Books: The Man in Gray

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"Did you have _anything_ to do with the killing of those men?"

To his own he would not lie longer. It wasn't necessary. His reply was
quick and unequivocal.

"I did not do it. But I approved it."

"It was the work of a beast."

"You cannot speak to me like that, sir!" the old man growled.

"And why not?"

"I am your father, sir!"

"That's why I tell you to your face that you have disgraced every child
who bears your name--now--and for all time. What right had you to put
this curse upon me? The devils in hell would blush to do what you have
done!"

The father lifted his hand as if to ward a blow and bored his son
through with a steady stare.

"God is my judge--not you, sir!"

John Brown, Jr., sided with his brother in the attack but with less
violence. His feebler mind was already trembling on the verge of
collapse.

"It cuts me to the quick," the old man finally answered, "that my own
people should not understand that I had to make an example of these
men--"

Jason finally shrieked into his ears:

"Who gave you the authority of Almighty God to sit in judgment upon your
fellow man, condemn him without trial and slay without mercy?"

The father threw up both hands in a gesture of disgust and walked from
the scene. He spent the night without sleep, wandering through the woods
and fields.

Three days later while Brown and his huntsmen were still hiding in the
timber, the people of his own settlement at Osawatomie held a public
meeting which was attended by the entire male population. They
unanimously adopted resolutions condemning in the bitterest terms the
deed.

When the old man heard of these resolutions he ground his teeth in rage.
He had thought to sweep the Territory with a Holy War in a Sacred Cause.
He expected the men who hated Slavery to applaud his Blood Offering to
the God of Freedom. Instead they had hastened to array themselves with
his foes.

Something had gone wrong in the execution of his divine vision. His
mind was stunned for the moment. But he was wrestling again with God in
prayer, while the avengers were riding to demand an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth.

When the true history of man is written it will be the record of mind
not the story of the physical acts which follow the mental process.

The dangers of society are psychological, not physical. The crucial
moments of human history are not found in the hours in which armies
charge. They are found in the still small voices that whisper in the
silence of the night to a lone watcher by the fireside. They are found
in the words of will that follow hours of silent thought behind locked
doors or under the stars.

The story of man's progress, his relapses to barbarism, his victories,
his failures, his years of savage cruelties, his eras of happiness and
sorrow, must be written at last in terms of mental states.

John Brown's mind had conceived and executed the series of murders that
shocked even a Western frontier. His mind enacted the tragedy days
before the actual happening.

And it was the state of mind created by the deed that upset all his
calculations. The reaction was overwhelming. He was correct in his faith
that a blood feud once raised, all appeal to reason and common sense,
all appeal to law, order, tradition, religion would be vain babble. But
he had failed to gauge the moral sense of his own party. They had not
yet accepted the theory which he held with such passionate conviction.

Brown's moral code was summed up in one passage from the Bible which he
quoted and brooded over daily:

"WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION OF SINS."

But he had made a mistake in the spot chosen for rousing the Blood Feud.
Men had instantly seen red. They sprang to their arms. They leaped as
tigers leap on their prey. But his own people were the prey. He had
miscalculated the conditions of frontier life, though he had not yet
realized it. His stubborn, restless mind clung to the idea that the
stark horror of the crimes which he had committed in the name of Liberty
would call at last all men who stood for Freedom.

He held his armed band in camp under the sternest discipline to await
this call of the blood.

The Southern avengers who swarmed across the Missouri border into the
region of Osawatomie accepted Brown's standards of justice and mercy
without question. A few men of education among them were the only
restraining influence.

Through these exciting days the old man would show himself at daylight
in different places removed from his camp in the woods. While squadrons
of avengers were scouring the ravines, the river bottoms and the tangled
underbrush, he was lying quietly on his arms. Sometimes his pursuers
camped within hearing and got their water from the same spring.

With all his indomitable courage he was unable to rally sufficient men
to afford protection to his people. He was a fugitive from justice
with a price on his head. Yet, armed and surrounded by a small band of
faithful followers, he led a charmed life.

His deed on the Pottawattomie made murder the chief sport of the unhappy
Territory. The life of the frontier was reduced to anarchy. Outrages
became so common it was impossible to record them. Murder was a daily
incident. Many of them passed in secret. Many were not revealed for days
and weeks after they had been committed--then, only by the discovery of
the moldering remains of the dead. Two men were found hanging on a tree
near Westport. They were ill-fated Free State partisans who had fallen
by the hand of the avengers. The troops buried them in a grave so
shallow that the prairie wolves had half devoured them before they were
again found and re-buried.

The Free Soil men organized guerrilla bands for retaliation. John E.
Cook, a daring young adventurer, the brother-in-law of Governor Willard
of Indiana, early distinguished himself in this work. He put himself
at the head of a group of twenty young "Cavalry Scouts" who ranged the
country, asking no quarter and giving none.

A squadron of avengers invaded Brown's settlement at Osawatomie, sacked
and partly destroyed it, and killed his son, Frederick, whose mind
had been in a state of collapse since the night of the murders on the
Pottawattomie.

John Brown rallied a group of sympathizers and fought a pitched battle
with the invaders but was defeated with bloody losses and compelled to
retreat.

He was followed by Deputy United States Marshal, Henry C. Pate. Brown
turned and boldly attacked Pate's camp and another battle ensued. The
Deputy Marshal, wishing to avoid useless bloodshed, sent out a flag
of truce and asked an interview with the guerrilla commander. Brown
answered promptly, advanced and sent for Pate.

Pate, trusting the flag of truce, approached the old man.

"I am addressing the Captain in command?" Pate asked.

"You are, sir."

"Then let me announce that I am a Deputy United States Marshal."

"And why are you fighting us?"

"I have no desire for bloodshed, sir. I am acting under the orders of
the Marshal of the Territory."

"And what does the Marshal demand?"

"The arrest of the men for whom I have warrants."

Pate had never seen John Brown and had no idea that he was talking to
the old man himself.

"I have a proposition to make," he went on.

"I'll have no proposals from you, sir," Brown announced shortly. "I
demand your surrender."

"I am an officer of the law. I cannot surrender to armed outlaws."

Brown's metallic voice quivered.

"I demand your immediate and unconditional surrender!"

"I have the right to retire under a flag of truce and consider your
proposition with my men--"

Pate started to go and Brown stood in front of him.

"You're not going."

"You will violate a flag of truce?"

Brown signaled his men to advance and surround Pate.

"You're not going, sir," he repeated.

"I claim my rights under a flag of truce accepted by you for this
parley. An Indian respects that flag."

Brown pointed to his men who were standing within the sound of their
voices.

"Order those men to surrender."

Pate folded his arms and remained silent.

Brown placed his revolver at the Deputy Marshal's breast and shouted.

"Tell your men to lay down their arms!"

Pate refused to speak. There was a moment's deadly silence and the
Marshal's posse, to save the life of their Captain, threw down their
guns and the whole party were made prisoners.

The United States Cavalry at Fort Leavenworth were ordered to the scene
to rescue the Deputy Marshal and his men.

CHAPTER XXII

The bugles at Fort Leavenworth sounded Boots and Saddles for the march
on Brown and his guerrillas. The barracks were early astir with the
excitement. Stern work might be ahead. Outlaws who would dare violate a
flag of truce, to take a United States Marshal and his posse would
have no more respect for cavalry. The men and officers were tired of
disorder. They were eager for a stand up and knock down fight. They
expected it and they were ready for it.

Stuart's bride was crying. In spite of her young husband's gay banter,
she persisted in being serious.

"There's no danger, honey girl!" he laughed.

She touched the big cavalry pistol in its holster, her lips still
trembling.

"No--you're just galloping off on a picnic."

"That's all it will be--"

"Then you can take me with you."

Stuart's brow clouded.

"Well, no, not just that kind of a picnic."

"There may be a nasty fight and you know it."

"Nonsense."

"It may, too."

"Don't be silly, little bride," he pleaded. "You're a soldier's wife
now. The bullet hasn't been molded that's going to get me. I feel it. I
know it."

She threw her arms around his neck and held him in a long silence. Only
a sob broke the stillness. He let her cry. His arms merely tightened
their tender hold, as he caressed her fair head and kissed it.

"There, there, now. That's enough. It's hard, this first parting. It's
hard for me. You mustn't make it harder."

"We've just begun to live, dearest," she faltered. "I can't let you go.
I can't stand it for an hour and you'll be gone for days and days--"

She paused and sobbed.

"Why did I marry a soldier-man?"

"You had to, honey. It was fate. God willed it."

He spoke with deep reverence. She lifted her lips for his goodbye kiss.

He turned quickly to go and she caught him again and smothered him with
kisses.

"I can't help it, darling man," she sobbed. "I didn't mean to make it
hard for you--but--I've an awful presentiment that I shall lose you--"

Her voice died again in a pathetic whisper.

Stuart laughed softly and kissed the tears from her eyes.

"So has every soldier's wife, honey girl. The silly old presentiment is
overworked. It will pass bye and bye--when you see me coming home so
many, many times to play that old banjo for you and sing our songs over
again."

She shook her head and smiled.

"Go now--quick," she said, "before I break down again."

He swung out the door, his sword clanking and his arm waving. She
watched him from the window, crying. She saw him mount his horse with a
graceful swing. His figure on horseback was superb. Horse and man seemed
one.

He looked over his shoulder, saw her at the window and waved again. She
ran to her room, closed the door, took his picture to bed with her and
cried herself to sleep.

The thing that had so worried her was that Colonel Sumner was taking
Major Sedgwick with him for conference and a single squadron of fifty
men under Stuart's command. The little bride had found out that he was
the sole leader of the fifty fighting men and her quick wit had sensed
the danger of the possible extermination of such a force in a battle
with desperadoes. She was ashamed of her breakdown. But she knew her man
was brave and that he loved a fight. She would count the hours until his
return.

Brown rallied a hundred and fifty men when the squadron of cavalry was
ordered to the rescue of Pate and his posse. He entrenched himself on an
island in Middle Ottawa Creek and from this stronghold raided and robbed
the stores within range of his guerrillas. On June 3rd, he successfully
looted the store of J. M. Bernard at Centropolis and secured many
valuables, particularly clothing.

The raiding party was returning from the looted store as Stuart's
cavalry troop was approaching Brown's camp.

The cavalry arrived in the nick of time. A battle was imminent that
might have ended in a massacre. Within striking distance of Brown's
island Colonel Sumner encountered General Whitfield, a Southern Member
of Congress, at the head of a squadron of avengers, two hundred and
fifty strong, heavily armed and well mounted.

Sumner acted with quick decision. He confronted Whitfield and spoke with
a quiet emphasis not to be mistaken:

"By order of the President of the United States and the Governor of the
Territory, I am here to disperse all armed bodies assembled without
authority."

"May I see the order of the President, sir?" Whitfield asked.

"You may."

The telegraphic order was handed to the leader. He read it in silence
and handed it back without a word.

Colonel Sumner continued:

"My duty is plain and I'll do it."

He signaled Stuart to draw up his company for action. The Lieutenant
promptly obeyed. Fifty regulars wheeled and faced two hundred and fifty
rugged horsemen of the plains.

Whitfield consulted his second in command and while they talked Colonel
Sumner again addressed him:

"Ask your people to assemble. I wish to read to them the President's
order and the Governor's proclamation."

Whitfield called his men. In solemn tones Sumner read the documents.
Whitfield saw that his men were impressed.

"I shall not resist the authority of the General Government. My party
will disperse."

He promptly ordered them to disband. In five minutes they had
disappeared.

On the approach of the company of cavalry, John Brown, with a single
guard, walked boldly forward to meet them.

Colonel Sumner heard his amazing request with rising wrath. He spoke as
one commanding a body of coordinate power.

"I have come to suggest the arrangement of terms between our forces,"
Brown coolly suggested.

"No officer of law, sir," Sumner sternly replied, "can make terms with
lawless, armed men. I am here to execute the orders of the President.
You will surrender your prisoners immediately, disarm your men and
disperse or take the consequences."

Brown turned without a word and slowly walked back to his camp. The
United States cavalry followed close at his heels with drawn sabers,
Stuart at their head.

Colonel Sumner summoned Brown before Sedgwick and Stuart and made to him
an announcement which he thought but fair.

"I must tell you now that there is with my company a Deputy United
States Marshal, who holds warrants for several men in your camp. Those
warrants will be served in my presence."

Brown's glittering eye rested on the Deputy Marshal. He moved uneasily
and finally said in a low tone:

"I don't recognize any one for whom I have warrants."

The grim face of the man of visions never relaxed a muscle.

Sumner turned to the Deputy indignantly.

"Then what are you here for?"

He made no answer. And Stuart laughed in derision.

During this tense moment the keen blue eyes of the Lieutenant of cavalry
studied John Brown with the interest of a soldier in the man who knows
not fear.

At first glance he was a sorry figure. He was lean and gaunt and looked
taller than he was for that reason. His face was deeply sun tanned and
seamed. He looked a rough, hard-working old farmer. The decided stoop
of his shoulders gave the exaggerated impression of age. His face was
shaved. He wore a coarse cotton shirt, a clean one that had just been
stolen from Bernard's store. It was partly covered by a vest. His hat
was an old slouched felt, well worn. In general appearance he was
dilapidated, dusty, and soiled.

The young officer was too keen a judge of character to be deceived
by clothes on a Western frontier. The dusty clothes and worn hat he
scarcely saw. It was the terrible mouth that caught and held his
imagination. It was the mouth of a relentless foe. It was the mouth of a
man who might speak the words of surrender when cornered. But he could
no more surrender than he could jump out of his skin.

Stuart was willing to risk his life on a wager that if he consented to
lay down his arms, he had more concealed and that he would sleep on them
that night in the brush.

The low forehead and square, projecting chin caught and held his fancy.
It was the jaw and chin of the fighting animal. No man who studied that
jaw would care to meet it in the dark.

But the thing that had put the Deputy out of commission as warrant
officer of the Government was the old man's strange, restless eyes.
Stuart caught their steel glitter with a sense of the uncanny. He
had never seen a human eye that threw at an enemy a look quite so
disconcerting. He had laughed at the Deputy's fear to move with fifty
dragoons to back him. There was some excuse for it. Back of those
piercing points of steel-blue light were one hundred and fifty armed
followers. What would happen if he should turn to these men and tell
them to fight the cavalry of the United States? It was an open question.

The old man walked toward his men with wiry, springing step.

The prisoners were released.

Stuart shook hands with Pate, who was a Virginian and a former student
of the University.

Brown's men laid down their arms and dispersed.

True to Stuart's surmise he did not move far from his entrenched camp.
He anticipated a fake surrender to the troops. He had concealed weapons
for the faithful but half a mile away. With Weiner he built a new camp
fire before Stuart's cavalry had moved two miles.

CHAPTER XXIII

The man with the slouched hat and coarse cotton shirt lost no time in
grieving over the dispersal of his one hundred and fifty men. It was the
largest force he had ever assembled. His experience in the three days
in which he had acted as their commander had greatly angered him. The
frontiersman who failed to come under the spell of Brown's personality
by direct contact generally refused to obey his orders.

The crowd of free rangers which his fight with Pate had gathered proved
themselves beyond control. They raided the surrounding country without
Brown's knowledge.

They stole from friend and foe with equal impartiality. There was one
consolation in his surrender to the United States troops. He got rid of
these troublesome followers. They had already robbed him of the
spoils of his own successful raids and not one of them had shown any
inclination to bring in the enemies' goods for common use.

He began to choose the most faithful among them for a scheme of wider
scope and more tragic daring. He was not yet sure of his plan. But God
would 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 raise
a National Blood Feud.

For a moment his indomitable Puritan soul was discouraged. He had obeyed
the command of his God. He could not have been mistaken in the voice
which 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 as
of no account in the reckoning and from that hour he had been a fugitive
from justice, hiding in the woods. He had escaped arrest only by the
accidental assembling of a mob of a hundred and fifty disorderly fools
who had stolen his own goods before they had been dispersed.

Instead of the heroic acclaim to which the deed entitled him, his own
flesh and blood had cursed him, one of his sons had been shot and
another was lying in prison a jibbering lunatic.

Would future generations agree with the men who had met in his own town
and denounced his deed as cruel, gruesome and revolting?

His stolid mind refused to believe it. Through hours of agonizing
prayer the new plan, based squarely on the vision that sent him to
Pottawattomie, began to fix itself in his soul.

This time he would chose his disciples from the elect. Only men tried in
the 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. Yet
Oliver was the second disciple chosen. He had forgiven the boy for
the fight over the pistol and had taken pains to regain his complete
submission. John Henry Kagi was the third chosen disciple, a young
newspaper reporter of excellent mind and trained pen. He had been
captured by United States troops in Kansas as a guerrilla raider and was
imprisoned first at Lecompton and then at Tecumseh. The fourth disciple
selected was Aaron Dwight Stevens, an ex-convict from the penitentiary
at Fort Leavenworth. Stevens was by far the most daring and interesting
figure in the group. His knowledge of military tactics was destined to
make him an invaluable aide. The uncanny in Brown's spirit had appealed
to his imagination from the day he made his escape from the penitentiary
and met the old man. The fifth disciple chosen was John E. Cook, a man
destined to play the most important role in the new divine mission with
the poorest qualification for the task. Born of a well-to-do family in
Haddon, Connecticut, he had studied law in Brooklyn and New York. He
dropped his studies against the protest of his people in 1855, and,
driven by the spirit of adventure, found his way into Kansas and at
last led his band of twenty guerrillas into John Brown's camp. Brown's
attention was riveted on him from the day they met. He was a man of
pleasing personality and the finest rifle shot in Kansas. He was genial;
he was always generous; He was brave to the point of recklessness; and
he was impulsive, indiscreet and utterly reckless when once bent on a
purpose. His sister had married Willard, the Governor of Indiana.

Brown's new plan required a large sum of money. With the prestige
his fighting in Kansas had given him, he believed the Abolition
philanthropists of the East would give this sum. He left his disciples
to drill and returned East to get the money.

In Boston his success was genuine, although the large amount which he
asked was slow in coming.

The old man succeeded in deceiving his New England friends completely as
to the Pottawattomie murders. On this event he early became a cheerful,
consistent and successful liar. This trait of his character had been
fully developed in his youth. Everywhere he was acclaimed by the pious
as, "Captain Brown, the old partisan hero of Kansas warfare."

His magnetic, uncanny personality rarely failed to capture the dreamer
and the sentimentalist. Sanborn, Howe, Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, George L. Stearns and Gerrit Smith became his devoted
followers. He even made Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison his
friends.

Garrison met him at Theodore Parker's. The two men were one on
destroying Slavery: Garrison, the pacifist; Brown, the man who believed
in bloodshed as the only possible solution of all the great issues of
National 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. The
sentimentalists asked no questions. And if hard-headed business men
tried to pry too closely into his plans, they found him a past master in
the art of keeping his own counsel.

He struck a snag when he appealed to the National Kansas Committee for a
gift of rifles and an appropriation of five thousand dollars. They voted
the rifles on conditions. But a violent opposition developed against
giving five thousand dollars to a man about whose real mind they knew so
little.

H. B. Hurd, the Chairman of the Committee, had suspected the purpose
back of his pretended scheme for operations in Kansas. He put to Brown
the pointblank question and demanded a straight answer.

"If you get these guns and the money you desire, will you invade
Missouri 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 my
history. You know what I have done in Kansas. I do not expose my
plans. No one knows them but myself, except perhaps one. I will not be
interrogated. If you wish to give me anything, I want you to give it
freely. I have no other purpose but to serve the cause of Liberty."

His answer was not illuminating. It contained nothing the Committee
wished to know. The statement that they knew him was a figure of speech.
They had read partisan reports of his fighting and his suffering in
Kansas--through his own letters, principally. How much truth these
letters contained was something they wished very much to find out. He
had given no light.

He declared that they knew what he had done in Kansas. This was the one
point on which they needed most light.

The biggest event in the history of Kansas was the deed on the
Pottawattomie. In the fierce political campaign that was in progress its
effects had been neutralized by denials. Brown had denied his guilt on
every occasion.

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