only thirty men! yet they presented a truly formidable array. The line was formed two deep, and was stretched out to give the men full room for action. Brown sprang his horse in front of the ranks, waving his long broadsword, and on they came, sweeping down upon us with irresistible fury.

It was indeed a splendid and fearful sight, never to be forgotten by the beholders. Only thirty men! yet they seemed a host. In their every action, in their entire movements, seemed emblazoned, as in their determined souls it was written, "Victory or death!"

Their leader looked the very impersonation of Battle. Many of us had seen John Brown before, some of us a number of times, and under trying circumstances. But now all felt that the real man we had never before beheld. The daring, the intrepidity, the large resources of the man, none of us had imagined till that moment.

Not a gun was discharged, their commander having given to his men the same strict orders that were given at Bunker Hill of old, that they should "reserve their fire till they could see the whites of their enemy's eyes." But before they had quite gained that very dangerous proximity to us, we succeeded in making them understand that we were their friends.

Then such a glad shout as rent the air from both sides was seldom ever heard, we believe, on any field even of victory. They were as glad to find that we were their friends, as we, in our helpless condition, were glad to learn that they were not our enemies.

The full intrepidity of Brown and his men, though it appeared to us astounding, was not fully appreciable till we came to look at it somewhat from their own view-point.

We were actually about eighty men, prisoners and all. But, spread out as we were, with the many horses grazing, the scattered and unpacked wagons, numerous camp-fires,—widely separated for convenience,—arms stacked in some places, and men gathered in groups in others, we presented altogether a formidable appearance. What was more, this was enhanced by our peculiar position, so that, to them, our numbers and strength were exaggerated, while our weakness and confusion were concealed. Brown admitted to us himself, afterward, that he thought he was undertaking to whip a force of two or three hundred, while his men declared that they believed they were actually charging upon not less than a thousand.

Brown's quick military eye took in, at the first, the supposed situation; and, as in a flash, he decided what to do. All depended, he concluded, upon rapidity of action. His only hope lay in striking a sudden and crushing blow, for which we were unprepared, and from which we could not recover till he had made victory sure. From the time Brown's forces came in sight over the hill, till they were within gunshot of us, hardly thirty seconds elapsed,—a very short notice in which to prepare for action, even if an attack were expected.

XI

Brown to Our Prisoners

After mutual congratulations over the bloodless and happy conclusion of the adventure, we set our friends down with us to eat the interrupted breakfast, to which they were prepared to do ample justice. They had ridden all night, some forty or fifty miles, in pursuit of the enemy,—had ridden all night, without rest or food, from the time they left us, at dusk of evening, till they surprised us that morning with their dauntless charge.

Another incident in connection with the events described it seems fitting to mention, as affording a very interesting side-glance at the character of our hero. After the meal, Captain Brown was asked by our officers to give a talk to the prisoners taken the day before, who were now drawn up in line for parole. He responded without an instant's hesitation or a moment to think what he should say.

He spoke to them in a plain, simple, unpretentious way, but with a directness, a force, and an eloquence withal, which doubtless wonderfully impressed those addressed, as certainly it held spell-bound all others who listened. Such vivid and indelible impression did this speech of Brown make on the mind of the present writer that, even after the lapse of these many years, he is able to reproduce it, not only in substance, but almost word for word; and he has no doubt of its exceptional character. Perhaps it was second only to that immortal address which the hero made three years later to the court at his trial in Virginia, which Emerson pronounced one of the three most remarkable addresses in the world.

On the latter occasion, however, instead of a few plain, simple, rough and ready, but intensely admiring followers, he had almost the whole civilized world eagerly to hear and sacredly to preserve his utterance.

Brown's speech to the prisoners was probably not over five minutes long in its delivery, but it lasted those forty trembling men a lifetime. It was not known that one of them ever afterward ventured over the Missouri border into the Kansas territory.

The address was as follows:

"Men of Missouri, one of your number has asked to see John Brown. Here he is. Look at him, and hereafter remember that he is the enemy of all evil-doers.

"And what of you yourselves, men! You are from a neighboring State. What are you here for? You are invaders of this territory,—and for evil purposes, you know as well as we know. You have been killing our men, terrorizing our women and children, and destroying our property,—houses, crops, and animals. So you stand here as criminals.

"You are fighting for slavery. You want to make or keep other people slaves. Do you not know that your wicked efforts will end in making slaves of yourselves? You come here to make this a slave State. You are fighting against liberty, which our Revolutionary fathers fought to establish in this Republic, where all men should be free and equal, with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, you are traitors to liberty and to your country, of the worst kind, and deserve to be hung to the nearest tree.

"But we shall not touch a hair of your heads. Have no fear. You are deluded men. You have been deceived by men who are your elders but not your betters. You have been misled into this wrong, by those your leaders; thus, they are the real criminals and worse than traitors, and, if we had them here instead of you, they would not find such mercy at our hands.

"You we forgive. For, as you yourselves have confessed, we believe it can be said of you that, as was said of them of old, you being without knowledge, 'you know not what you do.' But hereafter you will be without excuse.

"Go in peace. Go home and tell your neighbors and friends of your mistake. We deprive you only of your arms, and do that only lest some of you are not yet converted to the right. We let you go free of punishment this time; but, do we catch you over the border again committing depredations, you must not expect, nor will you receive, any mercy.

"Go home, and become liberty-loving citizens of your State and country, and your mistakes and misdeeds, as also the injuries which you have inflicted upon us, will not have been in vain."

XII

Hard Lines

The personal experiences here related are of interest and have a value mainly as they throw somewhat of fresh light upon the character of the subject of this work, Captain Brown, and upon the events and times in which he was the leading actor.

Those were troublous times,—times that indeed "tried the men's souls" who experienced them. The hardships were severe. Danger and disease, death by ruthless hands, and even death from starvation, often stared us in the face. At one time we lived six weeks solely on Indian-meal mixed with water and dried before the fire, and that without even a condiment. This was our common fare in times of scarcity. Bacon and molasses, and tea without milk or sugar, were our luxuries in times of plenty.

For months, in the summer of '56, the men in our settlement never had their clothes off, day or night, unless torn or worn off. On a trip early in the summer mentioned, made by a companion and myself to Kansas City for provisions, we chanced to come across John Brown and his company encamped in the woods on a river-bank. After we made ourselves known as friends we were invited into their camp. A more ragged set of men than we found were rarely, we believe, ever seen,—Brown worst off of all, for he would not fare better than his men. They had no shirts to their backs, and their outer clothing was worn or torn to tatters. While in camp, they were going barefoot to save the remnants of their worn-out shoes for emergencies. And withal, they were, they said, on short rations, having no bread, but only Indian-meal and water. They were glad of the opportunity to engage us to bring them provisions on our return, but they confessed they were as short of money as they were of provisions, which simply meant that we must share ours with them.

The men of our company worked hard by day to raise crops, with their rifles near at hand, and slept in the "bush" at night to avoid surprise and capture in their cabins. Only the women and children ran the risk of remaining in the houses, in their defenselessness trusting to the mercy of the enemy. That border life invited sickness, especially the malaria of the low prairie. Our cabins were roughly made, and so open that when it rained it was about as wet inside of them as outside.

We had not time to dig wells, and in mid-summer the rivers were low and the water so stagnant that we had to brush the green scum from the surface when we dipped the water to drink or for other uses. Every man, woman, and child of the settlement was ill with the "fever and ague," so termed. There came near being an exception to the rule. One man kept so full of whiskey, continuously, that the ague didn't seem to have even a fighting chance; but at length the liquor fell short, and the ague then found its opportunity and even made up for lost time.

As for fire-arms with which to defend ourselves, we were not well off. The famous Sharpe's rifles—"Beecher's Bibles," so-called, from the great preacher's contribution of them—won Kansas to freedom in large measure; but more by their terrible name than by virtue of any large number of the weapons themselves. The Free State men in Kansas actually had few of them.

When my older brother, with whom I went to the territory, and myself called on Theodore Parker in Boston,—for one thing to ask him if those going to Kansas would be helped to fire-arms,—he said he was sorry that his previous contributions had left him "nary red" which he could give for the purpose, and he referred us to the Aid Society. We concluded, however, to depend on our own means, though slender, and so bought, to use between us, one Sharpe's rifle for twenty-five dollars. We thought it might be useful to bring down prairie hens and wild turkeys, if not needed for more serious use.

This was the only Sharpe's rifle owned in our settlement of thirty-six men and youth able to bear arms. The members of our company, in fact, at this early period in the Kansas troubles of which we write, were very slimly accoutered for warfare, and the writer actually went into the battle of Sugar Mound, described in previous pages, with an old, worn-out flint-lock rifle, being a boy put off with the poorest weapon, which, with the greatest care, he could not discharge more than once in a half-dozen times' trying. And it was the only weapon he had until he made prisoner a Missourian and possessed himself of better arms.

XIII

A Government Musket

What does the reader suppose these arms were? The one of interest was a United States army musket, altered over from a "flint-lock" to a modern "percussion-cap,"—a very effective fire-arm. It will be seen that we had to contend not only with the Border Ruffian, but with the greater ruffian at that time behind him, the United States Government itself, which was covertly lending its influence and even its arms on the side of slavery. Those Government guns were stored at Fort Scott, on the Missouri border, and the Pro-slavery men were allowed to help themselves to them.

That Government musket I intended to keep as a souvenir of Kansas times; but later, on the occasion of coming down the Missouri river, when boarding the steamboat with this musket in a common gun-case, I thoughtlessly, on entering the main saloon, stood it in a conspicuous corner. It was soon afterward noticed,—"spotted," as the phrase went,—and I heard some one whisper, "Kansas." A rough-looking passenger approached the piece, removed its case in examining it, and inquired in a loud voice for its owner. Everybody was now all interest. It was a time when the Kansas excitement was at its height, and passions ran wild.

The cry, "Yankee! Yankee!" burst from the crowd. "Overboard with him! Overboard! Overboard!" was howled, and "Yankee! Yankee!" again rang out in hot, angry tones.

The subject of these gentle remarks, it goes without saying, was surely one of the most interested spectators of the scene of all the members of the crowd, and, as was quite politic, joined in the outcries. The odds seemed to be decidedly against him, and dissent was surely unwise. Apparently there was not another Eastern man on board, and this one felt—as once a Western man said he did when expecting to be lynched by a howling mob—"a little lonesome." Very fortunately for him, no one observed that he was in any way connected with the interesting implement of warfare. Had it been discovered that he was the owner of that musket,—well! he would probably not be here now to tell his story. If the possessor of it, on the contrary, had proved to be a "Pro-slavery" from the territory, he would immediately have been lionized as a hero.

"All's well that ends well." The only matter of regret to the owner was that he lost sight and possession forever, that troublous night, of his souvenir musket. It was secretly made away with by some one's hands, under cover of the darkness.

An incident in the story of the musket we may here relate, on account of its probable significance, not apparent at that time, but revealed at a later date.

As we were making our way leisurely from the battlefield at Sugar Mound, the opportunity was afforded me to show Captain Brown my share of the trophies of our recent victory. He seemed rather indifferent as he looked at the revolvers, the fine powder-horn, the shot-bag, and the cartridge-pouch; but when he caught sight of the musket he grasped it eagerly and scrutinized it with intense interest. On the gun-stock was inscribed: "Made at the U. S. Armory, Harper's Ferry, Va.,"—or words to that effect.

When, three years later, occurred that startling episode in our history at Harper's Ferry, Brown's scrutiny of the musket was recalled by me and apparently found its explanation. It raises the question, How long had he contemplated carrying the war into Africa?

In Brown's view, slavery was war, aggressive and in actual operation. Therefore, any attack on the institution was virtually defensive warfare, legitimate and justifiable. He was a worshiper, heart and soul, at liberty's shrine, and to his mind no sacrifice in its cause was too great or costly. In that light must be interpreted his hard saying: "It would be better that a whole generation of men, women, and children should be sacrificed than have liberty perish from the earth."

XIV

An Unfailing Guide

The youngest male member of our Kansas party, hardly more than a boy, was possessor of a peculiar psychical faculty—very fortunately for us during all our troublous experiences in the territory. It was a modest gift, but an exceedingly useful one to us under the exceptional circumstances in which we often found ourselves, and this not alone to its owner, but to the whole company. It cannot be better designated, in brief, than as the faculty of "finding the way," the term usually employed in speaking of it.

It probably will not lessen the interest of the reader in the matter if he is here told that the writer of this account himself was the happy possessor of this useful power. From a boy, a mere child, he may say, it was known among his playmates that he could lead them safely and surely to any place or object, when there was doubt about its locality, and could also discover the whereabouts of things lost. The shyness of the boy led him to keep his gift in the background.

In Kansas it was as suddenly as remarkably made prominent perforce. It came into use the first day after we set out on our journey over the prairie. We had not gone far from the borders of civilization,—only far enough for its objects to be out of view,—when our whole caravan of travelers, their teams, horses, oxen, and wagons, came to a full stop. The trail over the prairie branched into two, and all were in doubt which was the right one to take. The clouds had shut in the sun, and the boundless prairie stretched out on all sides, with not an object, house or tree, hill, or even a rock, in view, as a landmark by which we could aim our course. One of the party, with a little experience in traveling on the prairie, warned us that an error made here might mislead us a whole day's journey.

The situation began to be a little distressing; whereupon the older brother of the psychic boy said: "Call up my brother. He will tell you which trail to take." Accordingly, the boy was summoned to the front; and to the older heads, waiting there with amused smiles on their faces for the decision, he pointed out what, in his belief, was the right trail. Being wholly in doubt, they, with their smiles deepening to laughter, said they might as well follow the trail he indicated. It turned out to be the correct one.

During the following ten or a dozen days' journey, as many times at least the youth was summoned to the front, and his psychical faculty put to the test. Its possessor was made happy, and his companions were equally gratified, that his power in no instance failed him.

These trails, mere wagon-tracks across the country, ran in almost all directions, crosswise, parallel, and at all angles, and were enough to puzzle the very elect,—the elect being in this instance the psychic youth. The earnest wish to find the way in any case—and the stronger and more earnest the wish the better—seemed to be a sort of mainspring to the action of the power to insure its success.

This gift was brought into play many times during the two years of Kansas events sketched here, and served us well; was often invaluable. The fact just mentioned, that the strong wish insured its effectiveness, was often clearly shown. For instance, on the occasion referred to in a previous chapter, of our happening upon Captain Brown's camp in an out-of-the-way spot on our trip for provisions, there was a strong desire on our part, excited, perhaps, much by curiosity, to see Brown and his men at that particular time in their temporary hiding-place; and seemingly by this intense desire inciting the psychic power, we were led to the spot,—for it had taken us, as we found afterward, quite a number of miles out of our direct course.

In passing, we will here digress a little from our story to say that, at this time of our visit, Brown was being hunted down, like a criminal or a wild beast, by the Government military as well as by his other enemies, and was all the time liable to betrayal into their hands.

I remember well, in this connection, how we found him armed that day. He carried about his person not less than twenty shots with which to defend himself did it become necessary: a Remington repeater—six shots; a brace of revolvers—six-shooters; and a pair of pistols. He had also a long knife or dirk, and his usual trusty old broadsword. Most of these arms, he seemed to take pains to inform us, were presented to him by his friends. Particularly did the old man impress me, while showing us the weapons, when he quietly remarked: "Our enemies would like much, no doubt, to get hold of me; but," he added with sternness, "I will never be taken alive, and I warn them I shall punish them to the extent of my power if they attempt my capture."

To return from this digression, it was a perilous thing in those days for one to venture out alone on the prairie. It was perilous to life, and perhaps still more dangerous to the property of him who ventured,—at least in some ways. For one thing, we did not dare to risk our horses. Horses were valuable, and the enemy considered them as legitimate contraband of war. The luckless horseman caught abroad by his foes was simply ordered to dismount. His horse, saddled and bridled, was led off, and the owner was left to make his way on foot, no matter how far the distance. When a team without a load was overtaken by our opponents, the horses were appropriated and the wagon left standing on the prairie. Were the wagon loaded with valuables, both animals and wagon were confiscated, and their owner was told, very likely with rifles pointed at him, to run for life till out of sight. In such cases, were one found with money or other valuables on his person, he was summarily relieved of them. Sometimes we sewed our money within the lining of our clothes, for safety; but that device for concealment had its risks. One was liable to be stripped, and to have his clothing cut or torn to shreds in the hurried search for the money.

XV

Hazardous Journeys

Such were some of the hazards of travel at that time, when the new territory was indeed "bleeding Kansas."

Journeys, nevertheless, had to be made, and long ones, and many of them from sheer necessity. We were obliged to buy in a distant market all the food we ate, with all other necessaries of life. Shipment of goods must be made by ox-teams—the use of horses being out of the question, for the reasons mentioned; and the ox-team was rather a slow means of transportation. Some ten days were necessary to make the journey from our settlement to the nearest good market, Kansas City, and return.

There was another matter we had to consider. The journeys were hazardous to men as well as to horses. Men were valuable and scarce. Not more than two at most were ever allowed to go on these dangerous errands, and usually one only.

It is not strange, as will readily be understood, that the boy who could "find his way" was for that reason chosen to make these trips, and he generally went alone. Another reason for this choice was that the settlers would not run the risk of sacrificing their mature, strong male members in this service, could it be avoided. This youth—because a youth, with no one, wife or children, dependent upon him—would not be so great a loss to the community if capture, imprisonment, or death befell him! He was, however, inspired by, and felt not a little pride because of, the confidence reposed in his ability to perform the difficult and dangerous task assigned him.