turning, he accepted from Gerrit Smith a tract of CHAP. XI. mountain land in the Adirondacks, where he proposed to found and foster colonies of free negroes. This undertaking proved abortive, like all his others, and he once more went back to the wool business in Ohio.

Twice married, nineteen children had been born to him, of whom eleven were living when, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska bill plunged the country into the heat of political strife. Four of his sons moved away to the new Territory in the first rush of emigrants; several others went later. When the Border-Ruffian hostilities broke out, John Brown followed, with money and arms contributed in the North. With his sons as a nucleus, he gathered a little band of fifteen to twenty adventurers, and soon made his name a terror in the lawless guerrilla warfare of the day. His fighting was of the prevailing type, justifiable, if at all, only on the score of defensive retaliation, and some of his acts were as criminal and atrocious as the worst of those

committed by the Border Ruffians.1 His losses, one son murdered, another wounded to the death, that his father was not a participator in the deed.' It was a very narrow interpretation of the word 'participator' which would permit such a denial; but it was no doubt honestly made, although for the purpose of disguising what John Brown's real agency in the matter was. He was, in fact, the originator and performer of these executions, although the hands that dealt the wounds were those of others.". Frank B. Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown,” pp. 263-4.

1 On the night of May 24-25, 1856, five pro-slavery men living on Pottawatomie Creek, in Kansas, were mysteriously and brutally assassinated. The relatives and friends of the deceased charged John Brown and his band with these murders, which the relatives and friends of Brown persistently denied. His latest biographer, however, unreservedly admits his guilt: "For some reason he [John Brown] chose not to strike a blow himself; and this is what Salmon Brown meant when he declared

CHAP. XI. and a third rendered insane from cruel treatment, are scarcely compensated by the transitory notoriety he gathered in a few fool-hardy skirmishes. These varied experiences give us something of a clue to his character: a strong will; great physical energy; sanguine, fanatical temperament; unbounded courage and little wisdom; crude, visionary ideality; the inspiration of biblical precepts and Old Testament hero-worship; and ambition curbed to irritation by the hard fetters of labor, privation, and enforced endurance. In association, habit, language, and conduct, he was clean, but coarse; honest, but rude. In disposition he mingled the sacrificing tenderness with the sacrificial sternness of his prototypes in Jewish history. He could lay his own child on the altar without a pang. The strongest element of his character was religious fanaticism. Taught from earliest childhood to "fear God and keep his commandments," he believed firmly in the divine authenticity of the Bible, and memorized much of its contents. His favorite texts became literal and imperative mandates; he came to feel that he bore the commission and enjoyed the protection of the Almighty. In his Kansas camps he prayed and saw visions; believed he wielded the sword of the Lord and of Gideon; had faith that the angels encompassed him. He desired no other safeguard than his own ideas of justice and his own convictions of duty. These ideas and convictions, however, refused obedience to accepted laws and morals, and were mere fantastic and pernicious outgrowths of his religious fanaticism. His courage partook of the recklessness of insanity. He did not count odds. What

James Redpath, "Life of John Brown," p. 48.

Sanborn, in the "Atlantic,"

are five to one?" he asked; and at another time CHAP. XI. he said, "One man in the right, ready to die, will chase a thousand." Perhaps he even believed he held a charmed life, for he boasted that he had been fired at thirty times and only his hair had been touched. In personal appearance he was tall and slender, with rather a military bearing. He had an impressive, half-persuasive, half-command- April, 1872. ing manner. He was always very secretive, affected much mystery in movements, came and went abruptly, was direct and dogmatic to bluntness in his conversation. His education was scant, his reading limited; he wrote strong phrases in bad orthography. If we may believe the intimations from himself and those who knew him best, he had not only acquired a passionate hatred of the institution of slavery, but had for twenty years nursed the longing to become a liberator of slaves in the Southern States. To this end he read various stories of insurrections, and meditated on the vicissitudes, chances, and strategy of partisan warfare. A year's border fighting in Kansas not only suddenly put thought into action, but his personal and family sacrifices intensified his visionary ambition into a stern and inflexible purpose.

It is impossible to trace exactly how and when the Harper's Ferry invasion first took practical shape in John Brown's mind, but the indications are that it grew little by little out of his Kansas experience. His earliest collisions with the Border Ruffians occurred the spring and summer of 1856. In the autumn of that year the United States troops dispersed his band, and generally suppressed the civil war. In January, 1857, we find him in

VOL. II.-13