The man with the slouched hat and coarse cotton shirt lost no time ingrieving over the dispersal of his one hundred and fifty men. It was thelargest force he had ever assembled. His experience in the three daysin which he had acted as their commander had greatly angered him. Thefrontiersman who failed to come under the spell of Brown\'s personalityby direct contact generally refused to obey his orders.
The crowd of free rangers which his fight with Pate had gathered provedthemselves beyond control. They raided the surrounding country withoutBrown\'s knowledge.
They stole from friend and foe with equal impartiality. There was oneconsolation in his surrender to the United States troops. He got rid ofthese troublesome followers. They had already robbed him of thespoils of his own successful raids and not one of them had shown anyinclination to bring in the enemies\' goods for common use.
He began to choose the most faithful among them for a scheme of widerscope and more tragic daring. He was not yet sure of his plan. But Godwould reveal it clearly.
He spent a week at his new camp in the woods wandering alone, dreaming,praying, weighing this new scheme from every point of view.
His mind came back again and again to the puzzle of the failure to raisea National Blood Feud.
For a moment his indomitable Puritan soul was discouraged. He had obeyedthe command of his God. He could not have been mistaken in the voicewhich spoke from Heaven:
"WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION OF SINS."He had laid the Blood Offering on God\'s altar counting his own life asof no account in the reckoning and from that hour he had been a fugitivefrom justice, hiding in the woods. He had escaped arrest only by theaccidental assembling of a mob of a hundred and fifty disorderly foolswho had stolen his own goods before they had been dispersed.
Instead of the heroic acclaim to which the deed entitled him, his ownflesh and blood had cursed him, one of his sons had been shot andanother was lying in prison a jibbering lunatic.
Would future generations agree with the men who had met in his own townand denounced his deed as cruel, gruesome and revolting?
His stolid mind refused to believe it. Through hours of agonizingprayer the new plan, based squarely on the vision that sent him toPottawattomie, began to fix itself in his soul.
This time he would chose his disciples from the elect. Only men tried inthe fires of Action could be trusted. Of five men he was sure. His son,Owen, he knew could be depended on without the shadow of turning. YetOliver was the second disciple chosen. He had forgiven the boy forthe fight over the pistol and had taken pains to regain his completesubmission. John Henry Kagi was the third chosen disciple, a youngnewspaper reporter of excellent mind and trained pen. He had beencaptured by United States troops in Kansas as a guerrilla raider and wasimprisoned first at Lecompton and then at Tecumseh. The fourth discipleselected was Aaron Dwight Stevens, an ex-convict from the penitentiaryat Fort Leavenworth. Stevens was by far the most daring and interestingfigure in the group. His knowledge of military tactics was destined tomake him an invaluable aide. The uncanny in Brown\'s spirit had appealedto his imagination from the day he made his escape from the penitentiaryand met the old man. The fifth disciple chosen was John E. Cook, a mandestined to play the most important role in the new divine mission withthe poorest qualification for the task. Born of a well-to-do family inHaddon, Connecticut, he had studied law in Brooklyn and New York. Hedropped his studies against the protest of his people in 1855, and,driven by the spirit of adventure, found his way into Kansas and atlast led his band of twenty guerrillas into John Brown\'s camp. Brown\'sattention was riveted on him from the day they met. He was a man ofpleasing personality and the finest rifle shot in Kansas. He was genial;he was always generous; He was brave to the point of recklessness; andhe was impulsive, indiscreet and utterly reckless when once bent on apurpose. His sister had married Willard, the Governor of Indiana.
Brown\'s new plan required a large sum of money. With the prestigehis fighting in Kansas had given him, he believed the Abolitionphilanthropists of the East would give this sum. He left his disciplesto drill and returned East to get the money.
In Boston his success was genuine, although the large amount which heasked was slow in coming.
The old man succeeded in deceiving his New England friends completely asto the Pottawattomie murders. On this event he early became a cheerful,consistent and successful liar. This trait of his character had beenfully developed in his youth. Everywhere he was acclaimed by the piousas, "Captain Brown, the old partisan hero of Kansas warfare."His magnetic, uncanny personality rarely failed to capture the dreamerand the sentimentalist. Sanborn, Howe, Theodore Parker, Thomas WentworthHigginson, George L. Stearns and Gerrit Smith became his devotedfollowers. He even made Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison hisfriends.
Garrison met him at Theodore Parker\'s. The two men were one ondestroying Slavery: Garrison, the pacifist; Brown, the man who believedin bloodshed as the only possible solution of all the great issues ofNational life. Brown quoted the Old Testament; Garrison, the New.
He captured the imagination of Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
He was raising funds for another armed attack on Slavery in Kansas. Thesentimentalists asked no questions. And if hard-headed business mentried to pry too closely into his plans, they found him a past master inthe art of keeping his own counsel.
He struck a snag when he appealed to the National Kansas Committee for agift of rifles and an appropriation of five thousand dollars. They votedthe rifles on conditions. But a violent opposition developed againstgiving five thousand dollars to a man about whose real mind they knew solittle.
H. B. Hurd, the Chairman of the Committee, had suspected the purposeback of his pretended scheme for operations in Kansas. He put to Brownthe pointblank question and demanded a straight answer.
"If you get these guns and the money you desire, will you invadeMissouri or any slave territory?"The old man\'s reply was characteristic. He spoke with a quiet scorn.
"I am no adventurer. You all know me. You are acquainted with myhistory. You know what I have done in Kansas. I do not expose myplans. No one knows them but myself, except perhaps one. I will not beinterrogated. If you wish to give me anything, I want you to give itfreely. I have no other purpose but to serve the cause of Liberty."His answer was not illuminating. It contained nothing the Committeewished to know. The statement that they knew him was a figure of speech.
They had read partisan reports of his fighting and his suffering inKansas--through his own letters, principally. How much truth theseletters contained was something they wished very much to find out. Hehad given no light.
He declared that they knew what he had done in Kansas. This was the onepoint on which they needed most light.
The biggest event in the history of Kansas was the deed on thePottawattomie. In the fierce political campaign that was in progress itseffects had been neutralized by denials. Brown had denied his guilt onevery occasion.
Yet as they studied his strange personality more than one member of theCommittee began to suspect him as the only man in the Wes............