The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 25

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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.sed 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 doc.u.ment 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 surpa.s.sing 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 Const.i.tution, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 compa.s.s 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.