John Brown, Abolitionist by David S. Reynolds

Author:David S. Reynolds [Reynolds, David S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48666-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

The dramatic slave-stealing episode had whetted the appetite of his backers for acceleration of the Virginia project. On March 4, San-born enthusiastically wrote Higginson about the slave rescue and reported, “He also says he is ready with some new men to set his mill in operation, and seems to be coming East for that purpose.” Higginson and Parker expected the Virginia invasion to happen within a couple of months.

Brown wanted the same thing, but he knew that more preparations and fund-raising had to be accomplished before the “mill” could run smoothly. His wealthiest supporters were now more inclined than ever to send money his way, though they still preferred not to hear details of the Virginia plan. Between March and September 1859 he would receive some $1,200 from Stearns and $700 from Smith.

Having seen off the twelve liberated blacks in Detroit, Brown went with Kagi to Cleveland in search of personnel and funds. The city boiled with excitement over the fate of the so-called Oberlin rescuers, a large group of Ohio Abolitionists under indictment for violating the Fugitive Slave Act. The previous fall, a black man living in Oberlin had been seized by two slave-hunters who had identified him as a fugitive slave. An angry group of Oberlin professors, students, and black and white residents—thirty-seven in all—staged a rescue, snatching the fugitive from his captors and hiding him. The rescuers were widely cheered throughout Ohio's Western Reserve, a hotbed of Abolitionism, but denounced by proslavery Democrats like Clement L. Vallandigham, who called the incident an “insurrection.”

When Brown and Kagi reached Cleveland on March 15, the rescuers were in jail awaiting their trial, which was scheduled for April 5. Protesters surrounded the prison, chanting Abolitionist slogans. Brown and Kagi visited the rescuers and were inspired by them, in particular by one of the blacks who spoke out forcefully against the Fugitive Slave Act.

On March 22, Brown gave a public speech about his Kansas experiences. Attendance was sparse, since the public was preoccupied with the Oberlin rescuers. Those who came, however, heard firsthand about Brown's penchant for vigilante violence. He declared that his stealing of the Missouri slaves was the kind of action he was ready to take at any moment. If anyone tried to stop him, he would violently resist arrest. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported, he had his own way of dealing with border ruffians: “He believed in settling the matter on the spot, and using the enemy as he would fence stakes—drive them into the ground where they would become permanent settlers.” He did not mention Pottawatomie by name, but he came close to describing his action there. He insisted he had not killed anyone—technically true, perhaps, since James Doyle was probably dead when Brown shot him. But he admitted that “on some occasions, he had shown the young men with him how some things might be done as well as others; and they had done the business.”

A few days after his speech he auctioned off the horses he had stolen in Kansas.

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