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'