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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.

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 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 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.' '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 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.

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 , '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 , 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.'

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.

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?

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