The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 45

"WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION OF SINS."

He had laid the Blood Offering on G.o.d's altar counting his own life as of no account in the reckoning and from that hour he had been a fugitive from justice, hiding in the woods. He had escaped arrest only by the accidental a.s.sembling of a mob of a hundred and fifty disorderly fools who had stolen his own goods before they had been dispersed.

Instead of the heroic acclaim to which the deed ent.i.tled him, his own flesh and blood had cursed him, one of his sons had been shot and another was lying in prison a jibbering lunatic.

Would future generations agree with the men who had met in his own town and denounced his deed as cruel, gruesome and revolting?

His stolid mind refused to believe it. Through hours of agonizing prayer the new plan, based squarely on the vision that sent him to Pottawattomie, began to fix itself in his soul.

This time he would chose his disciples from the elect. Only men tried in the fires of Action could be trusted. Of five men he was sure. His son, Owen, he knew could be depended on without the shadow of turning. Yet Oliver was the second disciple chosen. He had forgiven the boy for the fight over the pistol and had taken pains to regain his complete submission. John Henry Kagi was the third chosen disciple, a young newspaper reporter of excellent mind and trained pen. He had been captured by United States troops in Kansas as a guerrilla raider and was imprisoned first at Lecompton and then at Tec.u.mseh. The fourth disciple selected was Aaron Dwight Stevens, an ex-convict from the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth. Stevens was by far the most daring and interesting figure in the group. His knowledge of military tactics was destined to make him an invaluable aide. The uncanny in Brown's spirit had appealed to his imagination from the day he made his escape from the penitentiary and met the old man. The fifth disciple chosen was John E. Cook, a man destined to play the most important role in the new divine mission with the poorest qualification for the task. Born of a well-to-do family in Haddon, Connecticut, he had studied law in Brooklyn and New York. He dropped his studies against the protest of his people in 1855, and, driven by the spirit of adventure, found his way into Kansas and at last led his band of twenty guerrillas into John Brown's camp. Brown's attention was riveted on him from the day they met. He was a man of pleasing personality and the finest rifle shot in Kansas. He was genial; he was always generous; He was brave to the point of recklessness; and he was impulsive, indiscreet and utterly reckless when once bent on a purpose. His sister had married Willard, the Governor of Indiana.

Brown's new plan required a large sum of money. With the prestige his fighting in Kansas had given him, he believed the Abolition philanthropists of the East would give this sum. He left his disciples to drill and returned East to get the money.

In Boston his success was genuine, although the large amount which he asked was slow in coming.

The old man succeeded in deceiving his New England friends completely as to the Pottawattomie murders. On this event he early became a cheerful, consistent and successful liar. This trait of his character had been fully developed in his youth. Everywhere he was acclaimed by the pious as, "Captain Brown, the old partisan hero of Kansas warfare."

His magnetic, uncanny personality rarely failed to capture the dreamer and the sentimentalist. Sanborn, Howe, Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, George L. Stearns and Gerrit Smith became his devoted followers. He even made Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison his friends.

Garrison met him at Theodore Parker's. The two men were one on destroying Slavery: Garrison, the pacifist; Brown, the man who believed in bloodshed as the only possible solution of all the great issues of National life. Brown quoted the Old Testament; Garrison, the New.

He captured the imagination of Th.o.r.eau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He was raising funds for another armed attack on Slavery in Kansas. The sentimentalists asked no questions. And if hard-headed business men tried to pry too closely into his plans, they found him a past master in the art of keeping his own counsel.

He struck a snag when he appealed to the National Kansas Committee for a gift of rifles and an appropriation of five thousand dollars. They voted the rifles on conditions. But a violent opposition developed against giving five thousand dollars to a man about whose real mind they knew so little.

H. B. Hurd, the Chairman of the Committee, had suspected the purpose back of his pretended scheme for operations in Kansas. He put to Brown the pointblank question and demanded a straight answer.

"If you get these guns and the money you desire, will you invade Missouri or any slave territory?"

The old man's reply was characteristic. He spoke with a quiet scorn.

"I am no adventurer. You all know me. You are acquainted with my history. You know what I have done in Kansas. I do not expose my plans. No one knows them but myself, except perhaps one. I will not be interrogated. If you wish to give me anything, I want you to give it freely. I have no other purpose but to serve the cause of Liberty."

His answer was not illuminating. It contained nothing the Committee wished to know. The statement that they knew him was a figure of speech.

They had read partisan reports of his fighting and his suffering in Kansas--through his own letters, princ.i.p.ally. How much truth these letters contained was something they wished very much to find out. He had given no light.

He declared that they knew what he had done in Kansas. This was the one point on which they needed most light.

The biggest event in the history of Kansas was the deed on the Pottawattomie. In the fierce political campaign that was in progress its effects had been neutralized by denials. Brown had denied his guilt on every occasion.

Yet as they studied his strange personality more than one member of the Committee began to suspect him as the only man in the West capable of the act.

The Committee refused to vote the rifles and compromised on the money by making a qualification that would make the gift of no service.

They voted the appropriation, "in aid of Captain John Brown in any _defensive_ measures that may become necessary." He was authorized to draw five hundred dollars when he needed it for this purpose.

The failure rankled in the old man's heart and he once more poured out the vials of his wrath on all politicians,--North and South.

For months he became an incessant and restless wanderer throughout New York and the New England States.

He finally issued a general appeal for help through the _New York Tribune_ and other friendly papers.

The contributions came slowly. The invitations to speak came slower. At Collinsville, Connecticut, however, after his lecture he placed with Charles Blair, a blacksmith and forge-master, an important secret order for a thousand iron pikes. Blair pledged his loyalty. He received his first payment on account, for a stand of weapons destined to become souvenirs in marking the progress of civilization in the new world.

In the midst of his disappointing canvas for funds he received a letter from his son, Jason, that a Deputy United States Marshal had pa.s.sed through Cleveland on the way East with a warrant for his arrest for the Pottawattomie murders.

On the receipt of this news he wrote his friend, Eli Thayer:

"One of the U. S. hounds is on my track: and I have kept myself hid for a few days to let my track get cold. I have no idea of being taken: _and intend_ (if G.o.d _will_) to go back with Irons _in_ rather than _upon_ my hands. I got a _fine lift_ in Boston the other day; and hope Worcester will not be _entirely behind_. I do not mean _you_; or _Mr. Alien & Company_."

So dangerous was the advent of the U. S. Marshal from Kansas that Brown took refuge in an upper room in the house of Judge Russell in Boston and remained in hiding an entire week. Mrs. Russell acted as maid and allowed no one to open the front door except herself during the time of his stay.

The Judge's house was on a quiet street and his connection with the Abolition movement had been kept secret for political reasons. His services to their cause were in this way made doubly valuable.

Brown daily barricaded his door and told his hostess that he would not be taken alive. He added with the nearest approach to a smile ever seen on his face:

"I should hate to spoil your carpet, Madame."

While in hiding at Judge Russell's he composed a sarcastic farewell to New England. It is in his best style and true character as a poseur:

"Old Brown's _Farewell_: to the Plymouth Rock; Bunker Hill Monument; Charter Oaks; and _Uncle Tom's Cabins_.

"Has left for Kansas. Was trying since he came out of the Territory to secure an outfit; or, in other words, the means of arming and equipping thoroughly, his regular minute men, who are mixed up _with the People of Kansas_: and _he leaves the States_, with a _deep feeling of sadness_: that after exhausting _his own_ small means: and with his _family and his brave men_: suffered hunger, nakedness, cold, sickness, (and some of them) imprisonment, with most barbarous and cruel treatment: _wounds and death_: that after laying on the ground for months; in the most unwholesome _and_ sickly as well as uncomfortable places: with sick and wounded dest.i.tute of any shelter part of the time; dependent in part on the care, and hospitality of the Indians: and hunted like Wolves: that after all this; in order to sustain a cause, which _every Citizen_ of this _Glorious Republic_, is under equal moral obligation to do: (_and for the neglect of which HE WILL be held accountable TO G.o.d:) in which every Man, Woman and Child of the human family;_ has a deep and awful interest; and that _no wages are asked or expected:_ he cannot secure (amidst all the wealth, luxury and extravagance of this _'Heaven exalted'_ people) even the necessary supplies for a common soldier. HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN?

"JOHN BROWN."

Following his usual tactics of interminable delays and restless, aimless wandering, it was the 7th of August before he reached Tabor, Iowa, the appointed rendezvous of his disciples.

Two days after his arrival the Free State election of the ninth of August was held in Kansas and the heavy vote polled was a complete triumph of the men of peace within the party. Kansas, in his absence, had settled down to the tried American plan of the ballot box for the decision of political disputes. Brown wrote Stearns a despairing letter.

He was discouraged and utterly without funds. He begged for five hundred to one thousand dollars immediately for secret service and no questions asked. He promised interesting times in Kansas if he could secure this money. Of his disciples for the great coming deed but one had arrived at Tabor, his faithful son Owen. The old man lingered at Tabor with his religious friends until November before starting for Kansas.

Higginson, his chief backer in Ma.s.sachusetts, was growing angry over his repeated delays and senseless inaction. Sanborn, always Brown's staunch defender, wrote Higginson a letter begging patience:

"You do not understand Brown's circ.u.mstances. He is as ready for revolution as any other man, and is now on the border of Kansas safe from arrest, prepared for action. But he needs money for his present expenses and active support.

"I believe that he is the best Dis-union champion you can find, and with his hundred men, when he is put where he can raise them and drill them (for he has an expert drill officer with him) WILL DO MORE TO SPLIT THE UNION than a list of 50,000 names for your Convention, good as that is.

"What I am trying to hint at is that the friends of Kansas are looking with strange apathy at a movement which has all the elements of fitness and success--a good plan, a tried leader, and a radical purpose. If you can do anything for it _now_, in G.o.d's name do it--and the ill results of the new policy in Kansas may be prevented."

The new policy in Kansas must be smashed at all hazards, of course. To the men who believed in bloodshed as the only rational way to settle political issues, the ballot box and the council table were the inventions of the Devil. It was the duty of the children of Light to send the Lord's Anointed with the Sword of Gideon to raise anew the Blood Feud.

It is evident from this letter of F. B. Sanborn to Higginson that even Sanborn had not penetrated the veil of the old Puritan's soul. The one to whom he had revealed his true plan was his faithful son in Kansas.

The Territory was not the objective of this mission. It was only a feint to deceive friend and foe.

And he succeeded in doing it.

That his purpose was the disruption of the Union in a deluge of blood, Sanborn, of course, understood and approved. He was utterly mistaken as to the time and place and method which the Man of Visions had chosen for the deed.