Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/146

138 sons were present and active—and a declaration of passive, with a threat of active, resistance to the "bogus" legislature. A peace program was laid down: they would ignore the patent fraud, organize a state and appeal to Congress and the nation. This they did in October and November, 1855, making Topeka their nominal and Lawrence their real capital.

The pro-slavery party, however, was quick to see the weakness of this program and they took the first opportunity to force the free state men into collision with the authorities. A characteristic occasion soon arose: a peaceful free state settler was brutally killed and instead of arresting the murderer, the pro-slavery sheriff arrested the chief witness against him. A few of the bolder free state neighbors released the prisoner and took him to Lawrence. Immediately the sheriff gathered an army of 1,500 deputies from Missouri, and surrounded 500 free state men in Lawrence just after John Brown arrived in Kansas. Things looked serious enough even to the drunken governor, and with the aid of some artifice, liquor and stormy weather, the threatened clash was temporarily averted. The wild and ice-bound winter that fell on Kansas gave a moment's pause, but with the opening spring the pro-slavery forces withered themselves for a last crushing blow. Armed bands came out of the South with flying banners, the Missouri River was blockaded to Northern immigrants, and the border ruffians rode unhindered over the Missouri line. The free state men, alarmed,