the house, but was overtaken by his assailant and cut down. There was a younger brother of the Doyles, then sixteen years of age, in the house, whose life was spared at his mother's tearful entreaty.

From this place the "Northern army," as the commander styled the little band, proceeded down the creek to the house of Allen Wilkinson, which was entered in the same manner and by the same men. Mrs. Wilkinson was at the time sick with the measles. When the men rapped at the door, she begged her husband not to open it. The men outside asked him to come out and show them the way to Dutch Henry's. He replied that he could tell them just as well without opening the door. The Browns then commanded him to surrender in the name of the แ Northern army," and to open the door or they would break it open. The door was opened, and four men entered and searched the house for arms, taking a gun and powder-flask. They then told Mr. Wilkinson to put on his clothes and go with them. He protested, saying that his wife was sick, and that he would remain at home and be ready to answer to any charge against him whenever wanted. Mrs. Wilkinson entreated, but the Captain said, "It matters not," and marched her husband away, without even giving him time to put on his boots. He was killed about one hundred and fifty yards from the house by the younger Browns, acting under the Captain's orders.

At about two o'clock in the morning the party reached Dutch Henry's Crossing, and knocked at the door of a house where were four men sleeping and a woman and children. The names of the men were James Harris, William Sherman, Jerome Glanville, and John S. Whiteman. The "Northern army" announced itself as usual, commanded surrender, inquired about other proslavery men, about arms, saddles, horses, and whether the men present had ever aided proslavery men in coming to the Territory, or done the Free-State party any harm, or intended to do it any harm. Satisfactory answers were received from Harris and Whiteman, and they were allowed to remain where they were found. William Sherman was killed in the same manner as the younger Doyles and Wilkinson. The horrible gashes made by the broadswords or sabers of the Browns gave rise to the story that the victims were mutilated; but there is no reason to think that the bodies were hacked or cut after life was extinct. The "Northern army" now, with a single prisoner, Jerome Glanville,

retraced its steps to the camp of the previous evening, where the wagon and horses had been left. They breakfasted there and remained in camp till nearly noon.

As the early light of that Sunday morning, May 25, 1856, came over that new land, so lately a wilderness, showing here and there at wide intervals a cabin, with a little field of planted ground, it revealed five ghastly corpses lying in the grass. Two widows, with their fatherless children, were weeping over their dead. They knew then what the world does not know even yet, that this was the work of John Brown. And the same morning light found the stern commander of the army of seven in camp with his men and prisoner. As he lifts his hands to heaven to ask a blessing on the food, the "dried" blood of his victims is seen upon them by the prisoner. The prisoner was set at liberty during the morning, but was a little too free in what he said about the Browns, and was shot not long afterward, near Black Jack, while on his way to Kansas City in a wagon. His death was, of course, attributed to the Browns, but this is not clearly established, and probably never can be. He may have been mistaken about the blood on the old man's hands as a literal fact, but the stain upon his character from that night's work can never be washed away. And it ought not to be forgotten, overlooked, nor forgiven. It is right at this late day to publish it to all the world, and let the story have its full effect upon the young who are forming their estimate of the man.

The story as here related is true beyond a doubt in all essential particulars. It rests upon the testimony of no single witness, but upon the perfect agreement of many. Its truth was confessed by Brown himself explicitly upon one occasion, implicitly many times. The killing of these men was never attributed to anybody else, and nobody in Kansas doubts that it was done under John Brown's authority.

The community at first was startled and shocked by the reports of these midnight murders. Old John Brown and his company of seven arrived at the camp they had left on Ottawa Creek about midnight between Sunday and Monday after the assassinations. The news was known there the next morning, and John Brown, Jr., immediately resigned his command of the rifle company, mounted his horse and rode away home. He was soon after arrested for this crime and severely used, it is said, being driven, chained, many miles in the hot sun until he became

insane. His father used to show the chain in the East on his money-raising excursions, and showed great emotion in narrating John Junior's sufferings and consequent insanity. He may well have shown emotion. That son suffered for his father's crime, which at that very time he was hiding and denying. Insane, a raving maniac, for awhile John Junior certainly was, as his fellowprisoners testify. And the form of his raving was all connected with this affair. "When the conversation turned, as it sometimes did, upon the Potawatomie murder, and we attempted to excuse his father for that act, giving the mitigating circumstances current among the Free-State men at the time, his eyes would sparkle with unwonted brilliancy, his manner would assume the wildest excitement, and, in a loud and boisterous voice, which was uncommon to him, he would exclaim: 'Do not attempt to offer anything in palliation of such a crime. Nothing can exuse it. It was unequaled in atrocity and displayed only cowardice. Had the same deed been done in open day it would have shown more manliness, but to call men from their beds at midnight and to cut them down in cold blood is infinitely more savage than was the chopping in pieces by a drunken rabble of R. P. Brown at Easton.' And thus he would run on for a long time, much more vehemently than we can possibly describe." So speaks G. W. Brown, a fellow-prisoner, in the "Herald of Freedom" for November 5, 1859. The condemnation of old John Brown in this is a little too methodical for madness, it may be; but there are other witnesses that his ravings were like this in substance.

The effect of these murders was very great upon the community and on the fortunes of Kansas; but it was not at all what the commander of the "Northern army" anticipated. He expected to precipitate a revolution; but instead of this, the abolitionists of Lawrence, even, almost unanimously denounced the deed. Public resolutions were passed concerning the matter, lamenting it as most unfortunate. The Missourians, however, came on, inflamed with righteous wrath, hunting old John Brown and his boys, ready to shoot them at sight. Frederick they did shoot thus, and they burned the cabins of all the Browns and all their kin, drove away their stock, and took vengeance upon them in whatever ways they could. Brown's resistance, and how he fought at Black Jack, are well known. It is not generally understood, however, that all this fighting at Osawatomie and Black Jack grew out of the Potawatomie

assassinations. The impression was really made in the East at the time, and has prevailed since, that the Potowatomie affair was in retaliation for these abuses and outrages committed upon the Browns by the Border Ruffians. But our theme now is not so much the effect of this affair upon Kansas as its bearing upon the character of Brown himself and its importance as a factor in making up our judgment concerning his career and greatness. Still, if the result of those murders had been good, and had that good been foreseen and foretold by Brown, it would be something in his favor. But this cannot be said. What Brown thought he foresaw never came; there was no revolution, and not a slave was freed. Only evil to Kansas resulted, so far as can be judged with any sort of certainty.

The effect of this crime upon the character and career of old John Brown was pervasive, decisive, overwhelming. After that night he knew that his life was forfeit; and he fought, and begged, and planned with a desperateness born of his danger. He could not live in Kansas, he could not live safely or peacefully anywhere. He must fight on to the end now. The Rubicon was passed. He cut off his long beard, probably as a disguise, and sought help in New England, reciting the woes of his family, but concealing their cause. His desperate earnestness won the confidence and the hearts of some of New England's greatest and noblest men. Had they known fully what he was and what he had done, or even what he intended, they would not have armed and helped him as they did.

In 1857, it was believed in Kansas that there was a secret plot for the massacre of the members of the Lecompton Constitutional Convention. This convention was very odious to the Radical wing of the Free-State party. Old John Brown was at the time hovering on the border of Missouri, in Iowa, waiting for a signal to come and assist in the bloody work. The plot was discovered and failed, and again Brown was disappointed. Such a plot, had it been executed, would have been in the line of his plans and expectation. was his idea of beginning a war against the South. After this failure, he ventured again into Kansas, and made al sudden raid into Missouri and captured some slaves, which he took safely to Canada. A peaceable and unarmed man was killed on this excursion - not intentionally, it is said. But Brown referred to the matter in his dying speech, and said these

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slaves were freed without harm to any one, without even the snapping of a gun." His accounts of his exploits before his Eastern friends, never modest, were seldom truthful. The real hero of Black Jack was Captain Shore. Osawatomie was not a victory, but a defeat of the Free-State party, and no particular bravery was shown by anybody. Old John Brown ran away in time to save his life, which was all well enough; only there is a popular impression that he did great things at the "Battle of Osawatomie." That fight, the pillage, and the burning were in consequence of his crimes, and for the whole he deserves censure rather than praise.

At the time of Brown's execution in Virginia, which was called in Boston his public murder, while the deluded abolitionists were exalting to the skies a man they did not know, a Free State paper, "The Herald of Freedom" of Lawrence, was printing the plain unvarnished truth about him and begging the Republicans of America not to make a hero of him. Boston replied: "Of course, the small men in Kansas can see no greatness in Brown. Those who live near a hero never know him, he is often rejected by all of his generation. The distant view is the true view. Here we get the man in true perspective and his greatness is clear as sunlight." Against these generalities we will not argue, for they doubtless contain a measure of truth; but as applied to Brown they are fallacious wholly. Viewed in the largest possible way, there is little that is admirable in this man's character; and if our civilization is worth anything, his entire public or fighting career is to be utterly condemned. was right for Free-State citizens in Kansas to defend their homes; but old John Brown never had a home there to defend, and his influence led most of his sons to early graves. It may have been justifiable to steal slaves from their masters and free them; such is the writer's opinion; but in this sort of work Brown never acted with any discretion, not even with common good sense, if freeing the slaves had been his chief object. But his real object, from the fatal night on the Potawatomie till his death, was to provoke the South and to commit the North to violence and bring on a war. He did not do it; and, dispassionately weighed after twenty years, the verdict of thoughtful men must be that his influence in bringing on the war that afterward came was infinitesimal. That war was brought on by Northern votes and Southern secession. The war sentiment caught up the name of VOL. CXXXVII.-NO. 324.

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