Books: The Man in Gray

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"You weep because the negro slave must serve one master. He has no power
to choose a new one. Do not forget that the power to _choose_ a new
master carries with it power to discharge the wage slave and hire a new
one. This power to discharge is the most merciless and cruel tyranny
ever developed in the struggle of man from savagery to civilization.
This awful right places in the hand of the master the power of life and
death. He can deprive his wage slave of fuel, food, clothes, shelter.
Life is the only right worth having if its exercise is put into
question. A starving man has no liberty. The word can have no meaning.
He must live first or he cannot be a man.

"The wage slave is producing more than the chattel slaves ever produced,
man for man, and is receiving less than the negro slave of the South is
getting for his labor to-day.

"Your system of wage slavery is the cunning trick by which the cruel
master finds that he can deny to the worker all rights he ever had as a
slave.

"If you doubt its power, look at this bundle of rags in my hands and
remember that there are five thousand half-starved children homeless and
abandoned in the streets of this city to-night.

"Find for me one ragged, freezing, starving, black baby in the South and
I will buy a musket to equip an army for its invasion--"

He paused a moment, turned and gazed at the men on the platform and then
faced the crowd in a final burst of triumphant scorn.

"Fools, liars, hypocrites, clean your own filthy house before you weep
over the woes of negroes who are singing while they toil--"

A man on an end seat of the middle aisle suddenly sprang to his feet and
yelled:

"Put him out!"

Before Gerrit Smith could reach Evans with a gift of five dollars for
the sick child which he still held in his arms the crowd had become a
mob.

They hustled the labor leader into the street and told him to go back to
hell where he came from.

Through it all John Brown sat on the platform with his blue-gray eyes
fixed in space. He had seen, heard or realized nothing that had passed.
His mind was brooding over the plains of Kansas.

CHAPTER XIII

It was October, 1854, before John Brown's three sons, Owen, Frederick
and Salmon, left Ohio for their long journey to Kansas. In April, 1855,
they crossed the Missouri river and entered the Territory.

John Brown decided to move his family once more to North Elba before
going West. It was June before his people reached this negro settlement
in Northern New York. He placed his wife and children in an unplastered,
four-roomed house. Through its rough weatherboarding the winds and snows
of winter would howl. It had been hurriedly thrown together by his
son-in-law, Henry Thompson. Brown had never stayed on one of his little
farms long enough to bring order out of chaos.

His restless spirit left him no peace. He was now in Boston, now in
Springfield, Massachusetts, now in New York, again in Ohio, or Illinois.

He was giving up the work in Ohio to follow his sons into Kansas. He had
planned to move there two years before and abandoned the idea. He had at
last fully determined to go.

On October the sixth, his party reached the family settlement at
Osawatomie. With characteristic queerness the old man did not enter with
his sons, Oliver, Jason and John, Jr., and their caravan. He stopped
alone on the roadside two miles away until next day.

The party on arrival had plenty of guns, swords and ammunition but their
treasury held but sixty cents.

The family settlement were living in tents around which the chill
autumn winds were howling. The poor crops they had raised had not been
harvested. The men were ill and discouraged. There was little meat,
except game and that was difficult to kill. Their only bread was made
from corn meal ground at a hand-turned mill two miles away.

Brown's sons, who had preceded him, had lost all vigor. The old man was
not slow to see the way out.

The situation called for Action. He determined to get it. He immediately
plunged into Free Soil Politics without pausing to build his first
shanty against the coming rains and snows of a terrible winter.

CHAPTER XIV

The race for the lands of the new Territories of Kansas and Nebraska was
on to the finish. Nebraska was far North. Kansas only interested the
Southerner. The frontiersmen were crossing the boundary lines years
before Congress formally opened them for settlement.

After a brief stop in West Tennessee the Doyles had succeeded in
reaching Miami County, just beyond the Missouri border, in 1853. They
had settled on a fertile quarter section on the Pottawattomie Creek in a
small group of people of Southern feeling.

The sun of a new world had begun to shine at last for the humble but
ambitious woman who had borne five strong children to be the athletic
sons and daughters of a free country. Her soul rose in a triumphant song
that made her little home the holy of holies of a new religion. Her
husband was the lord of a domain of fertile land. His fields were green
with wheat. She loved to look over its acres of velvet carpet. In June
her man and three stalwart boys, now twenty, eighteen and fourteen years
of age, would swing the reaper into that field and harvest the waving
gold without the aid of a hired laborer. She and her little girls would
help and sing while they toiled.

There was no debt on their books. They had horses, cows, sheep, pigs,
chickens, ducks, turkeys. Their crib was bulging with corn. The bins in
their barn were filled with grain.

Their house was still the humble cottage of the prairie pioneer, but her
men had made it snug and warm against the winds and snows of winter.
Their farm had plenty of timber on the Pottawattomie Creek which flowed
through the center of the tract. They had wood for their fires and logs
with which to construct their stable and outhouses.

The house they built four-square with sharp gables patterned after the
home they had lost. There were no dormers in the attic, but two windows
peeped out of the gable beside the stone chimney and gave light and air
to the boys' room in the loft. A shed extension in the rear was large
enough for both kitchen and dining room.

The home stood close beside the creek, and the murmur of its waters made
music for a busy mother's heart.

There was no porch over the front door. But her boys had built a lattice
work that held a labyrinth of morning glories in the summer. She had
found the gorgeous wild flowers blooming on the prairies and made a
hedge of them for the walks. They were sending their shoots up through
the soil now to meet the sun of spring. The warm rays had already begun
to clothe the prairie world with beauty and fragrance.

The mother never tired of taking her girls on the hill beyond the creek
and watching the men at work on the wide sweeping plains that melted
into the skyline miles beyond. Something in its vast silence, in its
message of the infinite, soothed her spirit. All her life in the East
she had been fighting against losing odds. These wide breathing plains
had stricken the shackles from her soul.

She was free.

Sometimes she felt like shouting it into the sky. Sometimes she knelt
among the trees and thanked God for His mercy in giving her the new
lease of life.

The new lease on life had depth and meaning because she lived and
breathed in her children. Her man had a man's chance at last. Her boys
had a chance.

The one thing that gave her joy day and night was the consciousness of
living among the men and women of her own race. There was not a negro
in the county, bond or free, and she fervently prayed that there never
would be. Now that they were free from the sickening dread of such
competition in life, she had no hatred of the race. As a free white
woman, the mother of free white men and women, all she asked was freedom
from the touch of an inferior. She had always felt instinctively that
this physical contact was poison. She breathed deeply for the first
time.

There was just one cloud on the horizon which threatened her peace and
future. Her husband, after the fashion of his kind, in the old world and
the new, had always held political opinions and had dared to express
them without fear or favor. In Virginia his vote was sought by the
leaders of the county. He had been poor but he had influence because he
dared to think for himself.

He was a Southern born white man, and he held the convictions of his
birthright. He had never stopped to analyze these faiths. He believed in
them as he believed in God. They were things not to be questioned.

Doyle had not hesitated to express his opinions in Kansas as in
Virginia. The few Southern settlers on the Pottawattomie Creek were
sympathetic and no trouble had come. But the keen ears of the woman had
caught ominous rumors on the plains.

The father and mother sat on a rude board settee which John had built.
The boy had nailed it against a black jack close beside the bend of
the creek where the ripple of the hurrying waters makes music when the
stream is low and swells into a roar when gorged by the rains.

The woman's face was troubled as she listened to the waters. She studied
the strong lines of her husband's neck, shoulders and head, with a touch
of pride and fear. His tongue was long in a political argument. He had a
fatal gift of speech. He could say witty, bitter things if stung by an
opponent.

She spoke with deep seriousness:

"I wish you wouldn't talk so much, John--"

"And why not?"

"You'll get in trouble."

"Well, I've been in trouble most of my life. There's no use livin' at
all, if you live in fear. I ain't never knowed what it is to be afraid.
And I'm too old to learn."

"They say, the Northern men that's passin' into the Territory have got
guns and swords. And they say they're goin' to use 'em. They outnumber
the Southerners five to one."

"What are they goin' to do with their guns and swords? Cut a man's
tongue out because he dares to say who he's goin' to vote for next
election?"

"You don't have to talk so loud anyhow," his wife persisted.

"Ole woman, I'm free, white, and twenty-one. I've been a-votin' and
watchin' the elections in this country for twenty odd years. Ef I've got
to tiptoe around, ashamed of my raisin', and ashamed of my principles, I
don't want to live. I wouldn't be fit ter live."

"I want ye to live."

"You wouldn't want to live with a coward."

"A brave man can hold his tongue, John."

"I ain't never learnt the habit, Honey."

"Won't you begin?"

"Ye can't learn a old dog new tricks--can they, Jack?"

He stroked his dog's friendly nose suddenly thrust against his knee.

"You know, Honey," he went on laughingly, "we brought this yellow pup
from Old Virginia. He's the best rabbit and squirrel dog in the county.
I've taught him to stalk prairie chickens out here. I'd be ashamed to
look my dog in the face ef I wuz ter tuck my tail between my legs and
run every time a fool blows off his mouth about the South--"

He stopped and laughed, his white teeth gleaming through his fine beard.

"Don't you worry, Honey. Those fields are too purty this spring for
worrying. We're goin' to send Colonel Lee our last payment this fall and
we'll not owe a cent to any man on earth."

CHAPTER XV

John Brown plunged into politics in Kansas under the impression that his
will could dominate the rank and file of the Northern party. He quickly
faced the fact that the frontiersmen had opinions of their own. And they
were not in the habit of taking orders from a master.

His hopes were raised to their highest at the Free State Convention
which met at Lawrence on Monday, the twenty-fifth of June, 1855. This
Convention spoke in tones that stirred Brown's admiration.

It meant Action.

They elected him a vice president of the body. He had expected to be
made president. However, his leadership was recognized. All he needed
was the opportunity to take the Action on which his mind had long been
fixed. The moment blood began to flow, there would be but one leader. Of
that, he felt sure. He could bide his time.

The Convention urged the people to unite on the one issue of making
Kansas a Free Soil State. They called on every member of the Shawnee
Legislature who held Free Soil views to resign from that body, although
it had been recognized by the National Government as the duly authorized
law-making assembly of the Territory. They denounced this Legislature as
the creature of settlers from Missouri who had crowded over the border
before the Northerners could reach their destination. They urged all
people to refuse to obey every law passed by the body.

The final resolution was one inspired by Brown himself. It was a bold
declaration that if their opponents wished to fight, the Northerners
were READY! The challenge was unmistakable. Brown felt that Action was
imminent. Only a set of poltroons would fail to accept the gauge of
battle thus flung in their faces.

To his amazement the challenge was not received by the rank and file of
the Free Soil Party with enthusiasm. Most of these Northerners had moved
to Kansas as bona fide settlers. They came to build homes for the women
they had left behind. They came to rush their shacks into shape to
receive their loved ones. They had been furnished arms and ammunition by
enthusiastic friends and politicians in the older States. And they had
eagerly accepted the gifts. There were droves of Indians still roaming
the plains. There were dangers to be faced.

The Southern ruffians of whom they had heard so much had not
materialized. Although the Radical wing of the Northern Party had made
Lawrence its Capital and through their paper, the _Herald of Freedom_,
issued challenge after challenge to their enemies.

The Northern settlers began to divide into groups whose purposes were
irreconcilable. Six different conventions met in Lawrence on or before
the fifteenth of August. Each one of these conventions was divided in
councils. In each the cleavage between the Moderates and Radicals became
wider.

Out of the six conventions of Northerners at Lawrence, out of resolution
and counter resolution, finally emerged the accepted plan of a general
convention at Big Springs.

The gathering was remarkable for the surprise it gave to the Radicals of
whom Brown was the leader. The Convention adopted the first platform of
the Free State party and nominated ex-Governor Reeder as its candidate
for delegate to Congress.

For the first time the hard-headed frontiersmen who came to Kansas for
honest purposes spoke in plain language. The first resolution settled
the Slavery issue. It declared that Slavery was a curse and that Kansas
should be free of this curse. But that as a matter of common sense they
would consent to any reasonable adjustment in regard to the few slaves
that had already been brought into the Territory.

Brown and his followers demanded that Slavery should be denounced as a
crime, not a curse, as the sum of all villainies and the Southern master
as a vicious and willful criminal. The mild expression of the platform
on this issue wrought the old man's anger to white heat. The offer to
compromise with the slave holder already in Kansas he repudiated with
scorn. But a more bitter draught was still in store for him.

The platform provided that Kansas should be a Free White State. And in
no uncertain words made plain that the accent should be on the word
WHITE. The document demanded the most stringent laws excluding ALL
NEGROES, BOND AND FREE, forever from the Territory.

The old man did not hear this resolution when read. So deep was his
brooding anger, the words made no impression. Their full import did not
dawn on him until John Brown, Jr., leaned close and whispered:

"Did you hear that?"

The father stirred from his reverie and turned a dazed look on his son.

"Hear what?"

"The infamous resolution demanding that Kansas be made a white man's
country and no negro, bond or free, shall ever be allowed to enter it?"

The hard mouth twitched with scorn. And his jaws came together with a
snap.

"It doesn't matter what they add to their first maudlin plank on the
Slavery issue."

"Will you sit here and see this vile thing done?"

A look of weariness came over the stern face with its deep-cut lines.

"It's a waste of words to talk to politicians."

John, Jr. was grasping at the next resolution which was one surpassing
belief. He rubbed his ears to see if he were really hearing correctly.

This resolution denounced the charge that they were Radicals at all. It
denounced the attempt of any man to interfere by violence with slaves or
Slavery where protected by the supreme law of the land. It repudiated
as stale and ridiculous the charge of Abolitionism against them. And
declared that such an accusation is without a shadow of truth to support
it.

Charles Stearns, the representative of the New England Society, leaped
to his feet and denounced the platform in withering tones. He fairly
shrieked his final sentence:

"All honest anti-slavery men, here and elsewhere, will spit on your
platform!"

He paused and faced the leaders who had drafted it.

"And all pro-slavery men must forever despise the base sycophants who
originated it!"

John Brown, Jr., applauded. The crowd laughed.

Old John Brown had paid no further heed to the proceedings of the
Convention. His eyelids were drawn half down. Only pin points of
glittering light remained.

The resolutions were adopted by an overwhelming majority.

In the East, Horace Greeley in the _Tribune_ reluctantly accepted
the platform: "Why free blacks should be excluded it is difficult to
understand; but if Slavery can be kept out by compromise of that sort,
we shall not complain. An error of this character may be corrected; but
let Slavery obtain a foothold there and it is not so easily removed."

Brown's hopes were to be still further dashed by the persistence
with which the leaders of this Convention followed up the program of
establishing a white man's country on the free plains of the West.

When the Convention met at Topeka on the twenty-third of October, to
form a Constitution, the determination to exclude all negroes from
Kansas was again sustained. The majority were finally badgered into
submitting the issue to a separate vote of the people. On the fifteenth
of December, the Northern settlers voted on it and the question _was_
settled.

Negroes were excluded by a three-fourths majority.

Three-fourths of the Free State settlers were in favor of a white man's
country and the heaviest vote against the admission of negroes was
polled in Lawrence and Topeka, where the Radicals had from the first
made the most noise.

The Northern men who had come to Kansas merely to oppose the extension
of Slavery were in a hopeless minority in their own party. The American
voters still had too much common sense to be led into a position to
provoke civil war.

John Brown spent long hours in prayer after the final vote on the negro
issue had been counted. He denounced the leaders in politics in Kansas
as trimmers, time servers, sycophants and liars. He walked beneath
the star-sown skies through the night. He wrestled with his God for a
vision.

There must be a way to Action.

He rose from prayer at dawn after a sleepless night and called for his
sons, Owen, Oliver, Frederick and Salmon, to get ready for a journey. He
had received a first hint of the will of God. He believed it might lead
to the way.

He organized a surveyor's party and disguised himself as a United States
Surveyor. He had brought to Kansas a complete outfit for surveying land.
He instructed Owen and Frederick to act as chain carriers, Salmon as
axeman and Oliver as marker. He reached the little Southern settlement
on the Pottawattomie Creek the fifteenth of May.

He planted his compass on the bank of the creek near the Doyles' house
and proceeded to run a base line.

The father and three boys were in the fields at work beyond the hill.

He raised his compass and followed the chainman to the Doyles' door. The
mother and little girl trudged behind, delighted with the diversion of
the party, so rare on the lonely prairies. Little could they dream the
grim deed that was shaping in the soul of the Surveyor.

When they reached the house she turned to the old man with Southern
courtesy:

"Won't you come in, sir, and rest a few minutes?"

The strange, blue-gray eyes glanced restlessly toward the hill and he
signaled his sons:

"Rest awhile, boys."

Frederick and Oliver sat down on a pile of logs. Salmon and Owen, at
a nod from their father, wandered carelessly toward the stable and
outhouses.

Owen found the dog Doyle had brought from Virginia and took pains to
make friends with him.

Brown's keen, restless eyes carefully inspected the door, its fastenings
and the strength of its hinges. The iron of the hinges was flimsy. The
fastening was the old-fashioned wooden shutters hung outside and closed
with a single slide. He noted with a quick glance that there was no
cross bar of heavy wood nor any sockets in which such a bar could be
dropped.

The windows were small. There was no glass. Solid wooden shutters hung
outside and closed with a single hook and eye for fastenings.

The sun was setting before the surveying party stopped work. They
had run a line close to the house of every Southern settler on the
Pottawattomie Creek, noting carefully every path leading to each house.
They had carefully mapped the settlement and taken a census of every
male inhabitant and every dog attached to each house. They also made an
inventory of the horses, saddles and bridles.

Having completed their strange errand, they packed their instruments and
rode toward Osawatomie.

CHAPTER XVI

With the opening of the Territory of Kansas the first Regiment of United
States Cavalry, commanded by Colonel E.V. Sumner, had been transferred
to Fort Leavenworth.

The life of the barracks was young Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart.

Colonel Lee had been transferred from West Point to the command of the
Second United States Cavalry on the Mexican Border at the same time that
Stuart's regiment was moved to Kansas.

The rollicking song-loving, banjo-playing Virginian had early
distinguished himself as an Indian fighter. He had been dangerously
wounded, but recovered with remarkable rapidity. His perfect health and
his clean habits stood him in good stead on the day an Indian's bullet
crashed through his breast.

He was a favorite with officers and men. As a cadet he had given promise
of the coming soldier. At the Academy he was noted for his strict
attendance to every military duty, and his erect, soldierly bearing. He
was particularly noted for an almost thankful acceptance of a challenge
to fight any cadet who might feel himself aggrieved. The boys called him
a "Bible Class Man." He was never known to swear or drink. They also
called him "Beauty Stuart," in good natured boyish teasing.

He was the best-looking cadet of his class, as he was the best-looking
young officer of his regiment. His hair was a reddish brown. His eyes a
deep steel blue, his voice clear and ringing.

In his voice the soul of the man spoke to his fellows. He was always
singing--always eager for a frolic of innocent fun. Above all, he was
always eager for a frolic with a pretty girl. He played both the banjo
and the guitar and little he cared for the gathering political feud
which old John Brown and his sons had begun to foment on the frontier.

As a Southerner the struggle did not interest him. It was a foregone
conclusion that the country would be settled by Northern immigrants.
They were pouring into the Territory in endless streams. A colony from
New Haven, Connecticut, one hundred strong, had just settled sixty miles
above Lawrence on the Kansas River. They knew how to plow and plant
their fields and they had modern machinery with which to do it. The
few Southerners who came to Kansas were poorly equipped. Lawrence was
crowded with immigrants from every section of the North. The fields were
white with their tents. A company from Ohio, one from Connecticut, and
one from New Hampshire were camping just outside the town. Daily their
exploring committees went forth to look at localities. Daily new
companies poured in.

Stuart let them pour and asked no questions about their politics. He was
keen on one thing only--the pretty girls that might be among them.

When exploring parties came to Fort Leavenworth, the young Lieutenant
inspected them with an eye single to a possible dance for the regiment.
The number of pretty girls was not sufficient to cause excitement among
the officers as yet. The daughters of the East were not anxious to
explore Kansas at this moment. The Indians were still troublesome at
times.

A rumor spread through the barracks that the prettiest girl in Kansas
had just arrived at Fort Riley, sixty-eight miles beyond Topeka. Colonel
Phillip St. George Cooke of Virginia commanded the Fort and his daughter
Flora had ventured all the way from Harper's Ferry to the plains to see
her beloved daddy.

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