The Insurrectionist

by Herb Karl

  Brown intended to return to Tabor.

  Jason and John Jr. took passage on a stagecoach bound for eastern Iowa. From there they would complete the journey to Ohio by rail. Brown, meanwhile, had again been stricken with chills and fever, and he and Owen were forced to remain in Tabor. After a week in bed under his son’s care, Brown felt well enough to continue. He and Owen climbed aboard the wagon that had brought him from Kansas. They headed east.

  Brown needed money and guns. He needed Massachusetts.

  Now, almost three months later—having traversed half the continent in a horse-drawn wagon—Brown found himself standing in the cobbled street outside the Boston law office of Senator Charles Sumner. He leaned into the icy wind as he crossed the street and headed for the front door.

  The old man felt a rush of warm air as Sumner invited him inside. A fire blazed on the hearth, providing much of the illumination in the small room, its windows stained with soot. Shelves of books lined the walls, and well-worn leather armchairs surrounded a library table that took up most of the floor. The table was festooned with stacks of papers.

  Brown removed his overcoat and handed it to Sumner, who struggled to hang it in a narrow closet.

  In appearance the two men were a study in contrasts. Sumner, the Harvard-educated lawyer who socialized with Boston’s intellectual elite, was bedecked in a tweed coat, vest, wool trousers, and a pair of gaiters that covered his finely crafted shoes. Brown wore a black frock coat buttoned almost to the neck, a leather cravat, and rough-textured trousers tucked into his stovepipe boots. He looked like a farmer in Sunday attire.

  The senator may have dressed like a gentleman, but his clothing couldn’t disguise his frail condition. Brown was saddened to learn that Sumner still suffered from the wounds inflicted in the Senate chamber by the South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks. Even in the dim light the old man saw the senator’s pallid complexion, the blackened hollows under his eyes.

  After obligatory comments on Boston’s harsh winter weather, the two men settled into chairs at the library table.

  The meeting had been arranged by Franklin Sanborn, the twenty-five-year-old secretary of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee, one of the private organizations that provided money and supplies to Kansas migrants. Sanborn enjoyed an almost sycophantic attachment to a circle of influential Massachusetts abolitionists, several of whom he’d already introduced to Brown. He was delighted to bring together one of the Senate’s champions of abolitionism and an acclaimed chieftain of the Kansas wars. At first, Sumner was reluctant to agree to the meeting; his precarious health had left him a virtual recluse.

  “Sanborn has spoken highly of you, Captain Brown, but that was hardly necessary,” Sumner said. “We’ve read of your exploits. Your efforts to discourage those who would bring Kansas into the fold of the slave power are well known.”

  “I have merely answered the call of the Lord,” Brown said. “It is my duty.”

  Sumner, too, knew something about duty. His life was wrought in the selfsame crucible. He was a disciple of the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, and as such he had dedicated himself to the improvement of society. Sumner had an agenda: prison reform, public education, the international peace movement, temperance, and of course the abolition of slavery. He spoke in a thin, halting voice. “As you can see from my present condition, one must accept the fact that there is sometimes a price to pay for doing one’s duty.”

  “I don’t wish to cause you further discomfort,” Brown said, “but I must tell you that the bravery you exhibited has been a source of inspiration to me and my soldiers. And I would like to thank you on behalf of Northern men who continue to fight for freedom in Kansas.”

  Sumner was growing weaker. Yet he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to educate Brown on the political realties both men faced.

  “Don’t expect the slave power to change because of what happens in Kansas,” Sumner said. “We have just elected a new president—a man from Pennsylvania—who will no doubt continue the policy of appeasement followed by his predecessor. I’m afraid there is too often little difference between Northern men and Southern men, and this is especially true when greed holds dominion over what is right.” Sumner was determined to finish what he had to say, even though his voice had begun to crack. “I have long questioned the unholy alliance between the cotton-planters and flesh-mongers of Louisiana and Mississippi and the cotton-spinners and human traffickers of New England—between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom.”

  So saying, the once sturdy and vigorous senator from Massachusetts gave out a long sigh and let his body collapse limply into the leather armchair.

  It was an awkward moment for Brown. While he felt privileged to have been taken into the confidence of a man he held in high esteem, he’d not yet divulged the special reason for his visit. Given the senator’s obvious misery, he wondered if perhaps the timing wasn’t right. Then again, there might not be another opportunity. Brown pushed back his chair and stood.

  “Senator Sumner, before I leave, I would be most grateful to see the coat you wore when assaulted by that coward from South Carolina. I understand you keep it here.”

  His voice almost a whisper, Sumner replied, “You understand correctly, Captain Brown. I keep it as a reminder of the barbarism that has taken hold of the slave power. I’m afraid the ladies in my family have banished it from our home.” He struggled to rise.

  “Please,” Brown implored, motioning for the senator to remain seated.

  Sumner pointed to the closet where earlier he’d hung Brown’s overcoat.

  Brown squeezed into the tiny space. The glow from the hearth cast a muted light on the frock coat hanging next to his overcoat. He let his fingertips glide over the dark folds of dried blood that saturated the coat from shoulder to shoulder, covering the lapels, leaving them stiff as untanned cowhide. He reached inside and felt the hardness where blood had penetrated the lining and gathered in clumps. He drew the coat to his face and inhaled deeply as though the pungent odor might merge into his being.

  Later, as he prepared to leave, Brown was tempted to embrace his host, but he instead contented himself with a handshake, executed gingerly because of the senator’s frail condition.

  The old man departed with a sense of renewal. He’d completed a pilgrimage, received an audience from a guardian of the faith, and looked upon a sacred relic. The experience left him euphoric.

  Outside, the sun hadn’t broken through the thick cloud cover. It was getting colder and the wind came in blasts that numbed the flesh. Still, Brown eschewed an approaching hackney coach, choosing instead to walk to his hotel. He’d endured worse conditions on the Kansas prairie. As he walked he reflected on what had happened since his arrival in Boston. In two short weeks Franklin Sanborn had introduced him to arguably the most important New England advocates of the antislavery movement. He was offered generous sums of money. He was held up as a hero. The Massachusetts State Kansas Committee had given him custody of two hundred Sharps breech-loading rifled carbines—presently in storage in the basement of a house in Tabor. And no mention was made of Pottawatomie. The meeting with Sumner was a fitting climax to what he considered a good start toward acquiring the money and weapons he needed for his return to Kansas.

  In his hotel room Brown sat on his bed and pulled off his boots. He was feeling some discomfort from the bowie knife that was tied to his leg with strips of leather. It was the same knife that had been part of the cache of weapons he acquired at Pottawatomie, and he carried it for self-defense. The walk to the hotel caused the knife’s double-edged tip to rub flesh from bone, and he hadn’t been aware he was bleeding. He held the knife with the tip pointing at the ceiling and watched the blood slide down the blade like dark syrup.

  Before turning down the bedcovers he knelt and prayed that he would soon be able to renew his war on slavery, acknowledging that his destiny was not in his hands but in God’s.

  A little over a week after
Brown’s meeting with Sumner—on Tuesday, January 27, 1857—Preston Smith Brooks, the South Carolina congressman who had caused the Massachusetts senator so much pain, died in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse. He was thirty-seven.

  Sumner was visiting a friend, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, when he learned of Brooks’s death. Longfellow wrote in his journal that Sumner did not express any personal feelings about Brooks but spoke of him as “a mere tool of the slaveholders, or, at all events, of the South Carolinians.”

  When Brown received the news, he was on his way to visit two men who were to continue to play a significant role in his life: Frederick Douglass and Gerrit Smith. The old man stepped off a train in Rochester, New York—Douglass’s hometown—and read the report of Brooks’s death in the New York Tribune. Had he read the paper thoroughly he would also have noticed an article predicting that the nation was headed toward a serious economic crisis.

  Brown was looking forward to his meetings with Douglass and Smith, but he had unfinished business in Boston and planned to return there as soon as possible. He also had a strong desire to see his family. He’d been away from the North Elba homestead for almost a year and a half.

  8

  Three Months Later

  April 30, 1857

  North Elba, New York

  At dusk Brown stood outside the unpainted frame house gazing at iconic Whiteface Mountain. He watched as a low cloud rolled in and slowly engulfed the pale granite slopes. Like the mountainside covered in mist, everything he’d been promised—the money, the weapons, the supplies to equip a hundred soldiers, the freedom to use these assets as he saw fit—was now shrouded in uncertainty. The fundraising tour that began by exceeding his expectations had ended in a sudden reversal.

  Forces were at play he didn’t understand and couldn’t control. The nation was sliding into a recession, and the consequences were particularly harsh in the Northeast: business failures, growing fears among land speculators and railroad investors, cutbacks in employment as factory owners laid off workers. The money Brown had been offered was no longer available, and he wasn’t able to accept the realities causing his financial backers to tighten their belts.

  Even the Supreme Court’s decision on Dred Scott, the slave who waged a ten-year legal battle for his freedom, failed to pry open the purses of the abolitionists. Brown was in Boston when the slaveholding chief justice from Maryland, Roger Taney, delivered the court’s judgment on March 6. Taney said slaves were never intended to be citizens of the United States, that they were personal property entitled to no rights of any kind. The ruling infuriated the abolitionists, but the surge in contributions Brown expected never materialized.

  The news from Kansas was equally dismal. Though Governor Geary resigned under pressure from the new president—James Buchanan—the warring factions remained subdued. Not at all what Brown hoped for. And though another wave of Northern immigrants had flooded the territory, the new settlers were more interested in acquiring land than fighting for a free Kansas. Still, Brown knew it was only a matter of time before the settlers would have the political clout their numbers alone would produce. He fretted that the war on slavery in Kansas was coming to an end and that his sources of funding had all but dried up.

  In the tiny settlement of North Elba, guarded by mountains and thick forests, the old man sought consolation among those with whom he felt most comfortable—his family and the colony of fugitive slaves attempting to create farms in the wilderness. In such a remote place, no US marshal was likely to pursue him. Despite a hurried stopover in mid-February—at a time when he was still optimistic about the future—Brown had been unable to enjoy an extended visit to his Adirondack home in two years.

  He loved the mountains and rugged meadows, and he missed mingling with the black families that were given acreage by his friend and advocate Gerrit Smith. The wealthy abolitionist owned vast tracts of land in western and northern New York. Brown had promised to avail the colony of his knowledge of subsistence farming in the severe climate; he would do so, he told Smith, in exchange for some land for himself. The deal, executed a decade earlier, marked the beginning of the relationship that eventually yielded financial support for the old man’s war on slavery.

  As the skies darkened over the North Elba homestead, Brown considered his options and prayed for guidance. In the morning he’d be leaving for the West. He wouldn’t see his wife and young daughters again for many months.

  When first he arrived at the farm eleven days earlier, he yet again was ailing with chills and fever. Awaiting his return were his wife, Mary, and three young daughters: thirteen-year-old Annie, ten-year-old Sarah, and two-year-old Ellen. Also present were Owen, Salmon, and Oliver—all having returned safely from Kansas—and Brown’s twenty-one-year-old son Watson, who had recently married Isabella, the sister of Henry Thompson. While his father and brothers and Henry were in Kansas, Watson had stayed behind to help his mother.

  In the evenings Brown and Mary lay on the small bed on the ground floor of their sparsely furnished home, little Ellen asleep on a pallet beside them, Annie and Sarah in an adjacent bedroom, the three unmarried sons in the loft above.

  Brown spoke to his wife of men of wealth and position, men who looked upon him as someone capable of cleansing the nation of its vilest sin. He also disclosed the doubts that had caused him so much anguish in recent weeks. He described the reception he got from the abolitionists who were introduced to him by Franklin Sanborn of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee.

  “When I first went to them,” Brown said, “they wanted to hear my stories.” So he told them about Black Jack and Osawatomie and how the border ruffians murdered Frederick. He showed them the chains worn by John Jr. after he was driven barefoot across the prairie until he’d almost gone mad. He told them how the rest of the boys fought courageously, how they suffered terrible wounds and sickness.

  “I thought they trusted me,” Brown said of his abolitionist allies. “I told them I had no other object but to serve the cause of liberty.”

  As he spoke, the wife who had borne him thirteen children, who had stoically accepted her husband’s longstanding promise to defeat slavery, who had endured the personal hardships his mission had caused their family, who had come to believe in his divine inspiration, now listened to him, his words weighed down with disappointment.

  “They insisted on harnessing me to Kansas,” he said. “They wanted me to expose my plans. I told them no one knows my plans—except perhaps one.”

  He told Mary of his relationship with the prosperous businessman George Luther Stearns, the most generous of his Massachusetts supporters. Stearns was a self-made man who acquired his wealth through his own talents, an achievement the old man admired. He visited the Stearns mansion in suburban Medford several times and captivated the family with stories of his Kansas exploits. It was Stearns, as chairman of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee, who transferred to him those two hundred Sharps carbines. The guns, however, were only to be used in defense of a free Kansas. And while Stearns also saw to it Brown was supplied with the sidearms he wanted—two hundred .31 caliber six-shot Maynard revolvers—they, too, were restricted to the fighting in Kansas, fighting that had become almost nonexistent.

  Stearns’s wife had even persuaded her husband to open his personal bank account to Brown. But again there was a stipulation that money drawn from the account was only to be used for actions taken against proslavery forces in Kansas, a circumstance that seemed less likely with each passing day.

  Other commitments went unfulfilled. In New York, the National Kansas Committee—which promised him $5,000—claimed to be experiencing the effects of the recession. The committee was on the verge of bankruptcy; no longer was there money to spare for an army of one hundred soldiers.

  A speech the old man gave on the floor of the Massachusetts legislature resulted in praise for his efforts but no offer of funds for weapons, ammunition, or supplies.

  Then there was Boston’
s Amos Adams Lawrence, heir to mercantile businesses and textile mills. He’d already invested heavily in the Kansas migration; the most important immigrant settlement in the territory had been given his name. Lawrence agreed to help support Brown’s family, but he was reluctant to contribute to an army of one hundred men without first assessing the present situation in Kansas. He had no desire to see the renewal or expansion of hostilities unless absolutely necessary. It wouldn’t be good for business.

  Brown couldn’t understand why the elites of New England—some of them descended from ancestors who gave birth to a nation professing liberty as its core value—wouldn’t gladly part with their abundant wealth so he might carry out his mission. He claimed that he, too, was a descendant of one of the Mayflower pilgrims, and though his Puritan lineage hadn’t provided him the financial advantages of those from whom he was seeking help, he was willing to sacrifice his life for the cause of freedom.

  “It wasn’t as though I were asking for an extravagant sum,” he grumbled to Mary. At a time when the average annual wage was between $700 and $900, the cost of supplying a hundred soldiers with horses, feeding the men and their mounts for a year, purchasing saddles, harnesses, tents, wagons, cooking and eating utensils, blankets, knapsacks, entrenching tools, holsters, spurs, and a minimal supply of ammunition—all of it seemed a bargain in light of the $30,000 he was seeking.

  At Sanborn’s urging, Brown had hit the lecture circuit, telling his stories in the cities, towns, and villages of Massachusetts and Connecticut. But seeking money in this fashion didn’t sit well with him. He felt he was begging. He especially didn’t like the questions about how he planned to use the money. He couldn’t disguise his frustration when he repeated to Mary the words he uttered many times over the years: “I told them I obey the laws of God and adhere to the promises of the Declaration of Independence. To act on these principles is my sacred duty.”