Viewed in this light, the Pottawatomie massacre was measurably successful.Opposing forces became more clearly defined and were pitted against each other in hostile array.There were reprisals and counter-reprisals.Kansas was plunged into a state of civil war, but it is quite probable that this condition would have followed the looting of Lawrence even if John Brown had been absent from the Territory.
Coincident with the warfare by organized companies, small irregular bands infested the country.Kansas became a paradise for adventurers, soldiers of fortune, horse thieves, cattle thieves, and marauders of various sorts.Spoiling the enemy in the interest of a righteous cause easily degenerated into common robbery and murder.It was chiefly in this sort of conflict that two hundred persons were slain and that two million dollars'
worth of property was destroyed.
During this period of civil war the members of the Brown family were not much in evidence.John Brown, Junior, captain of the Osawatomie Rifles, was a political prisoner at Topeka.Swift destruction of their property was visited upon all those members who were suspected of having a share in the Pottawatomie murders, and their houses were burned and their other property was seized.
Warrants were out for the arrest of the elder Brown and his sons.
Captain Pate who, in command of a small troop, was in pursuit of Brown and his company, was surprised at Black Jack in the early morning and induced to surrender.Brown thus gained control of a number of horses and other supplies and began to arrange terms for the exchange of his son and Captain Pate as prisoners of war.
The negotiations were interrupted, however, by the arrival of Colonel Sumner with United States troops, who restored the horses and other booty and disbanded all the troops.With the Colonel was a deputy marshal with warrants for the arrest of the Browns.
When ordered to proceed with his duty, however, the marshal was so overawed that, even though a federal officer was present, he merely remarked, "I do not recognize any one for whom I have warrants."After the capture of Captain Pate at Black Jack early in June, little is known about Brown and his troops for two months.Apart from an encounter of opposing forces near Osawatomie in which he and his band were engaged, Brown took no share in the open fighting between the organized companies of opposing forces, and his part in the irregular guerrilla warfare of the period is uncertain.Towards the close of the war one of his sons was shot by a preacher who alleged that he had been robbed by the Browns.
After peace had been restored to Kansas by the vigorous action of Governor Geary, Brown left the scene and never again took an active part in the local affairs of the Territory.
John Brown's influence upon the course of affairs in Kansas, like William Lloyd Garrison's upon the general anti-slavery movement of the country, has been greatly misunderstood and exaggerated.
Brown's object and intention were fundamentally contradictory to those of the freestate settlers.They strove to build a free commonwealth by legal and constitutional methods.He strove to inaugurate a revolution which would extend to all pro-slavery States and result in universal emancipation.John Brown was in Kansas only one year, and he never made himself at one with those who should have been his fellow-workers but went his solitary way.Only in three instances did he pretend to cooperate with the regular freestate forces.He could not work with them because his conception of the means to be adopted to attain the end was different from theirs.Probably before he left the Territory in 1856, he had realized that his work in Kansas was a failure and that the law-and-order forces were too strong for the execution of his plans.Certain it is that within a few weeks after his departure he had transferred the field of his operations to the mountains of Virginia.Kansas became free through the persistent determination of the rank and file of Northern settlers under the wise leadership of Governor Robinson.It is difficult to determine whether the cause of Kansas was aided or hindered by the advent of John Brown and the adventurers with whom his name became associated.
During the fall of 1856 and until the late summer of 1857 Brown was in the East raising funds for the redemption of Kansas and for the reimbursement of those who had incurred or were likely to incur losses in defense of the cause.For the equipment of a troop of soldiers under his own command he formulated plans for raising $30,000 by private subscription, and in this he was to a considerable extent successful.It can never be known how much was given in this way to Brown for the equipment of his army of liberation.It is estimated that George L.Stearns alone gave in all fully $10,000.Because Eastern abolitionists had lost confidence in Robinson's leadership, they lent a willing ear to the plea that Captain Brown with a well-equipped and trained company of soldiers was the last hope for checking the enemy.Not only would Kansas become a slave State without such help, it was said, but the institution of slavery would spread into all the Territories and become invincible.
