Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/554



Seventeenth with James C. Jordan and on the Eighteenth they passed through Des Moines, John Teesdale, of the State Register, paying their ferriage across the Des Moines River. On the Twentieth the party reached Grinnell and were warmly welcomed by Senator J. B. Grinnell and the citizens generally. They had now been on the way more than a month and no one had attempted to earn the large rewards offered for their arrest. The slave hunters seemed to have no relish for a conflict with the famous commander of the Free State Army at the Battle of Black Jack. On the Twenty-fifth they passed through Iowa City where Samuel Workman, the postmaster and Captain Kelley, proposed to raise a party to earn the large rewards offered, by making a night march to Springdale and capturing Brown and his party. But they were unable to find enough volunteers anxious for a fight with the Kansas veterans, who were known to be well armed and among friends. After resting at Springdale some days, arrangements were made by Wm. Penn Clark and others at Iowa City, to procure a box car on the Rock Island Railroad to convey the fugitives and their escort to Chicago. Laurel Summers, United States Marshal at Davenport, was quietly organizing a posse to arrest them when the train reached that city. But Clark had outwitted the officers by arranging for a box car to be side-tracked at West Liberty. Brown and Kagi slept at Dr. Bowen’s at Iowa City on the night fixed for departure. Workman’s spies were watching for Brown, intending to arrest the leader while his party was absent and then seize the slaves. But the slave catchers were hunting men who were on the alert and not easily trapped. At four o’clock, long before daylight, Brown and Kagi, mounted on fast horses, and piloted by Colonel Trowbridge, eluded the spies on watch and were on their way to West Liberty, where the slaves had been secreted in a mill, guarded by Stevens and others. A box car stood on the side track waiting for its human freight. As soon as Brown arrived the slaves were