Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/280

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272
JOHN BROWN

money, but sent him to New York and Washington to watch Forbes and possibly regain his confidence. Realf, however, had become timid and lukewarm in the cause and sailed away to England. The rest of the men scattered. Owen Brown went to Akron, O. Cook left Cleveland for the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry; Gill secured work in a Shaker settlement, probably Lebanon, O., where Tidd was already employed; Steward Taylor went to Illinois; Stevens awaited Brown at Cleveland; while Leeman got some work in Ashtabula County. John Brown left Boston, on the 3rd of June, proceeding to the North Elba home for a short visit. Then he, Kagi, Stevens, Leeman, Gill, Parsons, Moffett, and Owen were gathered together and the party went to Kansas, arriving late in June.

Thus suddenly ended John Brown's attempt to organize the Black Phalanx. His intimate friends understood that the great plan was only postponed, but the postponement had, as Higginson predicted, a dampening effect, and Brown's chances of enlisting a large Canadian contingent were materially lessened. Nevertheless, seed had been sown. And there were millions of human beings to whom the last word of the Chatham Declaration of Independence was more than mere rhetoric: "Nature is mourning for its murdered and afflicted children. Hung be the Heavens in scarlet!"