We now find John Brown busy for a while in the Northern States addressing Abolitionist meetings, collecting funds for the cause, and co-operating with the Anti-slavery Committees, of which there were several thousands. In many homes where the friends of freedom lived he was a welcome guest, not least welcomed by the children, who always seemed to refresh his weary heart. 'Out of the mouths of children,' as the psalmist says (according to one version), 'God gives strength to true men.' You might often have seen him holding up a little two-year-old child, saying, 'When John Brown is hanged as a traitor she can say she used to stand on John Brown's hand.' He was no false prophet!
Now also he was able to revisit, after two years' absence, the old homestead where his wife and children were awaiting him, down to the little one whom he had left an infant in the cradle. 'Come,' says the strange father to the little prattler, 'I have sung it to all of them; I must sing it to you.'
Blow ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound:
Let all the nations know
To earth's remotest bound.
The year of Jubilee is come,
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
In strains to which a soul on fire gave enchantment and a tunefulness of their own he sang that song of Moses and the Lamb, telling of the Jewish charter of Liberty to which Christ in His turn gave larger meaning; and the little eyes in the room beheld a transfigured face which they remembered when he had ceased blowing the trumpet of Jubilee, and when they sang the same hymn as they laid him beneath the sod outside that cabin door.
But not long could he stay at home. The year of Jubilee for all these bondmen was his one thought, and he found friends who regarded him as a tried man and were prepared to trust him implicitly. Such men as Beecher and Theodore Parker gave him help spiritual; men like the wealthy Stearns gave him help financial to the extent of many thousand dollars, and were content to know that John Brown, however he spent it (and concerning his plans he was always reticent), would have but one object—liberty to the captive.
One way in which it was spent was in the working of what was then known as the underground railway. The opportunist statesman—Henry Clay—had led many Northern voters to tolerate the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, under which the Federal Government facilitated the enforced return of fugitive slaves found in free states to the plantations of the South. And the Abolitionists in the North, as a set-off against this detested legislation, gave themselves with much zest to aid the runaway slave. If a slave could escape to the swamps or the forest and elude the bloodhounds on his track, he knew that at certain points he would find those who were prepared to house him, and, passing him on secretly from station to station, ensure his arrival at a terminus where he would be safe for life. That was Canada, the country where the Union Jack waves—the flag of 'Britons' who 'never shall be slaves' and are prepared to grant to all the priceless boon they claim themselves. This escape was called 'shaking the paw of the lion.' May that British lion never be transformed into a sleek tiger; may his paw ever be outreached to a runaway slave, and his roar be a terror to all who would market in human flesh and blood!
This chain of well-known houses and locations was called the underground railway; and, spite of penalties of imprisonment oft inflicted, it never lacked porters or guards; and if the trains did not always run to time it was because they were very cautious against accident. Some 30,000 passengers were probably conveyed on this line. You will not be surprised to find John Brown an active 'guard,' and under the name of 'Shubel Morgan' or 'Hawkins' he did good service there. See him making his way with twelve fugitive slaves from Missouri, through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan to Canada. It is the dead of winter, and the rough wagons travel heavily and slowly along the drifted roads. There is a price on his head in these Southern States—3,250 dollars offered conjointly by the Governor of Missouri and President Pierce—and the stations are sometimes thirty miles apart. They come to a creek, and there is the State Marshal awaiting them with eighty armed men—for he thought he had better have a good force, as he heard it was John Brown he might encounter. John puts his host of twenty-three men all told into battle array in front of the wagons, and gives the laconic order, 'Now go straight at 'em, boys, they are sure to run.' Into the water his men charge—but the baptism of water is all they are fated to pass through; there is no baptism of fire to follow, for, scared at the impulsive charge, and filled with vague terror at that irrepressible John Brown, the Marshal springs upon his horse and skedaddles. His men scramble to their horses. Some cannot untie them from the shrubs quickly enough; several animals carry two men, and, to complete the ludicrousness of the scene, one man, fearing he might be too late, grips fast the tail of the steed to which the proper rider has just set spurs, and, vainly trying to spring on behind, is seen with his feet off the ground, being whirled through the air. A few prisoners are speedily added to Brown's little company, who, thinking it is perhaps prudent to keep men off horseback who were so prone to flight, orders them to walk.
But he has ideas of courtesy, has this rough old warrior, and says he means them no unkindness and will walk with them. Such a favourable opportunity must in no wise be missed, so the old soldier-prophet gives them his mind upon the wickedness of slave-holding and the meanness of slave-hunting, which discourse, let us hope, is not wholly unfruitful. When he has held them for one night he thinks they have been brought far enough from their haunts to prevent further mischief, and sets them free. That one night spent with him they are not likely to forget. He would not so much as allow them the privilege of swearing. 'No taking of God's name in vain gentlemen; if there is a God you will gain nothing, and if there is none you are fools indeed.' Such is the old man's plain argument.
One of them, a harum-scarum young physician, is taken specially under charge by John Brown. Before retiring Brown desires him to pray. 'I can't pray,' he says, with an oath. 'What, did your mother never teach you?' asks Brown. 'Oh yes,' he replies; 'but that was a long time ago.' 'Well, you still remember the prayer she taught you?' continued Brown. 'Yes,' is the answer. 'Say that for want of a better,' is the order. Then, to the amusement of all, the poor doctor repeats the rhyme:
And now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Said the young doctor after he was released, 'John Brown knows more about religion than any man I ever met. He never used harsh language; we were treated like gentlemen; we shared food with them. Only it went against the grain to be guarded by niggers.'
Thus the journey proceeds. As they get farther north there is more bark than bite about the opposition they encounter. In the street at one town where they are sheltered, Brown strolls alone and finds a champion of slavery haranguing the crowd and denouncing Brown as a reckless, bloody outlaw, a coward who skulked and would never fight in the open. Warming to a climax the orator proclaims, 'If I could get a sight of him I would shoot him on the spot; I would never give him a chance to steal any more slaves.' 'My friend,' says a plain-looking countryman—no other than John Brown himself—on the outskirts of the throng, 'you talk very brave; and as you will never have a better opportunity to shoot old Brown than right here and now, you can have a chance.' But his powder was damped—or his courage!
Now the journey is over. The twelve fugitives have become thirteen, for a little infant has been born on the march, never to know, thank God, the horrors the mother has left behind. The child is named after his deliverer 'John Brown,' who conducts them safely across the ferry and places them under the shelter of the Union Jack on the Canadian shore. Then the old man reverently pronounces his 'Nunc dimittis,' 'Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.' 'I could not brook the thought that any ill should befall them, least of all that they should be taken back to slavery. The arm of Jehovah has protected us.' Before many months those rescued ones were weeping at the news that John Brown was condemned to die, and were saying 'Would that we could die instead.'
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