238 
Indiana University 
At first John Brown did not plan to go to Kansas. The 
hardships of his sons in the new country and the desire to 
resist the encroachments of the proslavery invaders caused 
him to change his mind, however, and, after a long and tedious 
journey, he arrived at their settlement, October 6, 1855. 
He was soon given a commission as “Captain” in the forces 
of the free state men,® and quickly became the most aggres- 
sive and militant of their leaders in the dreadful guerrilla 
warfare that had recently begun in Kansas. 
For two years he engaged in this border warfare. He is 
credited with two so-called victories and one deliberate 
butchery of five unarmed proslavery men who were dragged 
from their homes under cover of darkness and killed in the 
most fiendish and brutal manner.® 
In January, 1857, he was in Boston and appeared before 
a joint committee of the General Court, or legislature, of 
Massachusetts. Here he related all that he had seen in Kan- 
sas in order to secure an appropriation of money to aid the 
free state cause in that territory.^® While in the East, he 
seems to have planned a stroke against slavery in some other 
part of the country than Kansas. This plan was communicated 
to some of his abolition friends. Strange as it may seem, he 
interested a large number of them in his scheme. Many of 
them were people of wealth or standing in the communities 
where they lived. 
His idea was to secure a small body of trusty men, estab- 
lish a rendezvous in the mountains of Virginia, make forays 
into the cultivated districts, seize, arm, and liberate slaves. 
He thought he could fortify himself against attack, subsist 
on the enemy, and make slavery insecure. He believed that 
the field of his operations could be extended indefinitely, that 
recruits would join him, and that in the worst event he could 
retreat to the North or into Canada.^^ 
An adventurer from Europe was engaged to drill the men 
whom Brown had enlisted for this purpose. Being of a greedy 
■ Sanborn, op. cit., 200 ff. 
^Ihid., 214. 
^ These “executions” have been defended by many of Brown’s admirers. Redpath, 
op. cit., chap, i ; Sanborn,, op. cit., chap. ix. No unprejudiced modern historian justifies 
them. See James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 
1850 (7 vols., New York, 1893-1914) , II, 164, and Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 
1800-1859 (Boston, 1910) jj 181. 
Redpath, op. cit., 1T6 ff. No appropriation was made, however. 
Villard, op, cit., 313 ff. 
