James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

It was at this time that the old man said to me: “I would rather have the small-pox, yellow fever, and cholera all together in my camp, than a man without principles. It's a mistake, sir,” he continued, “that our people make, when they think that bullies are the best fighters, or that they are the men fit to oppose these Southerners. Give me men of good principles; God-fearing men men who respect themselves; and, with a dozen of them, I will oppose any hundred such men as these Buford ruffians.”

I remained in the camp about an hour. Never before had I met such a band of men. They were not earnest, but earnestness incarnate. Six of them were John Brown's sons.

I left this sacred spot with a far higher respect for the Great Struggle than ever I had felt before, and with a renewed and increased faith in noble and disinterested champions of the right; of whose existencesince I had seen so much of paltry jealousy, selfishness, and unprincipled ambition among the Free State politicians — I was beginning to doubt, and to regard as a pleasant illusion of my youth. I went away, thoughtful, and hopeful for the cause; for I had seen, for the first time, the spirit of the Ironsides armed and encamped. And I said, also, and thought, that I had seen the predestined leader of the second and the holier American Revolution.