Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/186

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178
JOHN BROWN

a thick chaparral four hundred yards off. General Reid made a successful charge, killing thirty-one, and taking seven prisoners. Among the killed was Frederick Brown. The notorious John Brown was also killed, by a pro-slavery man named White, in attempting to cross the Marais des Cygnes. The pro-slavery party have five wounded. On the same day Captain Hays, with forty men, attacked the house of the notorious Ottawa Jones, burned it, and killed two Abolitionists. Jones fled to the cornfield, was shot by Hays, and is believed to be dead."[1]

But John Brown was not dead and was ever after known as "Osawatomie" Brown. He wrote home September 7th saying:

"I have one moment to write to you, to say that I am yet alive, that Jason and family were well yesterday; John and family, I hear, are well (he being yet a prisoner). On the morning of the 30th of August an attack was made by the ruffians on Osawatomie, numbering some four hundred, by whose scouts our dear Frederick was shot dead without warning,—he supposing them to be free state men, as near as we can learn. One other man, a cousin of Mr. Adair, was murdered by them about the same time that Frederick was killed, and one badly wounded at the same time. At this time I was about three miles off, where I had some fourteen or fifteen men over night that I had just enlisted to serve under me as regulars. These I collected as well as I could, with some twelve or

  1. Quoted in Sanborn, p. 321