CHAPTER VII
THE SWAMP OF THE SWAN
"And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hands hath God delivered Midian, and all the host."
"Did you go out under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society?" asked the Inquisition of John Brown in after years. He answered grimly: "No, sir, I went out under the auspices of John Brown." In broad outline the story of his coming to Kansas has been told in the last chapter, but the picture needs now to be filled in with the details of his personal fortunes, and a more careful study of the development of his personal character in this critical period of his career. The place of his coming was storied and romantic. French-fathered Indians wheeling onward in their swift canoes saw stately birds in the reedy lowlands of eastern Kansas and called the marsh the Swamp of the Swan. Up from the dark sluggish rivers rose rolling goodly lands over which John Brown's brother Edward had passed to California in 1849, and on which his brother-in-law had settled as early as 1854. Here, too, naturally had followed the five pioneering sons in April, 1855. They came hating slavery and yet peacefully, unarmed, and in all good faith, with cattle and horses and trees and vines to settle in a
