Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/94

 vance-guard. He had some men armed with nothing but pitchforks, but they were not in the advance line. A brass cannon was brought out to support his rifles. There was some desultory firing; and then the Missourians, seeing, no doubt, that the Lawrence men were entirely ready for them, withdrew in good order.

Really, the Kansas battle was now won. Free State men had poured into the Territory. Slavery was impossible there: slave property could not be held, largely as the result of Brown's fierce guerilla warfare. He had seen clearly enough that the Territory could not be made a slave State if no slave could be peaceably held there. But now his mission, as the wielder of the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, called him elsewhere. He had a larger field in view. Whether as early as the end of 1856 he contemplated an attack in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, is not clearly