The Insurrectionist

by Herb Karl

The fog was dissipating, the sky brightening, as they entered the village. In the muddy road confusion reigned. Armed men raced for the blockhouse—a two-story log fortification equipped with gun ports. A few women—bags slung over their shoulders, children in tow—darted for shelter.

  Word spread that Brown was in the village. His presence seemed to restore a measure of order. Men fell in behind him.

  Jason came running. He was breathing hard. “Father, we must get Fred. They say he lies in the brush.”

  The old man, grim-faced, eyed Jason—but only briefly. A horse was bearing down, hooves tossing up clods of rain-soaked earth.

  The rider was James Holmes. He reined in his mount. “Got a look at ’em, Captain. Just over the ridge. Waiting for I don’t know what.”

  “Numbers,” Brown said.

  “Plenty,” Holmes said. “And cannons, too. Six-pounders, I’d say.”

  “Numbers,” Brown repeated.

  “Hundreds, Captain. Two. Three. All mounted.”

  Brown was standing near the center of the village of Osawatomie. To the north was the river, to the south Pottawatomie Creek. He was on a flat plain that slowly rose to the crest of a ridge. He knew that beyond the ridge was the enemy—numbering in the hundreds and reinforced with artillery—no doubt forming into a line of battle at this very moment.

  His mind raced as more horsemen bounded onto the scene. He recognized James Cline, another of the guerrilla captains who had been raiding proslavery settlements south of Osawatomie. The old man didn’t care for Cline, even warned his soldiers to stay clear of Cline’s men. They were too rowdy. But now Brown was forced to make a concession. He needed every available man.

  A breathless James Cline: “It’s hopeless, Captain.”

  Brown’s response was unequivocal: “I shan’t yield to the enemy.”

  “You don’t understand,” Cline persisted. “There’s too many. They have artillery.”

  It was Cline who didn’t understand. He didn’t understand the depth of Brown’s commitment. Brown’s cause—the destruction of slavery—was God’s work. The old man was utterly convinced of that. He’d told his soldiers, “One man in the right, ready to die, will chase a thousand.” But he also understood that victory wasn’t the only worthwhile outcome of battle. To fear no man and fight well—even in defeat—sent a powerful message to friend and foe alike. He once wrote, “Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery.” If Brown made a stand in Osawatomie—even though victory was unattainable—the enemy would know that in Kansas Territory there were men willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom. How could anyone—North or South—not honor such devotion to a cause?

  Brown said to Cline, “If you fear the enemy, then go. If there are men in your company who wish to fight, they have my invitation.”

  Cline wouldn’t be provoked into an argument. He knew firsthand of Brown’s determination to crush the enemy. Just a few days earlier, while interrogating border ruffians, Cline’s attention had been called to the brow of a nearby hill. Men on horseback led by Brown were charging Cline’s encampment at full speed. The old man had mistaken Cline’s company for the enemy. The two groups finally recognized each other, but the event was a sobering one for Cline and it caused him to doubt Brown’s judgment. He wasn’t eager to risk his life for a lost cause. He said to Brown, “My men may do as they choose.” Then he dug in his spurs, sending his horse galloping toward the crossing on the river. Not all his men followed.

  Brown turned to his soldiers: his regulars and those of Cline’s troop who stayed, along with a few locals—altogether a force of fewer than forty men. Not very good odds, assuming the estimates of Holmes and Cline were correct.

  The old man barked orders. To Luke Parsons: “Take ten men into the blockhouse. Hold your position as long as possible. Hurt the enemy all you can.”

  To Jason: “Stay close. I shan’t lose another son this day.”

  To the rest: “Into the timber. We can at least annoy them from the flank.”

  Brown drew his revolvers and headed toward the trees bordering the river, the men hustling after him.

  He placed them behind trees, concealed them in thick brush. He walked up and down the line, reminding each to hold his fire until the enemy was at close quarters.

  “Keep cool,” he said, “take good aim, aim low, and be sure to see your target in both sights.”

  They waited, all eyes on the crest of the ridge.

  When the sun burned off the last remnants of fog, the Missourians rose up from behind the ridge in two ranks, a hundred or more horsemen in each rank. Their weapons—pistol, saber, musket—glittered like newly minted coins.

  In front were two mule-drawn limbers, each towing a smoothbore cannon capable of firing a six-pound ball.

  The men in the blockhouse were the first to lose their nerve. Believing they were easy targets for the cannons, they fled, most following Parsons into the timber to join Brown.

  Seconds later the Missourians swept down the ridge in two thunderous waves. Brown’s men—hidden in the brush and trees—let go with withering gunfire.

  Some of the enemy dismounted and sought safety in shallow swales. They were unsure of where the bullets were coming from.

  A veil of blue-gray smoke from the exploding black powder hovered over Brown’s position. The artillerymen spotted it and turned their cannons. The first round of grapeshot tore into the treetops. Branches exploded. Chunks of wood rained down.

  “Steady, boys,” Brown called out. He said something else, but it was drowned in the noise. A second round of grape crashed into the timber, shearing the top of a hickory tree from its trunk.

  The commander of the Missourians abandoned his horse, ordered the rest of his men to dismount. He attempted to rally them for a counterattack and pointed his saber toward the trees on the riverbank.

  Brown walked down the line. “A while longer, boys,” he shouted. “Keep it up a while longer.”

  As he spoke the artillerymen fired another volley. Two gusts of grapeshot ripped into the foliage. Brown felt a blow to his shoulder, called out to the nearest soldier, Luke Parsons.

  “See anything on my back, Parsons? Any blood? Something hit me an awful rap.”

  Parsons looked. “Nothing, Captain.”

  “Well,” Brown said, “I surely don’t intend to be shot in the back if I can help it.”

  The Missourians concentrated their small arms fire on Brown’s position. Musket balls hissed overhead. The loud crack of a nicked branch was followed by a humming sound as a bullet tumbled in the air. Buckshot raked the underbrush.

  For nearly one hour, Brown’s men held their ground against a superior force. The old man followed his instincts, taking advantage of the natural defenses provided by the wooded margin of the river. He’d confused an enemy of 250 men reinforced by two cannons.

  Jason announced the inevitable. “Our men are leaving, Father. And we must, too.”

  In choosing to take a stand in the timber with his back to the river, Brown held the advantage over an enemy that fought in the open—uncovered, unconcealed. Now, in retreat, the reverse was true. It was he and his men who were vulnerable. There was no alternative but the river, a river that offered few places shallow enough to be forded easily.

  Some of them swam—notably James Holmes. Others moved along the bank, looking for a manageable crossing. Those who made it across the river scrambled up the opposite side, all the while chased by gunfire.

  Jason crossed ahead of his father, looked back at the old man wading in chest-deep water. “A strange sight was Father,” Jason recalled later, “in his straw hat and white linen duster, the tails floating behind him like the wings of a swan, his revolvers held high in the air to keep them dry.”

  Brown learned that most of his soldiers escaped. Only one died as a direct result of the battle—shot as he jumped into the river. Two were wounded, four taken prisoner. He would never know, nor would anyone else, the exact number of enemy casualti
es. The old man claimed to have killed thirty-one or thirty-two and wounded forty or fifty.

  The commander of the Missourians reported no troops killed, only five wounded—none dangerously. There was never an official record of Missouri casualties.

  It was late in the day when Brown and Jason set out to retrieve Frederick’s body. The Missourians were gone, and Jason had made sure his wife and child were safe. Before crossing the river, the old man reined in his horse on the edge of the high bank and gazed at the flames and smoke rising from the village.

  He felt the sting of tears, calmed himself by repeating silently the mantra he professed to live by. I do not act from revenge. It is a feeling that does not enter my heart.

  Sitting motionless in his saddle, he spoke to an audience much larger than just his son Jason.

  “God sees it,” he said. “I have only a short time to live—only one death to die—and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for. I will give the enemy something else to do than extend slave territory.”

  He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his white linen duster, then uttered with the solemnity of a sacred oath, “I will carry this war into Africa.”

  Africa. Brown’s code name for the South. The dwelling place of four million men, women, and children—held in bondage. When Brown arrived in Kansas Territory he hoped to challenge the slave power through violent action. Once there, he’d done what he thought necessary—at Pottawatomie Creek, at Black Jack Springs, and now at the Free State village of Osawatomie. As the summer of 1856—a summer that would be remembered as “Bleeding Kansas”—faded into autumn, it became clear to the old man he wouldn’t be able to carry his war on slavery into Africa.

  Not yet, anyway.

  7

  Five Months Later

  January 19, 1857

  Boston, Massachusetts

  A gust of cold air hit John Brown in the face as he stepped out of a hack onto the ice-covered cobbles in front of No. 4 Court Street—the law office of Charles Sumner, newly reelected senator from Massachusetts. It was early in the afternoon, and the normally busy street was deserted. With his hands buried in the pockets of his wool overcoat, Brown aimed himself at the front door. He was pleased to have been granted a visit with Senator Sumner—the victim of the assault that provided the final nudge, launching Brown and his boys into a night of bloody assassination.

  After the battle at Osawatomie, Brown saw that a change was coming to Kansas Territory. President Pierce had appointed a new territorial governor—John W. Geary. An imposing figure at six feet six inches tall and 260 pounds, he quickly brought the warring factions under control. With the aid of a beefed-up US cavalry, Geary orchestrated an informal truce between Free State guerrillas and proslavery militias, then defused a planned raid on Lawrence by twenty-seven hundred Missourians.

  Brown brooded over the cessation of hostilities. He was convinced the Missourians would strike again, and he was suspicious of Geary’s motives. The governor had rounded up border ruffians but also targeted Free State fighters—including Jim Lane, Sam Walker, and Brown himself.

  Another disappointment for Brown was the attitude of his married sons, John Jr. and Jason. Like their younger brothers who had already left the territory, they were weary of the violence and wanted to escape the desolation of eastern Kansas.

  The old man was reminded of the ruinous condition of the settlements when he and Jason left their hiding place after the fighting at Osawatomie and were riding to Lecompton to meet John Jr. who—with several Free State leaders charged with treason—was to be released from the stockade by order of Governor Geary. Brown took a circuitous route to avoid federal scouts. It allowed him to inspect John Jr.’s abandoned homestead and keep a promise to assess the damage and determine if anything was worth salvaging.

  Brown and Jason rode past deserted farms and scorched fields, saw cabins ravaged by fire with hardly a sign of life anywhere except for an occasional cow—ribs bulging, belly swollen—foraging between rows of charred corn stubble.

  As they approached familiar territory, the old man drew in his reins.

  Before him lay an expanse of bottomland. He guided his horse to the blackened shell of a small log cabin. A path led to what once was the cabin’s front door. He dismounted and walked to a wall of half-burned logs, a place where once a threshold might have been.

  He stepped inside the cabin’s collapsed interior. Fragments of charred timbers were indistinguishable from stone and iron.

  Jason scanned the rubble from his saddle. “Nothing, Father,” he said.

  Brown probed with his boot. He bent over and reached into one of the ash-covered mounds. He pulled out a book, its cover and spine seared black. He fanned the pages. They crumbled to the touch. He tossed the volume aside, pushed away more debris, found more books, all partially burned, all giving off the odor of stale smoke.

  Brown knew his eldest son prized his books. He’d brought four hundred volumes to Kansas from his Ohio farm. They represented a lifetime of reading and collecting.

  Jason said, “You’ve done what was asked of you, Father. My brother needs to know there is nothing left.”

  The old man continued to shuffle through the charred remains. He marveled that not a single book was totally destroyed.

  “Strange, is it not?” he mused. “Books do not burn so easily.”

  Jason nodded.

  “I recall Mr. Douglass saying a book inspired his escape from slavery,” Brown said. “I’m sure he would be comforted to know these books were able to resist the fires of the slave power.” Brown was referring to his friend Frederick Douglass, the former slave who now edited and published a widely circulated abolitionist newspaper.

  The ride to Lecompton was interrupted again when Brown and Jason came to the smoldering ruins of Ottawa Jones’s double-walled log home—once a safe haven for the Brown family. A band of Missourians—part of the militia that Brown fought at Osawatomie—had been instructed to kill Jones and destroy his house and cattle. The Missourians wanted to send a message: collaborating with Free State settlers wouldn’t be tolerated. Jones and his wife escaped. Not so a hired hand. His throat was slit.

  Jason stared at the remains of the Joneses’ cabin. He was overcome with a sudden and deep sorrow brought on by the events of the summer: the Pottawatomie killings, the torturous ordeal of his brother John Jr., the constant worry over the well-being of his wife and child, the burning of his crops by Pate’s men, his reluctant involvement in the fighting at Osawatomie, and, finally, the murder of his brother Frederick.

  Brown sensed Jason’s anguish, saw he was on the verge of tears. “You must not let such as this get in the way of your duty,” the old man said. “Take care to let nothing get in the way of your duty—neither wife, nor child, nor a good man like Jones.”

  “I do not weep for Jones, Father. I weep for all of us—whether against slavery or for it. Such a terrible waste. The killing, the burning—”

  “I feel no more love for this business than you. I merely dread the consequences we shall face if we do nothing.”

  Jason then began to relate the story of an event he hadn’t disclosed to his father, an event that took place on the evening before the battle at Osawatomie. He confessed he hadn’t joined his wife and child at the home of Brown’s half-sister Florilla. Instead he went to the aid of a family that was nursing a severely wounded boy who served in the proslavery militia Brown was to face at Osawatomie.

  “I cleansed his wound of maggots, Father,” Jason said. “I dressed the wound, bathed him, and changed his clothes. He told me he thought abolitionists were savages until he was brought to us. As he lay there, pale and exhausted from loss of blood, he spoke of his home and friends in Mississippi and how he wished he had never come to Kansas. He asked if I would take care of him for the few hours he had left. As I sat by his bed and saw tears flowing from a heart full of sorrow and trouble, a boy alone among strangers and far from
home, I said to myself . . .” He paused to breathe deeply. “I said to myself: if these are some of the things that make war glorious and honorable, deliver me from the honor of war.”

  Jason’s confession confirmed what Brown already suspected. His son would be of little use to him in the future. The old man dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks. Lecompton was still hours away.

  At the stockade in Lecompton, the reuniting of Jason and John Jr., the exchange of embraces, left little doubt in Brown’s mind that his married sons and their families were determined to leave Kansas—as soon as possible.

  With the restoration of peace and the coming of winter, the old man questioned his own need to remain. Maybe it was a good time to take advantage of his growing reputation. Abolitionists in the Northeast would be eager to hear him tell of his battles in Kansas. Perhaps they would see fit to provide him with the money he needed to build a truly potent force—say, a hundred men who could patrol the border between Kansas and Missouri. With $30,000 and a wagonload of Sharps carbines he could return to the territory in the spring and become a formidable opponent to the enemies of freedom.

  Brown arranged passage to Ohio for his sons’ wives and children. They would take the shorter route through Missouri by boat and rail—an option made possible by the cease-fire imposed by Governor Geary.

  Meanwhile—to avoid federal troops—Brown, Jason, and John Jr. would take the overland route through Nebraska. They would leave Kansas in two wagons, one crammed with weapons, cookware, and other personal belongings, the other filled mostly with hay—under which lay a fugitive slave from Missouri whom Brown had agreed to transport to freedom.

  Barely averting capture in Nebraska, the old man’s party arrived safely in Tabor, Iowa—the abolitionist community where Owen had found a temporary home while recovering from the ailment he suffered after the fighting at Black Jack. Owen welcomed his father and brothers. The fugitive slave was turned over to a local conductor on the Underground Railroad. The weapons and supplies were put in storage.