Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/82

 Brown was the author of the deed. The Missourians waited until he and his sons were all absent in the direction of Lawrence, and swooped down on their houses, burning them to the ground. The federal military authorities also bestirred themselves; and John, Jr., and Jason were taken prisoners by them, and kept in chains for some time. The younger John Brown had, from anxiety, from horror at the thought of his father having committed the Pottawatomie murders, joined very likely with a tendency inherited from his mother, become temporarily insane. Meantime John Brown the elder, with nine men, and one Captain Shore, with eighteen, encountered and attacked, on June 2, in a ravine at a place called Black Jack, a considerable force of Pro-slavery men under a Virginian named H. Clay Pate. There was a fierce fight, with Brown in command on the Free State side. Through ma-