Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/155

Rh than it was, but miserable enough now; and we have got their little crop of beans secured, which together with johnny-cake, mush and milk, pumpkins and squashes, constitute our fare." And he adds, "After all God's tender mercies are not taken from us. . . . I feel more and more confident that slavery will soon die out here—and to God be the praise!" On November 23d he writes: "We have got both families so sheltered that they need not suffer hereafter; have got part of the hay (which had been in cocks) secured; made some progress in preparation to build a house for John and Owen; and Salmon has caught a prairie wolf in a steel trap. We continue to have a good deal of stormy weather—rains with severe winds, and forming into ice as they fall, together with cold nights that freeze the ground considerably. Still God has not forsaken us!" It was thus that John Brown came to Kansas and stood ready to fight for freedom. No sooner had he stepped on Kansas soil, however, than it was plain to him and to others that the cause for which he was fighting was far different from that for which most of the settlers were willing to risk life and property. The difference came out at the first meeting of settlers in the little Osawatomie township. Redpath says: "The politicians of the neighborhood were carefully pruning resolutions so as to suit every variety of anti-slavery extensionists; and