ohn Brown
although he fought with bullets.

Yet John Brown's fervor soon ended in tragedy, sowing seeds of fear,
distrust, and bitter partisanship in all parts of the country. When,
in October 1859, the startling news reached Susan of the raid on
Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown, she sadly tried to piece
together the story of his failure. She admired and respected John
Brown, believing he had saved Kansas for freedom. That he had further
ambitious plans was common knowledge among antislavery workers, for he
had talked them over with Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, and the
three young militants, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frank Sanborn, and
Samuel Gridley Howe. Somehow these plans had failed, but she was sure
that his motives were good. He was imprisoned, accused of treason and
murder, and in his carpetbag were papers which, it was said,
implicated prominent antislavery workers. Now his friends were fleeing
the country, Sanborn, Douglass, and Howe. Gerrit Smith broke down so
completely that for a time his mind was affected. Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, defiant and unafraid, stuck by John Brown to the end,
befriending his family, hoping to rescue him as he had rescued
fugitive slaves.

Scanning the _Liberator_ for its comment on John Brown, Susan found it
colored, as she had expected, by Garrison's instinctive opposition to
all war and bloodshed. He called the raid "a misguided, wild,
apparently insane though disinterested and well-intentioned effort by
insurrection to emancipate the slaves of Virginia," but even he added,
"Let no one who glories in the Revolutionary struggle of 1776 deny the
right of the slaves to imitate the example of our fathers."[84]

Behind closed doors and in public meetings, abolitionists pledged
their allegiance to John Brown's noble purpose. He had wanted no
bloodshed, they said, had no thought of stirring up slaves to brutal
revenge. The raid was to be merely a signal for slaves to arise, to
cast off slavery forever, to follow him to a mountain refuge, which
other slave insurrections would reinforce until all slaves were free.
To him the plan seemed logical and he was convinced it was
God-inspired. To some of his friends it seemed possible--just a step
beyond the Underground Railroad and hiding fugitive slaves. To Susan
he was a hero and a martyr.

Southerners, increasingly fearful of slave insurrections, called John
Brown a cold-blooded murderer and accused Republicans--"bla