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236 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

became aware of it, and how it rekindled the zeal, stimulated the activity, and
strengthened the faith of our old anti-slavery forces. "Draw on me for $1,000
per month while the conflict lasts," said the great-hearted Gerrit Smith.
George L. Stearns poured out his thousands, and anti-slavery men of smaller
means were proportionally liberal. H. W. Beecher shouted the right word at
the head of a mighty column; Sumner in the Senate spoke as no man had ever
spoken there before. Lewis Tappan representing one class of the old opponents
of slavery, and William L. Garrison the other, lost sight of their former
differences, and bent all their energies to the freedom of Kansas. But these and
others were merely generators of anti-slavery force. The men who went to
Kansas with the purpose of making it a free State, were the heroes and martyrs.
One of the leaders in this holy crusade for freedom, with whom I was
brought into near relations, was John Brown, whose person, house, and purposes
I have already described. This brave old man and his sons were amongst
the first to hear and heed the trumpet of freedom calling them to battle. What
they did and suffered, what they sought and gained, and by what means, are
matters of history, and need not be repeated here.

When it became evident, as it soon did, that the war for and against slavery
in Kansas was not to be decided by the peaceful means of words and
ballots, but that swords and bullets were to be employed on both sides.
Captain John Brown felt that now, after long years of waiting, his hour had
come, and never did man meet the perilous requirements of any occasion
more cheerfully, courageously, and disinterestedly than he. I met him often
during this struggle, and saw deeper into his soul than when I met him in
Springfield seven or eight years before, and all I saw of him gave me a more
favorable impression of the man, and inspired me with a higher respect for his
character. In his repeated visits to the East to obtain necessary arms and supplies,
he often did me the honor of spending hours and days with me at
Rochester. On more than one occasion I got up meetings and solicited aid to
be used by him for the cause, and I may say without boasting that my efforts
in this respect were not entirely fruitless. Deeply interested as "Osawatomie
Brown" was in Kansas he never lost sight of what he called his greater
work — the liberation of all the slaves in the United States. But for the then
present he saw his way to the great end through Kansas. It would be a grateful
task to tell of his exploits in the border struggle, how he met persecution with
persecution, war with war, strategy with strategy, assassination and house-
burning with signal and terrible retaliation, till even the blood-thirsty propagandists
of slavery were compelled to cry for quarter. The horrors wrought by
his iron hand cannot be contemplated without a shudder, but it is the shudder