"Should one of your number be arrested, you must collect together as quickly as possible, so as to outnumber your adversaries who are taking an active part against you.Let no able-bodied man appear on the ground unequipped, or with his weapons exposed to view: let that be understood beforehand.Your plans must be known only to yourself, and with the understanding that all traitors must die, wherever caught and proven to be guilty."Whosoever is fearful or afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount Gilead" (Judges, vii.3; Deut.xx.8).Give all cowards an opportunity to show it on condition of holding their peace.Do NOT DELAY ONE MOMENT AFTER YOU ARE READY: YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOURRESOLUTION IF YOU DO.LET THE FIRST BLOW BE THE SIGNAL FOR ALL TOENGAGE: AND WHEN ENGAGED DO NOT DO YOUR WORK BY HALVES, BUT MAKECLEAN WORK WITH YOUR ENEMIES,--AND BE SURE YOU MEDDLE NOT WITHANY OTHERS.By going about your business quietly, you will get the job disposed of before the number that an uproar would bring together can collect; and you will have the advantage of those who come out against you, for they will be wholly unprepared with either equipments or matured plans; all with them will be confusion and terror.Your enemies will be slow to attack you after you have done up the work nicely; and if they should, they will have to encounter your white friends as well as you; for you may safely calculate on a division of the whites, and may by that means get to an honorable parley."He gives here a distinct suggestion of the plans and methods which he later developed and extended.
When Kansas was opened for settlement, John Brown was fifty-four years old.Early in the spring of 1855, five of his sons took up claims near Osawatomie.They went, as did others, as peaceable settlers without arms.After the election of March 30, 1855, at which armed Missourians overawed the Kansas settlers and thus secured a unanimous pro-slavery Legislature, the freestate men, under the leadership of Robinson, began to import Sharp's rifles and other weapons for defense.Brown's sons thereupon wrote to their father, describing their helpless condition and urging him to come to their relief.In October, 1855, John Brown himself arrived with an adequate supply of rifles and some broadswords and revolvers.The process of organization and drill thereupon began, and when the Wakarusa War occurred early in December, 1855, John Brown was on hand with a small company from Osawatomie to assist in the defense of Lawrence.The statement that he disapproved of the agreement with Governor Shannon which prevented bloodshed is not in accord with a letter which John Brown wrote to his wife immediately after the event.The Governor granted practically all that the freestate men desired and recognized their trainbands as a part of the police force of the Territory.Brown by this stipulation became Captain John Brown, commander of a company of the territorial militia.
Soon after the Battle of Wakarusa, Captain Brown passed the command of the company of militia to his son John, while he became the leader of a small band composed chiefly of members of his own family.Writing to his wife on April 7, 1856, he said:
"We hear that preparations are making in the United States Court for numerous arrests of free-state men.For one I have not desired (all things considered) to have the slave power cease from its acts of aggression.'Their foot shall slide in due time.'" This letter of Brown's indicates that the writer was pleased at the prospect of approaching trouble.
When, six weeks later, notice came of the attack upon Lawrence, John Brown, Junior, went with the company of Osawatomie Rifles to the relief of the town, while the elder Brown with a little company of six moved in the same direction.In a letter to his wife, dated June 26, 1856, more than a month after the massacre in Pottawatomie Valley, Brown said:
"On our way to Lawrence we learned that it had been already destroyed, and we encamped with John's company overnight....On the second day and evening after we left John's men, we encountered quite a number of pro-slavery men and took quite a number of prisoners.Our prisoners we let go, but kept some four or five horses.We were immediately after this accused of murdering five men at Pottawatomie and great efforts have been made by the Missourians and their ruffian allies to capture us.
John's company soon afterwards disbanded, and also the Osawatomie men.Since then, we have, like David of old, had our dwelling with the serpents of the rocks and the wild beasts of the wilderness."There will probably never be agreement as to Brown's motives in slaying his five neighbors on May 24, 1856.Opinions likewise differ as to the effect which this incident had on the history of Kansas.Abolitionists of every class had said much about war and about servile insurrection, but the conservative people of the West and South had mentioned the subject only by way of warning and that they might point out ways of prevention.Garrison and his followers had used language which gave rise to the impression that they favored violent revolution and were not averse to fomenting servile insurrection.They had no faith in the efforts of Northern emigrants to save Kansas from the clutches of the slaveholding South, and they denounced in severe terms the Robinson leadership there, believing it sure to result in failure.To this class of abolitionists John Brown distinctly belonged.He believed that so high was the tension on the slavery question throughout the country that revolution, if inaugurated at any point, would sweep the land and liberate the slaves.Brown was also possessed of the belief that he was himself the divinely chosen agent to let loose the forces of freedom; and that this was the chief motive which prompted the deed at Pottawatomie is as probable as any other.
