490 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



recruits. I placed twelve recruits in a log house to defend the town. I then gathered 

 fifteen more men together who were armed with guns, and started in the direction of 

 the enemy, who were approaching the town in line of battle. I gave up the idea 

 of doing more than to annoy them from the timber into which we all retreated. I had 

 no time to recall the twelve in the log house, and lost their assistance in the fight. I 

 met Captain Cline with twelve or fifteen men and he went with us into the timber on 

 the south shore of the Osage. When the enemy's left wing approached within rifle 

 shot, we began firing and soon threw their line into disorder. Captain Cline's men 

 soon got out of ammunition and retired. After the enemy rallied we kept up our fire 

 until, by the leaving of one and another, we had but six or seven left. We then 

 returned across the river. We had one man killed in the fight ; one shot when 

 crossing the river, and two wounded and two or three yet missing." The 

 enemy's loss he reports as thirty-one or two killed and forty or fifty wounded. 

 Other records verify this report and show that Brown had forty-one men, 

 all told, in the fight at Osawatomie, the enemy about four hundred. His son 

 Frederick, not attached to his force, had been surprised and killed in the road 

 that same morning by a pro-slavery preacher who was with the advance force of 

 the enemy. 



I cannot stop to recount his numerous adventures and battles, all characterized by 

 the reckless daring of one who feared not death, and controlled, directed, and 

 determined by the wisdom of one who overcame force by cunning, supplemented by 

 audacious bravery. 



Impoverished by the long campaigns he had made at his own expense, one son 

 killed, another made a maniac by cruel abuse while a prisoner, and the third son, 

 and his son-in-law Thompson severely wounded, all destitute, having been stripped of 

 every kind of property, in the fall of 1856, with impaired health, he sorrowfully left 

 the country he had so eiTectively helped to defend. But the people of the whole 

 country had learned who he was and for what he fought, and even those who 

 disapproved his course had learned to admire the self-sacrifice and earnest character 

 of Old John Brown of Osawatomie. 



Southern papers and partisans used him as a terrible example and representative of 

 the hated abolitionist, and began to suggest and argue the propriety of cutting loose 

 from a people who upheld and encouraged such outlaws. 



His abandonment of the work in Kansas was not that he had become faint- 

 hearted in the cause, but that he might go to the north and east in hopes of rousing 

 the anti-slavery element of the country to active work. He thought the time had 

 come for real aggressive warfare against slavery. He believed that by invading their 

 country and arming the slaves, and showing them that the dav of their deliverance was 



