Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/33

 they were not mistaken. They sacrificed their own lives, but the sacrifice proved to be the fire brand that, in less than five years, melted with the red glare of a hundred battle-fields, the shackles from four millions of slaves.

Justice to the memory of the four young men from Iowa, who fought at Harper’s Ferry in John Brown’s band, requires a permanent record of what is known of their brief lives and heroic deaths.

Steward Taylor was born at Uxbridge, Canada, October 29th, 1836. He came to Iowa when but seventeen years old and learned the wagonmaker’s trade at West Liberty. Here he became acquainted with George B. Gill who took him to Springdale in the winter of 1858, and at John H. Painter’s house they met John Brown. Young Taylor was greatly impressed with the fervor of the old “hero of Osawatomie,” and listened eagerly to his recitals of the horrors of American slavery. He made the acquaintance, also, of the young men who were drilling under Stevens at the Maxson farm for the Harper’s Ferry campaign and soon after enlisted with them. When the Chatham Convention was held he went to Canada to attend it. While waiting for the leader to complete his plans for the invasion, Taylor found work at his trade in Illinois. He waited impatiently for many months for notice to join the expedition. At times he feared that he was not to be included in the select band that was to strike the blow and he wrote to an Iowa friend: “My hopes were crushed and I felt as though I was deprived of my chief object in life. I believe that fate has decreed me for this undertaking, although at one time I had given up being wanted.” But early in July, 1859, a letter came from Kagi telling him to “come on.” He wrote back: “It is my chief desire to add fuel to the flame. My ardent passion for the work is my thought by day and my dream by night.” He raised what money was due him and at once started for the rendezvous at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, paying his own expenses. He was now twenty-one years of age and is