The Insurrectionist

by Herb Karl

  The criticism festered in Brown; he’d wanted to respond to it publicly, but he was busy transporting the liberated slaves out of Kansas, contending with roving bands of Missourians intent on repossessing their stolen chattel.

  The caravan was made up of the Conestoga wagon with its human cargo and a horse-drawn farm wagon filled with provisions. Tethered behind were the horses and mules confiscated during the raid. Because the Conestoga’s ploddingly slow team of oxen took almost two weeks to cover a distance of fewer than a hundred miles, Brown sought to replace it. He sent Aaron Stevens and Charlie Tidd to requisition a pair of draft horses. Also, there had been a delay caused by the birth of a boy to the wife of Jim Daniels.

  While Kagi scouted for safe houses along the trail to Nebraska, Brown and his refugees found shelter from a midwinter snowstorm. They were welcomed by a family that knew the old man and regarded the Missouri raid a worthy undertaking. When everyone was settled in, Brown took time to answer his critics. He wanted to defend his liberation of the slaves but also to expose the collusion and collaboration operating at the highest levels of government. So he sat down and composed an open letter to Greeley’s New York Tribune.

  He began the letter with a description of the seemingly pointless massacre that took place near Fort Scott prior to his return to the territory. “Eleven quiet Free State citizens,” he wrote, “were taken from their work and homes, lined up and shot, resulting in five killed, five wounded, one having escaped unhurt.” However, he noted, when he and his men raided Missouri in order to restore eleven slaves to their “natural and inalienable rights, with but one man killed, all hell was stirred from beneath.” Furthermore, Brown claimed the governor of Missouri requested the aid of the federally appointed governor of Kansas in order to capture the perpetrators of the “dreadful outrage” while a federal marshal was “collecting a posse of Missouri (not Kansas) men” in order to track down the fugitive slaves.

  The old man wanted his readers to know that the federal government again had surrendered its authority to the slave power, allowing crimes committed by proslavery men to go unpunished while bringing the full force of the law to bear on Free State men who were acting on principles contained in the Declaration of Independence. The letter eventually found its way onto the pages of the Tribune and other Northern newspapers.

  Brown had another matter to attend to before leaving Kansas. He wouldn’t depart without saying good-bye to the person he took into his confidence at the encampment outside Topeka on the eve of Independence Day in July 1856. To Brown, William A. Phillips was a journalist who, despite his close connection to Dr. Charles Robinson, hadn’t been tainted by a lust for power. Brown was convinced Phillips had a better grasp of the Kansas situation than other journalists; he’d written a book that Brown felt proved his judgment correct. The old man had acquired a copy—published in Boston in the fall of 1856—after his first meeting with the men who were to become his principal Massachusetts benefactors. In The Conquest of Kansas by Missouri and her Allies, Phillips included a description of Brown:

  Tall and stern-looking, hard-featured and resolute, there is something in Captain Brown’s air that speaks the soldier, every inch of him. He is not a man to be trifled with; and there is no one for whom the border ruffians entertain a more wholesome dread than Captain Brown. They hate him as they would a snake, but their hatred is composed of nine-tenths fear. Although the captain is a practical man, he is one of those abstruse thinkers who have read much and thought more. In his opinions he is inexorably inflexible, and the world would pronounce him a “fanatic.”

  He is one of those Christians who have not quite vanished from the face of the earth—that is, he asks the blessing of God when he breaks his bread, and does not, even in camp, forget his devotions in his zeal against the border ruffians. There is not a more stern disciplinarian in Kansas.

  However, when Brown invited Phillips to meet him at the Whitney House in Lawrence, the antislavery journalist’s attitude had changed. Like Dr. Robinson, Phillips was disturbed by Brown’s foray into Missouri, believing it imperiled a peaceful resolution to the troubles in the territory and harmed the chances of Kansas being admitted into the Union as a free state. Phillips came to the Whitney House reluctantly, approached Brown in the hotel’s lobby with skepticism.

  “You wished to see me, Captain?”

  Brown reached for Phillips’s hand. “I couldn’t leave Kansas without bidding farewell to one who has so unselfishly devoted himself to the cause of liberty. Come, my friend, we must talk. Perhaps we shall not meet again—at least in this world.”

  The old man led Phillips to his room—a small, unheated space containing a bed, a small table, and two chairs. Neither man removed his coat as they took a seat at the table. The only warmth came from a shaft of sunlight streaming through a window.

  Brown immediately launched into a monologue on the rise of slavery in America. “The Founding Fathers were opposed to slavery,” he intoned. “The whole spirit and genius of the American Constitution antagonized it and contemplated its early overthrow. But then, as the demand for their crops increased and machines made the harvesting of cotton more profitable, the planters commenced to extend slavery throughout the South and into the West.” Brown’s eyes flashed as he shifted to the political changes orchestrated by the slaveholding elite. He told how they gradually were able to seize control of the federal government. “Then began an era of political compromises, and men full of professions of love of country were willing—for peace—to sacrifice everything on which the republic was founded.”

  Brown abruptly pushed away from the table, stood, and began pacing. “And now,” he said, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders thrust forward, “we have reached a point where nothing but war can settle the question.”

  Phillips’s furrowed brow indicated he had doubts about what the old man was telling him.

  “It’s true,” Brown insisted. “If the Republican Party candidate is elected to the presidency next year, there will be civil war.”

  The old man continued, arguing that the successes achieved in Kansas by the Free State forces had merely checked, not defeated, the slave power. “We are now in a treacherous lull before the storm,” he said, his words resonating with absolute conviction. “We are on the eve of one of the greatest wars in history, and I fear slavery will triumph, and there will be an end to all aspirations for human freedom.”

  Brown returned to his chair. His voice softened. “For my part, I drew my sword in Kansas and I will never sheathe it until this war is over.”

  Phillips finally spoke. He knew it was Brown’s goal to conduct incursions into southern states. He said he feared such guerrilla activities would ultimately lead to the war Brown described, and that he and others like him would be responsible for it. “It is better to trust events,” Phillips admonished the old man. “If there is virtue enough in our people to deserve a free government, they will have it.”

  Brown grew sullen. “You forget the fearful wrongs that are carried on in the name of government and law.”

  “I do not forget them,” Phillips replied. “I regret them.” He went on to question Brown’s intention to recruit young black men from the slave population for his army of liberation. “The blacks are a peaceful, domestic, inoffensive race,” the journalist said. “In all their sufferings they seem incapable of resentment and reprisal.”

  “You haven’t studied them right,” Brown protested, “and you haven’t studied them long enough. Human nature is the same everywhere.”

  Phillips countered: “I fear for all your men—both black and white. It alarms me that you would lead them into some desperate enterprise where they would be imprisoned and disgraced.”

  The journalist’s refusal to endorse Brown’s mission was a disappointment. “Well,” the old man said, rising again from his chair, “I thought I could get you to understand this. The world is very pleasant to you. But when your household gods have been broken as mine have been
, you will see all this more clearly.”

  Phillips should have expected his criticisms would be taken as a sign of disloyalty. “Captain,” he said, turning to leave, “if you thought this, why did you send for me?”

  Brown put his hand on Phillips’s shoulder. “No—we must not part thus. I wanted to see you and tell you how it appeared to me. With the help of God, I will do what I believe is best.”

  The old man’s eyes were rimmed with tears as he reached for Phillips’s hand. He squeezed it firmly.

  It was indeed the last time the two men would see each other—at least in this world.

  Brown’s frustration was eased when Charlie Tidd rode into Lawrence leading a pair of husky grays. He and Stevens had acquired the horses from a proslavery man who was alleged to have stolen them from a Free State settler. Now the pace of the journey could be accelerated. A pair of workhorses would be pulling each wagon, and Brown could sell the oxen, putting additional money into his pocket for expenses.

  The caravan departed Lawrence bound for Holton, a village north of Topeka, where the wagons were to be met by Stevens and Kagi.

  But another blustery snowstorm moved onto the prairie, and Brown and his people were forced to seek refuge in some small cabins near Straight Creek, a stream that cut across the trail and was swollen by a premature thaw. While they waited for a lull in the storm, a local farmer informed Brown that a posse led by a US marshal was scouring the neighborhood and would probably arrest him as soon as the weather cleared.

  Brown immediately sent Tidd to find Stevens and Kagi and anyone else willing to help. “Tell them Pharaoh seeks to block our exodus from Egypt.”

  A day and a half later the storm passed and the skies cleared.

  One of Brown’s scouts reported that the posse he’d been warned about was lying in ambush, waiting for the caravan to ford Straight Creek. Meanwhile, Stevens and Kagi arrived with reinforcements. Twenty-two men—including those from Brown’s company—were now standing by, ready to do the old man’s bidding.

  One of the volunteers spoke up: “What do you propose to do, Captain?”

  “Cross the creek and move north.”

  “But Captain, the water is high and I doubt we can get through.”

  Brown’s response was as icy as the frozen puddles that dotted the ground. “I have set out on this road, and I intend to travel it straight through. The Lord has marked out a path and I shall follow it.”

  And follow it he did. When his men reached the creek, Brown told them to dismount and march directly into the bone-chilling water.

  On the opposite bank the Missouri lawmen looked on in disbelief as Brown’s men, carbines at the ready, advanced. When it was obvious they had no intention of turning back, the marshal leaped onto his horse and made a speedy departure.

  Chaos reigned as his deputies followed, stumbling over each other in a race for the horses secured among the leafless trees bordering the creek. Panic-stricken, they dug their spurs into the animals with a fury that forever preserved the event in the memories of those who witnessed it.

  The final action of the old man’s storied career in Kansas would be known thereafter as the Battle of the Spurs. “Old Captain Brown is not to be taken by boys,” noted a report of the incident in a Leavenworth newspaper, “and he cordially invites all proslavery men to try their hands at arresting him.”

  The caravan crossed the border into Nebraska and headed for Iowa. Kansas Territory had seen the last of John Brown.

  The wagons made it to Tabor without further incident. But the Iowa town that had welcomed Brown in the past now harbored doubts about his recent actions. Residents of the abolitionist community, like settlers and politicians in Kansas, were critical of his Missouri raid and feared retribution if they appeared too friendly.

  The old man asked the town’s mayor for permission to explain his actions at a public meeting. He assumed he’d be praised for rescuing the slaves; perhaps some of the people even might be willing to help defray the cost of conveying the slaves to freedom in Canada. His request received a less than enthusiastic response, though the mayor agreed to let him speak to a small group of concerned citizens gathered in a church.

  As Brown stood in the pulpit and began to tell his story, a prominent physician and slaveholder from nearby Saint Joseph, Missouri, entered the church. With his gaze fixed on the visitor, the old man said, “One has just come to this meeting whom I would prefer not to hear what I have to say and therefore I respectfully request him to withdraw.”

  The visitor took a seat and folded his arms defiantly. The grim-faced audience sat in stony silence. Stevens rose and declared in a voice seething with contempt, “So help me God, I never will sit in council with one who buys and sells human flesh.”

  Together, Stevens and Brown headed for the door. The rest of Brown’s men followed. As he walked out of the church, the old man said in a voice loud enough to be heard by all present, “We had best look to our arms. We are not yet among friends.”

  The caravan left the following day.

  His rejection by the citizens of Tabor didn’t deter Brown. If anything, it emboldened him. Knowing that bounty hunters would be looking to collect the rewards posted for his capture, he told Kagi he’d no longer engage in evasive maneuvers by choosing remote roads and avoiding towns. Henceforth, the caravan would take only the main roads across Iowa. “Any who try to take me and my company are cowards,” he said. “We are in the right and ought not fear any man.”

  Traveling in the severe winter weather had taken a toll on the old man. He was suffering from a “terrible gathering” in his head, and breathing was becoming difficult for him. He told Kagi his failing health was becoming as much his enemy as slavery.

  The farther the wagons moved east, the more cordially he was received by the citizens in the villages and towns of Iowa. He found many Iowans openly hostile to the Fugitive Slave Act. Since slave catchers were combing the area for runaways and didn’t hesitate to kidnap persons of color, whether slave or not, the Iowans figured that if the rights of free blacks could be violated, everyone’s rights were in jeopardy. They viewed Brown’s taking of the Missouri slaves as a much-needed expression of outrage against a law that denied the principles on which the nation was created.

  No Iowan was more receptive to Brown than Josiah Grinnell, the founder of the town bearing his name and the most notable abolitionist in the state. Grinnell showered Brown with praise, resupplied the caravan with provisions, and arranged for the liberated slaves to be taken to Chicago by rail.

  When the caravan reached the railhead near Iowa City, the freight car commissioned by Grinnell hadn’t yet arrived. For their safety and comfort, Brown took the refugees to a family in the nearby Quaker village of Springdale, once the location of his military school. The old man had time to retrieve the weapons that had been in storage there since the previous winter. Fifteen cases of Sharps carbines and five boxes containing two hundred pistols were loaded onto the Conestoga.

  Brown also had an opportunity to meet two Quakers who expressed an interest in joining him. Young Barclay Coppoc had been to Kansas and knew the old man by reputation. Older brother Edwin listened to the stories Barclay told of Brown’s deeds. Signing up for duty meant both men would have to renounce their religious commitment to nonviolence. They did so gladly.

  The freight car finally arrived, coupled between a locomotive and a passenger car. The refugees got on board. Brown had already purchased seats in the passenger car for himself, Kagi, and Stevens. The old man needed to get to Chicago in order to arrange for the transportation of the liberated slaves to Detroit.

  Meanwhile, the wagons—filled with crates of carbines and revolvers hidden under mattresses—were left in the hands of the remaining soldiers: Jerry Anderson, Charlie Tidd, the Coppoc brothers, and two others. They were to continue overland to Ohio, where Brown intended to store the weapons and sell the wagons and horses and the rest of the confiscated livestock. As usual, he was in despera
te need of cash.

  Chicago—a city of almost a hundred thousand—turned out to be as responsive to Brown’s needs as the tiny Iowa village of Grinnell. He’d been told about an ambitious thirty-nine-year-old Scottish immigrant who had opened a private detective agency in the city and put an end to a series of train robberies. His name was Allan Pinkerton. Brown learned Pinkerton was also a social activist who fought for universal suffrage in Scotland and had taken up the cause of abolitionism since coming to America. The Scotsman knew about Brown and was happy to assist. Pinkerton not only found another railroad car for the refugees, he also collected $500 from friends and business associates.

  As soon as Pinkerton put the money in Brown’s hands, the old man experienced a remarkable recovery from the “terrible gathering” in his head. He told Kagi and Stevens he was more certain than ever he was destined to fulfill his mission. He put Kagi in charge of the railroad car with its cargo of emancipated slaves while he and Stevens took the first available train to Detroit.

  On the morning of March 12, 1859, Brown, Kagi, and Stevens stood on a wharf on the Detroit River. Alongside were the women and men rescued from slavery. Together they had completed a journey across two territories and four states in the dead of winter and, along the way, celebrated the birth of a twelfth freedman to the wife of Jim Daniels. The couple named their new son John Brown Daniels.

  The liberated slaves were subdued yet profoundly moved, some weeping quietly, others seeking out Brown’s hand as they filed past him and stepped onto the ferry bound for Canada and a new life of freedom.