Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/551



been a member of Company F, First United States Dragoons. In May, 1855, he and three comrades had been court-martialed for assaulting Major Longstreet, who was afterward General Lee’s famous Lieutenant-General in the War of the Rebellion. They were sentenced to be shot, but the President commuted the punishment to three years in the penitentiary. Stevens made his escape, changed his name to Whipple and became a famous colonel in the Free State army during the Kansas War. John Henri Kagi was an accomplished writer and stenographer, a correspondent of the New York Post and an eloquent public speaker. Richard Realf was a young Englishman of rare talents, a poet and orator and had been a protegé of Lady Byron. John E. Cook was a young man, brave and chivalrous, a fine writer and poet. His young wife was a sister of the wife of Governor Willard of Indiana. Such were some of the young men enlisted in the Harper’s Ferry plan for liberating slaves. John Brown made his home with John H. Painter and won the warm friendship of William Maxson, Dr. H. G. Gill, Griffith Lewis, Moses Varney and other good citizens of Springdale.

During the winter he revealed to some of his friends his plans for the future and the purpose for which he was drilling his followers. Not one of these looked with favor upon his desperate enterprise and all tried to dissuade him from such a hazardous and hopeless undertaking. They saw clearly that he would find the whole power of the Federal Government arrayed against the forcible liberation of slaves and that his attempt must end in the death or imprisonment of all engaged in it. But nothing could shake the resolve of the fearless old emancipator. He firmly believed that he could strike a blow at slavery that would eventually result in its overthrow. His faith was so firm and confidence in success so great, that several young men from Springdale and vicinity enlisted, among whom were George B. Gill, Edwin and Barclay Coppoc and Steward Taylor.