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186 John, Jr., who had at last been released, Jason, Salmon, and Oliver, and also, true to his cause, a fugitive slave whom he had chanced upon. As he moved northward the United States troops, unaware of Geary's diplomacy, shadowed and all but captured him. Yet he passed safely through their very midst with his old wagon and cow and the hidden slave, displaying his surveyor's instruments. Thus silently John Brown disappeared from Kansas, and for a year nothing was heard of him in his former haunts. Only his near friends knew that he had gone eastward, and a few of them hinted at his great mission. Matters moved swiftly in Kansas. There was more and more evident a free state majority. But would the pro-slavery administration let it be counted? The new governor was trying to save something for his masters, but the irreconcilables of the Lane and John Brown type doubted it.

"I bless God," wrote Brown in April, "that He has not left the free state men of Kansas to pollute themselves by the foul and loathsome embrace. . . . I have been trembling all along lest they might 'back down' from the high and holy ground they had taken. I say in view of the wisdom, firmness and patience of my friends and fellow sufferers in the cause of humanity, let the Lord's name be eternally praised!" Notwithstanding this attitude of many of the free state party, they were prevailed upon to vote in the state election of October, 1857. As a concession, however, Lane was