Old John Brown, the man whose soul is marching on by Walter Hawkins
page 26 of 53 (49%)
page 26 of 53 (49%)
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There was much skirmishing, during which two of Brown's sons were
taken prisoners. Only the constant vigilance and undaunted courage of a few desperately bold men kept heart in the lovers of liberty. But they (often led by John Brown) escaped the government officials who sought to arrest them and sped to the help of those who were marked as the victims of the marauders. So slowly did the Federal Authorities awake to the situation that for a time there seemed little protection to be expected for persecuted lovers of liberty. We must now form. some estimate of the two sides in this irregular warfare in which John Brown all through the summer of 1856 was so prominently engaged. On the one hand were those whom the slave-holders relied upon for the most part to do their dirty work--ruffians, many of them from the neighbouring State; men who did not work, but who lived a wild life--not cultivating a tract of land around their rude dwelling-place like honest settlers, but fishing, shooting, and thieving for a living--preferring the atmosphere of a Slave State as more favourable to their life of lawlessness and plunder, and finding inspiration in the whisky-bottle for such deeds of devilry as have been described. Upon the other side, waging a guerilla warfare--for little else was possible against enemies who preferred sneaking outrages to pitched battles--were little companies of some score or two. Captain John Brown's company was ever to the fore. He felt that outrage had gone far enough unchecked, and that it was time honest men took the aggressive and struck terror into cowards' |
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