1858 (54 page)

Even many Republicans were mad at Brown. The editor of the moderate Republican
Lawrence Herald of Freedom
wrote, “Little did I think in 1856 that professedly free state men would be guilty of the same crime for which we denounced the proslavery men of that year and which raised such a storm throughout the nation.”
⁷⁰⁵

Sick of the criticism, Brown told Kansans, “You will have no more attacks from Missouri; I shall now leave Kansas, probably you will never see me again; I consider it my duty to draw the scene of the excitement to some other part of the country.”
⁷⁰⁶

If newspapers in Kansas and Missouri were not friendly, others were. Hutchinson’s reports were followed by other positive stories about Brown and his daring raid in large city newspapers in the Midwest and the Northeast. The
New York Times
even wrote on January 11 that, “Brown especially has suffered wrongs enough at the hands of Missouri invaders to almost steel his heart against every sentiment of humanity. To avenge the death of his murdered son and the long list of outrages perpetrated upon him during the Kansas struggle he considers almost a religious duty.”

The press coverage had helped convince his financial backers that he could succeed in a large raid and escape. Gerrit Smith wrote enthusiastically to his wife on January 10, “Do you hear the news from Kansas? Our dear John Brown is invading Missouri and pursuing the policy which he intended to pursue
elsewhere
.”
⁷⁰⁷

As he rode northward into Iowa, Brown had all of the press recognition that he sought. Would newspaper attention help him as he fled across the country toward Canada, though? He had to cover eleven hundred miles, traveling at night and during the day, in a brutal winter, and would have to move through farm villages and larger communities, always visible to those who wanted to capture him. He would have to rely on the assistance of the ordinary people of Iowa and other states on his way to Canada. He needed mayors and sheriffs to let him ride through on his way North, if not sympathetic to his cause then at least impressed enough with his bold raid to let him finish his journey. He needed abolitionists and friends to hide him and give him provisions, even though he was now a man wanted in both Kansas and Missouri, a man whose mere whereabouts would be worth $3,000 to any informer. Would they?

The first test came at Lawrence, Kansas, where his party, reduced for the time to just himself and George Gill and their eleven refugees and a baby, arrived at the home of supporter Major James Abbot late at night on January 24. The journey had been perilous and both Brown and Gill had nearly frozen limbs when they climbed off their horses at Abbott’s home. There, to his relief, Brown discovered that Abbott and others were not only willing to help him, but eager. Working at night to avoid detection by Lawrence authorities, they loaded up his wagons with food and clothing and gave him fresh horses. They urged him to ride with Dr. John Doy, who had himself rescued several slaves and was intent on getting them out of Kansas. Brown refused, to his good fortune. Doy was captured by a posse, one of several looking for him and Brown, a few days later and imprisoned.

Brown and the raiders nearly met the same fate on their way to Topeka, Kansas. A severe storm that dumped several inches of snow on the landscape forced them to spend the night at a tavern in the village of Holton. News of their presence in the area spread quickly throughout the county. The next day they reached Spring Creek, where the rushing water was too high to permit a crossing of the wagon and the raiders on horseback. Brown felt trapped because the previous evening he was told that not only was a local posse waiting for him on the other side of Spring Creek, but that the governor of Missouri, told of his location, had sent troops—“several hundred,” the story went—to capture him. Brown and the raiders slipped away in the morning, to Fuller’s Crossing, but met another posse there.

The men in the large posse tracking them were near the other side of the creek, Brown was told, and warned not to continue. There were nearly a hundred of them, he was told, and they were armed. “What do you propose to do?” asked a frantic woman who lived there, certain he would turn back.

John Brown did not flinch. He looked directly at her and without hesitation said, “I propose to cross the creek and move north.” He did, taking his men and the wagon through the surging waters to the other side. There, the twenty-two raiders and their freed slaves became engaged in a gun battle with eighty men in the posse. Acting boldly, the raiders charged the posse, forcing it back and eventually driving it out of the area following a flurry of gunshots. The men in the posse were so intent on retreating that many of their horses carried two men, both digging their boot spurs into their mounts.
⁷⁰⁸

Brown and the raiders found themselves in the newspapers again the day after the battle, appropriately dubbed “the battle of the spurs,” denounced by some and defended by others. The
Missouri Democrat
thought the entire affair amusing. “The chase was a merry one,” its correspondent wrote, “and closed by Brown’s taking off three of his pursuers as prisoners, with four horses, pistols, guns as legitimate plunder… Old Captain Brown is not to be taken by ‘boys’ and he cordially invites all proslavery men to try their hands at arresting him.”
⁷⁰⁹

Brown was relieved to be in a free state, writing his wife Mary, “I am once more in Iowa through the great mercy of God. Those with me and other friends are well. I hope soon to be at a point where I can learn of your welfare and perhaps send you something besides my good wishes.”
⁷¹⁰

He soon reached Tabor, Iowa, where he had hidden out in the past. He was allowed to keep his slaves in a schoolhouse overnight and to remain with Gill, Kagi, Aaron Stevens, and a few others who had joined them in the exodus, but the raiders were not welcomed to stay more than one night because they had killed Cruise. The locals denounced him in a statement, “While we sympathize with the oppressed and will do all that we conscientiously can to help them in their efforts for freedom, nevertheless, we have no sympathy with those who go to slave states to entice away slaves and take property of life when necessary to attain that end.”
⁷¹¹

Unhappy, Brown left and headed east toward the much larger community of Des Moines, stopping for shelter along the way at Underground Railroad safe houses in several villages. He was disgusted with the citizens of Tabor, writing, “There are those who would sooner see me supplied with a good [noose] than anything else for my services [in Tabor].”
⁷¹²

Brown had nothing but praise for his raiders and all the men who had fought with him. “Strong, hearty farmers and mechanics, who had left their work and their homes [on hearing of an invasion] without even waiting to change their clothes; and were, as a whole, the most intelligent, sober, and orderly set of men I have ever seen collected…a set of determined men as I had no idea this Territory could boast of in any such numbers.”
⁷¹³

The long trek and the close quarters the raiders and their liberated slaves maintained produced tension, though. Gill, at first a great admirer of Brown, later wrote that he was egocentric, could be vindictive, mean, and obstinate toward his own men, even petty, refusing to brew coffee for others when all he wanted was tea. He also seemed to want to hang everyone he thought betrayed his “cause” and was never intent on causing mere mischief when he could burn down an entire town or attack a settlement.
⁷¹⁴

Authorities in Des Moines were friendlier and the editor of the local newspaper, John Teesdale, an old acquaintance of both Brown and Kagi, gave him money to cover ferry tickets across the Des Moines river for his party. Brown later wrote Teesdale that he had no regrets about the murder of Cruise. “The most ready and effectual way to retrieve Kansas would be to meddle directly with the peculiar institution. Next, we had no means necessary of moving the rescued captives without taking a portion of their lawfully acquired earnings. All we took has been held sacred to that object and will be.”
⁷¹⁵

The reception in Grinnell, Iowa, was far more gracious, as Brown hoped it would be. Joseph Grinnell, who founded the town, was the leading abolitionist in Iowa. Grinnell not only provided them with food, clothing, fresh horses, and several nights of accommodations, but arranged for two nightly meetings at the Congregational Church where he and three local ministers applauded the work of the raiders after Brown and Kagi gave speeches. “[We] were loudly cheered and full endorsed. [Ministers] all took part in justifying our course and in urging contributions in our behalf and there was no dissenting speaker present at either meeting,” Brown wrote, adding that a few days later there was “last but not least, public Thanksgiving to Almighty God, offered up by Mr. Grinnell in the behalf of the whole company. [Thanks] for His great mercy and protecting care.”
⁷¹⁶

The raiders moved on to Springdale, home to many antislavery Quakers, where they were treated as heroes during a three-week stay. Men from the community accompanied them east on March 9 to West Liberty, where they boarded a railroad box car that was hooked up to a train and transported them to Chicago. The locals were proud to have harbored the Missouri raiders, who by now had the attention of the entire nation through the published
Parallels
and newspaper accounts of their movements and gun battles, but they were also glad to be rid of them. They feared an attack by a large armed posse, rumored to be in the area.

In fact, Brown and Kagi were almost captured while at Springdale when they made an overnight visit to nearby Iowa City. There, a man carrying a rope tied into a hangman’s noose confronted them in a tavern and threatened to hang “the nigger stealers of Kansas.” The man left their table and rejoined a group of men in the street. Some of them remained outside the front door of the tavern and others surrounded the stable where Brown and Kagi’s team of wagon horses were housed. The two men managed to leave the tavern and found refuge in a safe house outside of town. They slipped away unnoticed in the morning, fortunately not taking a road out of the area where a band of men with guns were taking target practice, telling a passerby that they were waiting to shoot “Old John Brown.” If Brown, Kagi, Stevens, and Gill were trapped in Springdale, they told the residents there, they would shoot their way out, endangering the locals. “Just give me a house and I’ll defend [it] against forty,” bragged Stevens, the man who had killed David Cruise. One man “declared that he did actually see the sparks [of anger] flying from Stevens’s eyes.”
⁷¹⁷

Brown’s exodus to Canada was not a happy one at first. Several posses in Kansas, and then in Iowa, were looking for him long after the Battle of the Spurs. He brooded over his disputes with Wattles and Montgomery and his demeanor was sour. Gill wrote that Brown had come to see himself as a messianic figure and was vindictive toward some, even his raiders and sons. That annoyed his followers, who were also tired from the raid, the hiding, and the march.
⁷¹⁸

Spirits had improved by the time they reached Chicago, though. The train had traveled through or stopped at numerous towns throughout Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln had just barely lost the election to the U.S. Senate to Stephen Douglas. No law enforcement officer or public official at any of those communities stopped the train to arrest Brown and the fugitives, although it would have been very easy to have done so.

The refugee train pulled quietly into Chicago at 3:30 a.m. on March 11, 1858, nearly three months after the rescue. Someone met Brown and his freed slaves at the empty train station and drove them in wagons through the dark streets of Chicago to the home of Allan Pinkerton, at the corner of Fifth Street and Franklin Street. Pinkerton was the head of a detective agency. He would later become Abraham Lincoln’s personal bodyguard and, after the Civil War, his agency would become the nation’s most famous. The refugees arrived at precisely 4:30 a.m. Pinkerton did not expect them and answered the knock on his door with a revolver in his hand. Surprised to see Brown and the party, Pinkerton let them all into his house, hugging Brown when he walked through the door. Pinkerton had used his home as a safe house on the Underground Railroad for years, and was happy to assist his most famous runaways. His wife, roused by the noise downstairs, took everyone into the kitchen and cooked them breakfast.

Brown told Pinkerton that he was out of money and needed clothing for himself and his party and about $500 to rent another railroad car to move on by rail to Detroit, where he planned to cross the Detroit River into Canada. Pinkerton hid Brown and his party in his home and in two other safe houses in the city over the next several days as he discreetly tried to gather clothes and cash. Pinkerton was frantic that he could not raise the money. The Chicago Judiciary Convention was meeting in town that week and the detective, a member, blurted out to a group of lawyers and judges on a committee that John Brown and his much-publicized refugees were hiding out in Chicago and needed funds to make it out of the country. There was a long pause and then one of the lawyers rose, walked to the head of the table, opened his wallet, and gave Pinkerton $50. Others followed and within just ten minutes the detective raised $600, more than he needed.