God, in His infinite wisdom, has sent us such a man!’
For one horrible instant I thought he meant me. I’ve heard worse, you know, and I knew what this little fanatic was capable of when he had the bit between his teeth. I stared back, stricken, and he asked:
‘What do you know of John Brown?’
That he’s a hairy impertinent lout who can hold more hard liquor than a distillery, was my immediate thought, for the only John Brown I knew was a young ghillie who’d had to be carried home on a hurdle the day I’d gone on that ghastly deer-stalk with Prince Albert at Balmoral, when Ignatieff had come within an ace of filling me with buckshot. But Crixus could never have heard of him, for this, you see, was years before Balmoral Brown had become famous as our gracious Queen’s attendant (and some said, more than that, but it’s all rot, in my opinion, for little Vicky had excellent taste in men, bar Albert; she always fancied me).
I confessed I’d never heard of an American called John Brown, and Crixus said ‘Ah!’ with the satisfied gleam of one who is bursting with great news to tell, which he did, and that was the first I ever heard of Old Ossawatomie, the Angel of the Lord – or the murderous rustler, whichever you like. To Crixus he was God’s own prophet, a kind of Christ with six-guns, but if I give you his version, unvarnished, you’ll start off with a lop-sided view, so I’ll interpolate what I learned later, from Brown himself, and from friends and foes alike, all of it true, so far as I know – which ain’t to say that Crixus wasn’t truthful, too.
‘Picture a Connecticut Yankee, a child of the Mayflower Pilgrims, as American as the soil from which he sprang!’ says he. ‘Born of poor and humble folk, raised in honest poverty, with little schooling save from the Bible, accustomed as a lad to go barefoot alone a hundred miles driving his father’s herd. See him growing to vigorous manhood, strong, independent, and devout, imbued with the love of liberty, not only for himself, but for all men, hating slavery with a deep, burning detestation, yet in his nature kind, benevolent, and wise, though less shrewd in business, in which he had but indifferent success.’
[Flashy: True, for his childhood, but omits that when he was four he stole some brass pins from a little girl, was whipped by his mother, lost a yellow marble given him by an Indian boy, had a pet squirrel, and a lamb which died. On his own admission, J.B. was a ready liar, rough but not quarrelsome, knew great swathes of the Scriptures, and grew up expecting life to be tough. As a man, his business career could indeed be called indifferent, since he made a hash of farming, tanning, sheep-herding, and surveying, accumulated little except a heap of debts, law-suits, and twenty children, and went bankrupt.]
‘Then, sir, about twenty years ago, he conceived a plan – nay, a wondrous vision, whereby slavery in the United States might be destroyed at a stroke. It was revolutionary, it was inspired, but his genius told him it was premature, and wisely he kept it in his heart, shared only with a few whom he trusted. These comprehended his sons, on whom he laid, by sacred oaths, the duty to fight against slavery until it was slain utterly! That duty,’ says Crixus, ‘they began to fulfil when, grown to manhood, they sought their fortunes in Kansas, on whose blood-drenched soil was fought the first great battle between Abolitionist and Slaver, between Freedom and Tyranny, between Mansoul and Diabolus – and there, Mr Comber, in the scorching heat of that furnace of conflict, was tempered the soul and resolution of him whom we are proud to call Captain John Brown!’
[Flashy: We’ll leave the ‘wondrous vision’ for the moment, if you don’t mind, and deal with ‘Bleeding Kansas’, which like everything to do with American politics is difficult, dull, and damned dirty, but you need to know about it if you’re to understand John Brown. The great question was: should Kansas be a free state or a slave one, and since it was up to the residents to decide, and America being devoted to democracy, both factions rushed in ‘voters’ from the free North and the slave South (Missouri, mostly), elections were rigged, ballot-boxes were stuffed, and before you knew it fighting and raiding had broken out between the Free Staters and the ‘Border Ruffians’ of the slavery party. Brown and his sons had joined in on the free side, and taken to strife like ducks to water. It was the first real armed clash between North and South, and you get the flavour of the thing from the Missouri orator who advised: ‘Be brave, be orderly, and if any man or woman stand in your way, blow ’em to hell with a chunk of cold lead!’]17
‘Nor was it long,’ says Crixus, ‘before Captain Brown’s fame as a champion of freedom was heard throughout the land. Too late to prevent the wanton destruction of the town of Lawrence by Border Ruffians, he was moved to wrath by the news that the conflict had spread to the halls of Congress, where the brave Senator Sumner raised his voice against the despoilers of Lawrence, and was clubbed almost to death in his very seat by a coward from South Carolina! In the very Senate, Mr Comber! Conceive if you can, sir, the emotions stirred in the honest bosom of John Brown – and ask yourself, is it matter for wonder that when, a few hours later, he came on Southern bullies threatening violence to a Free State man, he should smite them with the sword? Yet there are those who would call this just chastisement murder, and clamour for the law to be invoked against him!’
[Flashy: Well, Crixus was only saying what he and most of the North believed, but the truth of the matter was that Brown and his boys had gone to the homes of five pro-slave men who weren’t threatening anybody, ordered them outside, and sliced ’em up like so much beef with sabres; the men were unarmed, and it was done in cold blood. J.B. himself never denied the deed, though he claimed not to have killed anyone himself. That was the Pottawatomie Massacre, the first real reprisal by the Free Staters, and the most notorious act of J.B.’s life, bar Harper’s Ferry three years later, and even his worshippers have never been able to explain it away; most of ’em just ignore it.]
‘So now,’ says Crixus, ‘he was a hunted outlaw, he and his brave band. They must live like beasts in the wild, while the full fury of the Border Ruffians was turned on the unhappy land. Men were slaughtered, homes and farms burned – two hundred men, Mr Comber, died in the fighting of that terrible summer of ’56, property valued at thousands of dollars destroyed – but John Brown held the banner of freedom aloft, and his name was a terror to the tyrants. At last the Border Ruffians descended in overwhelming force on his home at Ossawatomie, put it to the torch, slew his son Frederick, and drove the heroic father from the territory – too late! John Brown’s work in Kansas was done! It is free soil today, and shall so remain, but more, far more than this, he had lighted Liberty’s beacon for all America to see, and shown that there can be but one end to this struggle – war to the bitter end against slavery!’
[Flashy: On the whole, I agree. J.B. hadn’t ensured Kansas’s freedom – the will of the majority, and the fact that its climate was no good for slave crops like cotton and sugar and baccy saw to that. But Crixus was right: he had lit the beacon, for while he and his boys were only one of many gangs of marauders and killers who fought in ‘Bleeding Kansas’, his was the name that was remembered; he was the symbol of the fight against slavery. The legend of the Avenging Angel grew out of the Pottawatomie Massacre and the battle at Black Jack, where he licked the militia and took them prisoner. To the abolitionists back east he was the embodiment of freedom, smiting the slavery men hip and thigh, and the tale lost nothing in the telling by the Yankee press. You may guess what the South thought of him: murderer, brigand, fiend in human shape, and arch-robber – and I’m bound to say, just from what he later told me himself, that he did his share of plundering, especially of horses, for which he had a good eye. But whatever else he did in Kansas, John Brown accomplished one thing: he turned the anti-slavery crusade into an armed struggle, and made North and South weigh each other as enemies. He put gunsmoke on the breeze, and the whole of America sniffed it in – and didn’t find the odour displeasing.]18
Crixus had paused for breath and another sip of brandy, but now he leaned forward and gripped my hands in his excitement.
‘Do you know what he said, Mr Comber, this good and great old man, as he gazed back at his burning home, his revolvers smoking in his hands, his eyes brimmed with tears for his murdered child? Can you guess, sir, what were those words that have rung like a trumpet blast in the ears of his countrymen?’
I said I couldn’t imagine, and he