Busy in the Cause: Iowa, the Free-State Struggle in the West, and the Prelude to the Civil War

8. Heaven Sent

8 Heaven Sent I Back in Kansas, John Brown and a few of the men—George Gill, Aaron Stevens, John Kagi, and Charles Tidd—briefly stayed around Lawrence and in early July moved on to southeast Kansas , where they hung about into the fall. These southeastern counties lay below the big bend in the Missouri River where no natural boundaries separated Missouri and Kansas. The area was still in turmoil, having been relatively untouched by FreeState successes in 1856.1 The situation was especially unsettled in Linn and Bourbon Counties, which bordered on Missouri. After proslavery guerrilla bands had driven them out earlier, Free-State settlers began coming back during 1857. Soon violence erupted in land disputes, as proslavery public officials intimidated and harassed Free-State arrivals. Trouble centered about Fort Scott in Bourbon County and Paris, the Linn County seat where proslavery leadership dominated. Radical Free-State partisans rallied behind James Montgomery, who lived near Mound City in Linn County. The guerrilla chieftain in 1857 stood where John Brown had been the year before, the object of arrest warrants and attacks but highly regarded by Free-State settlers looking for protection. In early July 1858 Brown, Kagi, and Tidd visited James Montgomery at his log cabin with the thought of joining forces. Only six 126 . . Heaven Sent weeks earlier thirty proslavery men under Charles A. Hamelton (spelled Hamilton by some writers) retaliated for Montgomery’s men having driven them into Missouri. Hamelton and others crossed back to Kansas near the Marais des Cygnes in northeastern Linn County and, grabbing whatever Free-State settlers they came upon, forced eleven men into a ravine. Standing above, they shot them down, killing five and wounding five, and one lay uninjured after feigning being hit. In response Montgomery raided West Point, Missouri, in search of two proslavery assassins , but they escaped.2 With such disorder in the border counties, Kansas territorial governor James Denver conducted a personal inspection and wrote: “We passed through a country almost depopulated by the depredations of the predatory bands under Montgomery, presenting a scene of desolation such as I never expected to have witnessed in any country inhabited by American citizens. . . .” Brown, while doubtless disagreeing that Montgomery was the sole cause, did see all around that “deserted farms and dwellings lie in all directions for some miles along the line, and the remaining inhabitants watch every appearance of persons moving about, with anxious jealousy and vigilance.”3 The Hamelton massacre hung as a shroud over the area when John Brown encamped about 220 yards from the deep ravine where the widely reported murders occurred. Here, within a quarter mile from the Missouri line, he began to enlist men under the assumed name of the Shubel Morgan Company. Soon his company contained ten men, including six of the previous winter’s trainees at Springdale, Iowa, plus four others who had escaped Hamelton’s clutches. Brown’s own men included his son Owen, John Kagi, Aaron Stevens (Charles Whipple), Charles Tidd, William Leeman, and George Gill. Though Brown kept quiet about being back in Kansas, his presence soon became known, increasing local residents’ fears in this part of Kansas and adjacent Missouri. Soon, Territorial Governor Denver placed Heaven Sent . . 127 an armed posse on the adjacent quarter section at the KansasMissouri border.4 Brown’s thought of joining together with James Montgomery’s force, which was larger in number than any Brown had commanded , did not last long. His praise for Montgomery as a gentlemanly , brave natural leader of integrity and purpose gradually bumped up against Montgomery’s own headstrong ideas, which led Brown—rankled at any thought of serving under another—to go it alone. This choice was not so for his men, who went back and forth between the two “captains” and served depending on the excitement of the moment.5 The Old Captain’s bouts of the ague, a malarial-like condition with alternating chills, fever, and sweating, reduced his active leadership in southeast Kansas. His plain, frugal encampment had likely brought it on, he thought, for “I had lain every night without shelter, suffering from cold rains and heavy dews, together with the oppressive heat of the days.” He first came down with ague July 23, and it continued until well into November. Throughout , his letters were regularly sprinkled with comments of “very feeble,” “very weak, and write with great labor,” “still weak,” and...