Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/78

 of their camp, and with, his sons began chaining the distance. The pro-slavery band supposed him to be a government surveyor, and, consequently, a Pro-slavery man; and they did not interfere. Brown counted them, and noted their strength. More than that, he engaged them in conversation, and got out of them the betrayal of a plan for a raid on "Old Brown and his gang"!

There was a good deal of pretence of law, and a good deal of invocation of the "sacred authority of the United States," on the part of the Pro-slavery authorities in Missouri and Kansas at this time, but no real law. The lives of Brown and his sons were threatened by men who were perfectly capable of taking them. A Pro-slavery grand jury "indicted" the Free State Hotel at Lawrence, which the abolitionists had turned into a sort of fortress, and sent a posse, under a "United States deputy marshal, to destroy it. On May 22, Brown