for secret service and no questions
asked. He promised interesting times in Kansas if he could secure this
money. Of his disciples for the great coming deed but one had arrived
at Tabor, his faithful son Owen. The old man lingered at Tabor with his
religious friends until November before starting for Kansas.

Higginson, his chief backer in Massachusetts, was growing angry over his
repeated delays and senseless inaction. Sanborn, always Brown's staunch
defender, wrote Higginson a letter begging patience:

"You do not understand Brown's circumstances. He is as ready for
revolution as any other man, and is now on the border of Kansas safe
from arrest, prepared for action. But he needs money for his present
expenses and active support.

"I believe that he is the best Dis-union champion you can find, and with
his hundred men, when he is put where he can raise them and drill them
(for he has an expert drill officer with him) WILL DO MORE TO SPLIT THE
UNION than a list of 50,000 names for your Convention, good as that is.

"What I am trying to hint at is that the friends of Kansas are looking
with strange apathy at a movement which has all the elements of fitness
and success--a good plan, a tried leader, and a radical purpose. If you
can do anything for it _now_, in God's name do it--and the ill results
of the new policy in Kansas may be prevented."

The new policy in Kansas must be smashed at all hazards, of course. To
the men who believed in bloodshed as the only rational way to settle
political issues, the ballot box and the council table were the
inventions of the Devil. It was the duty of the children of Light to
send the Lord's Anointed with the Sword of Gideon to raise anew the
Blood Feud.

It is evident from this letter of F. B. Sanborn to Higginson that even
Sanborn had not penetrated the veil of the old Puritan's soul. The one
to whom he had revealed his true plan was his faithful son in Kansas.
The Territory was not the objective of this mission. It was only a feint
to deceive friend and foe.

And he succeeded in doing it.

That his purpose was the disruption of the Union in a deluge of blood,
Sanborn, of course, understood and approved. He was utterly mistaken as
to the time and place and method which the Man of Visions had chosen for
the deed.

On entering the Territory, now as peaceful as any State in the Union,
Brown gathered his disciples, Oliver, Kagi, Stevens, and Cook and
despatched them to Tabor,