THE interest attaching to this little book demands from me some notice of its author, and of my indebtedness to him while preparing, twenty years ago, a "Life and Letters of John Brown," which has since become the basis of several biographies of that hero. Dr. J. W. Winkley, long a citizen of Boston, was one of those who, in 1856, became a Free State colonist of Kansas Territory, then the skirmish-ground of the long conflict between free labor and Negro slavery. His residence there was brief (1856 and 1857), as was that of many who went out in the years 1855-'58 to take part on one side or the other of the contest; but he had the good fortune, as a youth, in the perceptive and receptive period of life, to come under the influence of a hero; and this book portrays the incidents of that interesting acquaintance. Nearly thirty years later he communicated to me this story, and I succinctly mentioned it in my book. But it required a fuller statement; especially since it seems largely to have escaped the notice of the chroniclers of that disturbed and confused period of 1856. The partisan movements here described came in between two of Brown's famous fights,—that of Black Jack, in early June, when he captured the Virginian captain, Pate, and that in the end of August, when he repelled the formidable attack of the Missourians upon the small settlement of Osawatomie. The brothers Winkley and their comrades took up arms in the neighborhood of Osawatomie, after the engagements of the first two weeks in August, which culminated in the capture of several camps or "forts" of the Southern invaders of eastern Kansas, August 14 and 16. Fort Saunders, not far from Lawrence was taken by a Free State force under General Lane, August 14. On the 16th, another Pro-slavery "fort," garrisoned by a Colonel Titus, was captured, near Lecompton. The reason for these attacks was thus given by John Brown, Jr., then a prisoner at Lecompton, guarded by Captain Sackett with a force of United States dragoons (August 16, 1856):

"During the past month the Ruffians have been actively at work, and have made not less than five intrenched camps, where they have, in different parts of the Territory, established themselves in armed bands, well provided with arms, provisions, and ammunition. From these camps they sally out, steal horses, and rob Free State settlers (in several cases murdering them), and then slip back into their camp with their plunder. Last week, a body of our men made a descent upon Franklin (four miles south of Lawrence) and, after a skirmishing fight of about three hours, took their barracks and recovered some sixty guns and a cannon, of which our men had been robbed some months since, on the road from Westport. Yesterday our men invested another of their fortified camps, at Washington Creek.... Towards evening the enemy broke and fled, leaving behind, to fall into the hands of our men, a lot of provisions and 100 stand of arms.... This morning our men followed Colonel Titus closely, and fell upon his camp (near Lecompton), killed two of his men, liberated his prisoners, took him and ten other prisoners, and with a lot of arms, tents, provisions, etc., returned, having in the fight had only one of our men seriously wounded.... This series of victories has caused the greatest fear among the Pro-slavery men. Great numbers are leaving for Missouri.... I see by the Missouri papers that they regard John Brown as the most terrible foe they have to encounter. He stands very high with the Free State men who will fight, and the great majority of these have made up their minds that nothing short of war to the death can save us from extermination."

Immediately following the date of this letter of young John Brown came the adventures which Dr. Winkley so well describes. They may have had no other chronicler; and it is well that the testimony of an eye-witness should at last be given, ending with the striking incident, just following the Osawatomie fight of August 30, when young Winkley, in the log-cabin of the missionary Adair, husband of Brown's half-sister, saw John Brown sternly mourning over the body of his son Frederick, killed on the morning of the fight, on the high prairie above Osawatomie. I visited Mr. Adair in this cabin, in 1882, and talked with him on the events of that year of contention, and the pictures here printed of his prairie home are true to the fact as I then saw it. Two weeks after the burial of Frederick Brown, as mentioned by Dr. Winkley (September 14, 1856), Charles Robinson, who had commissioned John Brown as captain nine months earlier, wrote to him by that title from Lawrence, and said in his letter:

"Your course has been such as to merit the highest praise from every patriot, and I cheerfully accord to you my heartfelt thanks for your prompt, efficient, and timely action against the invaders of our rights and the murderers of our citizens. History will give your name a proud place on her pages, and posterity will pay homage to your heroism in the cause of God and humanity."

Robinson was at this time the nominal leader of the Free State settlers, being their duly chosen State Governor under the Topeka Constitution; and he became the first actual Free State Governor in 1861, when Kansas was admitted to the Union under another Constitution. Many years later, at the dedication of a monument commemorating the Osawatomie fight (August 30, 1877), Charles Robinson said, among other things:

"The soul of John Brown was the inspiration of the Union armies in the emancipation war; and it will be the inspiration of all men in the present and the distant future who may revolt against tyranny and oppression; because he dared to be a traitor to the government that he might be loyal to humanity."

Dr. Winkley agrees in this statement of Robinson; and his portrayal of the man as he was in the midst of surprises and responsibilities, but ever the same intrepid and resourceful leader, will add a new picture to those we already had of John Brown in action. Active or in chains, in the battlefield or in his Virginia prison, he always commanded attention, and received the applause of those who knew him.

The verdict of the world has confirmed this praise; and of all the men connected with the dark and bloody story of Kansas, from 1854 till the close of the Civil War, Brown's name is the most widely known. Blame has been mingled with praise; but the involuntary tribute paid, by the natural human heart, to invincible courage and unwearied self-sacrifice will insure the prevalence of praise over blame. Those who cannot approve all his acts, as Dr. Winkley cannot, are yet convinced generally of the high purpose and grand result of his arduous life. Richard Mendenhall, a Kansas Quaker, who knew him well but "could not sanction his mode of procedure," yet said, after Brown's death in Virginia:

"Men are not always to be judged so much by their actions as by their motives. I believe John Brown was a good man, and that he will be remembered for good in time long hence to come."

Quite recently an English author, William Stevens, writing a history of slavery and emancipation, has occasion to name John Brown, and the warmth of his eulogy does not satisfy the cool judgment of that most reflective journal, the London Spectator, which says:

"Mr. Stevens asks if Brown did not see the forces moving towards abolition more clearly than did his friends who protested against the daring of his schemes: yet he emphasizes too much, surely, the forlorn recklessness of the man's methods. But a more fearless, resolute, and cooler-headed man never lived. His family life, the devotion of his own flesh and blood to him, and his tenderness were indications of a character intensely human, but also of a man who had counted the cost and knew that the individual must yield to the race. He lit, not a candle, but a powder-magazine; and his last words prove that he foresaw, as plainly as man ever saw sunrise follow dawn, that blood, and blood alone, would loosen the shackles of the slave."

Events, in fact, followed the track which Brown pointed out, and with a swiftness that startled even such as accepted his clear insight of the national situation. There was something prophetic in his perception of the future; he could not see well what was directly before him, but of the consequences of his action, and of that of other men, he had the most piercing and sagacious view. Such men appear on earth but rarely; when they come, it is as martyrs and seers. Fatal are their perceptions, and to themselves as well as to the order of things they subvert. But it is more fatal to disregard the warning they give. Their remedy for existing ills, sharp as it must be, is for the healing of the nations and for the relief of man's estate.

F. B. Sanborn.

Concord, January, 1905.