Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/10

10 Considering the comparative tranquil condition of Kansas at the period referred to, it is not easy to reconcile this act of the "Massachusetts State Kansas Committee" and its chairman with a reasonable regard to the peace of the country, or the lives of their fellow-citizens. These arms, however, with the two hundred rifles, were left from that time in Brown's possession, although as stated by the witness Stearns, at page 228 of the testimony, "the exigency contemplated did not occur," and therefore no part of the $7,000 was drawn by Brown.

At what time Brown procured the pistols, or transported them to the West, appears only from the testimony of Stearns, who says he paid for them, and the freight on them to Iowa, on production to him of the railroad receipt afterwards, in 1858, but it does appear that they were sent along with the Sharp's rifles from Ohio to him, in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry. In 1858, Brown it appears told Stearns that both the rifles and the pistols were then "stored in Ohio." (Page 232 of the testimony.) From the correspondence of John Brown, jr., signing himself "John Smith," with his father, and with J. H. Kagi, (under the name of "J. Henrie,") shortly before the invasion at Harper's Ferry, printed in the Appendix, it will be seen that they were sent by him from Ashtabula county, Ohio, to his father at Harper's Ferry, via Chambersburg.

The testimony of the witnesses, Hurd and Stearns, would show that the arms refused to Brown by the national committee, had been afterwards voted to him by the Massachusetts committee—reference to Hurd's statement (page 250) and to the order given by Stearns to Brown (page 234) for the arms, would from their dates seem to contradict this, but only as to the order of time. The facts interesting to this inquiry are only, were the arms placed under control of Brown; by whom; and when? and this is clearly shown.

It is shown fully, from the testimony, that, although Brown when he first went to Kansas was accompanied by two of his sons, with their families, yet that he never removed his family from New York, and that he subsequently freely and fully avowed that he never had an idea of settling in Kansas, but was attracted to remain there only in the hope that by keeping alive the irritation and excited feeling of the settlers on the subject of slavery, and stimulating and accustoming them to war and bloodshed, he would be enabled in some way to lead them across the borders to incite a servile war in Missouri, from whence he might be able to extend it to other slaveholding States. Ultimately disappointed in this, and so early as the fall of 1857, he seems to have conceived the plan of a distinct invasion of one of the slaveholding States, under the organization and in the manner in which it was afterwards carried into execution in Virginia. This, of course, required the command of large sums of money; and he seems to have so successfully impressed himself and his capacity for conducting what he and his associates styled "the cause of freedom," upon the sickly, if not depraved, sensibilities of his allies in such "cause," as to command their confidence, if he did not altogether lull their suspicions. Letters to and from Brown and others, in the Appendix, give much insight into the manner and the sources whence his funds were derived.