was driven out of his store. Henry Sherman soon went to Mr. Grant's house and said that they had ordered old Morse out of the country, and he must go; and that a good many other free-state families must go too.

John Brown Jr. wrote me in 1884-1885 this version of a well-known anecdote. In the spring of 1856 Colonel Buford of Alabama arrived with a regiment of armed men, mostly from South Carolina and Georgia; with the openly declared purpose of making Kansas a slave State. A company of them were reported as encamped a little south of the town now called Rantoul, distant from his place about two miles. His father took his surveyor's compass and the four brothers (Owen, Frederick, Salmon and Oliver) as chain carriers, ax men, and markers, and found a section line which led through the camp of these men. They indulged in the utmost freedom of expression; one said, "We've come here to stay. We won't make no war on them as minds their own business; but all the Abolitionists, such as them damned Browns over there, we're goin' to whip, drive out, or kill, any way to get shut of them." The elder Doyle was already among them, having gone a distance of nine miles to show them the best fords of the river and creek. The running of that section line occurred a few days before the second call to assist Lawrence, May 20.

Judge Hanway, who lived and died in the region of the Pottawatomie, and was a member of John Brown Jr.'s rifle company, on its way to Lawrence, said that when they were in camp in Franklin County, a young man brought them. intelligence that pro-slavery citizens of the Pottawatomie had visited some of the free-state families and threatened them with death, and their property with destruction, if they did not leave the neighborhood by the following Saturday or Sunday night. Old John Brown immediately raised a small party of men and visited those who had been the instigators of this threatened movement. Judge Hanway was invited to become one of the party by one of the eight who went. He was informed at the time of the purpose of the expedition.

These eight were John Brown, his sons Owen, Frederick, Salmon, and Oliver, his son-in-law Henry Thompson, Theodore Weiner, and James Townsley, of Maryland originally,

--

a painter by trade, who had been for five years a cavalryman in the United States army. Townsley was a friend of Martin and Jefferson Conway, like them an opponent of slavery, had migrated to Kansas about the time John Brown did, and was living several miles up the Pottawatomie, southwest of Dutch Henry's. He was a member of the Pottawatomie Rifles, and was the first of the eight to tell the story (in 1879) of the expedition, not always in the same way. I have since heard the tale from two of those who were present, and who did not agree with Townsley in all the detail, nor with each other. One of these accounts, from a person I have always found exact and truthful, I must believe, where he varied from Townsley. John Brown was present at most of the killing, but did not take part in it. He never denied his responsibility for it. On May 27 he was asked by his son Jason, who told me, "Did you have any hand in the killing?" Jason went on:

He said, "I did not, but I stood by and saw it." I did not ask further, for fear I should hear something I did not wish to hear. Frederick said, "I could not feel as if it was right"; but another of the party [Owen, no doubt] said it was justifiable as a means of self-defence and the defence of others. What I said against it seemed to hurt father very much; but all he said was, "God is my judge, - we were justified under the circumstances.' "1

This has been the verdict of impartial and kindly men since, as it was that of Robinson for twenty-four years. Judge Hanway, in December, 1879, published this:

I protested, and begged them [the eight men] to desist. . . . After the dreadful affair had taken place, and after a full investigation of the whole matter, I, like many others, modified my opinion, . . . like others of the early settlers was finally forced to the conclusion that the Pottawatomie "massacre," as it is called, prevented the ruffian hordes from carrying out their programme of expelling the Free-State men from this portion of the Territory of Kansas. It was this view of the case which reconciled the minds of the settlers on the Pottawatomie. They would whisper one to the other: "It was fortunate for us; for God only knows what our fate and condition would have been, if old John Brown had not driven terror and consternation into the ranks of the proslavery party."

"2

1 F. B. Sanborn, Life and Letters of Jolin Brown, 273; 2 280.

No better evidence could be had as to the actual necessity and effect of this dire deed; for Hanway was a man universally respected, knew the situation at the time, and for thirty years after, and had no motive for telling aught but the truth. Colonel Walker, already quoted, when I talked with him for an hour at Lawrence in August, 1882, quoted to me Brown's remark to him twenty-six years before, as they journeyed together to escort General Lane into Kansas:

"the Pottawatomie execution was a just act, and did good," . . . I must say he told the truth. It did a great deal of good by terrifying the Missourians. I heard Governor Robinson say this himself in his speech at Osawatomie in 1877; he said he rejoiced in it then, though it put his own life in danger, for he [Robinson] was a prisoner at Lecompton, when Brown killed the men at Pottawatomie.1

This anecdote of Walker's agrees with what Robinson said in a public meeting at Lawrence, December 19, 1859, as reported at the time. The Lawrence citizens then voted a resolution concerning the Pottawatomie executions, thus:

according to the ordinary rules of war said transaction was not unjustifiable, but . . . was performed from the sad necessity which existed at that time to defend the lives and liberties of the settlers in that region.2

The resolution was supported, possibly drawn, by Robinson. He said:

...

... he had always believed John Brown was connected with that movement. Indeed, he believed Brown had told him so, or to that effect; and when he first heard of the massacre, he thought it was about right. A war of extermination was in prospect, and it was as well for Free-State men to kill proslavery men, as for proslavery men to kill Free-State men. . . . G. W. Brown believed the murder of those men . . was not justifiable; but he (Robinson) thought it was. Mr. Adair, a nephew of John Brown, remarking that he had heard his uncle say that he was present and approved the deed, but that he did not raise a finger himself to injure the men, -. . . Robinson said it made no difference whether he raised his hand or otherwise. John Brown was present, aiding and advising; he did not attempt to stop the bloodshed, and is of course responsible, though justifiable according to Robinson's understanding of the matter.2

-...

1 F. B. Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, 280;

2 281.

The substance of this report is confirmed by what Robinson wrote to Judge Hanway in 1878, already quoted by me in a letter to Mr. Lawrence of January, 1885.

I believe that this cumulative and most competent and respectable testimony about the men executed (much of which I collected in Kansas) was mainly true; and that it was as well known to Charles Robinson as it was to me, and much earlier. Hence his quoted declaration, about a "career of wholesale murder" which the pro-slavery men had entered upon. They had already killed five men, mostly acquaintances of Robinson. The five men slain by Brown's party Robinson probably never saw; nor did he often see John Brown. In his testimony before the Senate Committee,1 February 10, 1860, Robinson swore that he first made acquaintance with John Brown in " November or December, 1855," and "at Lawrence," and that he last saw him at Lawrence "in September, 1856." Robinson added: "I believe I never had a conversation with him at any other time. I am not positive that I ever saw him at any other time. . . . I do not remember about the first interview with him. From that conversation [in September, 1856] I learned that his object was to rather create difficulties and disturbances than to establish a free-State government in Kansas, while mine was for the latter object." Yet at that very time Robinson gave Brown the letter quoted by me, of September 14, 1856, in which Robinson said:

Your course, so far as I have been informed, has been such as to merit the highest praise from every patriot, . . . History will give your name a proud place on her pages, and posterity will pay homage to your heroism in the cause of God and humanity."

In his letters of 1884-1885 in Mr. Lawrence's collection, Robinson struggles to show that this letter was a forgery by Brown. Before showing it to me, as Brown did early in January, 1857, he had shown it to Governor S. P. Chase of Ohio, who wrote (and I saw the note), dating December 20, 1856:

1 Report of the Select Committee of the Senate (J. M. Mason, Jefferson Davis, and G. N. Fitch), No. 278, 36th Congress, 1st session, June 15, 1860, to inquire into the Harper's Ferry affair, page 196 of Testimony.

2 F. B. Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, 330.

I have also seen a letter from Governor Charles Robinson, whose handwriting I recognize, speaking of Captain Brown and his services to the cause of the Free-State men in Kansas in terms of the warmest commendation.1

Brown showed this note and Robinson's longer letter (December 30, 1856) to Gerrit Smith, who then wrote:

You did not need to show me letters from Governor Chase and Governor Robinson to let me know who and what you are. I have known you many years, and have highly esteemed you as long as I have known you.2

Let me now take up the charges made by Mr. Lawrence to this Society, in May, 1884, and repeated over and over in the collection of letters made by him, that John Brown was "always disloyal to the government" and that he made a trenchant speech against the double-dealing treaty negotiated by Lane and Robinson with Shannon in December, 1855. G. W. Brown in one of his numerous versions of the "Wakarusa war" (quoted by me on page 335) claimed to have introduced John Brown to Robinson and Lane at Lawrence. He has of late years, and specially in his letters to Mr. Lawrence, insisted that John Brown was a factious, troublesome element in the defence of Lawrence at the first siege. Unfortunately for these later fables of his, the once editor of "The Kansas Herald of Freedom" put himself on record in that weekly newspaper at the time, and a copy of his number for Saturday, December 15, 1855, lies before me as I write. It is quite rare, but the Kansas Historical Society happens to own two copies and has sent me one of them. As it has become so rare, I shall quote from it more than its former editor himself does, in one of his letters to Mr. Lawrence. In it he described at much length, and in fervid English, the origin and progress of the "Wakarusa war." As contemporary evidence of what went on before his eyes and in his hearing, it has a value far beyond the ramblings of his recollection thirty years afterward. This account fills more than twelve columns in number 45 of volume I., and counts up more than twelve thousand words. Its only mention of Captain John Brown (commissioned by Robinson and Lane at the instance of the editor, as he declared afterward) is in the following paragraph:

1 F. B. Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, 363; 2 364.